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Turning back to that page out of Stalin’s handbook for good citizenship, the Obama campaign has revived its program of asking Americans to inform on fellow citizens when they see someone, some organization, some politician, or some news outlet “attacking” the Obammessiah. Some of you may recall the black eye that team Obama got when it tried to do this before. Obama’s Attack Watch was heavily lampooned. (See Video Below) One of the best tools that the East German and Soviet regimes had to keep the average citizen of their oppressive regimes in line was a program that urged citizens...

He wanted to "laugh" when he heard the teacher suggest he could be arrested for criticizing a sitting president. "Honestly, at the time I wanted to laugh at her, because I've been taught all my life that nobody can take your opinion," He said he knew that it takes an actual threat against the president, not just criticism, to be arrested. "(The teacher) doesn't want to hear anything but what she believes, and ... if you disagree, you get berated and put down," Rogers said. "I just decided to finally get some proof of it." "Didn't Obama bully somebody though?"...

Mr. Obama went to Harvard, but so did George W. Bush, who some liberals consider dumber than dirt. The president won't release his transcripts, so we can't judge by his grades. Mr. Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, but when he was selected, popularity mattered more than scholarship. Mr. Obama joined an undistinguished law firm, where he tried no cases. He often rambles when he speaks without a teleprompter. Mr. Obama has said a lot of unsmart things: there are 57 states; Canada has a president; "Austrian" is a language; America is "20 centuries" old; Arabic is spoken...

The Ricketts family saddens me. I am sorry I ever said the city of Chicago or the people of Wrigleyville should sacrifice to help the owners of the Cubs build a better and more valuable team and Wrigley Field. I advocated that as recently as last week. I never wanted folks to open their wallets and simply give the Rickettses their cash, but I thought that the public could make some concessions and that the neighborhood could put aside its desires and be helpful in building a stadium that could improve the Cubs and, perhaps, bring new revenue to the...

Rep. Barbara Lee on Tuesday went on the attack against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on behalf of President Obama's re-election campaign, blasting Romney's business record at Bain Capital. Lee, D-Oakland, said America doesn't need a president who got rich by putting the concerns of other wealthy investors over those of workers. "Like President Obama, I believe we need to restore middle-class security and create an economy built to last," she said on a conference call with reporters. "Unfortunately, Mitt Romney's economic policies would do even more damage to the middle class." Lee touted Obama's Recovery Act economic stimulus, which...

President Obama's position on same-sex marriages has indeed been "evolving" - back in 2004, he wouldn't even have his photo taken with Gavin Newsom, for fear that being pictured with the man who opened the City Hall wedding chapel to gays and lesbians would cost him votes back home in Illinois. At the time, Obama was a mere state senator from Chicago looking to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Like a lot of up-and-coming African American pols, he tapped Willie Brown to host a fundraiser here to score some badly needed cash.Brown tossed a party at the Waterfront...

President Barack Obama has seen an uptick in fundraising since he announced his shift on gay marriage, with some Democratic rainmakers citing renewed interest from gay and lesbian donors who had been urging the president to clarify his stance on the divisive social issue. "The phone calls went on until one in the morning after the president spoke — people calling saying `Where do I go, what can I do to help, what events are coming up,'" said Robert Zimmerman, a Long Island, N.Y., Obama bundler. "People I've been seeking out for campaign support for months have been calling me...

Evangelist Franklin Graham said President Barack Obama has “shaken his fist at God” by voicing support for gay marriage. In an interview Wednesday with ABC News, Obama said his opinions had evolved and he now believes same-sex couples should have the right to wed.

One key point conservatives made in today’s story about President Obama backing same sex marriage is that it would drive away conservative Latino and African-American voters. That’s what folks like conservative activist Gary Marx told us. That possibility “is wildly unlikely,” said Gary Segura, professor of American Politics and Chicano Studies at Stanford University and a principal in the polling firm Latino Decisions. While many Latinos are Catholic, a religion which does not condone same sex marriage, Segura said Latinos rarely let their religious beliefs steer their votes.

President Obama's historic move Wednesday to support same-sex marriage could ripple all the way to the November election, helping unite his liberal base while threatening to ignite evangelical voters who have yet to commit to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, political experts said. But while the public debate over same-sex marriage has sparked explosive political clashes in the past, observers on both sides said it is unlikely to be a game-changer this year, when the economy is the top issue for most voters. Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to support same-sex marriage Wednesday during an interview with ABC...

Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, released a statement Friday attacking President Obama for what was described in a press release as the president's "decision to play politics with the one year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death." "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad," McCain said. "This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden 'to score political points.'"

“Mr. Obama has held more than a hundred joint fund-raisers since last spring, far more than President George W. Bush during his 2004 re-election, and has tucked fund-raising stops into many of his official presidential trips.” Heh. Try saying that three times with a straight face: “Mr. Obama has held more than a hundred joint fund-raisers” Even with this promise of additional fundraiser looty, it looks like it’s still “hard out here for a pimp” Plouffee is still having a hard time luring in the really big sugar daddies. Boy, this economy sucks doesn’t it? Oh well, I guess we’ll...

President Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, doesn't like the term "drug war." He argues that none of the smart guys in law enforcement uses it. Instead, the smart guys talk about middle-of-the-road strategies that emphasize treatment over incarceration - as did both Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush - while they also advocate tough law enforcement. Folks in the drug czar's office have "gotten really good at stealing the rhetoric of drug policy reformers," griped Bill Piper of the antidrug war Drug Policy Alliance, but they don't mean it. Obama may talk up having a dialogue on legalization and...

Given that the electorate is largely pro-dog, Democrats are eager to remind voters this fall about Mitt Romney’s innovative canine transportation methods of the 1980s. . . . But it’s a dog-story-eat-dog-story world. So when the Republicans were reminded by the Daily Caller of a quote from Barack Obama’s own book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” a Twitter feeding frenzy ensued. In the passage, Obama is recalling meals he had in Indonesia, where he lived between the ages of 6 and 10: “With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with...

President Obama chastised the media last week. "I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they're equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle," the president chided those attending the American Society of Newspaper Editors luncheon. Obama also claimed that he holds positions that 20 or 15 years ago "would have been considered squarely centrist positions. What's changed is the center of the Republican Party." Oh, and Ronald Reagan "could not get through a Republican primary today." Yet many in the media don't ask: Where are the...

Conservatives caricature 24/7 Barack Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter. True, his speeches are scripted; but we forget why so: He is very good at reading a prepared script as if he were talking off the top of his head, and he is very bad at actually talking off the top of his head. In the former mode, he sounds pleasantly moderate and mellifluous; in the latter, sort of creepy and awkward. Yet the result is paradoxical: Obama seems to feel false when he sounds balanced and eloquent reading someone else’s ideas on a teleprompter, and genuine only when he is...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is laying groundwork to make the majority-conservative Supreme Court a campaign issue this fall, taking a political page from Republicans who have long railed against liberal judges who don't vote their way. The emerging Democratic strategy to paint the court as extreme was little noted in this week's hubbub over Obama's assertion that overturning his health care law would be "unprecedented." His statement Monday wasn't completely accurate, and the White House backtracked. But Obama was making a political case, not a legal one, and he appears ready to keep making it if the high...

New rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions will make it nearly impossible to build new coal power plants The Obama administration effectively blocked the construction of any new coal-fired power plants on Tuesday, introducing rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the next generation of plants. The proposed new standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions on new power plants in half and will, over time, help move America away from the carbon-heavy plants that currently produce nearly half of the country's electricity, Lisa Jackson, the head of the environmental protection agency, told a conference call with reporters. "Right now there...

You may not have realized it, but the current run-up in oil and gasoline prices is actually a right-wing plot to oust President Obama. Big oil companies and/or Wall Street speculators have inflated prices to foment voter unrest and help Republicans seize the White House this fall. The possibility of armed conflict between Israel and Iran has nothing to do with it, or is a contributing factor at best. This theory has been echoing across the blogosphere for weeks now. The most detailed version appeared on the widely read Daily Kos blog, which included a lengthy post on Feb. 26...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Here's a thought that can't comfort President Barack Obama: The fate of his health care overhaul rests with four Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices. His most sweeping domestic achievement could be struck down if they stand together with Justice Clarence Thomas, another GOP appointee who is the likeliest vote against. But the good news for Obama is that he probably needs only one of the four to side with him to win approval of the law's crucial centerpiece, the requirement that almost everyone in this country has insurance or pays a penalty. Lawyers with opposing views of the...

