Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? <http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html>

By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

More Joe the Plumber: It's really about the dream

More Joe the Plumber: It's really about the dream

Tracy Coenen
Oct 23rd 2008 at 10:01AM

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Tax, Career

The controversy still rages over Joe the Plumber, who has been raked over the coals by the media and bloggers for asking presidential candidate Barack Obama a question about his tax plan. He's been accused of being a plant and an outright liar, and his divorce and delinquent taxes have been discussed ad nauseum.

Whether you're for or against Joe the Plumber, it's clear that he still represents the American dream. Maybe he's not considering buying a business. Maybe he doesn't have a plumber's license and instead works under someone who does. Maybe he's never going to make a lot of money.

But Joe represents the possibilities that Americans believe in. Someday he could be a business owner and he just might make enough to be considered one of those "high income" people. And indeed, many Americans believe they have a chance to someday be financially successful. But they also know that a strong U.S. economy depends on entrepreneurs.
Companies considered to be "high-growth" are responsible for creating almost all the job growth in the U.S., even though there are only about 30,000 of these companies. When inventors get to work and bring desirable products and services to the marketplace, we all benefit, and the economy expands. Our economy relies heavily on innovation, but that could be negatively impacted by a decreasing desire by consumers to start their own businesses in recent months.

It's popular to suggest that higher taxes on the "rich" are better for us as a whole, and that those in need are helped by such a move. Higher taxes likely would have just the opposite indirect effect, however. When governments seize more from taxpayers, the incentive to innovate and take risk is reduced. That results in less entrepreneurship, which results in fewer jobs, which impacts those in need very heavily.

A system that taxes more and distributes those funds to the less fortunate shouldn't ignore the side effects. Lower taxes encourage development of new companies and industries, and history has shown that the increased output from such development can greatly benefit all classes of taxpayers. So before we're too quick to believe that more taxes on the wealthiest of Americans are their duty (and even a "penalty" that they deserve for being wealthy), let's pay careful attention to what a move like this might mean for the rest of society, which depends on the jobs created by innovative entrepreneurs.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud

Camp Followers

Camp Followers
By Patrick J. Buchanan
October 24, 2008

Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating is
beneath that of Congress is the media.

Both have won their reputations the hard way. They earned them.

Consider the fawning indulgence shown insider Joe Biden with the
dripping contempt visited on outsider Sarah Palin.

Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings
that a great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama:

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests
Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. ... Remember I said it
standing here if you don't remember anything else I said ... we're
gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the
mettle of this guy."

A "generated crisis"? By whom? Moscow? Beijing? Teheran?

This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee who has access to the same intelligence as
George Bush. Joe was warning of a crisis like the Berlin Wall of
July 1961, where JFK called for a tripling of the draft and ordered
a call-up of reserves, or the missile crisis where U.S. pilots like
John McCain were minutes away from bombing nuclear missile sites in
Cuba and killing the Russians manning them.

Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launch
air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?

If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.

Instead, what we got was Obama's airy dismissal of Joe's words as a
"rhetorical flourish" and a media -- rather than demanding that Joe
hold a press conference -- acting as Obama surrogates parroting the
talking points that Joe was just saying that new presidents always
face tests.

Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would have
been accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media would
have run with the story rather than have smothered it.

Contrasting McCain with his hero, Joe declared a few weeks back,
"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the
television and ... said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

Nice historical reference. Except when the market crashed in 1929,
Hoover was president, and there was no television.

Can one imagine what the press would have done to Sarah Palin had
she exhibited such ignorance of history. Or Dan Quayle?

Joe gets a pass because everybody likes Joe.

Fine. But Joe also has a record of 36 years in the Senate.

Has anyone ever asked Joe about his own and his party's role in
cutting off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the greatest strategic
defeat in U.S. history and the Cambodian holocaust? Has anyone ever
asked Joe about the role he and his party played in working to
block Reagan's deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and SDI,
which Gorbachev concedes broke the Soviets and won the Cold War?

