The Union News.: 9/29/08

9/29/08

Will Barack be quizzed on ACORN?

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Cone of silence may be lifted on union-backed voter fraud group

As we all learn the details of the proposed federal government bailout of Wall Street, one important point needs to be remembered. All parties have agreed that this is a real crisis, that threatens to possibly throw the U.S. economy into a deep recession or even a depression. In the midst of trying to negotiate legislation to help fix the problem, the Republicans in the House tried very hard to keep American taxpayers off the hook for as much of this $700 billion bailout as they could. The Democrats tried to inject various pay-offs to their left-wing political cronies, like union bosses and ACORN-type Democrat-allied political organizations.

This is truly scandalous, a gross violation of the public trust. Just try to imagine the outcry if Republicans had worked to give billions of taxpayer dollars to right-wing political activist groups in a bill to fund the cleanup and rebuilding after hurricane Katrina. It's absolutely shameful, and the public ought not be allowed to forget it (Certainly Barack Obama, who once worked for the corrupt ACORN, ought to be asked about it).

The Republicans need to drive this point home at every opportunity from now until November 4th, and beyond.

(federalistjournal.com)

Bush gives Barackonomics a test-drive

Playing by 'Rules for Radicals'

ACORN emerges as a campaign issue

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Notorious union-backed voter-fraud and 'affordable housing' group takes center stage

The recent $700 billion bailout brought to national light the illegal activities of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. There is growing concern that ACORN is registering and bringing in large numbers of people who are not entitled to vote. The fraudulent charges against ACORN have surfaced nationwide. And yet, leaders in Congress were ready to give 20 percent of the bailout funds to ACORN.

ACORN’s claim to fame is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, otherwise known as Motor Voter. In his book, Stealing Elections, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund argues that the law promotes voter fraud:

“Perhaps no piece of legislation in the last generation better captures the ‘incentivizing’ of fraud… than the 1993 National Voter Registration Act…Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship. States also had to permit mail-in voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election official. Finally, states were limited in pruning ‘dead wood’ - people who had died, moved or been convicted of crimes - from their rolls. … Since its implementation, Motor Voter has worked in one sense: it has fueled an explosion of phantom voters.” (http://greenlining.org/stories/view/149)

In March 2006, Chris Van Hollen joined a rally for ACORN at the U.S. Capitol. That morning, 500 ACORN members rallied along with allies from the Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities.

Congressional candidate Dr. Steve Hudson stated “as further evidence of my opponent’s clandestine support of voter fraud, he introduced H.R. 5038, the Caging Prohibition Act of 2008, a bill that aimed to amend the federal criminal code to prevent state and local election officials from identifying or challenging phantom, fraudulent, and illegal voters. Like most of my opponent’s legislation, the bill has gone nowhere.”

Hudson continued, “my opponent is one of the most partisan members of Congress who supported the illegal activities of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and ACORN. I hope that voters in the 8th District will take a closer look at Van Hollen’s controversial record and join with me in holding him accountable.”

(politickermd.com)

Team Hillary exposes ACORN network

Related: "HillDogs: Obama campaign a corrupt enterprise?"
More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Interactive model revealed: "Traces of nuts"

Okay, the reason no one focuses on Obama's "community organizing" is because few understand how it fits into the big picture. focus, trace, read - revisit if necessary - but do understand why a) Obama has gotten to where he is and why he threatens to continue that meteoric rise - with your tax money - straight to the white house and b) how Obama, his advisors & the dems are linked to the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

Access the interactive model by clicking on the image, below.

(justsaynodeal.com)

ACORN big comments on Bush bailout SNAFU

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

We never get enough: Union-backed group unapologetic for 'affordable housing' ripoff

On Sunday, Sept. 28, ACORN National President Maude Hurd released the following statement after Congressional leaders announced a $700 bailout plan for Wall Street:

“Members of Congress worked tirelessly over the weekend to rid Wall Street of its toxic assets, which are responsible for the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Unfortunately, families who fell victim to Wall Street’s toxic lending practices and now risk losing their homes were largely left out. ACORN members are extremely disappointed that the bailout package does little to assist these homeowners, such as providing them relief through the bankruptcy courts. Although weak, there is language in the bailout package authorizing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to facilitate more loan modifications. ACORN members plan to hold Secretary Paulson accountable and ensure he uses this authority to make streamlined loan modifications a priority for struggling American families.”

(thepinehillsnews.com)

NM elections big raps Feds over ACORN fraud

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Barack's ACORN friends exposed

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Union-backed fraud unit pushed for bad mortgages, 'affordable housing'

What exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

The seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions.

Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.

ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an "affirmative-action lending policy." The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the "community support requirements" of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first "bank fair" at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank "summit" in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott's program as "affirma- tive-action lending" and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."

Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report ac knowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts.

In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."

IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mort gage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Then you'll truly know what community organizers do.

- Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

(nypost.com)

Asia Tribune defines Barack, pt. 4

More collectivism stories: here
• "Asia Tribune defines Barack, part 1" • "part 2"• "part 3"

The eyes of the world turn to Barack's America

If potential presidents can be judged by how they run their campaigns, then how they staff those efforts may provide important clues to the kinds of talents they would recruit for their administrations. Because Democrat Barack Obama is a relative newcomer to national politics, an examination of his inner circle of political and policy advisers offers new windows into his thinking, leadership style, and sources of expertise, wrote America’s foremost and influential National Journal in its March 31, 2008 edition.

Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisors are “more likely to stress ‘soft power’ issues like human rights, global development and the dangers of failed states.Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisors are “more likely to stress ‘soft power’ issues like human rights, global development and the dangers of failed states.

The composition of this team, Asian Tribune found, is most interesting and revealing when connected to the Senator’s own background and connections presented to the readers in the previous three installments.

In three previous installments, Asian Tribune gave an insight to conservatism and liberalism in U.S. politics, Obama’s political mentor in his teen years and his connections to the socialist movement.

As much as the background of his inner policy team is vital to understand this ‘most undefined’ candidate, it is also important to highlight where these individuals stood on many salient policies such as countering terrorism, striking a balance between national security and human rights, intervention to protect human rights and humanitarian assistance to combat zones that can be attributed to the policy platform Barack Obama has already developed and almost established.

The question raised here for the readers to stop for a moment and ponder is whether the foundation that was laid to develop a mind-set can be attributed to Obama’s association with radicals, progressives and anti-status quo activists in the formative years and during adulthood. Whether those associations, influences and what he derived in the past reflected in his decisions to summon a particular group of political and policy advisers. And, most importantly, to probe whether the composition of this inner circle and advisers together with his developed mind-set led to the emergence of important policy planks of his overall agenda now before the American people. And, what role those policy planks will play should he become the president on January 20, 2009. How will these fit in to the volatile Asian Region is the most asked question in these series Asian Tribune presents to you.

As The Nation, a well read newspaper with a popular Web Page, put it, Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisors are “more likely to stress ‘soft power’ issues like human rights, global development and the dangers of failed states.” It’s a group that has elevated wishful thinking to a policy. They generally believe that Saddam could have been contained; offer no coherent strategy for dealing with terrorism; maintain an almost mystical belief in the value of negotiations with tyrannies; favor the power of positive propaganda and “engagement”; and, are overly enthusiastic about disarmament, and international institutions and agreements.

At the first presidential debate held on September 26 Senator Obama reiterated his belief that negotiations produce better results in contrast to Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain’s hard line position when it comes to terrorism and dealing with countries that are hostile to the United States.

Last June the Washington Think Tank Council on Foreign Relations determined that Senator Obama’s foreign policy rests on the United States talking not only to its friends but also to its adversaries. Negotiating with adversaries has been promoted by some of the key policy advisers of the Democratic candidate.

Sen. Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda has emphasized multilateralism and reinvigorated diplomacy to advance U.S. interests. He has pledged to take steps to end the war in Iraq soon after taking office, to negotiate with the leadership of U.S. adversaries like Iran and Cuba, and to revamp the U.S. approach to free trade to bolster labor and environmental protections. Obama has attracted as advisers a number of top foreign policy experts who served under President Bill Clinton. Those advisers tend to be more independent from party orthodoxy on foreign policy issues, analysts say. Obama's top advisers were opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, although a number of prominent Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), supported the action at the time. Obama's advisers generally appear to agree with his belief that it is "important for the United States not just to talk to its friends but also to talk to its enemies.

A New Foreign Policy Vision

Obama was elected to the Senate in 2005 and serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. Prior to that, his professional experience was primarily confined to the State of Illinois, where he served as a state legislator representing a Chicago district, and before that, a community activist. He has cited his personal background-his Kenyan-born father and a youth spent in Indonesia-as crucial to the development of his world view. Like other presidential campaigns, Obama draws on a long list of advisers on foreign policy matters. The most senior include several ranking Clinton administration officials, the Brookings Institution's Susan E. Rice, former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.

"This is a team that's very reflective of Obama, who has made it pretty clear in his speeches and statements during the campaign that he believes that diplomacy has been undervalued over the past few years and that the United States shouldn't fear to negotiate," says Derek Chollet, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who advised John Edwards' presidential campaign.

If Obama wins the general election in November, his foreign policy and economic agendas will surely break with the legacies of the Bush administration, experts say. "Whether it's our approach to torture, or climate change, or how we're dealing with Iran, to Iraq, to the Middle East peace process you're going to see significant changes," says Chollet, who is not connected to the Obama campaign.

It is important to ascertain as to how Mr. Obama’s developed foreign policy planks in collaboration with a group of veteran foreign policy and national security fit into the Asian Region, one of the key objectives of the series of these Asian Tribune articles.

