Conservative Law and Politics

Check me out here with Lee Dryer speaking about liberal non-profit foundations.



 The article on Z Smith Reynolds is here and the one on WK Kellogg is here.

Soros on Fannie/Freddie

This particular article is so wonky even I had trouble following but here is Soros' plan for removing Fannie/Freddie from mortgage financing.

The first is to introduce mortgage securities based on the Principle of Balance. GSEs could, and should, do this, with the government regulator setting clear and conservative standards. No legislation is required.

The second step is to open the process so all qualified MCIs can issue POB bonds. To make this market work, this means new law requiring that MCIs maintain skin in the game for any federally guaranteed mortgage.

After that, the GSEs could be phased out from their role as MCIs, and the guarantee function hived off to a government agency. Eventually, the GSEs would be liquidated, as their portfolios run off.

Legislation would also be required to extend the POB system to areas that government insurance does not cover.

In fact, legislation authorizing “covered bonds” is making its way through Congress.

This is based on a system in Denmark in which individual loans become bonds that can be bought back.

The Ten Most Egregious Fox News Distortions?

I will give the Huffington Post credit. Rather than simply attacking Fox News with a bunch of rhetoric, they've actually provided evidence. This is the Huffington Post's ten most egregious Fox News distortions.



1)Bill Hemmer Accuses Obama "Czar" Of Condoning Statutory



According to the Huffington Post, the boy in question was in fact above the age of consent, 16, and Jennings knew it. In fact, that's half right. The boy was above the age of consent but Jennings, at the time, didn't know it and thought he was 15, which is below the age of consent. Either way, the boy was a minor and was having an affair, gay no less, with a man in his 20's, and Jennings didn't tell him to stop it but told him to "wear a condom". If that's an "egregious" distortion, then what will Huffington say about some of the things said on MSNBC...oh wait?



2)Fox News Crops Biden



In this one from March of this year, Martha McCallum purports to claim that Joe Biden recently (then of course) saying that the economy was strong. McCallum opened the segment by saying that "for weeks the Obama administration was saying doom and gloom on the economy" and then McCallum continued by saying they're "singing a different tune now". Then, she showed several clips of administration officials saying things similar to Biden. I will assume that Huffington is correct and this is from the campaign. Furthermore, Huffington says that Biden was quoting McCain when he said this. Still, this was one of four clips all saying the same thing. No doubt FNS shouldn't have put it in there but the point remains the same. At the time, the administration was absolutely suddenly saying things were getting better after scaring everyone in the debate over the stimulus. So, this is a distortion but egregious?



3)Fox News Deceptively Crops Obama On Health Care



The only thing deceptive here are the folks at Huffington Post. Huffington claims that Wendell Goler's report deceptively crops a soundbite by Obama. The soundbite says, "if you're going to fix it, why not a universal health care system like in Europe." Huffington claims that Obama was simply repeating the question and later on said that he didn't want a system like in Europe. In fact, Goler never said that Obama wanted a system like in Europe. He has always, however, pushed for UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. That's what the clip of Obama said. The point was that President Obama wants a universal health care system like they have in Europe. Goler never said that Obama wants single payer like in Europe. Rather, he said that Obama wants universal health care like they have in Europe and Obama has said that on many occasions.



4)Megyn Kelly Accuses Sonia Sotomayor Of "Reverse Racism"



This so called distortion is absurd. We all know the quote that Ms. Kelly is referring to about a Latina woman with the richness of her experience reaching a better conclusion than a white male. This is a very troubling statement and that particular statement stinks of reverse racism and to not report on it would be ridiculous. In fact Kelly said it "sounded like" Sotomayor thought that Latinos would reach a better conclusion than whites and that's exactly what it sounds like. If this is a distortion, what exactly is the truth?



5) Fox News Passes Off Republican Talking Points As Its Own



Huffington claims that this report, done by Jon Scott, was actually from a Republican communications press release. That maybe so, but the actual report quotes newspapers from Politico, to the New York Times, to the Washington Times. So, if the original idea came from a Republican press release, so be it. The actual report quotes every major media under the soon, and these media show how over time the stimulus did in fact grow. So, if this is distortion, what's the truth?



6)Fox News Misleads On PATRIOT Act:



In this one, Trace Gallagher discusses three provisions of the Patriot Act that are about to expire: the loan wolf provision, roving wiretaps, and the business records provision. These were set to expire and the Fox News report says that Democrats are considering not renewing them. The so called proof of a distortion is a piece at Cato, a libertarian think tank that has no use for the Patriot Act. First, Huffington and Cato claim that Fox says that with this loan wolf provision Moussaoui would have been caught. In fact, Sammon says that there is no evidence of this. Second, Fox News quotes former AG Mike Mukasey as saying that these provisions saved lives. Third, even Cato's attack acknowledges that there would be changes to all through. Cato claims that Democrats wanting to remove it is a distortion since they want to keep all three for the most part. That's obviously a matter of opinion.



In reality, all these issues are far too detailed and complicated for one segment. So, of course, when you interview a proponent of the Patriot Act, you will get one side. What Huffington doesn't say is if Fox News then had someone that supports civil liberties over the Patriot Act on afterwards. It's likely they did. That's just as much a distortion.



7) Chris Wallace Promotes "Death Book" Smear



This is a total distortion. This has to do with a pamphlet put on the VA's site that suggested that if you were depressed or feeling like a burden to your family, you should end it. Huffington claims that Wallace had a Republican on to talk about this "smear". Of course, what Huffington Post doesn't say is that right after the Republican, FNS had Tammy Duckworth on to defend the VA. Furthermore, Duckworth said several things that were totally erroneous and after all the outrage, the pamphlet was eventually removed.



8) Fox News Anchor Calls Obama Fist Bump A "Terrorist Fist Jab"

This one was inexcusable. This was said by then anchor E.D. Hill. The Obama's are fond of the fist bump and they've made that a cultural phenomenon. I don't know where Hill got this from however she did apologize for it and Hill no longer works for the network.

9) Fox News Makes Up Math

In this one, there's only a screen shot. In the screen shot, it says the president's budget is $3.6 trillion 4x the size of Bush's biggest budget. That's inaccurate however the projected deficit was about 1.9 trillion dollars or four times Bush's biggest budget deficit. I think the two were conflated. I believe that this was written incorrectly and since all we have is a screenshot and not the video, I suspect that this is exactly what happened.

10) Fox News Promotes Tea Party Protests

The Tea Parties in April attracted somewhere in the neighborhood of one million people. That is news. They weren't promoted but covered. There were tens of thousands of tea party goers in D.C. on the 12th of September. That Fox News covered them is not promotion but covering the news. Huffington also claims that Fox News didn't cover the gay rights march in October. Of course, that isn't true either. That was also covered.

So, of the ten, only one is legitimately a distortion. I think it says a lot that the media that claims there's distortion distorts more than Fox News itself in the piece on distortion. Frankly, conservatives can find ten such examples every week from the likes of CNN and MSNBC. For instance, Andrea Mitchell just said she doesn't think that George Soros is far left. CNN fact checked SNL when SNL dared to mock President Obama.

These were supposed to be the ten worst and most of them were themselves distorted in order to make them distortions. That says plenty.

