The Cool Blue Blog

Well, he should know

Senator Joe Biden has confirmed what we all knew: Senator Obama's youth and inexperience are dangerous for America

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Which might be OK, if Biden thought Obama was up to the job and would make the right choices. But Obama's Foreign Policy Expert isn't so sure about that.

"And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

During the debate at Hofstra University Obama praised Biden's Foreign Policy expertise

...he has some of the best foreign policy credentials of anybody. And Democrats and Republicans alike, I think, acknowledge his expertise there.

So Joe should know.

UPDATE: Senator Biden has taken the day off and former secretary of State Madeline Albright has stepped in to say "... it’s just a statement of fact, frankly...." so I guess the consensus is, Obama is dangerous on the Foreign Policy front. Meanwhile,   Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty asks: Why tempt our enemies?

News on the Economy

Things you might have missed from today:

1. Wall Street bounded higher Monday, extending its streak of volatility as investors took signs of easing in the credit markets as evidence that government steps to revive the battered financial system are taking hold.
2. The economy's health improved for the first time in five months in September as supplier deliveries and new orders strengthened, a private research group said Monday.
3. Momentum increased Monday for a new economic stimulus package as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed extra help for the ailing economy, while the White House said it was open to the idea.

Uh oh. What happens if people start believing Republicans are responsible for fixing the economic mess created by Fannie and Freddie and their cohorts in Congress?

Freddie Mac's problems began when Hagel's legislation won approval from the Senate committee.

Democrats did not like the harshest provision, which would have given a new regulator a mandate to shrink Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by forcing them to sell off part of their portfolios. That approach, the Democrats feared, would cut into the ability of low- and moderate-income families to buy houses.

The political backdrop to the debate "was like bizarre-o-world," said the second of three people familiar with the program. "The Republicans were pro-regulation and the Democrats were against it; it was upside down."

Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee chairman at the time, underscored that in a statement Wednesday, saying that with Democrats already on their side, it was not surprising that Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae went after Republicans. "Unfortunately," said Shelby, R-Ala., "efforts then to derail reform were successful."

Staff Sgt. Carlo A. Alcazar

Sgt. 1st Class Drew C. Kimmey, Capt. Stephen P. Ward and Staff Sgt. Carlo A. Alcazar, members of Civil Affairs Team 745, were recently recognized for their performance during an Afghanistan mission last November. The three soldiers were recognized for their efforts in rescuing a Special Forces team leader, who was also the ground forces commander that day.                   

CA Team 745 was stationed at Firebase Cobra in Oruzgan, Afghanistan, with special operations detachments from the 3rd Special Forces Group, members of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. On Nov. 2, 2007, the teams and their Afghan counterparts left the firebase to visit the village of Sarsina to conduct medical capabilities mission as well as a humanitarian aid drop. Once they arrived at the village, they discovered it had been evacuated and that Taliban fighters were entrenched into several fighting positions in an attempt to ambush forces in the area.                   

Alcazar reported only three families came in for medical treatment. The families told the soldiers the Taliban made the other people leave the village, but that having nowhere to go. they stayed. “What was alarming,” Ward said later, “was the buildings had locks and barricaded doors, which was a clear indication that the village wasn’t abandoned, but had been turned into a defendable position.”                   

All three quickly figured it was only a matter of time before the firefight would begin.                   

The teams were quickly engaged by 300 Taliban fighters. According to Army documents, after an hour of fighting, two vehicles were pulled to the rear of the fight after being disabled. This left the ground forces commander to the front of the coalition lines and in jeopardy of being overrun. At this point, Ward, the team leader for 745, radioed to the ground forces commander, who was pinned down in a vulnerable building, that his was on its way. Ward later said he and Alcazar went because they were the closest truck and the others were busy providing cover. Unfortunately, the team’s vehicle crashed into an enemy fighting position and became immobile, knocking Ward and Alcazar momentarily unconscious.                   

After they regained consciousness, Alcazar took to reloading ammunition belts, enabling Kimmey, the gunner, to continue to engage enemy forces. Ward exited the vehicle and directed his team to dismount and move to cover. Kimmey remained in the turret, providing cover for the team and allowing them to reach the ground forces commander. He stayed even though he knew the enemy was setting up mortar positions to destroy the truck he was firing from.                   

Kimmey was able to keep the Taliban from overrunning the soldiers with the .50-caliber gun. In the process, he was drawing a majority of the enemy fire. Ward reported the enemy was about 50 to 100 meters away at this point.                   