Top of the list of Barack Obama’s foreign policy and national security advisers is Anthony Lake, a former National Security Adviser to President Clinton.

Anthony Lake

At the National Democratic Institute’s (NDI) International Leaders Forum held the final day of the Democratic National Convention on August 28 at which some 500 international leaders participated according to the NDI website Anthony Lake told the panelists and the attendees that Barack Obama displays integrative thinking. He explained this as an ability to look at the big picture. Obama's plan to combat terrorism integrates many different strategies: integrating U.S. military, economic and diplomatic power AND America’s moral authority into the struggle against terrorism.

Dr. Lake, a former Clinton White House National Security Adviser, pronounced an important policy plank of an Obama Administration that after eight years of neglect, the United States, under Obama administration, will integrate and rebuild the military, abide by the Constitution and restore diplomacy, Lake said, because “power without diplomacy is dangerous.”

He further noted U.S. needs to foster a concept of common security, and Barack Obama understands that what happens elsewhere in the world impacts the United States. “We must work together with other countries to solve common challenges.”

Anthony Lake was a national security adviser to President Clinton and is now a professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Lake served under President Clinton during several major foreign policy crises, including the conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia, among others. Lake advocated keeping a U.S. presence in Somalia even after many voices in the United States called for a withdrawal. In an interview with PBS' Frontline, Lake said, "I still believe that if we had immediately turned tail in Somalia, there would have been other similar tragedies around the world."

On the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, in 2006, Lake, with Susan Rice, urged the United States to "press for a UN resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the UN force within one week or face military consequences." In a Washington Post op-ed, Lake and Rice argued that the United States could also intervene in Darfur without UN approval. "The United States acted without UN blessing in 1999 in Kosovo to confront a lesser humanitarian crisis (perhaps 10,000 killed) and a more formidable adversary," they wrote.

The Asian Region should note the following:

Mr. Lake, like Obama's other top advisers, is critical of the Iraq war. In a January 2007 Boston Globe op-ed, Lake wrote that the civilian leaders of the war effort have failed to understand that "you cannot fix another country's politics and resolve its internal fractures primarily through military means, coupled with floundering political, economic, and social programs that create as much dependency, corruption, and resentment as progress."

In an April 01, 2008 interview to ABC TV Network Dr. Lake said that the United States should “stand strong against radicalism, but with greater sensitivity when problem-solving.”

He then noted “The stance on war is not so much an ideological question as a practical one. Just like capturing terrorists: this must be done with all severity and efficacy, while respecting civil rights.”

To a question asked by the ABC when he advised President Clinton on the intervention in Bosnia whether he (Lake) was already sure then that the conclusion had to be the independence of Kosovo to which Dr. Anthony Lake replied “Yes, totally. Independence has always been an irreversible objective. They have sufficient memory in the Balkans. The vast majority wants to live in peace with Serbia, and this is the only way. While protecting the minorities, of course.” Here is an example of a catastrophic result when U.S. assistance is cut, reduced or denied to a country that was facing an internal insurgency:

Anthony Lake’s own attitude towards the totalitarian threat in Southeast Asia was displayed in his March 1975 Washington Post article, “At Stake in Cambodia: Extending Aid Will Only Prolong the Killing.” The prediction contained in Lake’s title proved exactly wrong. It was not a small mistake for someone who in 1992 would be placed in charge of America’s national security apparatus. Lake’s article was designed to rally Democratic Party opposition to a presidential request for emergency aid to the Cambodian regime. The aid was required to contain the threat posed by Communist leader Pol Pot and his insurgent Khmer Rouge forces.

At the time, Republicans warned that if the aid was cut, the regime would fall and a “bloodbath” would ensue. This fear was solidly based on reports that had begun accumulating three years earlier concerning “the extraordinary brutality with which the Khmer Rouge were governing the civilian population in areas they controlled.” But Anthony Lake and the Democrat-controlled Congress dismissed these warnings as so much “anti-Communist hysteria” and voted to deny aid.

In his Washington Post article,Dr. Lake advised fellow Democrats to view the Khmer Rouge not as a totalitarian force—which it was—but as a coalition embracing “many Khmer nationalists, Communist and non-Communist,” who only desired independence. It would be a mistake, he wrote, to alienate Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge lest we “push them further into the arms of their Communist supporters.” Lake’s myopic left-wing views prevailed among the Democrats, and the following year the new president, Jimmy Carter, rewarded Lake with an appointment as Policy Planning Director of the State Department.

In Cambodia, the termination of U.S. aid led immediately to the collapse of the government allowing the Khmer Rouge to seize power within months of the congressional vote. The victorious revolutionaries proceeded to implement their plans for a new Communist utopia by systematically eliminating their opposition. In the next three years they killed nearly 2 million Cambodians, a campaign universally recognized as one of the worst genocides ever recorded.

