When Will We Admit the Truth About Barack Obama?
By Selwyn Duke
April 28, 2008

If you interview someone for a job, you'll expect him to tell you what you want to hear. There'll be a facade, and his darker side will remain well-hidden. Now, let's say a requirement for the job is that the applicant likes children, and he does his best Captain Kangaroo. But then you find out he has a job history of indifference to and perhaps even abuse of them and that, during unguarded moments, he has expressed disdain for them. What will you believe, what he tries to sell you or history and hair-down revelations?

Remember this when evaluating the profound discrepancy between Barack Obama's damage-control denials and flowery rhetoric, and his long track record. Understand that he, like the other candidates, is interviewing for the job of president with you, the interviewer. His job is to bend the truth; your job is to discern it. The only question is: Who will do a better job, he or you?

Either Obama really is a savior for the third millennium, or the answer is that he is, thus far, besting many of you. Millions flock to him, registering oohs and ahs, fainting and fawning. Even critics and watchdogs heap praise upon him; Bill O'Reilly said he likes Obama and Sean Hannity proclaimed him a "good man." But what is the truth about this applicant?

Let me tell you a story. In 2002, President Bush signed into law a bill titled the "Born Alive Infants Protection Act" (BAIPA). This law was necessary because, believe it or not, infants were being born alive during attempted abortions and then, ancient Spartan style, left to die. Jill Stanek wrote about this last year, saying: (web site)

"As a nurse at an Illinois hospital in 1999, I discovered babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in soiled utility rooms. I discovered infanticide."

The act was so vile that even staunch abortion advocates would not oppose BAIPA. Stanek tells us that it passed the Senate by unanimous vote, garnering the support of senators Kerry, Kennedy and Clinton. She then pointed out:

"The bill also passed overwhelmingly in the House. NARAL went neutral on it. Abortion enthusiasts publicly agreed that fighting BAIPA would appear extreme."

But the state version of BAIPA failed for years in Illinois. Any guesses as to why? Stanek goes on to explain:

I testified in 2001 and 2002 before a committee of which Obama was a member.

Obama articulately worried that legislation protecting live aborted babies might infringe on women's rights or abortionists' rights. Obama's clinical discourse, his lack of mercy, shocked me. I was naive back then. Obama voted against the measure, twice. It ultimately failed.

In 2003, as chairman of the next Senate committee to which BAIPA was sent, Obama stopped it from even getting a hearing, shelving it to die much like babies were still being shelved to die in Illinois hospitals and abortion clinics.

If asked about this, I'm sure Obama would be a very effective interviewee; he is good with words. (Of course, one is better with words when they're managed by a sympathetic media.) Yet, when you look beyond the rhetoric, a picture of Obama starts to emerge.

There are his damnable associations. We know about William Ayers, the college professor and "education advisor" who, as a Weather Underground terrorist in the 1970s, planted bombs in a campaign against our government. You might point out that this was three decades ago, but know that Ayers is unrepentant and wishes that he had planted more bombs.

What does this piece of history teach us? For starters, it is one thing to understand something is wrong; it is another to feel it. Emotion is a stronger motivator than logic (Captain Kirk had the passion, not Mr. Spock). My point is, given Obama's cordial dealings with Ayers - a man with whom many wouldn't break bread - I'm left to wonder how much terrorism really bothers the senator on a visceral level. If his tolerance for the Weatherman is any indication, we have to ask: As president, would his zeal match that of our Islamist foes? Or will Osama bin Laden be a department chair in the Ivy League?

Then there is the now infamous Reverend Wright, the man of the cloth poised to move into a house with a 10-million-dollar line of credit. His bigoted, virulently anti-American bile has received enough press so that I don't have to provide a complete run-down, but this is a man who equated America with al-Qaeda, said we deserved 9/11, made anti-white statements, and called our nation "the US of KKKA." This prompted, as you know, a well-crafted and rendered speech on race by the interviewee (as the infanticide story, should it receive enough play, may inspire a speech on the sanctity of life), but, again, what is the reality behind the words?