In the most crucial vote he ever cast -- to give Bush a blank check
for war in Iraq -- Joe concedes he got it wrong.

Is Joe's record of having been wrong on Vietnam, wrong in the Cold
War, wrong on the Iraq War, less important than whether Sarah Palin
tried to get fired a rogue-cop brother-in-law who Tasered her
10-year old nephew to "teach him a lesson"?

"I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my
colleagues know," says Joe humbly. Given his record, it is
understandable Joe has forgotten so much of it.

Saturday, the New York Times did a takeout on Cindy McCain that
delved back into her problem with prescription pills. Yet when
Hillary's campaign manager, Mark Penn, brought up Obama's cocaine
use on "Hardball," he was savaged by folks for whom the Times is
the gold standard.

The people apparently had a "right to know" of Bush's old DUI
arrest a week before the 2000 election, but no right to know about
how and when Obama was engaged in the criminal use of cocaine.

The media cannot get enough of the "Saturday Night Live"
impersonations of Palin as a bubblehead. News shows pick up the
Tina Fey clips and run them and run them to the merriment of all.

Can one imagine "Saturday Night Live" doing weekly send-ups of
Michelle Obama and her "I've never been proud" of my country, this
"just downright mean" America, using a black comedienne to mimic
and mock her voice and accent?

"Saturday Night Live" would be facing hate crime charges.

How do we know? When the New Yorker ran a cartoon of Michelle in an
Angela-Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, New Yorker
editors had to go on national television to swear they were not
mocking Michelle, but the conservatives who have so caricatured
Michelle and The Messiah.

Is there a media double standard? You betcha.

Would you, as possible President

associated with terrorists?

would you retain someone who has a history of terrorist association to provide advice on policy?

According to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Malley provided informal advice to the campaign in the past without having any formal role in the campaign. On May 9, 2008, the campaign severed ties with Malley when the British Times reported that Malley had been in discussions with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. In response, Malley told The Times he had been in regular contact with Hamas officials as part of his work with the International Crisis Group.

ELECTION 2008
Obama aide wants
Foreign adviser's 'anti-Israel policies,'

---

Posted: January 29, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

Robert Malley

JERUSALEM – While officials here largely maintain a policy against interfering in U.S. election politics, some Israeli security officials quietly expressed "concern" about an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.

The officials noted Robert Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.

Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state.

Anyone like the sound of this?

Another black democrat

Another black democrat

Joke of the week

(Bear facts)

The photo below captures a disturbing trend that is beginning to affect wildlife in the US.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ1Vy9eXB40fi1DbQiZlsLvttAEpaDGGl6sib8nt-n31C852wz4aX7jrXMtgxfYprbJGm6b5si8q50l0DdzPb2ZzfHm3Z85KBTXCUV7bBNMRt_HmlcLhTxrthiE4IPFrUaLxkr2biQjPs/s1600-h/bear.bmp

Animals that were formerly self-sufficient are now showing signs of belonging to the Democratic Party... as they have apparently learned to just sit and wait for the government to step in and provide for their care and sustenance. This photo is of a Democrat black bear in Carthage Tennessee nicknamed 'Bearack Obama'!

Excuse me - Mr Obama - could you explain this?

CHICAGO POLITICS

BODY COUNT IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS

292 MURDERED IN CHICAGO

221 KILLED IN IRAQ

OUR LEADERSHIP IN ILLINOIS ;

SEN. BARACK OBAMA

SEN. DICK DURBIN

REP. JESSE JACKSON, JR.

GOV. ROD BLOGOJEVICH

HOUSE LEADER MIKE MADIGAN

ATTY. GEN LISA MADIGAN

MAYOR RICHARD DALY

ALL DEMOCRATS

THANK YOU FOR THE COMBAT ZONE IN CHICAGO

OF COURSE THEY ARE BLAMING EACH OTHER.

