Obama: The Affirmative Action President by Matt Patterson (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San Francisco Examiner) I found this at http://rtr.org/blogs/20460/13594/the-washington-post-august-18

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job? Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present") ; and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? Not content to wait for history, the incomparable NormanPodhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall StreetJournal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest? Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois ; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly? In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

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Dear Bob, I recently re-read radical left-wing activist Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (the anti-gun Left's political playbook). As you may know, our President, Barack Obama, spent years as a "community organizer" teaching the so-called "Alinsky Method" of organization in workshops and classes. In the "Tactics" chapter, Alinsky wrote this:  

Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The radical Left has distilled this lesson into their favorite motto: "never let a crisis go to waste." You and I shouldn't be surprised to see that this President is using a highly-publicized lone wolf shooting in Arizona to try and grab power. "Consensus." "Commonsense." "Responsible." "Reform." "Agreement." These words have been uttered before. They are Alinsky words. They are code words for curbing our gun rights -- and if you and I have anything to say about it, this President will not succeed. Shrouding himself with the blood of innocents in Sunday's Arizona Daily Star, Obama calls for greatly expanding background checks and rewarding states who share sensitive gun ownership records with the behemoth Federal bureaucracy. He isn't going to let the tragedy in Arizona go to waste. He's using it to advance his anti-gun agenda and chip away at your rights. You and I must not forget that in 1994, Bob Dole and the Republicans were instrumental in helping the gun control lobby pass the Brady Instant Gun Owner Registration Scheme in the wake of tragedy. Don't let it happen again. Want to help stop Obama and his anti-gun cronies? Call your Senators and your Member of Congress at the Capitol switch board:(202) 224-3121, today and tell them "No More gun control!" Let them know that you do not want to see a repeat performance of 1994 on the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives, and you expect both of them to vote against any gun control schemes brought to the floor. Once you've called your Senators and Member of Congress, please consider chipping in $15 or $20 to help the National Association for Gun Rights continue to fight for your right to keep and bear arms. Thanks for your activism! For liberty, Dudley Brown Executive Director National Association for Gun Rights P.S. Please help the National Association for Gun Rights continue to fight the gun control schemes of President Obama and the radical Left. Please click here to chip in $15 or $20 to help fight for your right to keep and bear arms.

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To help the National Association for Gun Rights grow, please forward this to a friend. To view this email as a web page, please click this link: view online. Help fight gun control. Donate to the National Association for Gun Rights!

This was not all true and this article was printed in the Spokesman-Review to clarify it.

 

Home sales tax clarified

In his recent guest column regarding the impact of the health care bill, Paul Guppy of the Washington Policy Center claimed that a 3.8 percent tax on all home sales was a part of the recently passed legislation. This is inaccurate and needs to be corrected. The truth about the bill is that if you sell your home for a profit above the capital gains threshold of $250,000 per individual or $500,000 per couple then you would be required to pay the additional 3.8 percent tax on any gain realized over this threshold. Most people who sell their homes will not be impacted by these new regulations. This is not a new tax on every seller, and that correction needs to be made. This tax is aimed at so-called “high earners” – if you do not fall into that category you will not pay any extra taxes upon the sale of your home. Sara Orrange Government affairs director Spokane Association of Realtors

Original article follows

Lets get rid of all the people that voted for this bill, We have to Clean House!

Did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it?

Article from the Wall Street Journal  -  by Eddie Sessions:
 
"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House. 
 
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author. 
  
His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal. 
  
He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before? 
  
He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance. 
 
And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.
 
The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary. 
 
Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters. 
 
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain .
 
The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.
  
Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues. 
  
Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot. 
 
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame. 
 
The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth. 
  
Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life. 
 
When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden. 
  
We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America ?"

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