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COMMENTARY FROM HARRY GORMAN
my friend Harry is 93 years old.
You, as I, grew up with the perception that Senators, Congressmen, Presidents were men of superior intellect, integrity, honesty -- and patriotism.
Now that I have observed them for years -- I realize they love MONEY more than COUNTRY -- political and financial wheeling-dealing for their districts before
country -- have little knowledge of even the first Commandment of any successful business "Thou Shalt Not Spend More Than You Earn".
I have developed a LOATHING and CONTEMPT for practically all Senators and Congress, the Dodds, the Barney Franks -- also, the COX's, the Paulson's, the Bernankes, the other financial swine who have brought us to the current mortgage, credit and other disasters -- with no end in sight.
The $700,000,000 'bail-out' is ROBBERY -- taking from the innocent taxpayer, to rescue the thieves who concocted the IMMORAL schemes like offering a home for 'no money or 3% down... no interest for a year" and a harmless looking "adjustable or fixed mortgage for 30 years".
These crooks and the MEN AND WOMEN IN CONGRESS who egged bankers and mortgage brokers to sell homes to poor people who were not credit-worthy should be investigated, prosecuted and the guilty sent to PRISON for outright fraud, with FULL RESTITUTION TO TAXPAYERS FROM THEIR PRIVATE HOLDINGS, NO MATTER WHERE HIDDEN --ONSHORE, OFFSHORE, IN THEIR WIVE'S BRAS!
To the home-hungry young buyer:
OUR GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR DADDY AND MOMMY.
You want a home, don't have more than two children, roll up your sleeves, go out in the marketplce and work your ass off -- as we oldsters had to do in the 1930s.
It was not until 1945 that we were able to purchase a home (used) for $8500.
Today, prices and "expectations" and "entitlements" -- are growing -- goodies which never existed when I was young. Good bye, American prosperity. Prepare for a Third World lifestyle. The Age of Super-Entitlement is here, especially under Obama.
The Congressional morons who are going to "tax the rich", coddle the unions and make health-care available to everybody from cradle to grave -- are pushing us, indeed -- right into our economic graves.
Neither Obama nor McCain realize or mention that we have a MORE than
$10 TRILLION Federal Debt and NEVER mention the additional Dance of Death with communist China, N.A.F.T.A., etc. --- all 'losers" for the U.S.
Enough!
On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario:
The document is being called the "C & R" document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. "Conflict" is the "C word" in the document.
The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. "Revolution" is the document’s "R word.
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- Koran Sura 5:51 commands Muslims not to take Jews and Christians (infidels) as friends
- Koran Sura 9:29 commands Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians until they either submit to Allah or die by the sword.
- Koran Sura 2:65-66 and Sura 5:60 contain references to Jews as “apes and swine to be despised and rejected.”
- Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a Muslim from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and his step father was a Muslim from Indonesia.
- Obama’s childhood mentor was a communist.
- Obama attended Muslim Basuki School and a Catholic school in Indonesia and his religion was registered as Muslim in both schools. Despite this overwhelming evidence, Obama insists he was never a Muslim.
- Obama has promised that in his first year of office, he will invite Iranian terrorist dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the White House in order improve relations and relax trade restrictions with Iran. This would certainly lead to the sale of advanced American technology, which would enable Iran to develop nuclear bombs much more quickly.
- Obama is a supporter of Kenyan Muslim Raila Odinga, who recently lost in that country’s election, and who wants to institute Islamic Sharia law as the law of that land. Raila claims to be Obama’s first cousin.
- Obama wants Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo to have access to the American legal system. Note that these Guantanamo attorneys [who represent these terrorists pro bono] are supporting Obama.
- Obama’s foreign policy advisors from the Carter Administration are notoriously anti-Israel and antisemitic.
- A non-profit organization with Obama on its board gave money to the terrorist-supporting Arab American Action Network, which favors Israel's destruction and is completely against America enforcing any of her immigration laws.
- Obama helped raise money for Muslim terrorist refugee camps in the Middle East.
- Obama has been endorsed by communist Daniel Ortega (former head of the Weather Underground organization), communist Tom Hayden, Jesse Jackson, and Muslim racist and antisemite Louis Farrakhan.
- Obama’s National Campaign Cochairman is congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., a notorious racist and antisemite.
- Obama’s Pastor, who Obama claims is his mentor, traveled with Muslim racist and antisemite Louis Farrakhan to Libya in 1984 to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
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Oct 11, 3:47 AM (ET)
By MIKE ROBINSON
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CHICAGO (AP) - Jailed political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer who helped launch Barack Obama on his political career, is whispering secrets to federal prosecutors about corruption in Illinois and the political fallout could be explosive.
Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration faces multiple federal investigations over how it handed out jobs and money with advice from Rezko, is considered the most vulnerable.