Do YOU need a JOB? Or are YOU in a DEAD-END job with LITTLE chance of ADVANCEMENT? Are you BORED? FIDGETY? DISCONNECTED from REALITY and possessing certain DELUSIONAL tendencies? Do you believe in a MOON COLONY? Would you like NASCAR, NFL team owners and other NE’ER-DO-WELLS to SUCK UP to YOU? Or are you just eager to IMPOSE your own PERSONAL RELIGIOUS BELIEFS on the rest of the AMERICAN PEOPLE? In that case: Would YOU like to be the PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE of the UNITED STATES REPUBLICAN PARTY? This is no JOKE, SCAM OR PHISHING swindle! Send no MONEY to FOREIGN...

Saudi on Student Visa Was Arrested After ‘Threatening to Blow Up White House’ By Edwin Mora March 12, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - A Saudi Arabian national who entered the United States on a student visa was arrested in January after he threatened to blow up the White House, according to written and verbal testimony presented to Congress last week by two top officials of the Department of Homeland Security.The revelation came in a hearing called on March 6 by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security to examine why a Moroccan national, Amine El Khalifi, had been able...

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama has asked Israel to give diplomacy a chance before deciding on an attack on Iranian nuclear sites to curb the Islamic republic's atomic ambitions but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retorted that his country must be the "master of its fate". Obama made the appeal to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday when the two leaders held talks in the White House on the Iranian nuclear standoff. "We do believe there is still a window that allows for a diplomatic resolution to this issue," Obama said. But Netanyahu showed no sign of backing away from...

While the Obama administration's decision to force church-based institutions to provide "access" to contraception as part of their health plans was intolerant and unconstitutional and gratuitously divisive, events have proven the move to be brilliant politics. The White House later came up with a phony compromise that allows church-affiliated employers to opt out of contraception, but requires their health care providers to provide birth control to plan members. In the meantime, one act of raw power unleashed a cascade of stupid Republican tricks. In February, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrel Issa questioned an all-male panel invited to discuss the administration's...

Newt Gingrich presented a stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats on gasoline prices Saturday at the California GOP convention in Burlingame. Gingrich promised, if elected, to bring gasoline prices below $2.50 per gallon. A day earlier, in a signature speech on energy, President Obama told the University of Miami that there "are no silver bullets short term when it comes to gas prices." Indeed, the problem of gasoline price spikes "won't be solved in one year; it won't be solved in one term; it may not be completely solved in one decade." (Just what you wanted to hear: Even given...

LightSquared CEO made curious max donation to DNC while seeking White House audience By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller   12:37 PM 02/24/2012 Broadband company LightSquared‘s CEO made a maximum-allowable political donation to the Democratic Party on the same day his lawyers were trying to arrange a meeting between him and top White House technology officials, records and emails obtained by The Daily Caller show. Those same records also show a questionable inconsistency, listing the CEO’s employer as a company he hadn’t worked for in a decade.The requests and donation came soon after President Barack Obama’s Federal Communications Commission...

With the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination in increasing disarray, Democratic President Obama has significantly strengthened his hand in California, where his margin over his strongest GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, has doubled in the past three months, a new Field Poll shows. Obama leads the former Massachusetts governor by 20 percentage points, 55-35, in the nation's most-populous state. Independent voters, who will be critical in the November election, prefer the president 59 to 27 percent, the poll found. The president has an even more commanding lead - of 28 points - over former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania,...

An adviser to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign says GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum went "well over the line" when he questioned Obama's Christian values. Robert Gibbs tells ABC's "This Week" that it's time "to get rid of this mindset in our politics that, if we disagree, we have to question character and faith."

President Obama was greeted with wild applause and shouts of “We love you!” from thousands of adoring supporters as he took the stage at the Nob Hill Masonic Center on Thursday night. But then, there were those two very vocal women in the pink slips lead away by the cops. Chalk up another appearance by Nancy Mancias of CodePink – the women’s group opposed to the United States’ involvement in wars. She stood as Obama was speaking about killing Osama bin Laden and began protesting the administration’s use of drone attacks. With her was another veteran CodePinker, Janine Boneparth, another...

