The Texas 18th District Blog

Obama’s vision is far from that of Founding Fathers

by Star Parker

“Pushing back on accusations from John McCain that he’s a socialist, Barack Obama said, “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret Communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Once again, we get the Obama oratorical fog. The problem isn’t what he does with his toys or sandwich, it’s what he sees as legitimate to do, under authority of government, with mine and yours.

“(McCain) has called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class.”

Obama’s plans go much further than using the tax code to redistribute wealth.

He’s got about $700 billion in so-called refundable tax credits in mind, direct money transfers to individuals, to finance his social engineering ideas in education, child care, and environmental policy.”

Who says Jews are Smart?

By Jonathan Rosenblum

Virtually his whole public career has been closely intertwined with the unrepentant former Weatherman William Ayers.

Another member of Ayers’ Hyde Park circle was former PLO official and the current Edward Said Professor at Columbia University, Rashid Khalidi, whom Obama credits with opening his eyes to the plight of Palestinians. He has been heavily funded by the virulently anti-Israel George Soros. (link)

Obama has numerous ties to the Nation of Islam, in particular through Tony Rezko, the convicted, Syrian-born racketeer, who partly paid for Obama’s home.

Obama’s foreign policy advisors have included: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and thirty-year critic of Israel; Samantha Powers, who has called for an end to aid to Israel and the introduction of American forces to protect the Palestinians; and Robert Malley, who has made a career of advancing, together with a former Arafat advisor, a revisionist account in which Israel was responsible for the breakdown of Camp David.

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I always like to throw in a little humor to lighten things up.  My daughter and her husband are standing in line in New Jersey to vote right at this moment.  Starbucks is offering free coffee today.  So here is her message to me:

Starbucks is giving away free coffee today if you say you voted.  So Tim tells the people in line just now, that the coffee is free if you voted, but if you voted Democrat you have to pay tax on it!

LOL!

Sheila Jackson Lee on Immigration & Homeland Security

Legal and Illegal Immigration are 2 completely different Issues.

Sheila Jackson Lee sets on several Congressional Committees and Sub-Committees vital for our Nation’s Homeland Security, yet her voting record indicates that we should drop border security and let terrorists and anyone else that wants to come, come on in.

• Member, House Committee on Homeland Security
• Member, Subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism
• Chair, Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection

Sheila Jackson Lee is a member of and even “chairs” (leads) Congressional Committees vital to our Nation’s and Houston’s Homeland Security, yet she has continuously voted all out to drop border restraints in favor of illegal immigration!:

• Voted NO on building a fence along the Mexican border. (Sep 2006)
• Voted NO on preventing tipping off Mexicans about Minuteman Project. (Jun 2006)
• Voted NO on reporting illegal aliens who receive hospital treatment. (May 2004)
• Voted YES on extending Immigrant Residency rules. (May 2001)
• Voted YES on more immigrant visas for skilled workers. (Sep 1998)
• Rated 0% by FAIR, indicating a voting record loosening immigration. (Dec 2003)
• Cover child resident aliens under Medicaid and SCHIP. (May 2005)
• Rated 0% by USBC, indicating an open-border stance. (Dec 2006)

Maybe she just doesn’t understand the relationship between Border Control and Homeland Security. That sure doesn’t make me feel any better living in a high priority terrorist target region like The Greater Houston Area!

She has not only voted to bang the borders wide open, but voted for American taxpayers to pick up their medical expenses. You just don’t expect that kind of dichotic behavior out of a Congressional Representative setting on some of our most important Homeland Security Congressional Committees.

How do voters anywhere justify electing legislators like Sheila Jackson Lee to represent themselves or anyone else?

John Faulk supports border control and legal immigration… as most Americans are decendants of legal immigrants.

Engineer2

Everywhere I look, I find more reasons to vote for John Faulk and send Sheila Jackson Lee home to New York!

 What an old anecdote about Mo Udall in the hospital reveals about McCain’s character.  (and Slate has not been kind to Republicans)

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn’t long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. “He’s not going to wake up this time,” McCain said.

On the way out of the parking lot, McCain recalled what it was like to be a nobody called upon by a somebody. As he did, his voice acquired the same warmth that colored Russell Feingold’s speech when he described the first call from John McCain. “When you called Feingold … ” I started to ask him. But before I could, he interrupted. “Yeah,” he says, “I thought of Mo.”

 Mark Steyn: Obama’s a better symbol than president

And why not? Obama in the White House, Obama on the dollar bill, Obama on Rushmore would symbolize the possibilities of America more than that narrow list of white-bread protestant presidents to date.

