Media FINALLY Reveal Obama “Small-Donor” Myth

It was heralded as a major part of the “new politics” surrounded Barack Obama.  It was lauded as being the end of special interest politics dominated by special interest money.  It was the primary reason Obama cited to justify his breaking of his promise to accept public financing.

And now the media finally tells us that the whole thing was a gigantic industrial-sized crock of crap.

Way to go, mainstream media.  Thanks for doing such a great job reporting Obama’s propaganda for the last two years, only to now get around to “correcting the record” after it no longer matters.

As USA Today reports:

Report says Obama’s small-donor base claim is off

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Despite attracting millions of new contributors to his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama received about the same percentage of his total political funds from small donors as President Bush did in 2004, according to a study released today by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute.

The analysis undercuts Obama’s claim that his supporters “changed the way campaigns are funded” by reducing the influence of special-interest givers.

“The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama’s finances,”
said Michael Malbin, the institute’s executive director. “The reality of Obama’s fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth.”

About $156 million, or a quarter of Obama’s record-shattering campaign account, came from donors of $200 or less, according to the institute’s analysis of federal election reports through Oct. 15. That compares with $205 million, or about a third, from those who gave between $2,300 and $4,600, the maximum allowed by law.

Forty-eight percent of Obama’s total take came from donors of $1,000 or more, compared with 56% for John Kerry and 60% for both Bush and John McCain, the analysis found.

The small-donor percentage is lower than figures previously reported in news stories because the institute’s analysis accounted for people who gave several small donations over the course of the election that added up to a larger sum, Malbin said.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an e-mail that the campaign had more than 3.95 million donors, and “91% of our contributions were in amounts of $100 or less. … There’s no doubt that small-dollar contributors played a critical and unprecedented role” in Obama’s victory.

The study said Obama brought in a total $638 million, the most ever raised in a political campaign, compared with $206 million by McCain, who accepted $84.1 million in taxpayer financing for the general election. Obama reported 580,000 donors who gave more than $200.

Donors giving $200 or less need not be disclosed, but the difference between the number of donors provided by the Obama campaign and the number reported in federal election records shows there were about 3.4 million of them.

McCain reported 170,000 donors of $200 or more.

Obama opted out of public financing, raising private money through November and significantly outspending McCain in battleground states.

When Obama announced in June that he would forgo public financing, he told supporters in a video message that “instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special-interest PACs, you’ve fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford. … You’ve already changed the way campaigns are funded, because you know that’s the only way we can truly change how Washington works.”

Meredith McGehee, a campaign-finance reform advocate at the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, said Obama cannot claim “this election somehow created an alternative system for public finance. … The data doesn’t show that.”

Obama did not accept contributions from political action committees or registered federal lobbyists, but many of his top fundraisers have keen economic interests in federal policies.

Contributing: Fredreka Schouten

I like the US News & World Report title better: “Barack Obama’s Fundraising and the Small-Donor Myth.”

This is why I am so routinely furious at the media.  It is simply blatant.  They could have done the story themselves when Barack Obama was so pompously and self-righteously breaking his word because his fundraising actually resulted in MORE openness and LESS big money (in other words, when he lied) over his reasons not to keep his promise and accept public financing.

But it simply wasn’t in their ideology to report the truth about Obama’s all-time record fund raising.  It was a GOOD thing that he lied; it was a GOOD thing that as a result of his oath-breaking, he was able to raise more than three times as much money as John McCain.

In breaking his word, Obama demonized his opponent who was keeping his.  But the media bought his reasoning hook line and sinker without bothering to see if his money were really coming from all those poor huddling masses who had previously been shut out of campaign contributions because of all those fat cats.  And now we find out it was a lie, and that Obama had as many fat cats as anyone else (actually FAR, FAR, MORE, given that he raised $640 MILLION dollars).

But now, after the election, the mainstream media will prove how “objective” it is by finally reporting on news that should have been reported six months ago.

Given that Obama in all likelihood won this election due to his 3-1 fund raising advantage, it would have been only FAIR to investigate his fund raising.  The McCain campaign vigorously attempted to prevent fraud, while Obama cared only about maximizing his contributions by any means available.  The result was ALL SORTS of documented fraud that proved Obama’s fundraising was a disgrace to fairness, or public access, or accountability, or anything else.

This is the same type of thing that we got from the media all along.  How Obama Got Elected.com was one of many daggers in any pretense of media objectivity, demonstrating that the media kept voters ignorant of negative information about Obama-Biden, but just relentlessly pounded home every negative bit of information (whether true or not) about McCain-Palin.

The media has been so blatantly biased throughout its election coverage that it is completely accurate to say that we are now in a propaganda state.  There is no possible way that Republicans can win in this media climate: whether you look at the Media Research Center, or at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (or again at their brand new study), or at the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Advertising Project, there is widespread agreement with one longtime ABC journalist that the media is dangerously biased.  Pew Research discovered that Americans believe by a 70% to 9% margin that the media is biased in favor of Obama and against McCain.  The media now represents a fifth column of government – a propaganda wing – that attacks conservatives and celebrates and defends Democrats and their ideology.