Rezko also was friendly with Obama - offering him a job when he finished law school, funding his earliest political campaigns and purchasing a lot next to his house. But based on the known facts, charges so far and testimony at Rezko's trial, there's no indication there'll be an October surprise that could hurt the Democratic presidential nominee - even though Rezko says prosecutors are pressing him for dirt about Obama.
"I think this strikes fear into the Blagojevich administration and the Statehouse Democrats but not into the Obama campaign," says state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Westmont, a John McCain delegate to the GOP convention but an old friend of Obama.
Rezko, 53, a real estate developer, was convicted in June of scheming to use his clout with the Blagojevich administration to squeeze $7 million in kickbacks out of a contractor and seven money management firms seeking to do business with the state.
Within two months, Rezko was seen in U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald's office, along with his attorneys.
There has been no official confirmation that Rezko is talking but his sentencing has been postponed indefinitely and both sides say they are going to "engage in discussions that could affect their sentencing postures."
"They never would have delayed the sentencing if he weren't talking - it's proof positive," said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association of Chicago.
In addition, attorneys say federal investigators have been questioning Blagojevich contributions around the state using information that only Rezko could have supplied. Finally, courthouse personnel requesting anonymity because grand jury probes are secret said Rezko has been repeatedly brought from his cell to the U.S. attorney's office to talk to prosecutors.
Rezko could have a lot to tell. He has raised millions of dollars in campaign money for many Illinois politicians and according to federal prosecutors used his clout to control appointments to state boards.
Obama has sent to charity $159,000 that Rezko raised for his campaigns for the state legislature, the House and the Senate. Rezko raised nothing for Obama's White House run.
Obama's name came up in testimony at the trial four times, twice in connection with an obscure legislative memo, as a guest at a Rezko party and when defense attorney Joseph Duffy told jurors his client was a friend of the senator.
None of the witnesses accused the Democratic nominee for president of doing anything improper.
But questions concerning Obama's relationship with Rezko linger, particularly over Rezko's role in the purchase of the Obamas' home.
The two have known each other for years, starting when Rezko offered Obama a job after he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991. Obama didn't take it, but a friendship developed.
The men talked politics frequently and occasionally dined together with their wives.
In 2005, the Obamas paid $1.65 million for their home near the University of Chicago. The sellers wanted a parcel they owned next door to sell on the same day, and Rezko's wife, Rita, was the buyer. At the request of the Obamas, Mrs. Rezko later sold them a 10-foot strip of land to enlarge their lot. They paid $104,500.
The deal took place while Rezko was under investigation and when details of the cozy relationship surfaced, Obama said it was a "bonehead" error to have asked for the additional land because it looked like he was getting a favor.
"I regret it," Obama said at the time. "I'm going to make sure that from this point on I don't even come close to the line."
McCain and vice running mate Sarah Palin have mentioned Rezko little if at all. But Republicans have aired a television ad focusing on Rezko. And McCain aides have repeatedly tweaked their opponent over the real estate deal in e-mails to reporters.
"We're delighted to have a debate on judgment with Barack Obama, who bought his million-dollar mansion in a shady deal with a convicted felon," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in August.
Blagojevich, meanwhile, got a black eye from the trial.
One witness testified that Blagojevich talked about hiring him for a major state job while his $25,000 donation to the governor's campaign fund was lying on the table.
Two attorneys testified that Blagojevich hinted that they could get lucrative state contracts if they raised money - possibly for a future White House campaign.
Obama's name has not surfaced in accounts of the investigation since the trial. But Rezko himself raised it in a letter to the judge months ago.
"Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened," he wrote. "They are pressuring me to tell them the wrong things that I supposedly know about Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama."
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Rescue the Old World Financial Order or Build a New One
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
October 11, 2008
Bush leaves G7 meeting on financial crisis
This weekend sees make-or-break efforts by Western finance ministers and international financial institutions to produce a plan that will drag their economies back into equilibrium before the world’s markets open Monday, Oct. 13. They are working to the dread drumbeats of turmoil, panicky investors and looming recession, which some economists predict will be more disastrous than the 1930s slump which led to World War II.
Two major rescue plans for the banking and financial systems by the US and UK have fallen short of luring fleeing investors back to the markets. In seven black days, crashing global indexes led by Wall Street - which tumbled 18 percent and London by 21 percent - followed by Asia, wiped $4.5 trillion off share values world wide. In the UK, it was calculated that one person goes bankrupt every five minutes. Iceland’s entire economy is bankrupt.
The plan on the G7’s table is essentially to partially nationalize almost half of the Western banking system by buying up stakes in troubled banks or shoring up the banking system as a whole.
In their statement Saturday, the G7 said that they were working on a rescue package tailored for each country within a common framework that would include recapitalizing banks, ensuring strong deposit insurance to protect savers and restarting frozen credit and mortgage markets.