Team 745 moved to the ground commander’s position and helped in the recovery of the commander and the casualties. All of this was done, while under “continual, accurate and effective” enemy fire.
Since the team’s 745’s vehicle was immobile, it was stripped of all sensitive equipment, and its gun was dismantled to prevent the enemy from gaining off of the team’s loss. Once team 745 sterilized their truck, they had no choice but to run beside the Special Forces vehicle, using it as cover, until they reached safety, because there was no room for them on the truck. All three of them ran alongside the truck until they reached a checkpoint and mounted up into another vehicle for the ride back to firebase Cobra.

During the civil affairs award ceremony honoring all three for their heroic acts, Maj. Gen. John F. Mulholland, said, “The words can’t do justice, nor can the medal on your chest convey what they went up against.”                  

Assassinating Joe

So all Joe Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber) did was stand on a rope line at an Obama campaign rally when the Senator picked him to ask a question. And the answer the Senator gave is what made Joe an instant celebrity. When asked what Obama's plan do for him if he happened to own a business that made more than $250,000 a year, Obama said: not much

Mr. Obama said his plan would improve the economy for other people trying to get a start in small business, and "spread the wealth."

Senator McCain brought up Joe at the debate as an example of the effects of Senator Obama's tax plan. i.e. the transfer of wealth from one class of people to another in an effort to "equalize" wealth.

But the problem is the media did not see Joe as "every Joe", they saw him as a threat to Obama.

And they went after him.

They went after him in a way they haven't gone after Rev Wright, Father Phlager, Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rezko, the Woods Fund, the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the Trinity Baptist Church, the New Party, and ACORN.

But the problem is Joe isn't the issue. There are plenty of Joes out there but Joe Biden doesn't know any of them.

It's not about Joe Wurzelbacher.

It's the issue, stupid.

You can't make low-income people well-to-do by making well-to-do people poor. Well-to-do people make jobs available to low-income people giving them opportunities to become well-to-do people.

The fact is that according to the Census Bureau, if you employ more than 5 people, you likely have receipts in excess of $250,000 a year. And in many cases, small businesses file as individuals. What's more is Obama's plan is per household, not per individual. So if you own a business that employs 5 people, and your spouse works, your household income could easily exceed $250,000.

Now it is a fact that during a recession, as people get laid off, they often start a business. And it is also true that small businesses lead a recovery in terms of hiring. So why would anyone want to put up roadblocks to a recovery by taxing small business?

You can cover for Obama.

You can assassinate Joe Wurzelbacher in the media.

But the issue will remain.

And the more you do to Joe what you did to Sarah Palin, the worse it will look for your guy Obama.

If Joe loses his livelihood as a result of the Media, he will definitly have to reconsider voting for Obama: because Obama's tax credits may be his only hope for survival. And, I wonder, if Obama wins will they revisit how Joe's story turned out under an Obama Administration?

Joe the Plumber

It is astounding that someone like Joe Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber from Toledo Ohio) could have such an astounding impact on a Presidential election. I mean he is literally an ordinary Joe who is working hard to live the American Dream.

It was just a random event that Senator Government Obama picked on him and of course, YouTube was there

Reporting on the Exchange, the Boston Globe wrote

Wurzelbacher told Obama he wanted to buy a plumbing business that makes $270,000 to $280,000 a year. Would it be taxed more under Obama's plan? Obama acknowledged that it would: For whatever amount it earns over $250,000, the marginal tax rate would increase from 36 percent to 39 percent - the same amount it had been under President Clinton, before the Bush tax cuts.

Obama asked Wurzelbacher to think back to the days when he was earning, say, only $60,000 or $70,000 a year. If he'd had a good-size tax cut then, he would have been able to save more and therefore buy his business sooner. "It's not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everyone who is behind you, that they have a chance at success, too."

He said, a bit later: "Right now, everybody's so pinched that business is bad for everybody. . . . I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

ABC has more of the exchange here.

This Joe's name came up in the Presidential Debate last night (oh, around 18 times) and some are calling Joe the winner. Now when McCain brought up Senator Obama's conversation with Joe, and pledged not to raise taxes on small business, Obama responded like this

Now, the conversation I had with Joe the plumber, what I essentially said to him was, "Five years ago, when you were in a position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then."

And what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn't yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now. And that requires us to make some important choices.

Joe's response?

"Joe the Plumber" also told Katie Couric in an interview after the debate that the Illinois Senator has "a tap dance...almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr."