Democracy is going extinct in the country that founded democracy, because no free society can survive such a climate of propaganda.

Obama Surrounds Himself With Acolytes Of A Proven Economic Failure

The Obama administration is shaping up to pretty much be a Clinton administration reunion.  Hotair’s story is “Obama administration: Clinton sequel?”  The Politico story is “The Clinton band is back together.”  “Change” means “Just like the Clinton years,” and “new politics” means “Pretty much exactly like the old Clinton machine politics.”  You kind of have to wonder: if people had wanted a “Clinton administration, version II,” why wouldn’t they just have elected Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama?

Just in case you’re thinking, “Because a ‘Clinton administration version II’ would have all the bugs worked out,” think again.  There are still plenty of bugs.  And one of those bugs is named Robert Rubin.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

WASHINGTON: It is testament to the star power of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin among many Democrats that as Barack Obama fills out his economic team, a virtual Rubin constellation is taking shape.

The president-elect used the announcement Monday that he was appointing two Rubin protégés, Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and Lawrence Summers as senior White House economic adviser, to underscore his determination to step aggressively into a economic leadership vacuum in Washington while also maintaining continuity with the Bush administration before the transition of power Jan. 20.

Obama is expected to soon announce the appointment of another Rubin protégé, Peter Orszag, as White House budget director. And even the headhunters for Obama have Rubin ties: Michael Froman, who was Rubin’s chief of staff in the Treasury Department and followed him to Citigroup, and James Rubin, Robert Rubin’s son.

Geithner, Summers and Orszag have all been followers of the economic formula that came to be called Rubinomics: balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation.

But there’s only one problem with this “constellation of Rubin”; the biggest star has plunged to earth in a flaming trail of cosmic disaster.

Or maybe you want to have as your next President’s senior economic adviser the guy who ran one-time powerhouse Citigroup right into the ground.

As the New York Post puts it:

There’s no shortage of blame, but if a vote were taken for mayor of the Citi of Fools, Robert Rubin, the most prominent member of the bank’s board of directors, would almost certainly win hands down.

Rubin, a former treasury secretary, played a key role by leading Citi into a risky strategy of gambling on the weirdest and most exotic investments – like securities backed by subprime mortgages that probably would never be paid.

As long as the money and bonuses kept rolling in, who cared if no one really knew what all these strange securities were worth?

Certainly not Rubin, who was paid an astonishing $62.2 million between 2004 and 2007 – or his fellow bozos on the board.

“Citigroup’s board of directors increasingly resembles a first-class sleeping car on a train wreck that just keeps happening,” said J. Richard Findlay, head of the Centre for Corporate & Public Governance.

“Almost whatever it does, it is too slow and too late.

“It can take months for Citigroup’s directors to clue into what others in the real world have known for some time.”

Noting that Citi’s stock has lost more than $133 billion this year alone, Findlay said, “Citigroup’s board has demonstrated that it has not been on top of any major issue in more than a decade, much less ahead of it.”

Charles Elson, director of the Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, told The Post that Citi’s board consistently misled the public.

“Even up until last week, we were told Citi was a strong institution, but it’s clear now that things are a lot worse than we knew,” he said.

“Where was the board during this? It’s very troubling.”

Thanks to the negligence of board members – who smiled for the cameras as they assured anyone who’d listen that everything was A-OK – taxpayers are now on the hook for $351 billion.

In other words, even as Obama bets the country’s future on “Rubionomics,” the rest of the financial world is starting to recalculate.

Hey, Barack, I hear that GM CEO Rick Wagoner may be on the market pretty soon; why not appoint him to advise you on how you should move forward with the auto industry?  He’s right on board with you: he wants you to socialize the economy, too.

Folk over at the Wall Street Journal are wondering, “Why are Robert Rubin and other directors still employed?”

I mean, even the Huffington Post is starting to ask the question: “Is Robert Rubin “Competent” Enough To Guide Team Obama?”  As the story unfolds, and builds the case that Rubin was directly involved in devising the strategy that led to Citigroup’s ruin, the answer becomes pretty clear.

And it is beginning to increasingly occur to investors that the “star economic team” of Rubin acolytes Barack Obama is assembling is pretty much the same bunch of guys who have been part of the crowd that basically turned our economy into the Titanic.

I suppose Barack Obama’s advice to Rubin will be something like, “Just think the exact opposite of absolutely everything you thought as the CEO of Citigroup, and we’ll do great.”

What Do You Mean, Terrorists Still Target U.S. After We Elected Obama?

We’ve been told stuff like, “A Barack Obama Presidency Will Restore America’s Prestige.”  We’ve been told Obama “would begin a presidency with tremendous potential to heal U.S. relations with much of the world.”

We’ve been told all kinds of bogus crap.

The reality is that everybody who hated us before will still hate us now.  The only diffrence after this election is that those enemies know that we elected an appeasing lightweight whom they think they can push around.  Essentially, we decided we wanted a poodle instead of a rottweiler.

Regardless of the “If we elect Barack Obama, the world will love us, all the prestige we lost under Bush will be restored, the world will respect us, and the sugar plum fairies will sprinke pixie dust on the whole wide wonderful world” narrative we’ve been fed, the reality just aint going to be like that.