The Indoctrination of America's Kids

This first video is the now infamous video of kindergarteners singing a song in praise of President Obama at B. Bernice Young Elementary School in New Jersey. It's one of the creepiest and most disturbing videos I've seen in a while. It's for good reason that it's disturbing. It's almost become a cliche to refer to this video as something akin to Mao, Kim Jong Il, and Stalin. In those nations, we would expect such a video. We shouldn't expect it in America. Yet, that's exactly what we have. Worse yet, these are kindergarteners and so in no position to think critically through what they are singing. Now, a second such video has surfaced.

Kids Obama Song from misterbee2009 on Vimeo.

Yet, in my opinion, that's not nearly as disturbing as the next two videos.






The reason that these two videos are much more disturbing is that they are found in thousands of classrooms all around the country. These second set of videos would have received no attention had it not been for the reporting of Glenn Beck. He broke the use of these videos in our classrooms nationally. These videos are produced by the George Soros' funded Tides Foundation. They present a view of America that is anti corporate, anti military, and frankly arguably anti American.

These two videos are the latest reincarnation of what has become a trend in our schools. Far too often, left wing ideology dominates the classroom and teachers aren't trying to teach but rather indoctrinate their students.

I don't necessarily have a problem with kids viewing the second set of videos (the first are indefensible) as long as that classroom then shows videos from the opposite perspective. If that is followed by debate and discussion, then that's the right way to teach. Yet, that's not what is happening. These videos, The Story of Stuff, are presented as the one and only view of America. They're presented to condemn our corporate, materialistic and militaristic culture. Those, not coincidentally, are also frequent targets of Soros himself. That isn't teaching but simply indoctrination.

A Stunning ACORN Revelation

This piece was published earlier this week.

Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the embattled radical activist group ACORN, has filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress, according to Ron Sykes, a former ACORN employee.

This revelation is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on "The Glenn Beck Program," CCI "is where the shell game begins."

This revelation is vital and important and the reasons get into wonky tax issues. So, I will try and simplify everything for you. CCI, as the article suggests, is the nerve center of ACORN. (I have also reported this and the Issa report reported this as well.)What this means is that almost all monies that are funneled into ACORN, be it private, charity, or government funds, start out at CCI and then get filtered into the rest of the organization. This very fact is unbelievably problematic and leads to all sorts of malfeasance. That's because it becomes very easy for ACORN to have funds meant to feed the hungry go to help the campaign of a Democrat when ALL funds start at one place, CCI. Of course, that's already common knowledge. This latest revelation leaves no doubt. Tens of millions of Dollars have been funneled to ACORN ILLEGALLY.

Now, we learn that Citizens Consulting Inc. is also a registered lobbyist. This has massive ramifications for most of the funds that ACORN receives. Here's why. Let's say you are a charity. You are likely under the tax code 501 (C)3. This tax code makes all your funds tax exempt. That's a huge government concession. After all, we'd all like to keep all our money but we don't. 501 (c)3's do. As such, they are required to do a lot of things with their money that other are not. Better yet, they are inhibited from doing a lot of things with their money that others are not. For instance, you can't engage in partisan activities. In other words, 501(C)3's can't go and contribute to Republicans or Democrats. That's perfectly logical. By being exempt from taxes, you are essentially using tax payer money. As such, that can't be used to support one political party.

Furthermore, government funds certainly can't be used for partisan purposes. Remember, Sarah Palin, in Alaska, blew the whistle on exactly this sort of corruption. While a member of the oil and gas commission, she discovered that a fellow member was using his time on the commission to engage in fundraising. As such, tax payers were paying them to try and elect Republicans. You can imagine how an Alaskan Democrat would feel about that. Similarly, HUD, HHS, etc. can't use government money for partisan purposes. We Republicans wouldn't be terribly happy if we found out that HHS money was used to help elect Democrats.

So, what are we to make of an organization that receives money from 501 (C)3's and the government and it's also a registered lobbyist. That means that tens of millions of Dollars were funneled to CCI illegally. Certainly, going forward, no government agency or charity can send money to ACORN unless they are certain that this money doesn't ever wind up at CCI. At this point, no one can be certain of this.

I can also confirm that until this story was published no member of ACORN 8 knew that CCI was also a registered lobbyist. It's unclear how long they've been registered lobbyists, but that just goes to show how secretive and compartmentalized the group is. ACORN 8 are all former members of the board of ACORN. The primary responsibility of any board is to be a watchdog to that organization. If board members aren't made aware that the same group that receives the overwhelming majority of funds of the group is also a registered lobbyist then that speaks volumes about the transparency of said group.

Now, every 501 (C)3 and government agency that ever gave ACORN any funds has a lot to answer for. Both have a fiduciary duty to make sure their funds aren't misused. Just how much due diligence was done before tens of millions tax payer and tax exempt Dollars were funneled to ACORN through a group that is also a registered lobbyist? Either there was a lack of due diligence or fraud. Either charities and governments didn't do enough due diligence to figure this out or ACORN lied when asked about it. Either way, a serious breach of tax payers trust was committed.

Beyond this, it is absolutely unacceptable for any charity or any government agency to give any money to ACORN moving forward. Whatever their accuses in the past, there is no excuse now. We now know that CCI is a registered lobbyist. So, now, anyone that uses tax payer money, be it actively or passively by being tax exempt, has a fiduciary responsibility to demand a total and INDEPENDENT forensic audit of ACORN, CCI and every ACORN affiliate before giving that group even one more penny. This includes localities like St. Louis and New York, HUD, HHS, and many charities including ones run by George Soros.

This latest revelation is yet another layer of troubling corruption in that group. That CCI was the nerve center for all the funds of ACORN was bad enough. That CCI was also a registered lobbyist means that no more tax funds can be given to that group before a full forensic audit is done. (As such if George Soros wanted to give his own money that would be fine)

The CRA, Fannie Mae, and the Democrats: A Conspiracy Too Good To Pass Up

I first heard about the Community Reinvestment Act sometime in late 2008. When I first heard commentators come on major networks like Fox News and assign it as the most significant blame for the mortgage crisis I was stunned. I have spent the last nearly seven years in the mortgage business. If the CRA was such a factor, why hadn't I heard of it before? As I learned more about it, I started to understand why it became such a popular cause celebre.

The CRA hits almost all conservative so called erogenous zones. First, it is exactly the sort of social engineering that conservatives hate. The CRA set up a quota system for banks to follow for providing loans in the inner cities. Furthermore, the CRA was created under Jimmy Carter. It gets even better for Republicans. It was updated and made more powerful under Bill Clinton. That was the politically philosophical trifecta. Not only could conservatives blame the entire financial crisis on government interference and social engineering but they could also tie it two of their least favorite leaders, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. This wasn't merely a chance to wage a philosophical battle over the issue of the day, but it was a chance to bloody up the legacy of two hated presidents.

Things only got better from there. Next we found out that the CRA was used by the federal government toward mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We found evidence that CRA pushed both into "sub prime". This was absolutely marvelous because we soon learned that Fannie/Freddie were much more tied to Democrats than Republicans. We further learned that John McCain and George Bush tried to reform Fannie/Freddie in 2004-2005. This now infamouse Youtube video was discovered.



As if there wasn't enough for conservatives to get excited about, they finally had the clincher. Who was a major recipient of CRA...ACORN, La Raza, and other demonized left wing groups.