And that other odrinary Joe, Joe Biden, all of a sudden doesn't know any ordinary Joe's like Joe the Plumber.

But Obama's tax plan is designed specifically to increase the Welfare State.

And that's because of his basic political philosophy which he attempts to hide with seemingly centrist rhetoric.

That philosophy is demostrated by the associations he now denies. But going further back, Gateway Pundit shows that Socialist Ideology has been with him from an early age

His first mentor in high school was noted Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
He admitted he attended socialist conferences during his college years in his first book, "Dreams From My Father", page 122:

"Political discussions, the kind that at Occidental had once seemed so intense and purposeful, came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences that I sometimes attended at Cooper Union or the African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem or Brooklyn during the summers-a few of the many diversions that New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center."

Obama also wrote that he selected his friends carefully, the more Marxist and radical the better, page 100:

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets."

And, don't forget Obama's pastor, mentor and father figure of 20 years, G-D AmeriKKKa Jeremiah Wright, who brought the black liberation socialist theology to the alter.

But Obama's centrist facade didn't get by Joe the Plumber.

Update: Clearly Joe is being perceived as a threat by Obama supporters. From The New Editor (via Instapundit)

So what happens to Mr. Wurzelbacher for expressing his views?

Reports in the mainstream media appear claiming that he is unlicensed (even though he doesn't need one as an employee of a business or as a contractor working on a residence), and that he apparently has a tax lien filed against him.

Not to be outdone, the Daily Kos published his home address for all the world to see.

The Democratic Underground just threw whatever they could at the guy.

Better think a little longer next time if you wish to criticize a Chicago Democrat running for president (or anything else, for that matter).

You might get 'the treatment.'

Yeah. Now Joe will get the Palin treatment.

But we know that Obama and his crew have a problem with the First Amendment when it intersects with getting their guy elected.

Spc Joseph Gibson

As the helicopter full of Rangers touched down that April night, Gibson and fellow soldiers found themselves dodging enemy small arms fire less than 50 meters away. Gibson’s platoon sergeant would later say the enemy small-arms and machine-gun fire began less than a minute after the group disembarked the helicopter. Among the two Ranger casualties was a soldier with a life-threatening gun shot wound.            

Transporting wounded soldier over an uneven field with irrigation ditches and through enemy fire was a challenge, but the Rangers’ dedication to each other motivated Gibson to get his friend to safety.              

“It was my buddy; I didn’t want to quit, Gibson said later. “For a while, it was just me on one end of the litter.”              

Gibson’s actions are credited with saving the soldier’s life. The soldier returned home safely to see his wife and newborn child.              

After assisting in this medical evacuation, Gibson and the Rangers continued on with their mission. They began to clear a field with tall grass and canals near the helicopter landing zone. The Rangers knew enemy fighters were still in the area, even though most had fled when the soldiers touched down. While clearing the field, Gibson stepped on a terrorist hiding in a ditch under some grass. Initially, Gibson continued for a few more steps past the terrorist. But following his gut instinct, Gibson turned around to investigate what he’d stepped on. The terrorist moved to kill Gibson and the Rangers. Gibson grabbed the muzzle of the terrorist’s rifle as the terrorist began to fire. Gibson wrestled the terrorist to the ground and gained positional control. He struggled and later stripped the terrorist of his weapon. The terrorist then gripped Gibson’s rifle. Without the ability to use a firearm, Gibson engaged the enemy with his hands. The terrorist ripped off Gibson’s helmet and all his night vision optics, then began to reach for something hidden in his clothing -- the detonator to his suicide vest. The terrorist screamed “Bomb!” in English.              

As Gibson worked to stop the terrorist from detonating his vest, the terrorist had maneuvered into a position that was cutting off Gibson’s circulation. Gibson, in an effort to save himself, began to hit the terrorist as hard as he could. His blows rendered the terrorist unconscious.              

“I got my weapon into his stomach and fired,” Gibson said. “He came back to consciousness after that, [but] I knew I got him. I stood up and neutralized him.”              

“Rangers are proven over and over again in battle,” Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, said in presenting Gibson with his Silver Star Medal. “Rangers are glorified in Hollywood movies, but you aren’t actors. You are real men who make real sacrifices.”              

Gibson said he is honored to serve as a Ranger and have saved his fellow soldier’s life. Following the incident, Gibson re-enlisted to fight with the Ranger platoon he accompanied that night.