You’ve heard of the massive, well-coordinated attack in seven locations in India’s financial capital, Mumbia?  Maybe you also heard stuff like this:

“They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: ‘Where are you from?” and he said he’s from Italy and they said ‘fine’ and they left him alone. And I thought: ‘Fine, they’re going to shoot me if they ask me anything — and thank God they didn’t,” he said.

That from an Associated Press story entitled, “Terrorist attacks in India target Americans; hostages taken, death toll rising.”

Well, that isn’t very nice of them.

Maybe they didn’t hear that we elected this glorious “transformational figure” to be our new prom-king-in-chief?

At the same time we’ve got terrorists trying to target Americans in India, we’ve got terrorists threatening to attack the New York subway system.

Liberals gave George Bush as much hell as they possibly could have during his presidency.  They opposed the Patriot Act, opposed Gitmo, opposed interrogating terrorists, opposed domestic wiretapping of international calls from terrorists, opposed that we didn’t give full constitutional protections to terrorists, opposed pretty much everything President Bush tried to do to fight the war on terror or to keep us safe at home.  And what would they have done if we HAD suffered another attack during his presidency?  They would have screamed that he didn’t keep us safe!

We’ve also got Russia threatening the United States over US missile defense plans in eastern Europe.  And we’ve got Venezuelan warships taking part in war exercises with a Russian naval group during an unprecedented visit to Venezuela by a Russian leader to further solidify an alliance between oil giants.

Of course, that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the very real possibility that Israel will attack Iran over that country’s nuclear weapons program precisely because they may not believe that a President Obama would be up to the job.

Here we are, waiting for the brand new wonderful world that Dear Leader Barack Obama’s “gonna lead us” into.  So far, the media has been unrelentingly unfair in its biased coverage of the political campaign.  The same media that wouldn’t let Bush do anything right won’t let Obama do anything wrong.

But some point, we’re going to be forced to wake up, smell the coffee, and deal with reality.  And media sugarcoating won’t be enough to make our problems go away.

If we’re attacked by terrorists during Obama’s administration, it will be because he’s a weak, pathetic leader who can’t protect us.  If he fights our enemies, it’s because he’s a vicious bloodthirsty warmonger.  If he doesn’t fight our enemies, it’s because he’s an appeasing coward who would rather bow down and cringe than stand up and fight.  In other words, he’s going to find out that constant demonization swings both ways.

Of Presidential Fitness And Media Propaganda

Fox News anchor Brit Hume reported today:

The president-elect isn’t shy about his penchant for exercise. He begins most mornings with a visit to a gym and frequently discusses his love for sports. Associated Press reporter Deanna Bellandi describes the incoming first couple as “fabulously fit.” Back in June, Men’s Fitness magazine ranked Obama the candidate as one of the 25 fittest guys in America.

So if this virtue of exercise is praised, how, you ask, have reporters referred to President Bush’s workout routine? They have used words such as “obsession,” “indulgence” and even “creepy” to describe the President’s exercise habit.

— FOX News Channel’s Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.

Just so we can all be aware that the blatant media propaganda campaign that damned and condemned everything about Bush while praising and adoring everything about Obama extends even into the most trivial aspects of their lives.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s partially because, unlike President Bush and all our other past Presidents, Barack Obama does his fitness routines in place of honoring God on Sunday mornings.

The Russian media (actually a quite fitting role model for the Tass-like American media of today) provides an example of the sheer power of propaganda to distort the truth and shape public opinion:

Though Moscow’s stock market is hit harder than its counterparts in Paris or London, Russian media are limiting their coverage of the financial crisis to Wall Street’s debacle, thereby adhering to confidence-boosting instructions from the Kremlin…

The Russian stock market has suffered a drop double that of Paris and has lost two-thirds of its value in just a few months, but this national channel gives no information on the situation and devotes less than 30 seconds to the financial markets.

In the corridors of Russia’s national media there is talk of a directive issued by the Kremlin – on the sensitive issue of the financial crisis, the order is – be positive on TV.

“It’s forbidden to use the word crisis if you’re speaking about Russia,” says Vladimir Vorfolomeev, the vice editorial director of radio Echo Moskvy. “You can’t say that the Russian market is falling or that shares are plunging…you have to be more neutral, saying for example that the share value is falling.”

But on the other hand, there are no restrictions when it comes to reporting on Wall Street – there, Russian journalists do speak of crisis and the inevitable recession which shows the limits of capitalism.

“They report that the plummeting US economy is dragging the rest of the world down,” says Vladimir Vorfolomeev. “They report Europe’s misfortunes – just like we did in Soviet times. On the one side there’s the West, which is in the process of collapsing, and on the other Russia, which if it is not prospering, can at least boast stability”.

And the Kremlin’s plan is working: if you believe the opinion polls more and more Russians are convinced that their economy is in good shape. Russians are not worried – for now the crisis is elsewhere and hasn’t affected them.

Barack Obama has talked at length about the United States becoming more like the rest of the world.  And in some ways we already have: our media, for instance, is now as thoroughly corrupt, dishonest, and untrustworthy as news services of all the totalitarian regimes we used to stand against.