Dr. Lake’s influence was seen when Obama announced that he was prepared to negotiate/talk with nations and leaders that the Bush administration has labeled as terrorist nationals and leaders. He is in favor of encouraging a dialogue with rebel/terrorist groups.

These sentiments were reflected at the recently concluded presidential debate.

The Asian Tribune presents these facts in detail because Dr. Anthony Lake is destined to be a key foreign policy and national security adviser in an Obama-Biden administration along with Dr. Susan Rice.

Anthony Lake is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Dr. Lake served as Assistant to the President Bill Clinton for National Security Affairs. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1962 and his State Department career included assignments as U.S. Vice Consul in Saigon and Hue, Special Assistant to the National Security Advisor, and Director of Policy Planning in the Carter Administration. Dr. Lake was Five College Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College and has also worked for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and International Voluntary Services. He is the author of several books, including Somoza Falling and the "Tar Baby" Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia, and co-author of Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmasking of American Foreign Policy. In addition, he edited After the Wars and was a contributing editor to Legacy of Vietnam: The War, American Society and the Future of U.S. Foreign Policy. Dr. Lake received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Dr. Susan Rice: Foreign Policy Adviser

At the August 28 National Democratic Institute’s International Leaders Forum Dr. Susan Rice, the other top foreign policy guide of Democratic candidate Barack Obama spelled out several policy planks of the Senator’s foreign policy.

Obama "recognizes that we share common security needs and a common humanity," and that we should be promoting and enhancing democracy throughout the world. "Obama knows that democracy cannot be imposed through the barrel of a gun," said Rice. We should strengthen democratic capacities at the global level; take a collaborative approach," she continued. "We can’t risk doing what divisive plans do; they set us apart from our allies. No more 'with us or you’re against us.'”

Dr. Susan Rice is currently a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. At Brookings, Dr. Rice is affiliated jointly with the Foreign Policy and Governance Studies Programs where she is examining the national security implications of global poverty and inequality, transnational security threats, new strategies for corporate social responsibility investing. She also serves as an independent consultant and speaker.

Prior to this, Rice was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997-2001. In this capacity, she formulated and implemented overall US policy towards 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, including political, economic, security and humanitarian issues. She oversaw management of 43 US Embassies, over 5000 U.S. and Foreign Service national employees, a Bureau operating budget of over $100 million and a program budget of approximately $160 million, annually.

From 1995-1997, Dr. Rice also served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) and, from 1993-1995, as Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping at the NSC. Prior to her White House tenure, Rice was a management consultant at McKinsey and Company in Toronto, where she served clients in oil and gas, steel, transportation, retail, public/non-governmental and pulp/paper sectors.

Dr. Rice was the co-recipient of the White House’s 2000 Samuel Nelson Drew Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to the formation of peaceful, cooperative relationships between states. She was awarded the Chatham House-British International Studies Association Prize for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the United Kingdom in the field of International Relations. Dr. Rice is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on several boards including the National Democratic Institute, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the Internews Corporation.

Rice received B.A. in History from Stanford and an M.Phil. from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She also received a D.Phil. (Ph.D) in International Relations from Oxford.

Mark Lippert

Mr. Lippert came to Senator Obama after working on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Foreign Operations Subcommittee for five years and has handled foreign policy and defense issues for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

Lippert has accompanied Obama on the four international trips he has undertaken. Lippert has a Master’s from Stanford in international policy, has had a hand in every major Obama speech and statement on international affairs and deals with the senator daily.

Senator Joseph Biden

Senator Joseph Biden, a veteran foreign policy expert for 35 years in the United States Senate who currently chairs the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been an influence on Senator Barack Obama on foreign policy for some time.

Barack Obama’s selection of Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential candidate drew mixed reviews in Iraq because of his advocacy to divide the country into autonomous regions along sectarian and ethnic lines.

It was his lack of foreign policy and national security credentials that Barack Obama selected Senator Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

The presidential debate on 26 September though Obama scored against McCain on the domestic economic front Senator McCain proved strong on national security and foreign policy.

In mid-2006 Biden, then the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed three ethnically divided autonomous regions for Iraq.

Mr. Biden’s so-called soft-partition plan — a variation of the blueprint dividing up Bosnia in 1995 — calls for dividing Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions, held together by a central government. There would be a loose Kurdistan, a loose Shiastan and a loose Sunnistan, all under a big, if weak, Iraq umbrella.

“The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests,” Senator Biden wrote in The New York Times Op-Ed column on May 1, 2006. “We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact,” he wrote.

USA Today editorial on August 25 said: “Biden’s command of foreign policy and his acquaintance with foreign leaders are impressive assests, but they don’t guarantee good judgment. He’s been wrong on Iraq, voting against the 1991 war to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but for the resolution that President Bush used to justify his reckless 2003 invasion.”

The time will tell how much influence Joe Biden will exercise on Barack Obama on areas of foreign policy and national security in an Obama-Biden administration.