Obama called Wright a friend, mentor and uncle; he had a 20-year relationship with him, during which time he attended Wright's church; he was married and had his child baptized by the reverend; and last year he donated $26,000 to the church. Yet some would give Obama credit for not casting his friend to the winds. After all, the interviewee said that he "cannot disown him." But my question is: Why, Mr. Obama, did you ever own him in the first place?

So we again have to wonder about his emotional constitution, his heart. Even if he doesn't share Wright's passion for the hate, he certainly was tolerant of it - and I suspect sympathetic to it. And a man is known by the company he keeps.

The woman he marries is some indication, too. Michelle Obama vigorously advocated partial-birth abortion (which is also infanticide) in 2004, and we all know about her notorious pronouncement: "For the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of my country." As for the comment, it has caused many to question her patriotism and apologists to counsel against rash judgment.

But the truth is plain. As I'm sure Jesse Lee Peterson - a black minister and the president of B.O.N.D. - would tell you, anti-American sentiment typifies leftist blacks (it's quite common among leftist whites, too). Think about it: How many blacks on the left can you think of who don't fit that mold? It's a consequence of imbibing the philosophy of hatred and bitterness dispensed by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other racial hustlers.

Then we have Obama's moment of honesty in San Francisco. As a refresher, here is what he said:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years . . . . And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Many have labeled these comments elitist, and Obama has been trying to explain them away. But, again, the truth is plain. Apologists have asserted that Bill Clinton expressed the same sentiments in 1992; in other words, the best they can muster is that Obama is just like Clinton.

And that is the point.

Obama is a leftist, Clinton is a leftist, and that's what leftists believe about "flyover country," just as Michelle Obama's statement reflects what they believe about the whole country. You needn't be clairvoyant to discern it.

To understand what is most striking about those comments, though, you have to look more deeply. Notice he mentioned "religion" in the same breath as "guns" and "antipathy to people," sandwiched right in-between the two. It's hard to escape the conclusion that he draws an equivalency among those things, which speaks volumes.

If you're a person of faith, you understand that we're supposed to cling to religion. After all, if you are serious about your faith, you must believe it is the Truth and that it is God's will that you should practice it. And why wouldn't you have the Truth at the center of your life?

The only kind of person who wouldn't have this perspective is one who has little or no faith. That certainly wouldn't make Obama unique, but remember that he has often masqueraded as a man of faith, just as he now touts his support for second-amendment rights (in 1999 he supported a law (web site) that would have eliminated gun stores from virtually the whole country). But this bespeaks of a reality: There is Obama the myth, and Obama the man. If you want to know the former, listen to what he says; if you want to know the latter, accept what he is.

And what is he? What is the truth about Barack Obama? You won't hear it from the Sean Hannitys of the world, who will tell us that he is a "good man" with bad ideology. Such people are simply telling you what they're supposed to believe; it's what "fair and balanced" commentators do, the stuff of "acceptable" conservatives. The truth about Obama is that he is not a good man.

He is a bad man.

Good men don't turn a blind eye to unrepentant ex-terrorists; support vile, anti-American bigots; lie about their core beliefs; and look down on traditional Americans. Most significantly, good men don't allow beautiful babies - the least among us - to be discarded like refuse and die miserable, lonely deaths in dark utility rooms. In fact, if we cannot call Obama a bad man, there is no such thing as a bad man. And calling him a good man doesn't just strain credulity; it puts it in the hospital in traction.

Ah, yes, hope, change, unity, infanticide, bigotry, terrorism, Obama . . . good? We all know what is wrong with this picture.

High Oil Prices - Blame The Government You Elected!
By Thomas D. Segel
April 29, 2008

Yesterday I topped off my tank at $3.49.9 a gallon. But, I am lucky. My home is in one of the lowest cost-of-living regions of the country. In California, for example, my brother filled up his tank again at $3.89.9 a gallon and he shops for "cheap" gas. The high price of gasoline is on the lips of everyone you meet these days. Also, everyone has his or her own idea about whom we should blame for our latest economic woes.

Those of us who dabble in writing politically oriented commentary expect to have our views challenged. However, reflecting back on my multiple years of journalistic ranting, I can remember no article that generated more comment than last week's "A Gallon of Oil and the Ethanol Hoax". While the majority of readers corresponding with me agreed with my attack on the liberal left and the environmental loonies who have caused most of our problems, there were still ample emails telling me I had no clue about the reality of our current plight.