Definition of Insanity: US To Pledge Another $7.7 TRILLION To Bailouts

If an ounce of economic socialism is good, then a few megatons of it must be REALLY good, right?

This from Bloomberg.com:

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. [Read full article]

I have many times heard people mock the “slippery slope” argument.  But dang if we aint rolling downhill, picking up speed, and accumulating a bunch of debris on the way down this metaphorical slope toward total catastrophic ruin.

Just a couple of weeks ago we found out that Bloomberg had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out where $2 trillion in loans had gone.  Turns out the government doesn’t want to tell us:

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

And don’t think that the secrecy that applied to the last $2 trillion won’t apply to the next $8 trillion.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.

“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”

And:

Congressman Darrell Issa, a California Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said risk is lurking in the programs that Poole thinks are safe.

“The thing that people don’t understand is it’s not how likely that the exposure becomes a reality, but what if it does?” Issa said. “There’s no transparency to it so who’s to say they’re right?”

The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $23 trillion, or 38 percent, of the value of the world’s companies and brought down three of the biggest Wall Street firms.

We don’t know what the hell kind of monster it is down there in that bottomless pit, but we DO know it loves to eat money – so we’d better keep feeding it.  And don’t ask questions, lest we all turn into caricatures from Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

Requiring the Fed to disclose loan recipients might set off panic, said David Tobin, principal of New York-based loan-sale consultants and investment bank Mission Capital Advisors LLC.

You’re damn right it might set off a panic.  I don’t have a clue what holes the money is being poured into, and I’m already panicking.  Apparently, ignorance is bliss when you’re country’s entire economy is circling the drain.

Barack Obama held a press conference today, but pretty much avoided specifics the way I’d avoid the chained-up pit bulls in a crack dealer’s front yard.  Apparently, omerta-style secrecy only works best when everybody keeps the secret.

Barack Obama is talking about as much as $700 billion or possibly even more for an upcoming stimulus package.  But that’s no big deal, anymore.  $700 billion amounts to chump change in the new reality.  Do you remember how much we all freaked out over that first $700 billion bailout? Boy, were we ever naive back then!  We were like a bunch of kids afraid to jump into the shallow end of the pool.  And now we’re perfectly okay with being thrown in the deep end wearing concrete shoes, right?

We’ve all seen motor homes those bumper stickers that read, “We’re spending our children’s inheritance.”  Well, that’s us.  Only our bumper sticker would say, “We’re spending our great, great, great, great, great, great great, great grandchildren’s inheritance.  We’re in our old Winnebago, driving down the hill, without a care in the world.

Well, except for that whole massive hyperinflation thing as all that money we printed to pay for all those Wall Street gambling debts makes all the money we’ve got virtually worthless.

Renowned Economic Forecaster Says US Headed For Total Collapse

Let me just start with the sobering thoughts of Trends Research Institute CEO Gerald Celente, and then save my comments for after:

Celente Predicts Revolution, Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012

Paul Joseph Watson, November 13, 2008

Prison Planet – The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions – all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

The George Washington blog has compiled a list of quotes attesting to Celente’s accuracy as a trend forecaster.

“When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.”
— CNN Headline News

“A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.”
— The Economist

“Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right.”
— USA Today

“There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.”
– CNBC

“Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.”
— The Wall Street Journal

“Gerald Celente is always ahead of the curve on trends and uncannily on the mark … he’s one of the most accurate forecasters around.”
— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Mr. Celente tracks the world’s social, economic and business trends for corporate clients.”
— The New York Times

“Mr. Celente is a very intelligent guy. We are able to learn about trends from an authority.”
— 48 Hours, CBS News

“Gerald Celente has a solid track record. He has predicted everything from the 1987 stock market crash and the demise of the Soviet Union to green marketing and corporate downsizing.”
— The Detroit News

“Gerald Celente forecast the 1987 stock market crash, ‘green marketing,’ and the boom in gourmet coffees.”
— Chicago Tribune

“The Trends Research Institute is the Standard and Poors of Popular Culture.”
— The Los Angeles Times

“If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.”
— New York Post

So there you have it – hardly a nutjob conspiracy theorist blowhard now is he? The price of not heeding his warnings will be far greater than the cost of preparing for the future now. Storable food and gold are two good places to make a start.

Aint that a heavyweight boxer’s send-you-whimpering-to-your-knees shot to the gut.

As I’ve previously written, “The Beast Is Coming.”  And he’s coming soon.

You remember Hillary Clinton’s now-famous “3 AM phone call” ad?  Well, it’s pretty much 3 AM every minute of every day right now, and the most inexperienced and most radical President in US history simply isn’t ready for it.  Don’t believe me; just ask Vice President-elect Joe Biden to reminisce about what he said a few months ago: “The Presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the job-training.”  We are ONE crisis away from complete disaster and even total collapse.  And – given a very likely Hillary Clinton appointment to Secretary of State – you have the two most senior members of Obama’s administration on the record repeatedly stated that Obama would simply not be up to the job.