National Security Advisers

Senator Barack Obama has stressed his commitment to winning the battle against Taliban forces in Afghanistan. He has also vowed that he would pursue al-Qaeda elements into Pakistan, with or without government permission, if he had strong intelligence the group was planning an attack on the United States.

Obama's leading national security advisers include:

Denis McDonough, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is the national security coordinator for Obama's campaign. McDonough was foreign policy adviser to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. McDonough has been outspoken on energy and environmental policy. In June 2007, McDonough urged the Group of Eight (G8) to take action to combat climate change, and warned that current levels of development assistance are "woefully insufficient" to help underdeveloped nations deal with climate change. McDonough has also said that the United States should do more to "promote the development of our domestic clean energy sector industry." McDonough said on a Brookings Institution panel in May 2007 that it is "far past time" for the United States to institute a cap-and-trade system mandating "very aggressive reductions" in greenhouse gases, with the goal of an 80 percent reduction over 1990 levels by 2050.

McDonough told a March 2008 Brookings Institution panel that the United States should "set a clear deadline" for troop withdrawal from Iraq in order to reduce the federal budget deficit and help solve the current economic crisis. He also said setting a deadline would send a message to the Iraqi leadership about the urgency of political reconciliation.

Richard Danzig, Sam Nunn Prize fellow in international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is also a consultant to the Department of Defense on bioterrorism. Danzig was Navy secretary in the Clinton administration.

In a 2007 Armed Forces Journal roundtable, Danzig said U.S. grand security strategy should "aim to keep us and our allies free to pursue our interests and values, to reduce the amount of armed conflict in the world and to protect our citizens as much as possible (both at home and abroad) from the conflict that exists." He said U.S. defense strategy should not "over-design our military on the premise that a particular scenario, type of conflict or type of unit is the be-all and end-all."

In his role as bio weapons consultant to the Pentagon, Danzig has warned against several possible scenarios involving terrorist use of biological warfare. In 2004, Danzig said it was becoming increasingly likely that a terrorist group could create biological weapons. "It seems likely that, over a period between a few months and a few years, broadly skilled individuals equipped with modest laboratory equipment can develop biological weapons," Danzig told the Washington Post. "Only a thin wall of terrorist ignorance and inexperience now protects us."

Jonathan Scott Gration, a retired two-star general in the Air Force, is CEO of Millennium Villages, a project based on the UN Millennium Development Goals aimed at lifting African villages out of poverty. Gration speaks Swahili and spent much of his childhood in Congo.

He was director of strategy, policy, and assessments for the United States European Command in Germany. A veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, Gration also served as Commander of Task Force West during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq before retiring. He now supports Obama's proposal to withdraw combat troops from Iraq, although he told the New York Sun in August 2007, "if it's very clear that the al-Maliki government is making significant progress, that we're turning the tide, it would be crazy not to re-adjust" that plan. Gration noted that he was not commenting on behalf of the Obama campaign in that instance.

Gration has expressed support for Obama's stated willingness to hunt al-Qaeda operatives into Pakistan. "The United States has to be willing to pursue these terrorists to where they're planning their logistics operations," Gration told Newsweek in August 2007. Gration also has called for a reduction in nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal and worldwide.

Sarah Sewall is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Sewall was deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance during the Clinton administration.

Sewall collaborated with Gen. David Petraeus to rewrite the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field guide. In a Washington Post op-ed, Sewall said the guide stressed the need for counterinsurgent forces to integrate into the population, "assuming more physical risk to soldiers." She also said humanitarian assistance and construction projects are "critical to the fight." Sewall also criticized the Bush "surge" strategy as having "too few capable U.S., allied and Iraqi counterinsurgent forces; weak U.S. efforts at promoting political and economic reform; and corrupt or feckless Iraqi institutions and leadership." In a Foreign Service Journal article in 2007, Sewall called for a national doctrine that clearly delineates civilian and military responsibilities in nation building during a counterinsurgency campaign.

David Axelrod – Obama’s Political Advisor:

Axelrod is the most important person in the Obama campaign. As much as Karl Rove was the ‘architect’ of George W. Bushes rise to power, Axelrod was the strategist and architect of bringing an obscure community organizer from South Side Chicago to the national scene. Axelrod’s expertise, strategy and manipulations greatly worked for Barack Obama to become the Democratic Party nominee for the November presidential election defeating the most powerful ‘Clinton Machine’.

National Journal (03/31/08) reported: (Axelrod) met Obama in the early 1990s when he was a community organizer leading a voter-registration drive on the South Side. Former political reporter, Axelrod, 53, left the Chicago Tribune in 1984 to become press secretary for then-Representative Paul Simon, D-Ill., who was running for the Senate. He soon took over as campaign manager. After Simon won, Axelrod formed a political consulting firm in Chicago and quickly establish himself as a fixture in Windy City politics, as well as statewide. In 1989, Axelrod went to work for Richard M. Daley in his first successful bid to be Chicago’s mayor, and remained close to the Daley machine ever since.