CAN'T BLAME THE REPUBLICANS, BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY.!!!!!

STATE PENSION FUND $44 BILLION IN DEBT, WORST IN THE NATION.

COOK COUNTY (CHICAGO) SALES TAX 10.25%, HIGHEST IN THE NATION.

CHICAGO SCHOOL SYSTEM ONE OF THE WORST IN THE NATION.

THIS IS THE POLITICAL MACHINE THAT OBAMA SAYS HE COMES FROM IN ILLINOIS ..

AND NOW

OBAMA SAYS HE'S GONNA "FIX" WASHINGTON POLITICS.!!!!!

Letter from a Virginian to Obama

I came across this in an email.
This is long but it contains some very important and vital information concerning the upcoming Presidential election.
I hope that you will take the time to read it.
There are two pieces which are incorrect in the exact detail, but on target to the essence.
(although not a professor in the sense of the word - the position he held is called professor
McCain was cleared of any wrong doing in the Keating 5, and was investigated only because "they had to keep one republican" for the investigation)
As I am not the author - I will not alter the document. Thank you.

To Barack Hussein Obama, The New York Times carried a story on Saturday, October 4, 2008 that proved you had a significantly closer relationship with Bill Ayers than what you previously admitted. While the issue of your relationship is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to America about it. The Chicago Sun reported on May 8, 2008 that FBI records showed that you had a significantly closer relationship with Tony Rezko than what you previously admitted. In the interview, you said that you only saw Mr. Rezko a couple of times a year. The FBI files showed that you saw him weekly. While the issue of your relationship is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to America about it. Your speech in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008 about 'race' contradicted your statement to Anderson Cooper on March 14 when you said that you never heard Reverend Wright make his negative statements about white America. While your attendance at Trinity Church for 20 years is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to America on March 14. In your 1st debate with John McCain, you said that you never said that you would meet with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea without 'preparations' at lower levels ... Joe Biden repeated your words in his debate with Sarah Palin ... while the video tape from your debate last February clearly shows that you answered 'I would' to the question of meeting with those leaders within 12 months without 'any' preconditions. While your judgment about meeting with enemies of the USA without pre-conditions is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to America in the debate with McCain. On July 14, 2008, you said that you always knew that the surge would work while the video tapes of you from more than a year ago show that you stated that the surge would not work. While your judgment about military strategy as a potential commander in chief is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to America on July 14. You now claim that your reason for voting against funding for the troops was because the bill did not include a time line for withdrawal while the video tapes of you from more than a year ago show that you voted against additional funding because you wanted our troops to be removed immediately ... not in 16 months after the 2008 election as you now claim. While your judgment about removing our troops unilaterally in 2007 is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to America about your previous position. You claim to have a record of working with Republicans while the record shows that the only bill that you sponsored with a Republican was with Chuck Lugar ... and it failed. The record shows that you vote 97% in concert with the Democrat party and that you have the most liberal voting record in the Senate. You joined Republicans only 13% of the time in your votes and those 13% were only after agreement from the Democrat party. While it is of concern that you fail to include conservatives in your actions and that you are such a liberal, the greater concern is that you distorted the truth. In the primary debates of last February, 2008, you claimed to have talked with a 'Captain' of a platoon in Afghanistan 'the other day' when in fact you had a discussion in 2003 with a Lieutenant who had just been deployed to Afghanistan. You lied in that debate. In your debates last spring, you claimed to have been a 'professor of Constitutional law' when in fact you have never been a professor of Constitutional law. In this last debate, you were careful to say that you 'taught a law class' and never mentioned being a 'professor of Constitutional law.' You lied last spring. You and Joe