Well, he’s got it.  We gave it to him.  Along with a total Democratic majority that will give him power not seen since FDR.  And boy, oh boy, are we ever going to pay for it.

Possibly the most terrifying crisis of all could occur before Obama even takes the oath of office.  Former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton is among a group of foreign policy experts who believe that Israel – fearing Obama’s weakness and lack of commitment to their security – will attack Iran before January 20, 2009 in order to destroy the rogue, terrorist state’s nearly complete nuclear weapons program.  And even Joe Biden pretty much had to say that you’re going to have to have blind faith in Obama, because it won’t be apparent that he has any clue what he’s doing.

On the economic front, we now have Obama already backing away from his pledge to tax the bejeezus out of the rich and raise capital gains so that he can give the lower classes (including those who don’t even pay taxes) a “tax cut.”  Which is pretty much an implicit acknowledgment that he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about during the campaign, and that the people he was demonizing had a far better understanding than he about how the economy works.

Which is partially why investors have been bailout out of the market in droves since Obama’s election, and why 74% of chief executive officers believe that an Obama presidency will be a disaster for the nation.

The good news for liberals, given Celente’s analysis: you’ve always wanted to destroy Christmas.  Now you’ll finally be getting your wish.  Way to go.

Evangelical Christians have long known this coming meltdown was coming.  The United States isn’t mentioned in Bible prophecy for one good reason: we won’t matter.  We won’t have the power to project ourselves into the Middle East during the final days, and we won’t have moral courage to support historic friend Israel when it matters most.

Grant R. Jeffrey wrote a book entitled Final Warning: Economic Collapse and the Coming World Government which came out in 1995.  He concluded his chapter 14, ”The Coming Economic Collapse,” by stating:

“However, in the last few years the size and complexity of the financial derivatives market has exploded until today over $21 trillion is at risk in America and and astonishing $42 trillion is at risk worldwide.  To place these figures in perspective, the total value of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange amounts to only $6 trillion.  We should remember that the stock market crash of 1987 that resulted in the loss of $1 trillion of investors’ funds was precipitated by a massive drop in the financial derivatives market.  During the last year the largest Japanese steel company in Germany lost $1.4 billion.  Then, Orange County, CA, lost $2 billion while the 270-year-old Barings Bank of England was forced into bankruptcy when they lost $1.3 billion in one week on a derivatives trade by one 28-year-old employee.  This incredibly dangerous derivatives market could very well be the trigger for the coming financial collapse that the Bible indicates will occur in the last days leading to the rise of Antichrist and the revived Roman Empire” (p. 247).

Grant’s insightful and clearly prophetic analysis both reveals the means of our economic destruction while simultaneously pointedly revealing that the cancerous roots of the financial implosion occurred during the Clinton era, and NOT as a result of Republican or Bush policies.

In September 2003, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank said of the GSE entities which created the housing finance crisis, ”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis.”  And Democrats steadfastly refused to regulate them at a time when President Bush urged regulatory reform when it could have averted disaster.  And Barney Frank – representing the Democratic consensus – was still in denial as late as July 2008, saying, “I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under.”  In one of the greatest propaganda campaigns in human history, the American media managed to convince the electorate that policies that were conceived and carried out during Democratic administrations were somehow the Republicans’ responsibility.

I worked as hard as I knew how to elect John McCain because I saw Barack Obama as the walking disaster who would destroy America and prepare the way for the beast of Revelation.  Secular humanists will continue to laugh at people like me even when they are in the darkest depths of the Apocalypse.  But I hope that more and more people will begin to realizing it’s no laughing matter before the looming disaster engulfs us all.

As a final P.S. let me say one final thing about the Apocalypse.  If you cheat and read the last page of Revelation to see how it all ends, you will find that God wins, and all those who oppose Him lose.  The time is coming when we will all have to pick our sides.

Gay Rights Groups Using Vile Intimidation Tactics To Attack Prop 8 Backers

Here’s one example from before the election via the Daily Kos:

But when the church and its members invest millions of dollars in an attempt to write discrimination into my state’s constitution and divorce my friend Brian against his will, there will be hell to pay.

So what am I asking you to do?

Some distributed research.

There is a list of a bunch of Mormon donors to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign (in case that one goes down, here’s a mirror with slightly worse formatting.

Here’s what I’m asking for:

This list contains information about those who are big donors to the Yes on 8 campaign–donors to the tune of at least $1,000 dollars.  And, as you can see, there are a lot of them.  It also indicates if they’re Mormon or not.

If you’re interested in defeating the religious right and preserving marriage equality, here’s how you can help:

Find us some ammo.

Use any LEGAL tool at your disposal.  Use OpenSecrets to see if these donors have contributed to…shall we say…less than honorable causes, or if any one of these big donors has done something otherwise egregious.  If so, we have a legitimate case to make the Yes on 8 campaign return their contributions, or face a bunch of negative publicity.

There are a crapload of donors on this list–so please focus on the larger ones first.  $5,000 or more is a good threshold to start with.

Feel free to use Lexis-Nexis searches as well for anything useful, especially given that these people are using “morality” as their primary motivation to support Prop 8…if you find anything that belies that in any way…well, you know what to do.