The Clinton administration's get-tough regulatory regime mattered so crucially because bank deregulation had set off a wave of mega-mergers, including the acquisition of the Bank of America by NationsBank, BankBoston by Fleet Financial, and Bankers Trust by Deutsche Bank. Regulatory approval of such mergers depended, in part, on positive CRA ratings. "To avoid the possibility of a denied or delayed application," advises the NCRC in its deadpan tone, "lending institutions have an incentive to make formal agreements with community organizations." By intervening—even just threatening to intervene—in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers. A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from the Bank of New York; the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America has a $3-billion agreement with the Bank of America; a coalition of groups headed by New Jersey Citizen Action has a five-year, $13-billion agreement with First Union Corporation. Similar deals operate in almost every major U.S. city. Observes Tom Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, which has $220 million in bank mortgage money to parcel out, "CRA is the backbone of everything we do."

In addition to providing the nonprofits with mortgage money to disburse, CRA allows those organizations to collect a fee from the banks for their services in marketing the loans. The Senate Banking Committee has estimated that, as a result of CRA, $9.5 billion so far has gone to pay for services and salaries of the nonprofit groups involved. To deal with such groups and to produce CRA compliance data for regulators, banks routinely establish separate CRA departments. A CRA consultant industry has sprung up to assist them. New financial-services firms offer to help banks that think they have a CRA problem make quick "investments" in packaged portfolios of CRA loans to get into compliance.

It's absolutely true. For years, ACORN would shake down local and regional banks in order to get them to do more low income loans in "compliance with the community reinvestment". In fact, ACORN turned compliance enforcement of this act into a major cottage industry for itself and a source of serious funding. We even found out that George Soros had ties to the CRA. The conservatives had found their holy grail of blame for the crisis. Every single enemy, ideological and personal, could be blamed all at once for the crisis.

So, you have folks like Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Thomas Sowell, and Thomas Woods all in unison blaming the CRA. Sean Hannity brings up the CRA everytime the crisis is discussed. They state it as fact, and it has become an almost cult like narrative among conservatives.

For instance, I was at a gathering of conservatives late last year when this subject was brought up. One individual insisted that the Fannie/Freddie were responsible for the sub prime crisis. The problem with this hypothesis is that it takes a rudimentary view of "sub prime". Back in the beginning of 2007, the sub prime crisis swept through the niche and caused banks like New Century, First Franklin, WMC, and Fremont (among dozens of others) to fail nearly all at once. None of these banks had anything to do with Fannie/Freddie. In fact, they were called sub prime because they sold their loans to entities other than Fannie/Freddie (who's loans we all called prime) How could Fannie/Freddie be responsible for their failure? What media referred to as "sub prime" and what the industry referred to as "sub prime" were two entirely different things. The banks that all failed at the beginning of 2007 all sold their loans to entities that had nothin to do with fannie/freddie. More than that, banks like Fremont, First Franklin, etc. weren't even under the guidance of the CRA. None of these entities created any loans to meet that criteria because they weren't under its control. That was of little consequence because the narrative had already formed for conservatives.

Conservatives were also not to be bothered with little insignificant issues like numbers and logic. For instance, at its height the CRA accounted for 3% of all loans. How could it have such an effect if it accounted for so little of the overall pool. Second, the CRA applied to retail banks. (the banks you walk into) The crisis was mostly created at wholesale banks. (the banks that use mortgage brokers) Wholesale was the nexus of most of the "toxic" loans that were created and lead to the crisis. Remember, a lot of folks put most of the blame on mortgage brokers. Well, mortgage brokers work exclusively in wholesale. Those institutions weren't under the perview of CRA. Keep in mind, some banks have both a wholesale and retail department, but they are totally separate. So, it's hard to imagine that the policies of one would have much of an effect on the other.

Of course, logic and raw numbers are entirely unimportant in a conspiracy theory. That's what this is. In order to believe that the CRA is responsible for all this, one would have to believe that this obscure law brought the entire financial system down all while no one noticed. One would have to believe that it influenced the decisions of mortgage professionals all over the universe of mortgages even though it itself accounted for only a fraction of the total loan pool. The financial crisis was largely caused by financial institutions that weren't even governed by the CRA and yet it still somehow influenced their behavior. This conspiracy is like most conspiracies. It makes sense on the surface. It's only once the facts are fully examined that holes are found all over. Don't tell conservatives though because it makes for a great story.

Here is my white paper on the crisis.

George Soros' Unholy Alliance with ACORN

What if a corrupt far left billionaire got together with a corrupt but effective grassroots group in an effort to radically change America ? That's exactly what's happening between George Soros and ACORN. Think of ACORN as instruments of George Soros grand plan. Soros wants to elect far left candidates, pass universal health care, props up the unions among many liberal ideological goals. Think of ACORN is the tool of implementation of his ideology, or at least a tool. On top of this, every policy which Soros uses ACORN to implement also helps President Obama. That's the stakes in this unholy alliance.

For instance, ACORN has an affiliate named Project VOTE. It's an organization that specializes in GOTV campaigns. Of course, the scam is that this group only goes into areas of the sort of candidate that Soros likes. So, while Project Vote does in fact do voter registration drives they do them almost exclusively in poor, African American neighborhoods. In other words, they would only do voter registration in neighborhoods that would back candidates that Soros would also back. Of course, Soros would never give money to ACORN directly. In fact, here, one of his own affiliates Democracy Alliance, gives money to Project Vote, itself an ACORN affiliate.

Whenever Soros does business it's like this. The reason for this is that the world that both Soros and ACORN inhabit is a maze of tax codes. 501 (C)3, 501 (C)4, and Soros favorite 527 among dozens. Each has its own rule for disclosure. The more tax benefits a non profit organization the more it has to disclose. By both Soros and ACORN creating multiple affiliate organizations it's nearly impossible to track the money. As it moves from one affiliate to another eventually outside folks aren't allowed to see all their records.
(O'Reilly's now famous diagram of Soros affiliates)

This way all sorts of shenanigans can go on without enough of a paper trail to prove it. There are stories that have reported that Soros was behind, what they call a rigged recount and he used ACORN in just such a way to do it in Minnesota for Al Franken. Of course, it goes without saying that Franken accounts for the 60th and filibuster proof vote in the Senate

Another way that Soros uses ACORN is in the area of universal health care. Here, the two form an alliance along with several other far left groups called Health Care for America Now. A Politico story recently characterized HCAN as "the groups that represent the base of the Democratic Party".on the issue of health care. One of the biggest donors in HCAN is the Tides foundation. That's another Soros affiliate. Meanwhile ACORN is one of a group of more than a dozen different organizations that created HCAN. HCAN runs as a 501 (c)4. Here are all the principles involved in creating this organization.

ACORN, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AFT, Americans United for Change, Campaign for
America’s Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Campaign for Community Change, Children’s Defense Fund Action Council, Communications Workers of America, International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), MoveOn.org, NAACP, National
Council of La Raza, National Education Association, National Women’s Law
Center, SEIU, UFCW, USAction, Women's Voices, Women's Vote and Working
America.

(Of course, you should notice other liberal icons in this group like La Raza, the SEIU,and Moveon.org) This group is now organizing advertisement campaigns against wavering Democrats like Mary Landrieu. They hold rallies, organize town halls, and make phone calls among many different other support activities in order to get universal health care passed. (four minutes into this video in front of HCAN, Congress Woman Jan Schakowski admits that the goal of universal health care is single payer)

Meanwhile, the guy that runs the Tides Foundation is a gentleman named Drummond Pike. He's close personal friends with Wade Rathke. Wade Rathke was the long time CEO of ACORN who was removed last summer because he covered up the embezzlement of his brother Dale. When this embezzlement was first made public, Wade turned the embezzlement into a loan and then sold said loan to Pike. As such, ACORN no longer owned the paper on what was owed. It's one of the perks for ACORN of having wealthy and powerful friends. It's no different than the quid pro quo they got from Bruce Ratner, owner of the Nets, to build a new stadium in Brooklyn.