Biden both claimed that John McCain voted against additional funding for our troops when the actual records show the opposite. You distorted the truth. You and Joe Biden claim that John McCain voted against funding for alternate energy sources 20 times when the record shows that John McCain specifically voted against funding for bio fuels, especially corn ... and he was right ... corn is too expensive at producing ethanol, and using corn to make ethanol increased the price of corn from $2 a bushel to $6 a bushel for food. You distorted the truth. You and Joe Biden claim that John McCain voted like both of you for a tax increase on those making as little as $42,000 per year while the voting record clearly shows that John McCain did not vote as you and Joe Biden. You lied to America. You and Joe Biden claim that John McCain voted with George W. Bush 90% of the time when you know that Democrats also vote 90% of the time with the President (including Joe Biden) because the vast majority of the votes are procedural. You are one of the few who has not voted 90% of the time with the president because you have been missing from the Senate since the day you got elected. While your absence from your job in the Senate is of concern, the greater concern is that you spin the facts. You did not take an active roll in the rescue plan. You claimed that the Senate did not need you while the real reason that you abstained was because of your close relationships with the executives of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Countrywide, and Acorn ... who all helped cause the financial problems of today ... and they all made major contributions to your campaign. While your relationship with these executives and your protection of them for your brief 3 years in the Senate (along with Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, and Chris Dodd) is of concern, the greater concern is that you are being deceitful. You forgot to mention that you personally represented Tony Rezko and Acorn. Tony Rezko, an Arab and close friend to you, was convicted of fraud in Chicago real estate transactions that bilked millions of tax dollars from the Illinois government for renovation projects that you sponsored as a state senator ... and Acorn has been convicted of voter fraud, real estate sub prime loan intimidation, and illegal campaign contributions. Tony Rezko has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to your political campaigns. You personally used your political positions to steer money to both Tony Rezko and Acorn and you used Acorn to register thousands of phony voters for Democrats and you. While your relationships with Rezko and Acorn are of concern, the greater concern is that you omitted important facts about your relationships with them to America. During your campaign, you said: 'typical white person.' 'they cling to their guns and religion.' 'they will say that I am black.' You played the race card. You tried to label any criticism about you as racist. You divide America. You claim that you will reduce taxes for 95% of America, but you forgot to tell America that those reductions are after you remove the Bush tax reductions. You have requested close to $1 Billion in earmarks and several million for Acorn. Your social programs will cost America $1 Trillion per year and you claim that a reduction in military spending ($100 billion for Iraq) can pay for it. While your economic plan of adding 30% to the size of our federal government is of concern, the greater concern is that you are deceiving America. The drain to America's economy by foreign supplied oil is $700 Billion per year (5% of GDP) while the war in Iraq is $100 Billion (less than 1% of GDP). You voted against any increases to oil exploration for the last 3 years and any expansion of nuclear facilities. Yet today, you say that you have always been for more oil and more nuclear. You are lying to America. Mr. Obama, you claimed that you 'changed' your mind about public financing for your campaign because of the money spent by Republican PACs in 2004. The truth is that the Democrat PACs in 2004, 2006, and 2008 spent twice as much as the Republican PACs (especially George Soros and MoveOn.org). You are lying to America. Mr. Obama, you have done nothing to stop the actions of the teachers union and college professors in the USA. They eliminated religion from our history. They teach pro gay agendas and discuss sex with students as young as first grade. They bring their personal politics into the classrooms. They disparage conservatives. They brainwash our children. They are in it for themselves ... not America. Are you reluctant to condemn their actions because teachers/professors and the NEA contribute 25% of all money donated to Democrats and none to Republicans? You are deceiving America. Oh Mr. Obama, Teddy Roosevelt said about a hundred years ago that we Americans should first look at the character of our leaders before anything else. Your character looks horrible. While you make good speeches, motivating speeches, your character does not match your rhetoric. You talk the talk but do not walk the walk. 1. You lied to America. You lied many times. You distorted facts. You parsed your answers like a lawyer. 