If you find anything good, please email it to:

equalityresearch at gmail dot com.

Here’s the bottom line for me: if someone is willing to contribute thousands of dollars to a campaign to take away legal rights from some very dear friends of mine, they had damn well make sure their lives are beyond scrutiny–because I, for one, won’t take it lying down.

This one is for Brian and the millions like him all across the nation.

The list of donors whose names and towns have been published is THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of names long.  And we have a call to harass and investigate them (does the fishing expedition targeting “Joe the Plumber” ring any bells?) to hurt people and punish them for exercising their free speech rights.  How DARE Joe the Plumber ask a single honest question?  And how DARE you support something you believe in if homosexuals don’t like it?

CBS had this story about the subsequent attempt to attack, harass, and intimidate supporters of Prop 8 even after the people spoke:

(CBS) For supporters of same-sex marriage, the Election Day loss in California seems to be energizing their campaign rather than ending it.

Demonstrations against Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage, have been growing, CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

Now the anger is moving to the Internet, where supporters of same-sex marriage are posting blacklists – the names and businesses of those who gave money to help Proposition 8 pass.

Chris Lee, an engineer who is an immigrant from China, was shocked to see his name on the Web site AntiGayBlacklist.com after he gave $1,000 to the campaign to end same-sex marriage.

“I was completely disgusted,” Li said. “This sort of blacklist should only appear in communist countries, should not be found in the United States.”

In Los Angeles, demonstrators called for a boycott of a restaurant whose manager made a personal donation of $100 to the “Yes on 8” campaign.

“She didn’t think it would be public record,” said Jeff Yarbrough.

Anger over the blacklists brought out demonstrators in Sacramento, where Scott Eckern resigned as musical director of a local theater when he was identified as a donor.

In other words, you’d better bow down to their “rights,” or they will destroy you.  Your rights don’t matter.  Your values don’t matter.  Your religious beliefs don’t matter.  Only they matter.  And they will come after you and destroy you if they can.  All they need is the power; they already have all the hate they need.

Another story serves to frame the ugliness and hypocrisy of the “tolerant” pro-gay community:

“Since Proposition 8’s victory, a series of protests against churches, small businesses and individual supporters of traditional marriage have taken place in cities across the state,” Ron Prentice, chairman of ProtectMarriage.com, wrote in a statement. “Tragically, some opponents of Prop. 8 who claim to cherish tolerance and civil rights are unabashedly trampling on the rights of others. Protests and boycotts have taken place against a Hispanic restaurant owner in Los Angeles, African American religious leaders in the Bay Area, and a musical theater director in Sacramento, among many others.”

Robert Hoehn, vice president of Hoehn Motors in San Diego County, gave $25,000 of his own money to the Yes-on-8 campaign in February. And he called what followed “a really really ugly experience.”

Before the vote, Hoehn said, he he received “dozens and dozens and dozens of really vitriolic messages” and his Honda dealership was picketed.  Since the proposition won, he said, he has received a few messages and phone calls denouncing his support for the measure.

Another story shows the blatant racial intolerance of the gay community.  70% of blacks voted for Prop 8, along with an overwhelming majority of Hispanics:

Geoffrey, a student at UCLA and regular Rod 2.0 reader, joined the massive protest outside the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Westwood. Geoffrey was called the n-word at least twice.

It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks. YOU NIGGER, one man shouted at men. If your people want to call me a FAGGOT, I will call you a nigger. Someone else said same thing to me on the next block near the temple…me and my friend were walking, he is also gay but Korean, and a young WeHo clone said after last night the niggers better not come to West Hollywood if they knew what was BEST for them.

Los Angeles resident and Rod 2.0 reader A. Ronald says he and his boyfriend, who are both black, were carrying NO ON PROP 8 signs and still subjected to racial abuse.

Three older men accosted my friend and shouted, “Black people did this, I hope you people are happy!” A young lesbian couple with mohawks and Obama buttons joined the shouting and said there were “very disappointed with black people” and “how could we” after the Obama victory. This was stupid for them to single us out because we were carrying those blue NO ON PROP 8 signs! I pointed that out and the one of the older men said it didn’t matter because “most black people hated gays” and he was “wrong” to think we had compassion. That was the most insulting thing I had ever heard. I guess he never thought we were gay.

Blacks who have allowed homosexuals to depict their “struggle for civil rights” in the same terms as blacks should wake up and realize something: if being gay is like being black, then it truly IS immoral to be black.  If you don’t believe me, just look at what homosexuals are saying about you.

What if we did this stuff to them?  What if we published the names and information of opponents of Prop 8, and began individually targeting them for harassment, intimidation, and worse?  What would they say about it?

Bottom line: they are counting on the complete moral superiority of the supporters of Prop 8 not to retaliate.  They single us out and target us, even as they count on us to be better than they are and not retaliate by targeting them.  But what if we did?  What if we went to these peoples’ homes and business with the same vindictive spirit of hate these people are bringing to their cause, and to our doorsteps?