The problem is we’re not electing a symbol, a logo, a two-dimensional image. Long before he emerged on the national stage as Barack the Hope-Giver and Bringer of Change, there was a three-dimensional Barack Obama, a real man who lives in the real world. And that’s where the problem lies.

The senator and his doting Obots in the media have gone to great lengths to obscure what Barack Obama does when he’s not being a symbol: his voting record, his friends, his patrons, his life outside the soft-focus memoirs is deemed nonrelevant to the general hopey-changey vibe. But occasionally we get a glimpse. The offhand aside to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around” was revealing because it suggests a crude redistributive view of “social justice”. Yet the nimble Hope-a-Dope sidestepper brushed it aside, telling a crowd in Raleigh that next John McCain will be “accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

***

Not only has this party belittled working people in this campaign, it has also been part of tearing down two female candidates.

—

The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”

Having worked in politics, I know that absolutely none of this is on the level. This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines”—a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news.

As the nation slouches toward disaster, the level of political discourse is unworthy of this moment in history. We have Republicans raising Ayers and Democrats fostering ageism with “erratic” and jokes about Depends. Sexism. Racism. Ageism and maybe some Socialism have all made their ugly cameos in election 2008. It’s not inspiring. Perhaps this is why I found the initial mocking of Joe so offensive and I realized an old line applied: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

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A Perfect Storm

 by Thomas Sowell

Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic– and catastrophic.

Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge challenges, domestic and foreign.

Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political career, either in Illinois or in Washington.

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Sheila Jackson Lee and Ties to Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) link here

Our law enforcement agencies and the FBI have been torn by this failure to define an ideological enemy. At the same time that the FBI is testifying at the Holy Land Foundation trial as to how the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic supremacist goals, other parts of the FBI have been told to invite CAIR to provide training for the FBI on their views of Islam. CAIR also has provided “training” and guidance to DHS, TSA, Customs, and other law enforcement agencies. CAIR also attends meetings with an influential advisory panel on homeland security. The Investigative Project of Terrorism reports that “several members of Congress maintain close ties with CAIR” (Jim McDermott, Keith Ellison, Sheila Jackson Lee, Bill Pascrell, Dennis Kucinich). Such congressional representatives have no concerns about CAIR’s founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad as a documented supporter of the Hamas Islamic supremacist terrorist group. The American mainstream media frequently contacts CAIR to provide comments on news stories without providing context as to who and what they are - providing further public legitimacy for them. America has similar challenges with other groups associated with Islamic supremacism such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). CAIR and ISNA are unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial. The President of ISNA not only spoke at a national political party’s presidential convention, she also is on the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project team calling for engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood.

American Voters know which politicians failed us in the Mortgage Meltdown!

Thomas Sowell 

Let us hope that today’s Israeli government understands that issue the same way as regards Iran, since ours may not.

Despite the media hype that we need to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the world, the United States of America remains the number one destination of immigrants from around the world, some of whom take desperate chances with their lives to get here, whether across the waters of the Caribbean or by crossing our dangerous southwest desert.

Mychal Massie

“Is freedom of speech in Obama’s lexicon?
Tuesday October 28, 2008 by Mychal Massie — Obama has staked his presidential aspirations on “change” and being the advocate for the middle class, i.e., the people. Yet it appears that one of the primary changes he will exact is to strip the “people” of their constitutional right to freedom of speech by ensuring that they pay a painful pr …”

Obama just said “we are 4 days away...” from election day.  Finally, a truthful utterance!

Heritage Foundation Requests Obama to Pull False Ad

Plundering the Plumber’s Records

If Joe the Plumber were Jawad the Suspected Terrorist, civil liberties activists would stampede the halls of Congress on his behalf. Liberal columnists would hyperventilate over the outrageous invasions of his privacy by Ohio state and local employees. The ACLU would demand the Big Brother snoopers’ heads. And Democratic leaders would convene immediate hearings and parade him around the Beltway as the new poster boy/victim of unlawful domestic spying.

But because peaceful American citizen Joe Wurzelbacher is an outspoken enemy of socialism, rather than an enemy of America, the defenders of privacy have responded to his plight with an impenetrable cone of silence.

Another view on why the stock markets are so bad  Wall St Journal article you should see.

 Obama and the Politics of Crowds

“On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest — African-Americans and affluent white liberals — has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking — Canetti’s feeling of equality within the crowd…”

Obama and “The Left” 

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.”

At first I almost didn’t listen to this guy.  He spoke so fast I had a hard time understanding him (I’m old).  But I did listen and I’m glad I did.  Here he is.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxhYampIl7A

Found this over at The Corner.

Now that it is politically incorrect to judge a politician by the company he/she keeps she can hangout with anyone! 

Politicians normally are pretty protective of their public images. They might take campaign money from some shady characters, but common sense dictates that they avoid too many public associations that can prove embarrassing.