No one successfully navigates the Byzantine and bare-knuckles world of Illinois politics without causing at least a bit of controversy, and Axelrod has been criticized over the years for some hard-hitting television spots.

Since 2002, Axelrod’s firm, AKP&D Message and Media, has worked on 42 primary or general election contests around the country and helped win 33 of them. Axelrod was a media consultant for John Edward’s 2004 presidential bid.

“What David is basically doing — and this is somewhat new for Democrats — isn’t trying to figure out how to sell policies,” says the Democratic media consultant Saul Shorr. “It’s a matter of personality. How do we sell leadership?”

April 1, 2007 The New York Times wrote the following about David Axelrod: Axelrod has known Obama longer than any of his other close political advisers and, other campaign officials say, is now Obama’s chief strategist and someone he “trusts implicitly.”

Axelrod has been intimately involved with the staffing of the campaign (David Plouffe, who was a partner in Axelrod’s consulting firm, is now Obama’s campaign manager), with its strategy and pacing and with the scrubbing of its message and language. Because of the vastness of the operation, Axelrod has had to hire other media consultants to help him develop commercials; his own role, he says, will be as “keeper of the message.” One senior campaign adviser told me: “Barack is a no-drama kind of guy. He’s not looking for a person or a group of people that bring their own set of dramas to the operation. What [Obama] gets from David is no nonsense.”

Axelrod met Obama when the senator was 30 years old and coordinating a voter-registration drive in Chicago and Betty Lou Saltzman, a doyenne of progressive politics in Chicago, suggested that the two get to know each other. In the 15 years since, Axelrod has worked through Obama’s life story again and again, scouring it for usable political material, and he believes that some basic themes come through: that he is “not wedded to any ideological frame or dogma,” that he is “an outsider rather than someone who’s spent years in the dens of Georgetown,” that he is an “agent for change” and has the optimism and dynamism of a fresh, young face. Axelrod knows that each of these characteristics has its flip side —optimism can be read as naïveté, independence as ideological unmooredness, unjadedness for a lack of experience and bipartisanship as an instinct to avoid necessary combat.

And, here’s what the mainstream media in the United States have so far failed to reveal about David Axelrod’s not-so-known background which Asian Tribune research found:

David Axelrod’s political heroes are John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and he has consistently worked on the campaigns of liberal and far-left candidates.

His parents were both liberals. His father, Joseph Axelrod, was a psychologist in New York City and his mother Myril was a writer.

Myril Axelrod was formally a writer for PM, a leftist tabloid newspaper published from 1940 to 1948 in New York City.

The paper was founded by Ralph McAllister Ingersoll, a liberal who thought he could use Communists on his staff to help with the circulation of the paper. The Communists, however, used the paper for their own purposes and he lost influence over the magazine after entering the Army.

One web site to which Asian Tribune research extended says they have been unable to determine if Axelrod’s mother was a liberal who considered the Soviet Union a slave state or a Marxist-leaning liberal who viewed the Soviet Union as a humane society. However, the Web Site freerepublic.com confidently says that her liberalism was obviously infused into the mind of David Axelrod and is what still apparently motivates him to support leftist candidates.

The Web Site writes: The radicalism of Frank Marshall Davis that was planted in a young Barack Obama appears to have taken root – and the son of a writer for a Communist-dominated newspaper – is running Obama’s political campaign to help him become President.

Foot Note: The credentials, pronouncements, beliefs, upbringing and philosophies of close policy advisers speak a great deal of the candidate himself. This is the closest group that will associate in the Obama administration, and they are the ones who will help Mr. Obama to formulate foreign, national security, overseas assistance, counter-terrorism etc, policies which will have an impact on the Asian region and worldwide.

Part Five: The Asian Tribune will discuss Barack Obama’s policies on terrorism and countering terrorism, rule of law, several aspects of his foreign policy planks and how he views human rights and civil liberties.

(asiantribune.com)

Will Dems, ACORN mafia go unexposed?

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Role of union-backed voter fraud group in trillion dollar scam has been ignored by MSM

Sarah Barracuda could win this election on Friday night for the Republicans. All she needs is the courage to tell the truth in her debate with human gaffe machine Joe Biden -- with John McCain's permission and support -- to tell it like it is.

If the great American middle class ever figures out the trillion dollar phony mortgage scam from Freddie and Fannie, they will finally rise up in wrath and throw the liberal bums out. Let it start hitting their pocket books, their ATM cards and credit cards, let their home prices fall like a rock -- and Barack Obama will be out of politics, along with the Democrat majority in Congress.

For conservatives this is the opportunity of the century.

That is why the Democrats are screaming with fear about the abyss that has suddenly opened at their feet. Since the Carter Administration first threatened the banks with punishment if they didn't allow themselves to be robbed by sub-prime borrowers, since the Clinton Administration made it all even worse in 1995, even the Democrats have known full well that the bills had to come due at some time.