These people are hateful, vile, despicable, loathsome, vindictive, wicked, depraved hypocrites who will use any means necessary to get their way.  They are already hard at work trying to get the will of the people set aside, so that a four judges can impose their agenda on 30 million people.

In other words, the Bible is completely right about them and about their “lifestyle.”  Moses was right in calling their conduct “an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).  Paul was right in describing homosexuality as the ultimate level of depravity (Romans 1:26-32).  If nothing else, they prove it to anyone willing to look by their very own conduct.

Pre/Post-Election Poll Craziness: Media Rewriting Its Propaganda

Okay.  Six weeks and one Presidential election apart.  Two articles reporting on two polls from the same source (CNNMoney): one titled “Poll: 60% say depression ‘likely’” and one titled “76% say Obama can fix economy – poll.”

Am I the only one who sees a contradiction?

Let’s backtrack a little bit.  Since election day, the Dow has lost 21% of its value, from 9625 on November 4 to today’s close of 7552.  It was 9525 on October 6, the day that 60% of Americans believed that a depression was “likely.”

The CNNMoney story from October 6 begins:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Nearly six out of ten Americans believe another economic depression is likely, according to a poll released Monday.

And it ends:

And [Economic Cycle Research Institute director of research Anirvan] Banerji said that the increasingly grim view of the economy will by itself lead to cutbacks in spending by both consumers and businesses. That in turn will result in greater job losses and more economic pain.

“The fact that the majority of people believe we are going into a depression ensures that the recession will get worse,” Banerji said.

The market has lost over one-fifth of its value since Barack Obama was elected President.  That is a rather stunning display of a complete lack of confidence in his leadership and in his policies.  Such an abandonment from the market following a presidential election is historically unprecedented.  And we are supposed to believe that now 76% of Americans believe Obama can “fix” the economy?

Because Obama has done what, exactly?

First of all, I have to ask: is it THESE people who believe Obama can fix the economy?  Is it the nearly 60% of Obama voters who – on crucial issues such as which party has been in charge of the Congress for the last two years – are dumber than monkeys, but get to vote anyway?

It sure isn’t THESE people, investors or chief executive officers, the people who actually invest and who actually run things.  You poll the CEOs, and you find out that “74 percent of the executives say they fear that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.”  You find out that CEO’s believe that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.”

Barack Obama is being portrayed by the media as the new FDR, superintending the “new new deal.”  That should frankly terrify you, if you had a clue.

Let me tell you what’s going on here: exactly what I and others have been saying would happen.  The same media that has been demonizing the economy as a narrative device to attack Republicans will begin to assure everyone that things will be okay now that Barack Obama is in charge.  Most Obama voters didn’t know that Democrats have actually been in charge of both the House and the Senate for the past two years because the media didn’t want them to know that.  Widespread awareness of such a fact would have undermined the media narrative that Republicans were responsible for the tanking economy.  Better to run one story after another trashing Sarah Palin.

John McCain was portrayed as some kind of older-than-retarded out-of-touch fool for claiming that the fundamentals of the economy were strong when they were at a time when they were ACTUALLY FAR STRONGER THAN THEY ARE NOW (you know, before Obama got elected and the market lost over a fifth of its value).  But you will begin to see “here comes the sun” articles building up the economy now that the election is over and Democrats came out on top.

The media has been so blatantly biased throughout its election coverage that it is completely accurate to say that we are now in a propaganda state.  There is no possible way that Republicans can win in this media climate: whether you look at the Media Research Center, or at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (or again at their brand new study), or at the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Advertising Project, there is widespread agreement with one longtime ABC journalist that the media is dangerously biased.  Pew Research discovered that Americans believe by a 70% to 9% margin that the media is biased in favor of Obama and against McCain.  The media now represents a fifth column of government – a propaganda wing – that attacks conservatives and celebrates and defends Democrats and their ideology.  Democracy is going extinct in the country that founded democracy, because no free society can survive such a climate of propaganda.

Are the two polls from CNN contradictory?  Of course they are.  But they are the product of two agendas: agenda #1 was to undermine confidence in the economy in order to get Obama and Democrats elected; agenda #2 is to reinforce confidence in the economy in order to help them be successful.

The problem is that the people who actually invest and who actually run businesses aren’t as stupid and naive as the brainwashed public that voted for Obama and a Democrat super-majority.  That’s why the smart money is bailing our of the economy like rats off a sinking ship so that they can actually keep what little profit they have before the Democrats can begin to start “spreading the wealth around.”

How Obama Got Elected

I came across this watching Hannity and Colmes, and had to let you enjoy it too.

A video survey of Obama voters displayed on HowObamaGotElected.com confirms the results of a recent Zogby poll: Obama won on the basis of shocking ignorance of the electorate, fed by shocking media bias.

Everyone knew which candiate had had an “issue” with clothes, and which candidate had had a daughter get pregnant (Sarah Palin, for those of you whose sub-rock habitat gets bad reception), but the question of which party was in control of Congress was a much more difficult matter for them.  Again and again, you get to hear Obama supporters believing that Republicans were in charge of Congress.

A Zogby poll shows that 57.4% of voters could not correctly answer which party controls Congress.  Monkeys randomly pushing a button could have done better.