President Obama, who signed the Shark Conservation Act into law last month, apparently didn't check out the menu before he made a surprise visit Thursday to a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown that is among a handful still serving shark fin soup, a delicacy that has been outlawed in California. The Great Eastern restaurant, a Chinatown landmark on Jackson Street, has a $48 single serving of braised shark fin soup on its menu, and was the site of the president's drop-in after he landed in San Francisco to attend three fundraising events. Obama made an unannounced visit to the venue,...

San Francisco philanthropist Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the Democratic Party's most generous benefactors, is keeping her checkbook closed when President Obama holds high-priced California fundraisers this week."I want to look him in the eye and say, 'Thank you so much' " for his work, said Buell, who expresses deep disappointment in the president's leadership on environmental issues, especially climate change. With Obama's 2012 re-election campaign in full swing, "I would just love to write my big check ... or have a high-dollar dinner here" on his behalf, she said. "I can't."Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, has...

From San Francisco, the controversy over the White House decision to require religious-affiliated employers to provide contraception in their employee health care benefits has felt like an argument about the barn door being open years after the horse got out of the barn. In 1996, San Francisco effectively forced Catholic Charities to offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples (without calling them domestic-partner benefits) in order to receive city funds to care for the sick. A 1999 law made California one of 28 states that now require employers to include contraception in health-care plans that cover prescriptions. Yet the Obama administration...

President Obama, in a compromise aimed to quell criticism from church leaders and conservatives, said Friday that he will allow Catholic institutions in California and across the nation to opt out of a federal requirement that religious-based employers provide free birth control to their employees. The move, which would revise a Health and Human Services Department rule by allowing those employees access to free birth control via their employers' insurance companies, sparked mostly positive reaction from women's and religious organizations as well as California Democrats meeting this weekend in San Diego. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a practicing Catholic and...

Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer of the Archdiocese of San Francisco has written a letter that will be distributed at all Masses this weekend about the Obama administration’s decision to require Catholic institutions to administration would require Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities to provide contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act. See Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ statement here. The ruling has raised a huge row with many Catholics, who make up 27 percent of the electorate and constitute a large share of independents. They are also concentrated in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election....

5-DAY PREDICTIONS FOR NAVID NAVID (Gospel), was designed to collect data on weather conditions and monitor for natural disasters. The satellite weighs about 110 pounds (50 kilograms) and will orbit Earth at an altitude of up to 234 miles (375 kilometers), circling the planet 15 times a day. Navid, produced at an Iranian engineering university, is the third small satellite that Iran launched over the past years and is expected to remain in orbit for about two months. The two earlier satellites — Omid, launched in 2009, and Rasad, sent into orbit in June 2011 — lasted three weeks and...

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer insults the president with a finger-wagging tarmac rant in Arizona. As a result, sales of her book soar. American presidents have always been fair game for public criticism. But isn’t it past time that we challenge the campaign of insult, racial slur and utter disrespect that has been unleashed on Barack Obama? Consider just the Republican presidential contenders. The campaign started with Donald Trump’s ugly nonsense about Obama’s birth certificate, suggesting that he was un-American. Newt Gingrich devoted a book, To Save America, to denouncing Obama’s “secular socialist machine that represents as great a threat to...

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama ratcheted up his class warfare rhetoric, calling for an America "where everyone gets a fair shot" and "everyone does their fair share" – his latest attempt to blame upper-income Americans for our economic problems and hike their taxes. In his State of the State address, Gov. Jerry Brown called for closing state budget deficits by increasing income taxes on the "wealthy" and hiking the sales tax. It's only "fair," he said. "Fairness" – code for income redistribution – will be the theme of the 2012 elections. All year we will...

President Barack Obama's campaign speech Tuesday to a joint session of Congress — aka the State of the Union — proves we have been teleported from America to Absurdistan. Cases in point: n Though Europe and the euro teeter on a precipice because of vast, past borrowing, Obama hardly mentioned our record $15 trillion debt. See? Absurd. But Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels clearly defined the debt disaster in his Republican response to Obama. "In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt," Daniels said. "And yet the president...

Every time I criticize President Obama for not working with Republicans, as I did in Thursday’s column, I receive emails from Democrats who argue that Obama cannot work with Congress because Mitch McConnell once told the National Journal’s Major Garrett, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Whaaaaa. The Republicans are being political. This has never happened in Washington before. Whaaaa. Of course, when George W. Bush was president, Democrats never tried to undermine his chances of re-election. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid just called Bush a ”liar” who...