Soros is also a supporter of the unions through his involvement with the SEIU. The SEIU contributes funds to Soros linked organizations, does GOTV activities, and any other grass roots activites for liberal causes. Of course, the local New Orleans 100 SEIU is run and was created by Wade Rathke. Yes, that's the same Wade Rathke that used to run ACORN. Furthermore, ACORN members often belong to the SEIU as well. The SEIU often uses ACORN to organize Alinsky like demonstrations in order to pressure hospitals, grocery stores, and other places of business to unionize.

Then, there's George Soros' good friends Herb and Marion Sandler. They created the Sub Prime Mortgage Company Golden West. They sold it to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006. It ultimately lead to the demise of Wachovia. The Sandlers contribute a great deal to an organization called the Center for Responsive Lending. This organization was a champion for Community Reinvestment Act, which championed quotas for bank's mortgage lending an poorer areas. ACORN used this very CRA in order to perpetuate campaigns of intimidation on bankers in order to get them to comply with the CRA. The Center for Responsive Lending funded a lot of ACORN's CRA activities.

There are several things everyone should know. First, at all times their connections are loose and so difficult to track. Second, ironically, all of these connections are made that much easier by McCain/Feingold. In fact, it's not too far a stretch to say that McCain was used as a pawn by George Soros in creating the shadow government that Soros uses. After all, shadowy groups like 501 (c)3's and 527's would have much less power without McCain/Feingold. Now, Soros has a community organizing group to advance the agenda of a President, himself a former community organizer. Under no circumstances should we ever underestimate George Soros.

I Agree with George Soros?

A few weeks back, I wrote this piece analyzing the different forms of an economic recovery: indicated by the letters l, u, v, and w. In it, I predicted that we would form a W shaped recovery. In a W shaped recovery there are one or more false rallies only to find the economy back in a recession.

I believe that we will see this W shaped recession. It's why I am still bearish. Whatever short term signs we see of a recovery, they are, in my opinion, overwhelmed by the long term problems caused by the action in response to the recovery. In other words, I believe the medicine will wind up worse than the ailment.

Between the Fed's quantitative easing (creating money out of thin air and buying bonds with it), the massive stimulus, the bank bailouts, all of these things have run up our debt to massive levels. What does this cause? First, it causes higher interest rates, high inflation, and a weak dollar. Already, we are seeing signs of the negative effects of this. Oil has steadily been rising over the last two months. That's partially to do with the dollar, as oil is priced in dollars.

What will $3 a gallon gas prices do to our recovery? I have spoke often about the rising interest rate in the Ten Year U.S. Treasury. That's back to just under 3.7%. This has recently caused a massive short term run up in mortgage rates. What will 6% or even 7% mortgage rates do to our recovery?

Speaking in front of business interests today, George Soros echoed my beliefs.

Billionaire investor George Soros on Tuesday predicted a "stop-go" economy for the United States, saying fears of inflation will drive up interest rates and choke off growth.

Soros, one of the world's most successful hedge fund managers who was speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Wall Street Journal, said borrowing costs are the major headwinds for the economy.

"As markets revive, fear of inflation will drive up interest rates, which will choke off recovery," he said.

Rising U.S. Treasury yields have driven mortgage rates back up, threatening a recovery in the housing market and a refinancing boom that has helped preserve the still-fragile health of recession-weary households and the banks that lend to them.

The rise in bond yields and mortgage rates may also act to check the huge recent rally in global stock markets of the past three months, with the Federal Reserve trying to end an 18-month recession and yet not spur inflation.

What Soros never addressed is the role of President Obama, the candidate he furiously supported in the race, in engineering the recovery he now predicts. In fact, Soros was downright disingenuous to the point of suspicious in his speech. Soros went on to claim that bubbles can't be avoided, that government must limit the dangers of bubbles, and that regulators are always less knowledgeable than the market itself. In fact, if I didn't know Soros any better, I would say he's a free market champion after reading the notes of this speech. Yet, I know him better. This is the same George Soros that is a major funder of the universal health care campaign. While he speaks about light regulation out of one side of his mouth, he funds Socalist causes out of the other side. So, it would seem he got what he wanted, and yet, in this speech, he indicts the entire domestic policy of President Obama regardless.

Soros is no dummy. He knew exactly what platform Obama was going to implement when he threw the entire weight of his multi billion dollar fortune behind him. Yet, now, suddenly, he comes out to indict that very same platform in its entirety. That obvious dichotomy was neither asked nor answered. That's too bad because it's awfully suspicious.

Deconstructing the Criminal Enterprise ACORN

If you've heard of ACORN, you've probably heard of that group tied to "voter fraud". Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is the evidence of voter fraud by ACORN rather limited, but in fact, when the public focuses on its "voter fraud" activities they are playing right into the hands of ACORN and overlooking the real criminality by that group. In fact, the focus on ACORN itself plays into the hands of the powers that be in that group. (more on all of this in a minute)

When you hear about ACORN's attempt at voter fraud, what you hear about is a lot of fake names registered to vote. The most infamous example is when they registered "Mickey Mouse". Of course, this is not voter fraud because "Mickey Mouse" won't be voting. In fact, this is funding fraud. Often ACORN is hired by the George Soros funded group Democracy Alliance. Democracy Alliance will pay ACORN a certain amount, say $10, per name that is registered. Well, about 66% of the names handed into DA in 2008 by ACORN were likely fraudulent. They didn't exist much like "Mickey Mouse". This isn't voter fraud though since none of these names would ever vote. Ironically enough, the victim of this fraud is Soros and DA themselves, since they paid millions for voters that didn't exist.

Now, while I don't mean to minimize the fraud involved here, I can also tell you that everyone behind ACORN would love nothing more than for the public to focus on its "voter fraud" activities. There are several reasons for this. First, as I pointed out, it's hard to convict them of any illegal activities on "voter fraud" since there is really no evidence of this. Second, by making the focus "voter fraud" the public at large misses their far more serious crimes.

As I have already pointed out, their serious crimes are centered in Citizens Consulting Incorporated. CCI is a consulting and accounting group that counts only one client, ACORN. Here's where it gets tricky. ACORN itself isn't one organization but rather two hundred separate organization, most of them ACORN affiliates. The reason that the folks at ACORN want the public at large to focus on ACORN itself is also two fold. First, there is very little criminality going on at ACORN itself. By extension, ACORN can become the lightning rod for controversy all the while deflecting attention from its much more nefarious affiliates.

The real criminality comes from the manner in which funds are distributed. As I pointed out in another piece. all monies that ACORN receives start at CCI. ACORN receives money not only from private "philanthropies like Democracy Alliance but from the federal government itself. This money is often earmarked. For instance, it might earmarked for providing health care services to the poor. This would likely be done by the ACORN affiliate, Health Care for America Now. HCAN would lobby the government for funds. The government would write them a check. That check wouldn't got to HCAN but rather to CCI. From there, it could wind up in any of the 200 or so affiliates for any purposes. It might wind up in the coffers of one of its political arms to be used to fund the campaign of another politician.