One exception seems to be when the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is involved. Growing public evidence shows that CAIR has been dishonest about its roots and its ultimate objective. But that fact has done nothing to give pause to several members of Congress who continue to speak at CAIR functions and support the group’s political agenda.

CAIR has established roots in the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a group found to be a front for Hamas. In June 2007 federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-support trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).[1] The “ List of Unindicted Co-conspirator and/or Joint Venturers” designates CAIR as a co-conspirator because of its associations with the US Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.[2]

Read Full Article here

Help us replace Sheila Jackson Lee with John Faulk. We need to elect members of Congress with strong financial backgrounds.

I didn’t want to fill the page with numbers, it can get boring. But you can go to the Bloomberg link and look around. Most numbers only have meaning when you compare them to prior months and look at trends. Even though things went to hell last week economists and investors have been expecting it for many months.

Yesterdays stock market ups and downs as well as everday last week reflected uncertainty about whether the actions were already built into the market or whether it needed further adjustment. Yesterday also reflected similar uncertainty in Europe and Asia. Remember we buy from Europe and Asia. If we reduce buying due to job losses, they experience a reduction in selling. If they sell less, they produce less and experience layoffs.

Australia lowered its interest rate yesterday to stimulate more borrowing and buying by Australian consumers. Europe is figuring out how to react currently. As long as people have jobs they continue to eat, buy clothes, etc. Our country had many depressions and recessions before the Federal Reserve system was implemented in the early 1900’s. Other countries have central banks that perform what our Federal Reserve system does.

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/ecalendar/index.html

ICSC-Goldman Store Sales

This years sales are up 1.3% over last year. Not too bad.

Employment Situation

Jobless Claims

Released on 10/2/08 For wk 9/27 2008

Definition
The National Association of Purchasing Management - Chicago compiles a survey and a composite diffusion index of business conditions in the Chicago area. Manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms are both surveyed, but until recently, market players have believed that the survey primarily covers the manufacturing sector. Readings above 50 percent indicate an expanding business sector. The NAPM - Chicago is considered a leading indicator of the ISM manufacturing index.

This means that purchasing managers expect consumption to increase.

MBA Purchase Applications

Released on 10/1/08 For wk 9/26 2008

Definition
The Mortgage Bankers’ Association compiles various mortgage loan indexes. The purchase applications index measures applications at mortgage lenders. This is a leading indicator for single-family home sales and housing construction.

People are still buying homes and applying for mortgages. Granted lending standards are tightening but as homes are sold the inventory of unsold homes decreases and that takes pressure off the economy. When that unsold inventory gets low, builders will start building again and hiring workers. It just will be at a slower more realistic pace than in recent years.

Remember what Frankin Delano Roosevelt said in the 1930’s, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. There is so much happening now including what the effects of last week’s bailout will be that investors and employers are in a quandry.

Let’s work together to put John Faulk in office. We need to elect members of Congress with strong financial backgrounds instead of lawyers who put us in this situation like Sheila Jackson Lee.

People had low expectations for Gov. Sarah Palin’s performance last night.  We were fed interview clips for the last two weeks showing her appearing to be unable to answer the interviewers’ questions.  Actually these were snippets from the  Charles Gibson and Katie Couric interviews.  Each interview was 30 minutes or more in length.  The media carefully chose what they wanted to present to you.  In her remarks on TV last night Governor Palin looked at you through the TV camera and said it is nice to be able to address the American people directly, not filtered through the media.

That’s why we were all so surprised that she did so well.  She performed normally.

In her answers about the Israeli-Palestinian problem she mentioned that she and McCain supported a two state solution, including an Israeli capitol in Jerusalem.  Biden and all commentators I heard last night and today missed the significance.  The Arab world considers Jerusalem to be their city even though it is in Israel.  This has been a major point of contention.  The Arabs want Telavive to be the Israeli capitol.  It still will be a point of contention forever but she stated her courageous view.

The accountants listening to Biden’s comments must have been in heaven.  He threw out one number after another.  It reminded me of the late Senator Everett Dirksen commenting when he was in the Senate:  “a billion here a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking big money”.   I couldn’t keep up with all of the statistics being tossed around.  Since Biden was wrong on many other remarks he probably invented a few of them too.  Biden is known for making inaccurate statements.  Last week he cited Franklin D Roosevelt’s speech on TV in 1929.  TV wasn’t available until the late 1940’s and Roosevelt wasn’t president in 1929.

After the debate I watched Karl Rove evaluate it.  He said he identified 10 outright lies and 4 that were debatable.  Sometimes under stress people make mistakes but in the instances of lies he said Biden knew better. 