There is a sane reason why bankers and trustees have to exercise "due diligence" over other people's money. All the politicians are lawyers, and they know about money and theft. But "due diligence" was criminalized for bankers through Federal law. They were compelled, on penalty of law, to lend money at high-risk through Fannie and Freddie. It is the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 all over again, where everybody bought stocks on margin until they could see the abyss opening up at their feet. Well, this time it was the Feds who created an insane lending scheme themselves. The US Government threatened to punish bankers for "redlining" -- which in real life means giving money only to people who can pay it back.

You can only bend the market through coercion for so long -- then things fall apart. That's what's happened here.

The taxpayers are now on the hook for a trillion dollars, if you add the failed 300 billion dollar rescue package from two weeks ago to the 700 billion dollar Paulson package. This is a trillion dollar scam, and all the politicians in Congress, the ACORN mafia, the people who played the market on unsecured mortgages, and the scam artists who were hired by Freddie and Fannie -- they all knew it. In case you haven't been watching, that includes all of Barack Obama's "home mortgage advisors" -- Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson and Jamie Gorelick. It includes Senate Banking Committee members like Chris Dodd. It includes House members like Barney Frank. Watch this video and you can see them strutting their stuff when the US watchdog agency criticized Fannie and Freddie in 2003.

They knew exactly what was going on.

This crisis is not financial -- it is political. It's not a market failure. It's a decades-long robbery by the Left, finally exposed for what it is.

The Democrats deserve the wrath of the voters this time.

Sarah Palin could defeat Obama and Biden Friday night. All she has to do is tell the truth about the Democrats and the Trillion Dollar Scam. Not to do so would be collude in a massive Ponzi scheme, designed to fall on the shoulders of the taxpayers.

This is precisely why we have elections.

John McCain and Sarah Palin will need a lot of guts to do this. But the scam has to be exposed, or the fetid wounds in the financial sector will fester and metastasize.

(americanthinker.com)

The most fraudulent election in U.S. history

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

"Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy," by John Fund, Encounter Books, $17.95, 240 pages.

Election 2008 is poised to become worse than the Florida meltdown of 2000 as numerous factors foreshadow a replay of Florida’s court battles and recounts — but this time in more than one state, warns John Fund, author of the timely revised and updated “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.”

Fund, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal’s Web site and the paper’s daily “Political Diary,” as well as a contributor to Newsmax.com, is concerned that miscounts and voter fraud scandals everywhere from Seattle to Miami have rocked elections during the past several years — and, in very bad news for the election next month — many of the problems have not been resolved.

[Free offer with Newsmax magazine - Get John Fund’s book, “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy,” - here].

And then there are the new complications.

“This will be the first presidential election where the full impact of new federally mandated provisional ballots will be felt,” Fund says. “Any person who is not on the voter registration lists this November must be given a provisional ballot, which will be set aside and counted if found valid later.

“A tug of war over provisional ballots may be inevitable in key states where the margin of victory is no greater than the number of provisional ballots cast. Both campaigns would once again send squadrons of lawyers to any closely contested state to watch and argue as every single provisional ballot in the state is reviewed and a determination is made as to whether it should be counted. Results could once again be delayed for weeks after Election Day.”

“Stealing Elections” uncovers perhaps the most disturbing reason why this election’s credibility is in jeopardy. The Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, is linked intimately to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) a supposedly nonpartisan voter registration organization. But many of its activists have been indicted and convicted of voter fraud violations.

Fund details Obama’s involvement with ACORN throughout his career. In turn, ACORN’s political arm has endorsed him while its “nonpolitical arm” is “pledging to spend $35 million this year registering voters — most real but many fictional,” Fund notes.

Furthermore, “Stealing Elections” reveals shocking truths about how Obama had the support of the notorious Chicago Daley machine that stops at nothing to win elections, how ACORN led “the worst case of voter-registration fraud” in Washington State’s history, and how the 2008 elections are on a collision course with controversy as disputed provisional votes, absentee ballots, and an army of lawyers disputing results all converge in closely contested states.

On every page, Fund reveals eye-popping details. As Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, points out in his review: “[Y]ou don’t know the half of it until you read his book.”

Some examples:

• Obama’s first election: He dismissed complaints of vote fraud even in notoriously dodgy Chicago precincts, while at the same time owing his first political office to his ability to deploy lawyers and throw every single one of his opponents off the ballot.

• From the national level to city hall, voting precincts in many states are ill-prepared to handle the influx of absentee ballots, provisional votes, and illegal voter registrations that could overwhelm election systems in many states in November.

• The terrible testament to the growing voter cynicism: Overall, the United States ranks 139th out of 163 democracies in the rate of voter participation.