This isn't merely fraud but a total misuse of funds, and often its tax payer funds. Of course, often monies get transferred between affiliates as though they are all in one account. Since CCI is itself a private enterprise, no one has yet seen their books.

So, what ACORN has done is created a sophisticated network of sister organizations and this network is actually run, financially at least, by CCI. All of this makes tracking down the money and the criminality very difficult. This is all by design. The scam here is so complicated that it means the public at large will likely get confused before understanding the scam.

Another aspect of ACORN's criminality is their unholy alliance with the SEIU (Service Employees Internation Union). As I reported prior, several years back Dale Rathke was found to have embezzled about a million dollars from ACORN. It is Dale's brother Wade that founded the organization. Well, Wade didn't necessarily go very far. He then moved onto create the New Orleans chapter of the SEIU. In fact, employees often find their way between ACORN affiliates and the SEIU. Often, their ideologies match and in such cases the SEIU uses ACORN as a sort of goon squad.

Here's how that works. If the SEIU wants to get a hospital to be unionized, they will hire ACORN to intimidate some of the major players at said hospital. This is what I refer to as ACORN's use of Alinksy Rule #13. They will bring in a few hundred protestors. The protestors will stand outside or across the street from the target's house. Then, these protestors will go several blocks all around passing out fliers to neighbors demonizing the target. The goal is of course to get the target to submit under the pressure of public scorn among their friends, colleagues, and neighbors. In other words, union contracts are often extorted through the constant public demonization of a hired goon squad.

Again, it's important to understand that a paper trail between ACORN itself and all of this is difficult to track. ACORN is put out as a sort of front group to attract attention. That way when a conservative blogger like me or any other opponent points out what they are doing they can go to my ideological enemies and ask for money. After all, if conservatives hate ACORN, then they must be doing something right in the eyes of someone like George Soros. They are also there to deflect attention from the real criminality which starts at CCI and continues in any number of about 200 affiliates that most people have never heard of. Finally, imagine trying to follow the money as it tracks between these two hundred or so affiliated organizations. That should tell you why the public at large focuses on "voter fraud". It's because the real criminality is far too complicated for anyone to grasp.

Is Oil Speculative

This is a question for which there is a growing debate. Two heavy hitters are on different sides of this debate. Here is how George Soros views the situation.

Soaring oil prices are increasingly the result of speculation, financier George Soros said in an interview published Monday.

The billionaire investor said the money pouring into the oil market increasingly had the look of a bubble, but that it would not burst until both the United States and Britain were knocked into a recession.


"Speculation ... is increasingly affecting the price," Soros was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. "The price has this parabolic shape that is characteristic of bubbles."


But the cost of oil ? which briefly reached new record highs of more than US$135 a barrel in trading Thursday ? was unlikely to fall dramatically until the U.S. and Britain economies began contracting, the paper quoted Soros as saying.


Soros has frequently been a voice of gloom and doom as the U.S. economy

Here is how Warren Buffet sees it.

It's supply and demand. I mean, if somebody buys a thousand forward oil contracts and somebody sells a thousand forward oil contracts, somebody's speculating on the downside and somebody's speculating on the upside. The only way you could have speculators having a big impact is if you had a huge amount of storage where they started actually withdrawing actual, physical oil from the system.



But it's not speculation, it's supply and demand and the situation is that in my adult lifetime, up until the last year or two, there's always been a huge amount of excess supply available. There's been reserve capacity. And that goes back 30 years ago, in this country we produced way more oil than we needed here and we had something called the Texas Railroad Commission that shut down wells. And a matter of fact, we got down to where they would only let wells operate in Texas for eight days, we had so much extra capacity. We don't have excess capacity in the world anymore, and that's what you're seeing in oil prices.

Now, let's take a look at a historical chart of oil.












Now, the last time it had such a dramatic rise, peaking in December of 1979, it crashed. That market was also speculative.


Now, markets work on perception. Markets are never perfect however the closer perception is to reality the closer to perfection the markets are.


I go back to the three speculative markets I know best, 1929, the internet boon, and the mortgage boon. In each of those markets, prices had almost nothing to do with reality. With the internet boon, most folks were buying the concept rather than anything tangible with any particular company. With the real estate boon, folks were buying real estate mostly following the herd. Real estate was literally increasing in value overnight. Now, since the property or location didn't actually change overnight, perception and reality were far apart.


So, what is going on in oil now? Of course, we have heard of greater demand from China and India. We have also heard about the weakening dollar. There is no doubt that all of these are contributing factors, but would these factors contribute to a 150% increase in a year and almost 700% increase in seven years? In my opinion, they wouldn't. I side with Soros on this one (as difficult as that is to admit).


I believe that what's happening now is that speculators are taking issues of supply and demand, big and small, and turning that news into excitement and driving prices far beyond where they should go. Everytime an oil pipeline is blown up or Iran acts up, oil is up five and ten dollars a barrel. A pipeline getting blown up has marginal effect on supply and demand and yet we see far more significant effect on the price of oil.


Earlier this month oil went up ten dollars in one day.

Oil soared after an Israeli politician raised the specter of an Israeli military strike on Iran, the second largest OPEC oil producer. In New York crude oil rose eight percent, or $10.75, to a record over $138 a barrel. The rise followed a five percent gain on Thursday, bringing oil's two-day advance to a stunning $16.

In other words, this market responded acutely to a speculative report. Nothing in the fundamental dynamic of supply and demand changed and yet the price went up nearly 10% in one day. When a market responds to speculation so acutely, in my opinion, that market is itself speculative.

Let's look at what happened when an oil pipeline was blown up.

In an apparent case of politically motivated sabotage, six explosions blew apart oil and natural gas pipelines operated by Mexico’s Pemex state oil and gas monopoly early Monday in Veracruz and Tlaxcala states, causing fires and forcing the evacuation of 15,000 people from surrounding towns.

The blasts forced Pemex to shut down at least four affected pipelines and prompted federal authorities to close two major roads. No injuries were reported.

Mexico is the world’s sixth-largest oil producer and a major supplier of petroleum to the U.S. The outages drove the price of oil above $78 a barrel in futures trading Monday.

...

The attacks helped push oil prices higher in New York futures trading Monday. Oil for October delivery increased 79 cents to $77.49 a barrel, then rose as high as $78.47 a barrel in late electronic trade, near the record $78.77 reached Aug. 1.

Now, we are talking about pipeline that produces hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day when the world produces nearly a hundred million. Yet, the price of oil went up over 1% in one day. Does this sound like a case of supply and demand or merely the perception of supply and demand?

The good news is that ALL speculative markets end bad for the speculators. 1929, the internet boon, and the real estate boon all ended up blowing up for the speculators. The same thing will happen with oil. Speculative markets are built almost exclusively on the emotion, excitement. Excitement is a fickle thing. Anything can swing the excitement back. With the internet stocks it was Greenspan raising interest rates. With real estate, it was the eventual realization that the entire market was built on bad loans. With 1929, it only took one bad day.

So, at some point folks will see relief and great relief at the pump because the oil market will go the way of all speculative markets, with a crash. Unfortunately, no one knows when that will happen, tommorrow, next month, next year, or five years from now. Until then, speculators will drive events. They will take each and every news and blow it up into great excitement and move the market tremendously. That's how speculative markets work. I once witnessed a medical stock go from $7 a share to $70 in one day because their drug passed one of the FDA trials. The drug was still nowhere near being brought to the market let alone making money but this news drove the stock to a 1000% increase in one day. That's what speculative markets are like. Israel indicates that they may attack Iran at an undetermined time in the future and oil blows up $10 a barrel.

The dynamics are always the same, and so is the result. I just hope that folks won't go broke filling up their tanks waiting for the only natural result, the crash. Here is my plan to bring oil to $20 a barrel.

527's Vs. Barack Obama

The conventional wisdom has the 527's being a major boon for the Democrats, and they will destroy McCain's character before we get to November. The main reason is this man

George Soros. I have hypothesized that he puppeteered CFR in order to consolidate more power into these very 527's. This may in fact be true, however it also appears that 527's are an animal no one can control.

In 2004, a small but well financed 527 known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth nearly single handedly moved the election. When John Kerry decided to make his military service a central theme of his campaign, the SBVT challenged many of his assertions. Had Kerry not made his military record an issue they likely would not even have formed. Since he did, they played a crucial role in the election. Soros, mind you, spent in the neighborhood of nine digits trying to oust Bush last time, and all of his dollars accomplished next to nothing. This small group single handedly changed the dynamics of the race last time.

Thus, just because Soros is ready to reach very deep into his pocket again (I have heard up to a quarter billion) doesn't mean he will be anymore effective. The problem for Soros is that McCain is a known quantity. While Soros will attempt to smear McCain, it is difficult to change perceptions gathered over nearly the past half century. So far, here is Soros' contribution...

The audience can decide however I think Soros had better have a lot more than that if he is going to get any bang for his buck.

If you think about it, it is Obama that is the perfect foil for 527's. Think of 527's as the commercial hatchet men. They will make the sort of vicious attacks the opponents are afraid to make because those sorts of attacks often come back and boomerang.

For instance, I have been harping on Obama's vote in favor of making infanticide legal. So far, this hasn't been an issue in the campaign. Well, a well placed source at a leading conservative 527 tells me they are already working on an ad to highlight this vote.

Frankly, much of what we have seen over the last three months is perfect material for a 527. We all know about Michelle Obama's penchant for saying nutty things. Well, there's no way that McCain is going to attack Michelle Obama. He won't need to. There will be plenty of conservative 527's ready to pounce.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright is the 527's crack rock. There is so much material that any 527 would salivate for that they would never run out of material. McCain has walked on egg shells regarding this issue. I was on a blogger conference call, however, and nearly everyone of the questions related to his condemnation of the North Carolina ad. While he is careful with this subject, I know that the activists are dying to use it. The 527's are the perfect outlet for just such a series of ads.

We've all now seen this photo. The subject of Bill Ayers is also one that hasn't been explored too terribly much. Not nearly as much as many 527's would like. This photo seems like the perfect set up for any number of hit piece thirty second advertising against Obama.

Tony Rezko and all the baggage that he brings is yet another topic that the 527's are custom made to explore.

The San Francisco comments as well as Obama's radical record are all topics that the 527's could also delve into, though those are topics the McCain campaign will likely also explore.

Unlike the competing campaign, 527's don't have to worry about their own image. Remember the SBVT are disliked by a lot more people than they are liked, however that really doesn't matter. Whatever anyone thinks of them, they did plenty of damage to Kerry.

That's where a campaign to expose Obama's vote on infanticide comes in. Such an ad would likely be quite incendiary and provocative. The makers of said ad would immediately get the scorn of liberals and likely most moderates. That matters not. The 527's aren't on the ballot. The message will get out and that is what matters. McCain will be in no more of a position to control the conservative 527's than Obama will be to control Soros.

The main risk for McCain is connections made between the plethora of 527's and his own McCain/Feingold bill. While that is in fact possible, politics has a way of being entirely unpredictable. No one could have predicted that will all the money spent on the left side of 527's in 2004, it was one specific right 527 that made all the difference. Now the conventional wisdom has Soros dominating 527's. We will wait and see, however it is Obama, not McCain, that is the perfect target for the sort of advertising that 527's want to do.

The X Factor: 527's in Election 2008

The most unpredictable part of this campaign is definitely going to be the behavior of so called 527's and their effect on the race. Now, some conventional wisdom has it that the Soros dominated 527's should have a decided advantage throughout the campaign. After all, many believe that Soros was the puppetteer behind Campaign Finance Reform and the proliferation of the 527's is all part of his master plan. Furthermore, he is willing to spend whatever it takes to damage McCain.

Still, in 2004, he spent an obscene amount and one right leaning 527, the SBVT, was able to affect the election in a way his entire effort never could. So far, I have not been impressed with the work his groups have come up with, however I will let the audience decide.





Now, if this is the sort of product that Soros sponsored 527's will bring this time around, then in my opinion, he hasn't learned anything from 2004.

527's sympathetic to the Republicans have an eclectic and formidable line up. On prominent 527 from which we will here plenty from this year is Freedom's Watch. You should see plenty and so far they have shown a knack for variety but here is one...




So far, by far the most controversial ad from a 527 was a Republican leaning ad that attacked Obama as weak on crime. (the embedding was disabled so you will have to click here to see the ad)

In fact, my favorite political ad over the last couple years was this one by the the group Republican Jewish Coalition (for full disclosure I joined the group after seeing it)



A lot of people are bemoaning the proliferation of so called 527's however they are a reality. While their shadowy nature will likely attract much of the most gutter political thought, we should also recognize that the niche has gone through an evolution over the last couple years. While it will carry more than its share of filth, we should recognize that the structure allows for bold, innovative, and daring commentary as well. I expect that we will see some of that as well.

It is totally unclear who will benefit and who will get hurt, however their role in the election cycle is its biggest X factor.

The Internet Crash and Soros' Pessimism

From March of 2000 till the end of the year nearly three trillion dollars in paper losses occurred in the stock market as a result of the internet bubble. It was a crash of monumental and global proportions, and much of the punditry at the time predicted gloom of unmatched proportion at the time.

Their gloom was well warranted. The internet had transformed the economy and more than that the landscape of the workforce. Silicon Valley had become the place to be. Investors had rushed into catch anything and everything related to the internet. Folks had quit their jobs to jump into the internet craze and many people had put much of their wealth into the internet. The phenomenon was global. When the market crashed, it had exposed an economy that was nothing more than a mirage built on the backs of companies that had nothing but a good idea. Thus, it stood to reason that we were heading for a crash of monumental proportions. Furthermore, the landscape was made even more dicey by 9/11 and several significant accounting scandals that followed.

Yet, despite this gloomy outlook the recession that followed was fairly mild and it was followed by over four years of uninterrupted growth.

Now here comes this analysis of the current economic outlook by George Soros.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks’ commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Soros makes to simultaneous and interlocking points. The first point is that the economy has become so sophisticated that the real estate crash will damage just about everything else in the economy. That's because the financial products that are created from mortgages have become so sophisticated that they are used by anyone and everyone. Soros is absolutely correct when he says that everyone from hedge funds to municipalities in one way or another invested in these sub prime mortgages. He is correct that the subprime crisis is not merely isolated to the real estate industry. He is also correct when he says that it is now a world wide problem.