My argument is very basic. If any blame is to be assessed, it must be laid at the feet of our national government. The problem starts with the price of oil, which everyone must agree is a commodity and seeks out the highest dollar buyers are willing to pay. Supply and demand determine high and low prices. To get lower prices you can either reduce the demand or increase the supply. Now what has been controlled for more than 35 years? Supply is the answer. And who has controlled the supply of oil in the United States? The answer to that big question is the United States Government.

We all know there is abundant oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We know more oil is in the Dakotas and even Wyoming. We know there are huge deposits of oil off the California and Florida coasts. We know there are tons upon tons of oil shale in the West. We know that thousands of oil wells were capped and are no longer in production. Deep deposits of oil at up to 16,000 feet and natural gas, more than 3 miles underground and off shore await us and we know the technology exists to bring them to the surface.

We know that in the past three and one half decades no new oil refineries have been built, nor have the existing ones been modernized due to the restrictive rules and regulations placed upon the industry by governmental agencies.

While people are forced into making choices between buying gasoline to drive to work, or placing food on the table for their families, a few of our capped wells in California and other locales are being reopened. In California alone, there are currently more than 3,000-capped wells and many have seen only between 20% and 25% of their oil extracted. Some were capped just waiting for new technology and higher prices. Many were capped due to environmental objections. To be completely objective, we must also admit a large number were capped because they had turned into dry holes.

We have allowed the far left environmental movement to cripple the economy by its marriage to the Democratic Party and a few brain-dead Republicans. We have allowed the left to keep screaming in our ears that everything is the fault of Big Oil. As the politicos chant this mantra, we buy into the false claim because most of us get our facts from bubbleheads in the media who also are without a clue to reality.

According to Walter Youngquist writing in "Myths and Realities of Mineral Resources", the six largest Big Oil companies really belong to America. He says, "Nearly 200 mutual insurance companies hold close to 16 million shares. Ninety-one colleges own these stocks and about 1,000 charities and educational foundations in the United States are holders of these oil company securities. In direct ownership more than 2.3 million Americans hold stock in these six companies."

Our own citizens, investing in these combined resources have allowed the "big" companies to drill some very expensive wells. A single hole can cost a million dollars and more, without any assurance of success. And this is the Big Oil that should be punished with higher taxes that politicos yell about in the national ear.

Another governmental con job is the political falsehood that oil deposits in such places as the wildlife refuge or off the Florida coast don't contain enough resources to make drilling worthwhile. Well, think about this. In the United States we use just under 20 million barrels of oil a day. A field that produces 100 million barrels of oil is considered huge. However, it takes years to use up the supply. If that 100 million barrel field were used to supply America's daily needs, it would be gone in less than a week. But, that never happens. The oil is pumped over years and years. So, when you hear the political chatter about there "is only about 90 days worth of oil in that Alaskan refuge...and it won't pay us to drill there", remember not a single field is ever used to supply needed oil, and a field that could supply 90 days worth of Black Gold is huge. That would be a field containing multiple hundreds of millions of barrels. It would be assisting in our nation's energy needs for decades.

The other chant from the left is we can wean ourselves off our oil addiction by conservation. There is nothing that can be saved through conservation efforts other than short-term relief. If you conserved until your economy fell apart, it would still not increase the supply. People fail to understand we can no longer rely upon our own resources for oil independence. We passed the point of self-sufficiency in 1970. Each year, as our population expands, our dependence upon foreign oil and other energy sources increases. We now consume far more than we can create from our own resources. The government has added to this burden by its massively restrictive regulations and mind-numbing pandering to the environmental left.

Health savings accounts growing in popularity
By KEVIN FREKING
Associated Press
May 1, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 6 million people are enrolled in health insurance plans that allow them to also open health savings accounts, nearly double estimates from just two years ago, according to new industry projections.

But critics of health savings accounts were not deterred by the enrollment figures. They released a separate report Wednesday from the Government Accountability Office that said taxpayers with health savings accounts had an adjusted gross income averaging about $139,000 in 2005, versus $57,000 for all other filers.