Some of Biden’s erroneous statements here

Biden’s comments about McCain taxing health care were resonant with me.  McCain wants to decrease taxes on healthcare.  When I was in college I did tax returns for a small local accounting firm to help with my expenses.  I was an accounting major.  On those tax returns you could deduct the insurance premiums people paid for health insurance.  People bought the insurance through employer or union sponsored plans but as today in most cases you had to pay out of your paycheck for a portion.  Some also bought insurance on their own directly through an insurance company.  Medical costs weren’t so high back then so many people didn’t buy private insurance.  We showed how much they paid on their tax return (we usually got the information from their check stubs).  It reduced their taxable income hence making their taxes less and the insurance easier to pay for.

Since lawsuits continually cause insurance premiums to increase, they are even more painful today.

Thomas Sowell on the bailout

 In the original bailout bill in congress last week there was a provision to give millions of dollars to ACORN, a group supported by Sheila Jackson-Lee.  Here is an article by Ken Blackwell about  ACORN.  Ken used to be Secretary of State of Ohio.  ACORN

More than ever before Americans need to elect members of Congress with strong financial backgrounds instead of lawyers who put us in this situation like Sheila Jackson Lee.

Last night I saw the CEO of Stratfor interviewed on O’Reilly.  His comments were very to the point.  There are almost two million people in eastern Pakistan invading there is out of the question.  Obama wants to use the Europeans to help us out.  Startfor says the europeans are incapable since they have small military budgets and are dependent on Russia for oil, etc.  According to him the only way to put more US troops into Afganistan is increase the US Federal Defense budget (as McCain wants to do).  Good Luck!

Here is Stratfor:  Stratfor

Here is a repeat of a link I published a few months back: US removes uranium from Iraq 

 Another nuke item.

A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”

Article here MV Iran Deyanat

This is why Bush and congress tooks us to war in Iraq and why Iran is a major problem.

Remember Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson.  He visited Africa and confirmed the Iraqis had been there to buy commodities but not yellowcake.  His visit confirmed to the CIA that the Iraqis were buying yellowcake since it is the only product they can export.

Yellowcake

Let’s work together to put John Faulk in office. We need to elect members of Congress with financial backgrounds.

PATTERICO sees a pattern of intimidation

Hey Congressman Frank, what happened in five years?

Barney Frank said Friday he expects a resolution to the rescue plan by Sunday.  He wants it out of the news before he gets beat up even more.

Purple Not Just Red or Blue

Both parties share responsibility.  As I have said before it is a natural occurrence when government is involved. 

A Good Summary of the Debate 

The Wall St Journal sums it up in a brief read able fashion.

 A Comment on Sending Troops To Get Osama Bin laden

You can bet that his cave in Pakistan is heavily defended.  When you send troops to invade a heavily defended enemy position you need to have 3 times as many troops as the enemy because in the assault you are going to lose a lot of troops and you need some left to take control if you succeed.  I was a Marine in my youth and I knew it was for real when they announced on the loudspeaker of the ship I was on “all marines make up a field marching pack and prepare to go ashore” and by the way if you need to make a will “go to the mess hall, we have people that can help you with that”.

I was 21 years old when Vietnam became a U.S. war.  When you send in highly experienced and trained special operations people in complete secrecy you don’t lose thousands of troops.  You may lose one or two highly trained special operations people.  If they direct a “predator” or use a laser to guide a bomb you can accomplish the same objective. 

McCain said last night he advocated sending troops into a village, take control of it and stay there so that the villagers gain confidence that we will support and protect them as we are doing successfully in Iraq.  The villagers then no longer support the Taliban and want them out.  The Taliban is not kind to villages.  This approach in Vietnam was used successfully and lableled “Pacification”.  When the Viet Cong returned to the villages in the evening they were met by a unit of Marines.  The Viet Cong were pacified rapidly and so was the village.  I read this week that there is a petition being circulated around Iraq  requesting their government to ask the U.S.  to keep Marines there when the other troops leave.

We are winning in Afghanistan and we will probably get Bin laden soon if he hasn’t died already.  Read Michael Yon’s “Death in the Corn” here

Michael Yon An Embedded Freelance Writer

When people say we don’t have enough troops in Afghanistan or that the Taliban are coming in from Paksitan to fight us,  I ask myself “so what’s the problem”.  We have NATO forces helping us in Afghanistan so there are more troops there than implied by only referring to the number of American troops.  As for the fighting that is what we want.  We want them to engage us because we have superior training and fire power.  We annihilate them.  Read Michael Yon and see for yourself.

Michael Yon was a green beret who became a free lance writer after getting out of the army.  He reports extensively on Iraq,  Afghanistan and other middle east areas based on his own daily observances.