Soros makes another philosophical point.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Essentially what Soros is saying here is that in his belief the market tends toward disequilibrium while most of the players believed that it tends toward equilibrium. Keep in mind that Soros made one billion dollars in a day playing on the market's disequilibrium toward the Pound. Furthermore, this philosophy has guided his view of the world

Despite working as an investor and currency speculator (his fortune in 2004 was estimated at US$7 billion), he argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure.

Victor Niederhoffer said of Soros: "Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed
economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest."Soros claims to draw a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow.

I have already pointed out that speculative markets are a result of the flawed nature of human beings, and that they are unfortunate part of free markets. Still, anyone that has followed the aftermath of speculative markets knows full well that the natural pull is always toward equilibrium not disequilibrium. In the aftermath of the mortgage crisis all of the products that created the speculation have been nearly eliminated by the market: stated loans, no money down loans, option arms, and pre payment penalties.

Speculative markets are an unfortunate and all too real part of free markets, however it is in my opinion a distortion of free markets to say that speculative markets are what free markets tend to. This is important because Soros argues that the flawed nature of free markets created an atmosphere of taking on undue risk.

That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception,

In other words, Soros believes that unrestrained free markets create an atmosphere where irresponsible behavior is rewarded and thus creates more of it. In the case of the credit crisis, more extended borrowing was rewarded and market players thus borrowed more. While I agree that in the real estate crisis that is exactly what did happen, I would argue that this happens only in speculative markets.

Where Soros and I diverge is in the belief that speculative markets are the norm or the exception. Soros believes that eventually all markets become speculative whereas I believe those are anomoles caused by human failings. I believe that I am right because history has shown that markets have always learned from the excesses of speculation. After the market crashed, margins were tightened. After the internet stocks crashed, most of the speculators were forced out of the market, and in the current crisis the market has removed most of the excessive loans.

Soros entire diatrobe is a commercial against globalization and for so called mixed economies which he feels are the only way to curb the failings of humans. I firmly believe he is wrong and that brings me back to the internet crisis. The current doom and gloom was only surpassed by the same sort of doom and gloom following the internet bubble's burst. So, if Soros is right this time, why exactly did the internet bubble lead to a recession that was rather mild? Just like now, internet stocks became a part of portfolios of all sorts of financial institutions all over the world. Just like now, the internet craze was part of a globalized effort. Just like now, it was a result of the failings of greed. The moral hazard of excessive leveraging was only surpassed by the moral hazard of investment in stocks with no earnings and little revenues during the days of the internet bubble.

In fact, if you change a few words around, you are now in fact staring at the internet bubble. Yet the doom and gloom that Soros professes never materialized and that is in my opinion because he is fundamentally wrong about the worth of free markets.

Connecting the Dots on Obama's Radicalism

Defining Obama as a liberal is at this point a given. At this point, the question is just how liberal is he. As most astute political observers know, the National Journal voted Obama most liberal Senator in 2007. While he continues to try and paint himself as more moderate, I believe his own record paints a much different story. In fact, I believe that the label of radical is in order. I will attempt to connect the dots between his radical positions and the radicals he associates himself with, and what all of this may mean. I see his radicalism on four issues in specific: abortion, the borders, geopolitics, and the 2nd amendment.

On abortion, Barack Obama isn't merely pro choice, but rather pro choice for the entire nine months and frankly then some. For instance, Barack Obama is for partial birth abortion, a procedure done only in the last three months (as well as a brutal procedure in which the baby is partially removed from the mother and then the brain is literally sucked out of the head). This past summer the Supreme Court ruled that a state law banning partial birth abortion was in fact legal and here is how Obama responded...

I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient. I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.”

Being for partial birth abortion is a fairly radical position in and of itself (and one that puts Obama in the significant minority), however Obama's radicalism on abortion doesn't end there. In fact, when he was in the Illinois State Senate he voted in favor of the practice of a form of infanticide...

Both the Illinois and the federal bill sought equal treatment for babies who survived premature inducement for the purpose of abortion and wanted babies who were born prematurely and given live-saving medical attention.

When the federal bill was being debated, NARAL Pro-Choice America released a statement that said, “Consistent with our position last year, NARAL does not oppose passage of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act ... floor debate served to clarify the bill’s intent and assure us that it is not targeted at Roe v. Wade or a woman’s right to choose.”

But Obama voted against this bill in the Illinois senate and killed it in committee. Twice, the Induced Infant Liability Act came up in the Judiciary Committee on which he served. At its first reading he voted “present.” At the second he voted “no.”

...

At the end of the hearing, according to the official records of the Illinois State senate, Obama thanked Stanek for being “very clear and forthright,” but said his concern was that Stanek had suggested “doctors really don’t care about children who are being born with a reasonable prospect of life because they are so locked into their pro-abortion views that they would watch an infant that is viable die.” He told her, “That may be your assessment, and I don’t see any evidence of that. What we are doing here is to create one more burden on a woman and I can’t support that.”

In other words, Obama voted in favor of a procedure in which a baby was aborted, the abortion failed, and the baby was killed anyway. This means that there is no abortion procedure that Obama isn't in favor of.

On the issue of the borders, Obama also shows the same kind of radicalism as he does on abortion. Here is what Obama said in front of the group La Raza...

And I will never walk away from the 12 million undocumented immigrants who live,work, and contribute to our country every single day.

He has consistently shown favor for illegal immigrants over securing the border through his voting record. He didn't show up to vote on an amendment to end sanctuary cities, however only a week later he voted in favor of the DREAM Act, a scheme to legalize the children of illegals. Here is how he responded to me regarding the DREAM Act.

In order for an undocumented student to qualify and apply for conditional legal status under the DREAM Act, he or she would have to: have arrived in the United States at age 15 or younger; have been continuously present in the U.S. for at least five years; have good moral character; graduated from high school or obtained a GED in the U.S.; not have a history of criminal or terrorist activity; and be age 29 or younger when the DREAM Act is signed into law. The undocumented student would then be required to either serve in the military or attend college for at least two years within a six year time frame. If the undocumented student is able to meet all of these requirements within six years, he or she could then apply for legal permanent residency; if the student fails to meet all of these requirements, he or she would revert to illegal status and become deportable. This legislation offers hope and opportunity to young people who have chosen the right path and who want to become contributing citizens of the United States.

When he was in the Illinois Senate, he was leading the charge to bring driver's licenses for illegals to the state.

There is strong Latino support for the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, State Sen. Barack Obama, an African American, who forcefully supported the drivers’ license bill in the Illinois Senate.

Obama is against the border fence, putting guards on the border, and is nowhere to be found in the bi partisan support for the SAVE Act. Thus, he finds himself in front of radical open borders groups, he supports most if not all measures that are pro open borders, and has been nowhere on any measures that move toward sealing our borders. This, I would say, is a radical open borders position.

On geopolitics, Obama uses his open borders position to form the nexus of a radical geopolitical position. Obama is in favor of a protectionist trade policy. He is also in favor of unconditional dialogue with most if not all of our enemies. He has gone so far as to say that he wants to meet unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his first year in office. In other words, he wants to shun our closest allies economically at the same time he extends a diplomatic hand to our worst enemies. Furthermore, while he is closing our markets to our neighbors, he is opening our borders to its people. To me, this is quite radical.

Finally, just yesterday, I analyzed his radical position on the 2nd amendment. While he pays lip service to the second amendment being an individual right, his voting record says something much different. Both the NRA and Gun Owners of America each gave Obama a grade of an F on the 2nd amendment. Here is what he said about concealed carry permits...