On issues that really mattered, or on issues that made Democrats look bad, people were ignorant; on issues that made Republicans look bad, or stupid, everyone seemed to know.

I have said this again and again: we live in an age of media propaganda.  And no democracy can long exist in such an environment of political propaganda.

Obama’s “New New Deal” Will Redistribute Wealth Of Shrinking Economy

The last couple weeks may well be a harbinger of things to come, as the people Obama promised to tax heavily continue to pull out of the market.  On November 4, the Dow closed at 9,625; today, it was at 8,497.  That means that the market has lost nearly 12% of its value since Obama became President-elect.  Hardly a measure of confidence.

The market spoke rather clearly on November 5:

NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Wall Street hardly delivered a
rousing welcome to President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday,
dropping by the largest margin on record for a day following a U.S.
presidential contest.

 The slide more than wiped out the previous day's advance, the
largest Election Day rally ever for U.S. stocks.

Now, this wasn’t at all unexpected.  On October 24, I wrote an article titled, “Investors Ready For Dramatic Sell-Off If Democrats Win.”  A few days before that, I wrote an article pointing out that “Actual Job Creators Favor McCain 4-1 Over Obama,” which – among other things – points out that “74 percent of the executives say they fear that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.”

The people who invest, and create job opportunities, and build the economy, don’t want to have their wealth redistributed.  Would you want your wealth redistributed?

Democratic apologists point out that Obama promises on a meager jump in the top federal tax rates from 36% to 39%.  But that “insignificant” 3% comes right out of peoples’ profits.  It sounds a lot worse when the reality is understood: when businesses that had been making an 11% profit are now reduced to an 8% profit.  Or an 8% profit reduced to a 5% profit.  And Obama promises to increase capital gains taxes and several other taxes that will impact upon businesses and the investment climate that supports business.  How hard are job creators willing to work to experience a diminishing return on their time, labor, and risk?

Time Magazine – a publication that has gushed over Obama for months – has a new gushing cover:

It should frighten you.  FDR was no “moderate.”  He presided over a terrible time for the country, and – while he was a popular figure because of what he tried to do – his actual economic administration has been widely recognized by economists to have been a failure.  Studies have demonstrated that the average depression lasted only four years; but for some reason the Great Depression dragged on and on and on under FDR’s governance.  By 1938, after more than four years of FDR, the effects of the Depression were actually much worse than they had been when he first took office.

As an example of the new realizations regarding the 1930s, UCLA economists argue:

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

Even the common man’s sense has largely been that World War II had more to do with getting us out of the Depression than FDR’s New Deal.  It certainly did get men who had been standing in bread lines put to “work.”  And as the nation coalesced together and began to pour resources into building weapons, factories that had been idled came back on line, and innovation increased to match the technological development of our enemies.  And certainly, the fact that, when hostilities ended, the United States alone was not reduced to rubble had a great deal to do with helping our economy surge forward.

But by that thinking, anyone who criticized President Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is correct only insofar as we need an even BIGGER war.  For Obama to truly be like FDR, we need to have a devastating Depression that drags on for 12 years while incompetent liberals continue to tinker, and then we need slug it out in World War III against Russia and China.

So pardon me for looking at the “New New Deal” FDR-lookalike Barack Obama and shuddering down to the marrow of my bones.

We’re watching the market beginning to go down the slide.  It’s going to go down a lot more.  And fear over Barack Obama’s policies is going to have a lot to do with the lack of confidence that keeps investment from pouring back into the economy.

The picture is far more frightening than the story the media is telling: there are more than $700 trillion in derivatives in the global economy.  That’s far more than the total currencies of all the governments in the entire world.  As one writer puts it, “In other words, every dollar of insurance on bonds issued by some deadbeat governments and corporations is leveraged 200 times!”  We’ve got a time bomb waiting to explode.  And we put a lot of the people who created that time bomb in the first place in charge of fixing the mess they themselves created.  People like Obama’s National Finance Chair, Penny Pritzker, who was at the epicenter of the subprime loan scandal and once paid $460 million to stay out of jail.  People like Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick, who pocketed over $300 million from Fannie and Freddie while juggling the books so they could get their bonuses.  People like Barney Frank, who claimed that nothing was wrong with Fannie and Freddie and the housing market they supervised, and repeatedly fought off President Bush’s efforts to regulate them at time when the crisis we are currently experiencing could have been averted.  People like Charles Schumer, who exemplified the sheer hypocrisy of the Democratic Party with his blaming others for what he himself did.  People like Joe Biden, whom two major studies said shared direct blame for the foreclosure disaster because of legislation he championed as the Senator from banking-capital Delaware.  And people like Barack Obama, who embraced more contributions from Fannie and Freddie – and from scandal-plagued finance institutions such as Lehman Brothers than anyone during his short time in the Senate.  Now all these people have been entrusted with fixing a mess of literally global proportions; a mess that they in large part created in the first place.

And Barack Obama wearing the “New New Deal” mantle of FDR’s Panama hat, glasses, and fancy cigarette is not going to make that time bomb go away.  In fact, it may be the very thing that brings the whole house of cards come crashing down.