The 95% Illusion

Senator Obama has oft repeated the claim that he will lower the taxes on 95% of all taxpayers. You've heard him. He made the claim at the last debate and continues to make it on the campaign trail.

So let's be clear about my tax plan and Sen. McCain's, because we're not going to be able to deal with entitlements unless we understand the revenues coming in. I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, 95 percent.

If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up. If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down.

So let's be clear about his tax plan. Today, 44% of Americans do not pay taxes at all. Yet Senator Obama assures us that " If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down." So how can your taxes go down if you do not pay taxes? Easy, it's called Tax Credits.

Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

So where does this money come from?

All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.

So for all those people who do not pay taxes, they are not getting a tax cut: they are getting a transfer payment.

Now clearly that money has to come from somewhere.

But the most alarming thing about Mr. Obama's proposal is that the $250,000 threshold, above which the payroll tax would be applied, refers to household income, not individual income. So it's quite deceptive when he claims that the $250,000 threshold will "ensure that lifting the payroll tax cap does not ensnare any middle class Americans."

Suppose your household consists of you and your spouse, each earning wages of $150,000 per year. Currently, you are each subject to the payroll tax up to $102,000 of wages, so together you are taxed on $204,000. Under the Obama plan, you'd be taxed again on another $50,000 of wages.

At the current payroll tax rate of 12.4% – 6.2% from wage-earners and 6.2% from their employers – your household would be looking at a tax hike of $6,200 per year. You probably didn't consider yourself rich before, and you certainly won't after paying that tax bill.

And it is, at the moment, an open question as to whether this $250,000 threshold applies to interest on savings and capital gains income.

Now one of the things these tax credits do is erase the payroll taxes for people who receive them. So they won't be contributing to Social Security and Medicare. But they will collect from it.

The political left defends "refundability" on grounds that these payments help to offset the payroll tax. And that was at least plausible when the only major refundable credit was the earned-income tax credit. Taken together, however, these tax credit payments would exceed payroll levies for most low-income workers.

And it will cost us in the long run

The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

Now Obama defends this by saying he'll be raising payroll taxes on households earning more than $250,000 but they won't be getting higher benefits.

And neither has Mr. Obama said whether the rich – and, truth be told, the middle class – paying his new higher taxes will get correspondingly higher Social Security benefits when they retire. Throughout the history of the Social Security program, there has always been a connection between what you contribute in taxes and what you get back in benefits. If Mr. Obama uncaps the wages subject to tax, but doesn't uncap benefits, then he has severed the link between them. Social Security would stand revealed not as a work-related contributory retirement system, but simply as a tax-funded welfare and income-redistribution program.

And for all that, Mr. Obama's proposal won't help Social Security's long-run solvency problems.

Further, the Obama plan actually increases the tax rate for those who earn the credits, so when the government decides that they can no longer afford to pay the Tax Credit, those people who were getting them will all of a sudden be in a higher tax bracket and wind up paying more taxes than they would have before the Tax Credits were installed.

There's another catch: Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year.

In short, Senator Obama's plan will incentivize the poor to remain poor while at the same time provide disincentive to make money, open small businesses and create jobs.

Now that's change.

But it's not small change.

Sgt Drew C. Kimmey

Sgt. 1st Class Drew C. Kimmey, Capt. Stephen P. Ward and Staff Sgt. Carlo A. Alcazar, members of Civil Affairs Team 745, were recently recognized for their performance during an Afghanistan mission last November. The three soldiers were recognized for their efforts in rescuing a Special Forces team leader, who was also the ground forces commander that day.                   

CA Team 745 was stationed at Firebase Cobra in Oruzgan, Afghanistan, with special operations detachments from the 3rd Special Forces Group, members of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. On Nov. 2, 2007, the teams and their Afghan counterparts left the firebase to visit the village of Sarsina to conduct medical capabilities mission as well as a humanitarian aid drop. Once they arrived at the village, they discovered it had been evacuated and that Taliban fighters were entrenched into several fighting positions in an attempt to ambush forces in the area.                   

Alcazar reported only three families came in for medical treatment. The families told the soldiers the Taliban made the other people leave the village, but that having nowhere to go. they stayed. “What was alarming,” Ward said later, “was the buildings had locks and barricaded doors, which was a clear indication that the village wasn’t abandoned, but had been turned into a defendable position.”                   

All three quickly figured it was only a matter of time before the firefight would begin.                   