{excerpt} Money, get away Elsewhere on the big money beat, I’m still trying to figure out how we got to a place where the top two GOP candidates are giving each other a hard time for making so much dough. It was Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street” who famously said, “Greed, for a lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit Greed . . . will . . . save that . . . malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.” A quarter-century later, a story...

Toward the end of his State of the Union speech, President Obama observed that Washington politicians should learn from the example of the U.S. military: "When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails." Obama recalled the successful Navy SEAL mission, which under his watch took out Obama bin Laden, and observed, "the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other - because you can't charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there's someone behind you, watching your back." At first blush,...

Related: David J Vitale: http://www.muckety.com/David-J-Vitale/5794.muckety "Urban Partnership Bank Chairman David Vitale on ShoreBank, Federal Aid for Banks, and Detroit’s Troubles" http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2011/Urban-Partnership-Bank-Chairman-David-Vitale-on-ShoreBank-Federal-Aid-for-Banks-and-Detroits-Troubles/ UPB link: https://www.upbnk.com/faith-based Board: "Urban Partnership Bank names board" By Becky Yerak Posted Aug. 27, 2010 Urban Partnership Bank, the newly formed group that last week bought failed Chicago-based ShoreBank, has named five-people to its board of directors. It includes three former First Chicago executives who had joined ShoreBank in recent months during its last-ditch and ultimately unsuccessful effort to raise capital so state and federal regulators wouldn’t seize it. Those are David Vitale, who, as previously reported, will...

Toward the end of his State of the Union address, President Obama delivered a paragraph that was so blatantly absurd and self contradictory as to actually become clarifying—so incoherent that it shed a bright light on his thinking and his grave dilemma. It’s hard to believe he actually said this, but he did: I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That’s why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States. That’s why we’re getting...

President Barack Obama had sought to delay judgment on the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project for carrying tar sands oil from Alberta in Canada down to the Gulf Coast refineries. Obama realized that this was a wedge issue for the Republicans. The environmentalists, a key component of the Obama coalition, strongly opposed the pipeline because they feared an environmental disaster and objected to the exploitation of tar sands as a source of energy. On the other hand, the pipeline would have created tens of thousands of jobs, a particularly sensitive topic in this year's elections. Additionally, Canadian oil...

Israel’s National Security Council thinks that President Barack Obama is naïve in his attitude towards the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which stated Sunday it can’t fathom the idea of recognizing Israel. Dr. Rashad Bayumi, the Brotherhood’s number two leader, said on Sunday, "No Muslim Brotherhood members will engage in any contact or normalization with Israel.” President Obama has asked the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to mediate secret talks between the United States and the Taliban, according to The Hindu newspaper. The jurist previously has called for killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and has vowed that Islam “will conquer Europe...

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country... The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking...

<p>Sen. Dick Lugar said challenges by Tea Party candidates are partly to blame for the Republicans not having a majority in the Senate.</p> <p>“Republicans lost the seats before in Nevada and New Jersey for example and Colorado where there were people who claimed that they wanted somebody who was more of their Tea Party aspect, but in doing so they killed off the Republican chances for majority,” he said. “This is one of the reasons why we have a minority in the Senate right now.”</p>

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Thursday that none of the challengers had legal standing to file the lawsuit. The plaintiffs included some of Obama’s political rivals, taxpayers and military personnel.

<p>O’Reilly: Is he a socialist?</p> <p>Romney: You know, I prefer to use the term that he’s just over his head.</p> <p>O’Reilly: Yeah, but you got to look at his economic plan. An economic plan that’s top down, federal leadership, getting us out of the recession--- he spent trillions of dollars on that. And people say, Listen, the guy’s a socialist — it’s class warfare that’s what he’s gonna wage against you if you get the nomination: You’re a rich guy, you’re out of touch. Is he a socialist?</p>

A half dozen Occupy Des Moines activists are setting up a camp outside President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters in Iowa and are vowing to stay there around the clock. The Occupy protestors rallied on Saturday against military spending and then some walked to the office for Obama's re-election bid. No one was there and the doors were locked. The protestors say Obama staffers aren't listening to them and they will stay until they are satisfied. They have set up two tents and put up a sign on the door declaring it "Obama's former headquarters." The activists say they want Obama...