2. You distorted the record of John McCain in your words and in your advertisements. 3. You had associations with some very bad people for your personal political gains and then lied about those associations. 4. You divide America about race and about class. Now let me compare your record of lies, distortions, race bating, and associations to John McCain: War hero. Annapolis graduate with 'Country first.' Operational leadership experience like all 43 previously elected presidents of the USA as a Navy Officer for 22 years. 26 years in the Senate. Straight talk. Maverick. 54% of the time participated on bills with Democrats. Never asked for an earmark. The only blemish on his record is his part in the Keating 5 debacle about 25 years ago. Mr. Obama, at Harvard Law School, you learned that the end does not justify the means. You learned that perjury, false witness, dishonesty, distortion of truth are never tolerated. Yet, your dishonesty is overwhelming. Your dishonesty is tremendously greater than the dishonesty that caused the impeachment and disbarment of Bill Clinton. Your dishonesty is tremendously greater than the dishonesty of Scooter Libby. You should be ashamed. Mr. Obama, it is time for us Americans to put aside our differences on political issues and vote against you because of your dishonest character. It is time for all of us Americans to put aside our political issues and vote for America first. It is time for America to vote for honesty. Any people who vote for you after understanding that you are dishonest should be ashamed of themselves for making their personal political issues more important than character. Would these same people vote for the anti-Christ if the anti-Christ promised them riches? Would they make a golden calf while Moses was up the mountain? Would they hire someone for a job if that someone lied in an interview? ... of course not. So why do some of these people justify their votes for you even though they know you are dishonest? Why do they excuse your dishonesty? Because some of these people are frightened about the future, the economy, and their financial security ... and you are preying on their fears with empty promises ... and because some (especially our young people) are consumed by your wonderful style and promises for 'change' like the Germans who voted for Adolf Hitler in 1932. The greed/envy by Germans in 1932 kept them from recognizing Hitler for who he was. They loved his style. Greed and envy are keeping many Americans from recognizing you ... your style has camouflaged your dishonesty ... but many of us see you for who you really are ... and we will not stop exposing who you are every day, forever if it is necessary. Mr. Obama, you are dishonest. Anyone who votes for you is enabling dishonesty. Mr. Obama, America cannot trust that you will put America first in your decisions about the future. Mr. Obama, you are not the 'change' that America deserves. We cannot trust you. Mr. Obama, You are not ready and not fit to be commander in chief. Mr. Obama, John McCain does not have as much money as your campaign to refute all of your false statements. And for whatever reasons, the mainstream media will not give adequate coverage or research about your lies, distortions, word parsing, bad associations, race bating, lack of operational leadership experience, and general dishonest character. The media is diverting our attention to your relationships and ignoring the fact that you lied about those relationships. The fact that you lied is much more important than the relationships themselves ... just like with Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon ... Monica Lewinski and Watergate were not nearly as bad as the fact that those gentlemen lied about the events ... false witness ... perjury ... your relationships and bad judgments are bad on their own ... but your lies are even worse. Therefore, by copy of this memo, all who read this memo are asked to send it to everyone else in America before it is too late. We need to do the job that the media will not do. We need to expose your dishonesty so that every person in America understands who you really are before election day. Mr. Obama, in a democracy, we get what we deserve. And God help America if we deserve you. Michael Master McLean, Virginia

ACORN did it before, are they doing it again?!

"Those who do not bother to learn history WILL repeat the lessons and learn through the mistakes"

ACORN - The common liberal / democrat comments about ACORN are that:

it's not a big issue,

it's only a few bad apples,

it's no big deal,

republicans are crying in advance of loosing the election

And there were never any problems in Chicago, "vote early vote often is just a joke", and so forth, and dead people never voted anywhere.

Well - I am not going to get into the Taft history here, because I could write from now till after the election about Chicago voter fraud, it's so well documented that even a congressman from Illinois can't argue that point.

But there is an election around the corner; ACORN has come up; and the same congressman from Illinois, who was once their attorney, gave them a large amount of money, and later had to revise his disclosures to correct what that money was for."

And maybe that report was as great a piece of fiction such as this nation has become immune to seeing.

What did he buy, who is this organization that he did spend campaign money on? - let's look at ACORN history in voter registrations:

from http://www.rottenacorn.com/activityMap.html

Recent Fraud

State	Year	Details
AR	1998	A contractor with ACORN-affiliated Project Vote was arrested for falsifying about 400 voter registration cards.
CO	2004	An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.
CO	2005	Two ex-ACORN employees were convicted in Denver of perjury for submitting false voter registrations.
FL	2004	A Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said ACORN was "singled out" among suspected voter registration groups for a 2004 wage initiative because it was "the common thread" in the agency's fraud investigations.
MI	2004	The Detroit Free Press reported that "overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers in several Michigan counties are under investigation for voter-registration fraud, suspected of attempting to register nonexistent people or forging applications for already-registered voters." ACORN-affiliate Project Vote was one of two groups suspected of turning in the documents.
MO	2007	Four ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City for charges including identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 election.
	2006	Eight ACORN employees in St. Louis were indicted on federal election fraud charges. Each of the eight faces up to five years in prison for forging signatures and submitting false information.
	2003	Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally.
NC	2004	North Carolina officials investigated ACORN for submitting fake voter registration cards.
NM	2005	Four ACORN employees submitted as many as 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures on the group's Albuquerque ballot initiative. A local sheriff added: "It's safe to say the forgery was widespread."
NM	2004	An ACORN employee registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. Citing this and other examples, New Mexico State Representative Joe Thompson stated that ACORN was "manufacturing voters" throughout New Mexico.
OH	2007	A man in Reynoldsburg was indicted on two felony counts of illegal voting and false registration, after being registered by ACORN to vote in two separate counties.
	2004	A grand jury indicted a Columbus ACORN worker for submitting a false signature and false voter registration form. In Franklin County, two ACORN workers submitted what the director of the board of election supervisors called "blatantly false" forms. In Cuyahoga County, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group.
MN	2004	During a traffic stop, police found more than 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of a former ACORN employee, who had violated a legal requirements that registration cards be submitted to the Secretary of State within 10 days of being filled out and signed.
PA	2008	An ACORN employee in West Reading, PA, was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison for identity theft and tampering with records. A second ACORN worker pleaded not guilty to the same charges and is free on $10,000 bail.
	2004	Reading's Director of Elections received calls from numerous individuals complaining that ACORN employees deliberately put inaccurate information on their voter registration forms. The Berks County director of elections said voter fraud was "absolutely out of hand," and added: "Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registration but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations." The Berks County deputy director of elections added that ACORN was under investigation by the Department of Justice.
TX	2004	ACORN turned in the voter registration form of David Young, who told reporters "The signature is not my signature. It's not even close." His social security number and date of birth were also incorrect.
VA	2005	In 2005, the Virginia State Board of Elections admonished Project Vote and ACORN for turning in a significant number of faulty voter registrations. An audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations that were rejected for carrying false or questionable information were submitted by Project Vote. Many of these registrations carried social security numbers that exist for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons in violation of state and federal election law. In a letter to ACORN, the State Board of Elections reported that 56% of the voter registration applications ACORN turned in were ineligible. Further, a full 35% were not submitted in a timely manner, as required by law. The State Board of Elections also commented on what appeared to be evidence of intentional voter fraud. "Additionally," they wrote, "information appears to have been altered on some applications where information given by the applicant in one color ink has been scratched through and re-entered in another color ink. Any alteration of a voter registration application is a Class 5 Felony in accordance with § 24.2-1009 of the Code of Virginia."
WA	2007	Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged, in the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history. More than 2,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted by the group during a voter registration drive.
WI	2004	The district attorney's office investigated seven voter registration applications Project Vote employees filed in the names of people who said the group never contacted them. Former Project Vote employee Robert Marquise Blakely told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had not met with any of the people whose voter registration applications he signed, "an apparent violation of state law," according to the paper.

anyone smelling anything yet? - stay tuned