I am not in favor of concealed weapons,” Obama said. “I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could [get shot during] altercations.”

In the 1996 survey, he took it one step further and was in favor of a ban on all handguns. Finally, here is what he said about D.C.'s gun ban

I think that local jurisdictions have the capacity to institute their own gun laws . . . the City of Chicago has gun laws, as does Washington, D.C... The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can’t initiate gun safety laws . . . isn’t borne out by our Constitution

D.C. has of course banned nearly all firearms within the city. In other words, Obama is always against citizens carrying guns, has been against all gun ownership, and is perfectly fine with municipalities deciding on their own to ban all guns (like in D.C.). This, again, is another position that isn't merely liberal but downright radical.

Now, given Obama's record as a radical on many different issues, let's examine some of his associations with radicals. We all know about his two decade relationship with radical anti American pastor Jeremiah Wright. That relationship has been hyperanalyzed. What has been talked about less is some of his other associations and relationships with other radicals.

For instance, there is radical and former terrorist William Ayres.

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Ayres once tried to bomb the Pentagon and in 2001 said he wished he had been more successful. Obama still considers Ayres a friend.

Next, there is the group La Raza which stands for The Race. La Raza's stated mission is the total destruction of our Southern border and giving back to Mexico what it had lost in wars in the 1800's. La Raza was a driving force in each of the marches of illegals coordinated in our country over the last couple years. Obama has spoken at La Raza numerous times. In fact, once they were used as an alibi for a purported meeting with his radical pastor Jeremiah Wright.

Finally, there is the head radical of them all, George Soros. So far, their association is limited, however I have already pointed out Soros is trying to buy the 2008 election and puppeteer the Democratic party after they win. While their current relationship is murky at best, you can all bet that it won't be long before Soros gains favor with Obama. He is spending hundreds of millions so that he gets a friendly administration in office. His millions won't go to waste.

The two of them are fairly natural allies. Obama and Soros see eye to eye on all four of the issues I mentioned. Soros is virulently anti 2nd amendment. Soros is a leading secular progressive with radical positions on numerous social issues including being pro abortion in nearly all instances. Soros has made his goal a one world society with no borders. Finally, Soros totally rejects Bush's vision for the GWOT and here is what he said about negotiating with our enemies...

Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi army in Iraq are very different forces, but President Bush's global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly. It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups.

Thus, we have some very important common ground between two radicals. One radical may in fact be President and the other radical is hoping to put him there in order to puppeteer him and his party to radically change our nation around. There are all the dots connected on radicalism that should frighten everyone...

Soros and Campaign Finance Reform

This election season may involve one piece of irony that will be lost on most folks with only rudimentary knowledge of politics. That irony will involve George Soros and the attacks he is about to orchestrated on John McCain. Soros is a murky figure and it is always difficult to pin point exactly what is real and what is perception with him, however it appears that Soros was a puppetmaster behind Campaign Finance Reform championed by McCain and now he will use that very law to launch a full frontal assault on McCain himself. Here is how Bill O'Reilly put it...

Enter radical left-wing billionaire George Soros, who quickly drilled a number of loopholes into the law. Realizing organizations could pour unlimited amounts of cash into the political process if they didn't "endorse" a certain candidate, Soros and his far left guys set up MoveOn.org and other so-called "527 organizations" to wreak havoc during voting season.

Under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, a political organization can get tax-exempt status and spend unlimited money if it champions causes rather than specific candidates. You can't use money to promote a "Vote for Hillary" theme; however, you can buy TV time saying Hillary is a bad woman, you can opine that McCain and the Iraq war are evil, and you can put forth that Obama hangs out with a nasty preacher.

Get the ruse? The money cannot be used to tell the folks whom to vote for, but it can be spent to demonize a candidate on the "issues."

The problem with tracking Soros is he always keeps himself three degrees away from whatever he is actually doing. That said, from what I have been able to gather, groups that he funds and supports were behind the scenes power players in making CFR a reality. Here is how AIM put it...

Soros has always exercised influence over so-called campaign finance reform groups. Those groups were behind the McCain-Feingold bill to reform campaign spending that also put limits on the ability of independent groups to influence political races. The law included a loophole that allowed Soros to spend more than $20 million to defeat Bush.

Now, Senator John McCain's Reform Institute has been exposed for taking $150,000 from Soros' Open Society Institute. Journalist and author Richard Poe says the McCain group "has long served as a nerve center for the so-called 'campaign finance reform' movement-a movement which has done nothing to clean up campaign finance, but has done a great deal to empower federal judges and government bureaucrats to regulate political speech, in defiance of the Bill of Rights."

Evidence of Soros' fingerprints on CFR can be found. In fact, you don't have to look very far. Here is how the Soros funded Open Society Institute viewed CFR right after it was passed.

Along with several other foundations, OSI supports organizations that helped develop the case for reform through research, public education, collection of campaign finance data, and testing of reform options at both the state and federal level. These organizations pursued a wide range of reform options, including restrictions on large donations such as those enacted in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002; public financing of campaigns such as the program now in effect in Arizona; free television time for candidates; fuller disclosure of contributions; and improvements to the presidential campaign system to deal with the problems caused by some candidates' refusal to participate.

Among the organizations OSI has funded are Public Campaign, Common Cause Education Fund, Democracy 21, the Campaign Finance Institute, and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University; a large number of state and regional organizations; and research groups such as the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Grants have also been awarded to academic researchers, constitutional scholarship, bipartisan roundtables, and other efforts.

In the specific case of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, OSI funded factual research to support the legal defense of the act against a constitutional challenge raised by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), the National Rifle Association, and others—a challenge that is currently pending before the Supreme Court.

This is the M.O. of Soros. He finds several front groups and creates all sorts of distance between himself and the groups, and then he starts dropping endless amounts of money into causes like: euthanasia, drug legalization, one world government, gun control, etc. CFR would give him the opportunity to influence our elections and once again keep his finger prints as far away as possible. It is of course still up for debate whether or not these 527's popped up on their own, or if in fact that was his master plan. What is clear is that CFR as it works now works well for Soros. He can drop millions, and billions if necessary, into shadowy groups that can go after pols and causes he sees fit, and his fingerprints are difficult to trace. Of course, the ultimate irony is that in campaign 2008 the target is his old partner John McCain.

Here is how Reuters put it...

Democratic grass roots organizations on Monday launched a $20 million campaign to defeat Republican John McCain in the 2008 U.S. presidential election by focusing their attention on rising costs of the Iraq war.

The campaign, supported by former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, aims to link war spending with the ailing U.S. economy.

...

Groups taking part in the new campaign are the Center for American Progress, USAction, MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org, Service Employees International Union and Americans United for Change.

What Reuters couldn't connect is that every group mentioned is linked to Soros. Some estimates have Soros planning on spending nine digits on so called issue advertisements. Of course, those numbers are difficult to track. Soros never spends any money directly. Rather, what he does is drop many millions into groups like OSI (Open Society Institute). OSI then funnels money to several other groups and many times those groups funnel money to other groups. The group that ends up spending the money is usually three and four links away from Soros himself. Because these groups aren't covered under CFR, Soros can drop whatever he feels like. Soros, whose wealth is estimated at 7 billion dollars, can drop just about anything he wants. Of course, it appears that he has decided to use the CFR that he likely helped craft to attack his own partner in CFR, John McCain.