• The growing shortage of vital volunteer poll workers as that group ages: In March 2002, for example, an unprecedented number of polling-place workers didn’t report for work in Los Angeles County. A total of 124 precincts opened late and one didn’t open at all.

• A latent bomb ticking for Election 2008: Since 2000, upwards of 70 percent to 75 percent of the nation has changed voting equipment. Says Kim Brace of Election Data Services, “Every time you make a change, it has the potential of causing problems.” Inevitably, the biggest problems occur the first time the new equipment is used, she says.

• Loose absentee laws don’t increase turnouts; they make fraud easier; they alter campaigns in strange ways. In 2000, they hurt the Democrats more profoundly than the butterfly ballots, hanging chads and other well-remembered epiphenomena of Florida.

• Learn how Al Gore could have won Florida.

• This year, it’s expected that three out of 10 Americans will vote before Election Day, Nov. 4. Many will vote three weeks before the election. In Maine, folks can begin voting a full three months before Election Day.

• A 2008 Rasmussen Reports poll found that 40 percent of Americans believe there is either significant vote fraud or active suppression of people who want to vote.

• At a time of heightened security and mundane rules that require citizens to show ID to travel and even rent a video, only half the states require some form of documentation to vote.

The author warns: “Should ‘anything goes’ continue to be the ballot byword, the nation may wake up to another crisis even bigger than the 2000 Florida folly.

“Perhaps then it will demand to know who subverted the safeguards in its election laws. But wouldn’t it be better if — with the lessons of Florida and even more recent election snafus and scandals still fresh in the minds of many people — we did something now?

- Dave Eberhart

(newsmax.com)

Concerted effort to defraud U.S. voters

More ACORN stories: here • Voter-fraud stories: here

Voter Fraud reaches Fever Pitch thanks to Barack's union-backed group, ACORN

It appears that Barack Obama has trained his minions well—very very well, in fact. Obama’s group ACORN is under scrutiny or indictment in at least 14 states for voter fraud, embezzlement and misuses of taxpayer funds. One of the states—Missouri—is the state in which the Obama campaign now has Missouri police, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce using their offices to intimidate and threaten those who speak ill about Kandidate Obama.

Note: There are also rumblings that Missouri police may use their color of authority to intimidate all non-Obama voters. The chance of Obama winning the US presidency via election fraud is now running at approximately 34%. Do I have your attention?

I stated ACORN is Obama’s group because of the following facts: Obama was ACORN’s attorney in his early days Barack Obama trained ACORN management and its members on voter registration and community “organizing”—no doubt to prepare them for his own planned political career. While Chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC)—where he served with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—Obama arranged for CAC funding to ACORN. This is the same ACORN that is currently practicing voter fraud for Obama’s election to the presidency of the United States of America.

In Florida, ACORN (a leftist advocacy group that has formally endorsed and is working for Obama’s election) has already registered 380,000 “new voters.” However, many if not all of these are under suspicion. In New Mexico’s Bernalillo County alone, well over 1,000 ACORN-registered “voters” are under suspicion and federal law enforcement has been called in to investigate. In Ohio’s Franklin County, ACORN has been caught presenting falsified voter registration cards. This goes on and on throughout multiple states. We are in clear and present danger, folks. Obama will not only lead us off the proverbial cliff but, his adherent police force will kick us over.

It took very little time for Hugo Chavez to topple Venezuela’s democracy and set up his own personal dictatorship. Do you really believe the USA has safeguards built in? Wrong. If they are not followed, there ARE NO safeguards. Take another look at what’s happening in Missouri. It certainly appears that the Missouri police and their bosses are following Obama’s jack-boot orders. And have we so soon forgotten the still-ongoing 2008 Democrat-induced financial crisis? There were supposed to have been safeguards to prevent this also. Where rampant corruption exists, safeguards are moot.

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/26/acorn-falls-again-the-worst-case-of-voter-registration-fraud-in-washington-state-history/

http://www.kmov.com/video/topvideo-index.html?nvid=285793&shu=1

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/zieve/080927

http://raymondpronk.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/acorn-association-of-community-organizations-for-reform-now-obamas-red-shirts/

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/080919-kouri-columnsvoterfraud.html

http://renaissancelady48.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/acorn-and-voter-fraud-watch-new-mexico/

http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/9/26/386122.html?title=National+advocacy+group+accused+of+voter+fraud

- Sher Zieve

(webcommentary.com)

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9/29/08

Will Barack be quizzed on ACORN?

Bush gives Barackonomics a test-drive

Playing by 'Rules for Radicals'

ACORN emerges as a campaign issue

Team Hillary exposes ACORN network

ACORN big comments on Bush bailout SNAFU

NM elections big raps Feds over ACORN fraud

Barack's ACORN friends exposed

Asia Tribune defines Barack, pt. 4

Will Dems, ACORN mafia go unexposed?

The most fraudulent election in U.S. history

Concerted effort to defraud U.S. voters

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