Many leading Western economists strongly doubt that these measures will do the trick. DEBKAfile’s sources note that what the Americans and British have been aiming for until now is to restore investor confidence in the existing financial system by increasing credit, the lifeblood of economies based on the free market.
But matters have gone too far for what is essentially a patching up job. The upheavals of the last two weeks have demonstrated that the entire system is discredited. Trust has been suspended not only in the financial system but in the ability of political leaders to come up with solutions to protect the individual investor and taxpayer.
The partial nationalization of banks in the US and Europe breaks with the rules of the free market, of which the United States is the global epitome - a major factor in its superpower status. While Asia has prospered by embracing free-market practices, resentment is deepening over its shortcomings for which the US is blamed.
The Columbia University Nobel-prize winning economist, Prof. Joseph Stiglitz told the Washington Post : “People around the world once admired us for our economy and we told them if you want to be like us, here’s what you have to do – hand over power to the market. The point now is that no one has respect for that kind of model anymore given this crisis."
And of course it raises questions about our credibility. Everyone feels they are suffering because of us.”
The only Western leader to address this problem head-on was Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. At a government session in Rome, Oct. 10, he revealed: “The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite new rules is being discussed.” Berlusconi added: “They can’t just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.”
This remark was quickly retracted after a phone call from the White House in Washington, according to our sources, because it opens up the even more problematic question of who is competent to lead the rewriting of the rules. However, the IMF, high priest of the gospel that the market knows best, has already turned around and is calling for more international regulation and oversight on global finance, a further retreat from its basic tenets.
The looming leadership vacuum is fueling financial fears. The US president George W. Bush’s presidency ends in January, Canada faces an election next week, Japan is on its third prime minister in a year; Britain’s Gordon Brown is fighting sliding opinion polls.
Who will therefore lead the transition to a different, or even amended, world financial order? And how credible would a G7 or EU consensus be, given that so many major economic powers including China, Russia, India and Brazil, were excluded from their counsels?
Israel is suffering its own leadership crisis.
Friday night, Ronnie Bar-On, finance minister in the caretaker government headed by Ehud Olmert, went on record again as declaring that Israel’s banks and financial institutions are solid. No Israeli bank is threatened with collapse, he insisted.
The corporate leaders (Lev Leviev, Eliezer Fishman and Nohi Dankner), whose bonds have plummeted on the Tel Aviv stock exchange, are equally sound and will recover, the finance minister stressed. As for the savers, who have lost 15-20 percent of their assets, they should not complain, said the minister, because in past years their value doubled. All he was willing to admit was that a new period was at hand.
By continuing to pour oil, the minister was gambling. The Tel Aviv Stock exchange opens for business Sunday, Oct. 12, after a six-day suspension due to Yom Kippur running into Saturday. It is unlikely that this market will sail unscathed through the global turbulence. Bar-On may have reason to regret that he did not announce an emergency plan in good time to protect savers and holders of pension funds, if not the banks.
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Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
- and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
VII.
So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
TV ad features Obama mocking Bible
Candidate's 'Fight the Smears' site tries to bury video documentation
Posted: October 10, 2008
11:30 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
 Screen shot from Obama's 'Fight the Smears' website |
A television commercial showing clips of Sen. Barack Obama mocking the Bible has prompted backlash from the candidate's "Fight the Smears" website, which falsely accuses the ad's creator of trying to scam Christians out of their money by promising to air a spot that will never be broadcast.
Under the heading "Scamming the faithful," Obama's official website says of the man who made the commercial, "The trickster's claims about Barack's faith are every bit as false as his claims that this amateurish video is really a TV ad."
WND has confirmed, however, that – true to his word – the ad's creator purchased air time for the commercial on television stations in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Sources at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh and a cable company servicing Erie told WND that the ad had been aired on several occasions.
Nonetheless, in an Oct. 3 update to "Scamming the Faithful," the Obama website maintains its attack of the commercial's creator, Stephen Marks of the organization pH for America.
"Nothing has changed here," reads the Oct. 3 update, "The scammer is still untrustworthy. … Making scams seem plausible is what tricksters like him are known for. In the end, he's even less credible now than he was when he first started taking people's money."
"It is ironic indeed," responded Marks in a statement, "that this so-called 'Fight the Smears' website (is) not fighting smears but creating them."
Get "The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama's War on American Values"
Marks insists that every dollar he has raised through his website and the appeal for support at the end of the ad "has gone to pay for the media buys and minimal production costs." Marks also claims that that pH for America purchased a television as a gift for the Obama campaign "so they can watch the TV and see the ads airing for themselves."
Made into both a one-minute and two-minute commercial format, the shorter of the two advertisements can be seen here:
