Extra Astroturfing

Hot Air has the scoop on Roxana Mayer, who ID’d herself as a doctor supporting Obamacare at a Sheila Jackson-Lee town hall…

Not only was Mayernot a doctor, Roxana Mayer was an Obama delegate, as Patterico discovered with some digging. What’s more, the Houston Chronicle apparently knew this and failed to include it in its glowing coverage of Mayer’s appearance. The reporter, Cindy Horswell, has admitted that she knew Mayer was an Obama delegate and that Mayer didn’t live in Jackson-Lee’s district when she wrote the Chronicle story…

Hot Air goes on to note that Ms. Mayer was a leader in the Obama group “Organizing for America”. Point blank, she was a plant set in place by Obama operatives who were trying to change the terms of the debate. That they had to put up a fake doctor who is actually an Obama organizer in order to get the sound bite necessary…too bad for them that the truth came out, huh?

The left will stop at nothing to win – lies and all manner of trickery are perfectly ok in the left’s book because, not believing in absolute right and wrong, the only thing which matters is advancing the cause. If it takes dishonesty then its not a matter of them taking a regrettable step – for them, its a good thing to do and, if it works, something to be proud about. These are the sorts of people we’re dealing with – keep that in mind and never for a moment take any pro-Obama action or statement at face value…until its completely investigated, our default position on such things should be “doubt”.

UPDATE: Is Obama betting the farm on health care?

Bank Failures Rise to 77 for 2009

The hits just keep coming:

Troubled Colonial BancGroup will be bought by rival BB&T Friday, the government said after state regulators closed the bank whose assets had been frozen by a federal judge.

The Montgomery, Ala., bank, which has 346 branches spread across Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas, is the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history and by far the largest failure of 2009.

With $25 billion in assets and $20 billion in deposits, Colonial is 100 times larger than the typical bank to have failed this year…

…The failure of Colonial is another blow to the FDIC trust fund, which has had to cover 77 bank failures so far in 2009 — including four more late Friday…

They are failing because people aren’t paying their loans – home mortgages and, increasingly, commercial mortgages. Anyone who thinks we’ve bottomed out is a complete fool – we’ve got stock market bubbles and government spending-forced GDP “gains”, but the real economy is sliding rapidly in to depression. It’ll be years before we crawl out of this – and the more we go with liberalism, the longer it will be take and the poorer we’ll get.

UPDATE: And the question is asked: Is the FDIC broke?

"Black Man Pleads Guilty to Posing as Obama-Hating White Supremacist on Facebook"

This is not surprising:

An African-American man from Mississippi admits posing as a white supremacist to send a death threat across state lines by Facebook.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says 20-year-old Dyron L. Hart of Poplarville pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to making a threat in November 2008.

Hart admitted creating a name and using a white supremacists’ photo to pose as a white man who planned to kill blacks because Barack Obama had been elected president.

He originally was charged with threatening three black students at Nicholls State — where he had attended one semester — but pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count.

He sent the threats from a computer in Poplarville.

The maximum sentence is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine; sentencing is Nov. 18.

There are, indeed, white racists in America – in a nation of 300 million people and 210 million white people, there might even be 10 or 20 million white racists. A tiny percentage, but certainly a large number of people. But what would make such a person – even if he had a burning, passionate hatred of black people – want to issue threats? Let alone carry out any such threats? The plain fact of the matter is that the chances of someone hating Obama based on his race sufficient to make him desire to take action against Obama is vanishingly small. It could happen, but it almost certainly won’t. But, such facts don’t fit the narrative…and so, here we have Mr. Hart.

Now, Mr. Hart might have been doing this entirely on his own hook, but I doubt it. It is in the left’s interest to have a heightened level of threats against Obama in order to create the story that to oppose Obama is to be in some way tied to the racists who are threatening him. Having people like Hart do what they do makes all opposition to Obama appear odious. And its not that someone has to hire Hart – just the right word or suggestion, here or there, and someone who shares the leftwing world view – and its penchant for lying in service to the cause – and you’ll get plenty like him out there.

We can expect more and more of this as opposition to Obama reaches crescendo – the left will stop at nothing.

Where Obama Gets His Brain

From warmed-over communist propaganda dressed up as education:

In the heyday of the Cold War, both knowingly and unknowingly, … radical intellectuals served as a reliable conduit for anti-U.S. propaganda generated in the think tanks of Moscow. The technical details were described by a number of defectors from the Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies, the highest-ranking of whom was Ion Mihai Pacepa, acting chief of Romania’s espionage service.

“The whole foreign policy of the Soviet-bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies,” Pacepa writes. “The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world Communism. … Many ‘Ban-the-Bomb’ and anti-nuclear movements were KGB-funded operations, too. I can no longer look at a petition for world peace or other supposedly noble cause, particularly of the anti-American variety, without thinking to myself, ‘KGB.’

“As far as I’m concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America,” Pacepa continues. “KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, ‘our most significant success.’”

The fraudulent image of America as the “violent imperialist aggressor” was picked up by the Western media, disseminated through activist groups, and found its way into policy making, exemplified by John Kerry’s 1971 “Genghis Khan” testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where Kerry almost verbatim repeated the KGB fabrications, later recognized by Pacepa as his own subversive product.

“KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility,” Pacepa recalls. “One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and ‘news reports’ about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. … All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.”

Our sensory organs may perceive the same reality, but our knowledge of the world depends on how our minds interpret our perceptions and connect the dots. A successful propaganda campaign modifies that process by inserting, in a manner of speaking, a prefabricated optical lens that redirects incoming information and rearranges the existing dots. It may remain unnoticed for a while because the distortion affects limited designated areas — in this case, political ideology. One still is the same person, except that when he thinks of political, economic, or social issues, lies suddenly become perceived as the truth, right as wrong, good as evil, enemies as friends, and so on.

Anyone who spends a bit of time reading history realizes that this is an obvious fact – while the particular issue may change, the accusations against the United States remain exactly the same.

The communist accusation against the United States is that we are a quasi-fascist, imperialist, international predator – because they are fools, western and American leftists picked up on this propaganda and eventually fell for it hook, line and sinker. These people then rose through the academic, legal and artistic ranks and then provided the education -and worldview – for the current leadership of the left, most especially Barack Obama.

What this leads to on the left is a desire to curb the United States; to subordinate it to international bodies who can prevent us from acting in our insane, aggressive, imperialist manner. Additionally, there is a desire to apologize and compensate for all those American crimes – remember, to someone educated by the left, the United States has been an ongoing war criminal since the get-go and is, of course, guilty of a Hitlerian genocide against the American Indians. Obama, after all is said and done, is just doing as he’s been told – unless some can get him to read non-leftist works on the past, he’ll just mindlessly go along in the groove he’s in, certain that he’s got the moral high ground.

So, too, most of Obama’s supporters – by now, we’re on the fourth generation of post-Hitler/Stalin Pact leftists and talking to such about the facts of life is like trying to talk to a person who thinks that 2 plus 2 equals 5. Makes for tricky discussions…but something we’ll just have to work around.

GOP Favored on 8 out of 10 issues

Including health care:

For the first time in over two years of polling, voters trust Republicans slightly more than Democrats on the handling of the issue of health care. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that voters favor the GOP on the issue 44% to 41%.

Democrats held a four-point lead on the issue last month and a 10-point lead in June. For most of the past two years, more than 50% of voters said they trusted Democrats on health care. The latest results mark the lowest level of support measured for the party on the now-contentious issue.

If you look in to the full poll, you’ll see that the GOP and Democrats are tied on Iraq. The one issue voters trust Democrats on over the GOP is – believe it or not – “government ethics” by a 34/31 margin. This shows how badly we blew it when our Congressional GOP became part of the problem in DC – we’ll a long time getting over that and the only sure cure is to gain power and then go after corruption root and branch in DC, letting the chips fall where they may.

We lost the trust of the American people and we deserved to lose it – we lost our way and became part of the problem. We became, that is, just like the Democrats. Now that the people are getting a refresher course in just how horrible Democrat government is, their trust is swinging towards us…but we still have to earn it, and then carry out our duty, no matter how hard it is. If we can show that we’re trust worthy, we’ll be rewarded with a generation of power with which to remake America back towards the constitutional republic it was always meant to be.

Phrase of the Day

Back to basics:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater

Toomey Tops Both Democrats for 2010 Senate

Losing Specter may end up being the best thing that ever happened to us:

Uncomfortable town hall meetings are just the tip of the iceberg for Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. He now trails Republican Pat Toomey by double digits in his bid for reelection next year and is viewed unfavorably by a majority of the state’s voters.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Pennsylvania voters shows 48% would vote for Toomey if the election were held today. Just 36% would vote for Specter while four percent (4%) prefer a third option, and 12% are not sure.

These figures reflect a dramatic reversal since June. At that time, before the public health care debate began, Specter led Toomey by eleven…

…If Congressman Joe Sestak is the Democratic nominee instead of Specter, Toomey still leads but by a smaller margin. The polling shows 43% for Toomey and 35% for Sestak. In June, Sestak had a six-point edge over Toomey.

We might be trading a wet noodle RINO for a rock-ribbed conservative. It is still a very long way out, but its been my experience in politics that not too many people recover from the level of negative Specter has reached. The Dems better figure a way to dump him in favor of Sestak or they’ll have a nearly insurmountable problem in PA next year.

Right now, Specter has a 13 point lead over Sestak in the Dem primary, but I expect that number will start to shift as Democrats start to see the writing on the wall. What will remain to be seen is whether or not the Democrat leadership starts to wise up – they do seem rather out to lunch and they may stick with Specter.

Cowardly Liberals

Yale is set to publish a book about those Mohammed cartoons which caused that ruckus in 2005 – funny thing about the book:

This is contemporary academia, after all. No, after consulting “two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism,” that great bastion of intellectual light, the Yale University Press, decided to publish a book about the Danish cartoons without the Danish cartoons. (emphasis in original)

These people will not fight against Islamism for the simple reason that they are afraid to do so. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing except that they insist that the rest of us call their cowardice “sensitivity” and that we all become as “sensitive” as they are. Its like the coward running from battle who insists that everyone follow him, lest he be seen for the coward he is.

The Islamists are sure to be pleased – their future slaves are already showing proper deference towards their masters.

Obamunism Update

Foreclosures rise 7 percent in July from June

Bleak sales are another reality check for economy

Bankruptcy filings surge in first-half 2009

US new jobless claims show surprise increase

‘Fastest Dying Cities’ Meet for a Lively Talk

National Guard drill at high school to prepare for possible H1N1 riot

Statement from Vice President Biden on launch of $2.3 billion recovery act green manufacturer tax credit program

Random Thoughts, Observations, and Questions

If the government can spend it’s way out of bankruptcy, why can’t I spend my way out of debt?

Congressional pay raises ought to be approved by the voters, not by Congress. Try telling your boss that you and your co-workers voted yourselves a pay raise, and see how far that gets you.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So are government abuses and corruption, it seems.

According to the Democrats, the difference between grassroots and astroturf are which party is being protested.

The way things are going, we’ll only be stuck with Barack Obama for four years. But, Sonia Sotomayor will be on the Supreme Court for life. Think about that the next time you plan to stay home on Election Day because the Republican “isn’t conservative enough.”

As the unemployment rate went down during the Bush years, Democrats kept telling us how much worse the economy was getting. As the unemployment rate goes up under Obama, Democrats keep telling us the worst is over.

Barack Obama is not a president. He’s just playing one in real life. And he’s really doing a crappy job.

In order to get my marriage license, I have to show two forms of ID, including my birth certificate.

After January 20, 2009, dissent went from the highest form of patriotism to being un-American.

Obama critics still don’t use the word “socialism” as much as Bush critics used the term “religious right.”

If you could choose any country in the world for your health care needs, which country would it be?

While on the subject, if Obama needs to go across the country to sell his health care plan at pre-screened town halls, then it will probably go as far as President Bush’s Social Security plan in 2005 did.

Have you ever read the health care bill? It ought to be called Obama’s Health Control Plan, not Health Care Plan. This is stuff you never would expect to see happen in America. It has everything to do with control, not quality of or access to health care.

Most who support Obama’s heath care plan probably support abortion rights. Abortion advocates often say the government shouldn’t have “control over my body.” So, why do they support a plan that allow the government to control what kind of medical care your body can or cannot receive?