The teams were quickly engaged by 300 Taliban fighters. According to Army documents, after an hour of fighting, two vehicles were pulled to the rear of the fight after being disabled. This left the ground forces commander to the front of the coalition lines and in jeopardy of being overrun. At this point, Ward, the team leader for 745, radioed to the ground forces commander, who was pinned down in a vulnerable building, that his was on its way. Ward later said he and Alcazar went because they were the closest truck and the others were busy providing cover. Unfortunately, the team’s vehicle crashed into an enemy fighting position and became immobile, knocking Ward and Alcazar momentarily unconscious.                   

After they regained consciousness, Alcazar took to reloading ammunition belts, enabling Kimmey, the gunner, to continue to engage enemy forces. Ward exited the vehicle and directed his team to dismount and move to cover. Kimmey remained in the turret, providing cover for the team and allowing them to reach the ground forces commander. He stayed even though he knew the enemy was setting up mortar positions to destroy the truck he was firing from.                   

Kimmey was able to keep the Taliban from overrunning the soldiers with the .50-caliber gun. In the process, he was drawing a majority of the enemy fire. Ward reported the enemy was about 50 to 100 meters away at this point.                   

Team 745 moved to the ground commander’s position and helped in the recovery of the commander and the casualties. All of this was done, while under “continual, accurate and effective” enemy fire.
Since the team’s 745’s vehicle was immobile, it was stripped of all sensitive equipment, and its gun was dismantled to prevent the enemy from gaining off of the team’s loss. Once team 745 sterilized their truck, they had no choice but to run beside the Special Forces vehicle, using it as cover, until they reached safety, because there was no room for them on the truck. All three of them ran alongside the truck until they reached a checkpoint and mounted up into another vehicle for the ride back to firebase Cobra.            

During the civil affairs award ceremony honoring all three for their heroic acts, Maj. Gen. John F. Mulholland, said, “The words can’t do justice, nor can the medal on your chest convey what they went up against.”                  

Same old, Same old: With Obama

I wrote about the "Community Action" group ACORN and their fraudulent voter registration practices back in 2006. At that time they had been caught perpetrating fraud in Philadelphia, Denver and Ohio among other places. Now, they are back in the news again

...their office was raided Tuesday morning by agents of the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General who alleged in an application for a search warrant that ACORN had hired 59 felons through a work release program as canvassers and submitted nearly 300 apparently fraudulent voter registration cards as part of the drive.

Interestingly, Nevada is one of those "swing" states in the Presidential election. And why were the cops looking at ACORN?

The submitted voter cards included addresses and names that do not exist in Nevada, duplicate registrations, names culled from telephone books and names of Dallas Cowboys players, an investigator for the Secretary of State alleged in his affidavit for a search warrant.

In another swing state, Missouri, ACORN is in trouble for the very same thing.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

"I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all."

In fact, Britain's SkyNews is reporting that ACORN's voter registration irregularities are widespread

US election officials believe they have uncovered massive attempted voter fraud less than a month before the country goes to the polls to choose its new president.

Eleven separate investigations have now been launched into a voter registration group called the Association of Community Organisations for Reform – or Acorn.

Now ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and an association of community organizations is composed of Community Organizers. And one such Community Organizer is Senator Barack Obama.

A radical group Barack Obama used to work for is committing voter-registration fraud in several states, ahead of the election. What does Obama know about this scam?

That question is being asked by Investor's Business Daily

What does all this have to do with Obama, besides the fact that he'd be the beneficiary of most, if not all, of these new votes?

For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for "advance work.")

What's more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN's voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago's South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.

The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.

ACORN was one organization that was instrumental in encouraging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to extend home loans to people who couldn't afford them.

Various ACORN chapters across the country, led by folks like Chicago's Madeline Talbott, staged in-your-face protests in bank lobbies and filed complaints meant to hold up mergers sought by targeted banking firms.

Unless the banks agreed to ACORN's terms - which many (understandably) did.

Talbott & Co. generally wanted them to ease down-payment requirements and ignore weak credit histories. And their intimidating tactics often necessitated police action, as at a '97 protest at Pulaski Bank & Trust in Arkansas, where activists blocked drive-through lanes.

The movement's biggest victory, of course, came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up the riskier loans - providing fresh incentive for banks to make even more of them.

Democrats attempted to return the favor by including ACORN in the $700 billion "bailout" plan.

According to Discover the Networks, ACORN  is "Largest radical group in America, with 175,000 dues-paying member families, and more than 850 chapters in 70 US cities" and has been involved in voter fraud for Democratic and left-wing candidates since at least 2004.

Through the years, Senator Obama was right there with ACORN

"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career," he told the group last November.

Indeed, in the early '90s, Obama was recruited by Talbott herself to run training sessions for ACORN activists.

ACORN also got funding from two charities, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation, when Obama served on their boards, and from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - the radical "education reform" outfit Obama ran from '95 to '99.

Using his ACORN connections, Obama joined the New Party with whose help, and that of ACORNs, he gained a seat in the Chicago Senate. The New Party

...hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN. The party's Chicago chapter also included a large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members...

One of the more notable New Party members was Carl Davidson, a Chicago-based Marxist who became a political supporter of Barack Obama in the mid-1990s.

The connections between Obama and Marxist ideologies just keep growing, from Rev Wright, to William Ayers, ACORN and now the New Party.

And when called on any of them, he either claims he didn't know or he just had a passing relationship.

There's more here and here.

Update: From Gateway Pundit Busted... Obama Lied About His ACORN Training Sessions

Is there any past associate that Obama at this point has not disavowed or distanced himself from? Wright, Phlager, Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rezko, Woods Fund, Joyce Foundation, Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Trinity Baptist Church, the New Party, and ACORN.

Other than Michelle, what friends does he have left?

Obama declares war on Iran

Senator Obama's foreign policy notions continue to amaze me. Almost unnoticed, Senator Obama said he would instigate war on Iran by blockade and it is clear from the context that he doesn't even realize that such is an act of war

I have consistently said that, if we can work more effectively with other countries diplomatically to tighten sanctions on Iran, if we can reduce our energy consumption through alternative energy, so that Iran has less money, if we can impose the kinds of sanctions that, say, for example, Iran right now imports gasoline, even though it's an oil-producer, because its oil infrastructure has broken down, if we can prevent them from importing the gasoline that they need and the refined petroleum products, that starts changing their cost-benefit analysis. That starts putting the squeeze on them.

It sure does. But how doe one "prevent them from importing the gasoline that they need" without a blockade? And since he lists such an action along with diplomacy and sanctions, he appears he believes a blockade is just another tool he can use that is on the same plane as these others.

But according to Britannica a blockade is

an act of war by which a belligerent prevents access to or departure from a defined part of the enemy’s coasts

A blockade involves war ships ours would block and theirs would attempt to break the blockade. And meanwhile shipping in the Persian Gulf gets real dicey.

When asked about the Obama Doctrine

What is the Obama doctrine for use of force that the United States would send when we don't have national security issues at stake?

The Senator said

... when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.

The Senator mentioned Rawanda and (remarkably) the Holocast. He is aware that we did intervene on behalf of the Holocast, right? It was called World War II. But more importantly, he didn't mention Iraq: At least not in this context. Earlier in the debate he said

I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.

But wouldn't the Obama Doctrine force him to have considered invading Iraq?

Did he forget the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds? The Marsh Arabs? Not to mention the indiscriminate torture and murder of thousands of Iraqi citizens.

And had we withdrew at the point of high sectarian violence that preceeded the Surge, as Obama advocated, would this have not resulted in mass ethnic cleansing easily on the order of what was perpetrated in Rawanda?

Would we have not been "diminished" in Obama's mind?

Yes we would.

He also mentioned Darfur

...the strains that have been placed on our alliances around the world and the respect that's been diminished over the last eight years has constrained us being able to act on something like the genocide in Darfur, because we don't have the resources or the allies to do everything that we should be doing. That's going to change when I'm president...

So what is Senator Obama suggesting here? That we will withdraw from Iraq and put troops in Afghanistan and Darfur?

Obama's Foreign Policy is muddled, unclear and contradictory.

Forget the economy: A president has limited ability to affect it when compared to Congress and the Economy itself which goes through cycles and is to a great extent autonomous. Central Planning has been shown not to work very well so the economy is what it is and Government can only help screw it up: as is the case currently. And with a President that will sign into law every Democratic initiative that crosses his desk, the risk of Central Planning, not to mention higher taxes and uncontrolled Social Programs increases.

But even if we manage to escape that fate with a vigilant Republican minority (or better yet, a fiscally conservative majority) what a President does on the International stage is more direct and visceral. And it affects lives and the economy independent of Congress.

Obama's grasp of Foreign Policy (or lack thereof) is the most dangerous thing about him.

And one that should disqualify him to voters.