The tax figures mean the wealthy are using the accounts as a tax shelter rather than as a means to help them afford health insurance, said Democratic Reps. Pete Stark and Henry Waxman, both from California.

Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, said the GAO's numbers showed that the typical enrollee deposited $2,100 in a health savings account in 2005 and withdrew $1,000. She said those figures hardly represent amounts that could be described as a tax shelter for the wealthy.

Health savings accounts are a relatively new product pushed by the Bush administration as a way to slow rising health care costs. Workers who purchase health insurance plans with a high deductible can deposit up to $2,900 into the account tax-free, or up to $5,800 for families. Consumers can use the money in their account to pay their medical expenses, or they can save it for future needs, including retirement.

Overall, enrollment in such plans represents about 3.4 percent of the private insurance market, said America's Health Insurance Plans, which compiled the latest enrollment projections. The association said more than a quarter of new enrollees were previously uninsured.

The state with the highest percentage of high-deductible enrollees was Minnesota. About 9.2 percent of the state's total enrollment in private health insurance comes through high-deductible plans. Following closely behind were Louisiana, 9 percent; and the District of Columbia, 8.7 percent.

Supporters of health savings accounts say the accounts make health coverage affordable because the insurance policies that accompany them generally require lower monthly premiums.

But critics question whether the poor and those with high medical expenses can afford all the up-front costs. They're concerned the plans are attracting two extremes: those who buy the policy because it's cheaper, but are unable to invest in the savings accounts, and those who use the accounts to generate tax breaks.

The GAO said national surveys indicate that more than four out of 10 people who purchased high-deductible plans don't open a health savings account, even though they were eligible to do so. Participants said they lacked information about the accounts, they could not afford them, or they did not believe they needed them.

5 Economic Questions For The Candidates
By Tony Blankley
April 30, 2008

Prince Otto von Bismarck is credited with the sneering remark that "there is a special providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America." Of course, that was in the age of presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, so Bismarck, the greatest statesman of his age, was entitled to look down on the quality of American leadership. One wonders what old "Blood and Iron" would say today if he were looking at the magnificent triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. (At least Curly, Moe and Larry were funny when they stuck their fingers into each other's eyes.)

Every several weeks, I write a column suggesting what this presidential election might look like if we had serious candidates and a press corps that treated the presidency as an important office in which vital decisions would be made by its incumbent. I invariably get flooded with e-mails telling me, basically, "Blankley, don't hold your breath."

Nonetheless, I shall persist -- but continue to breathe. Some serious questions should be posed to the candidates at a moment when the world shudders on its economic axis, with inflation showing its ugly head; oil at more than $115 a barrel; grain prices at historic highs; grain shortages leading to riots in Third World cities; the worst (still unresolved) financial crisis since the Great Depression; a dollar crisis; the prospect of an American recession that might pull the world's economies into its vortex; and a dangerous political trend away from healthy international trading practices.

Here are five questions for the three candidates. In several of these questions, the important -- if informal -- relationship between the president and the Federal Reserve Board chairman will be critical. They often have informal lunches during which coordinated monetary and fiscal policies are worked out. Some presidents don't avail themselves of that opportunity.

First, will you actively seek to coordinate with the Fed chair?

Second, how do you judge the inflation threat, and what will you do about it when you become president in less than nine months? While currently limited largely to commodities (including oil, food and basic industrial and construction materials), should monetary policy be used to try to drive down the prices of everything else at the cost of slow growth or even sustained recession? Or do you wait and hope that the commodities inflation doesn't taint the rest of the economy and create a virulent inflationary fire that will be even harder to put down? How will your assessment of the inflation danger affect your other policies (health care, infrastructure, etc.)? Will you subordinate various expensive programs if deficit spending to achieve them would exacerbate the inflation?

Third, are you for a strong dollar, or will you continue Bush's policy of letting the dollar sink? Some presidents think a weak dollar helps trade and we should do little to support the dollar. But today, for the first time in living memory, there is a risk that the dollar, if it continues to slide, would be replaced by the Euro as the global store of value. The United States benefits from the dollar's unique role in the world. It has permitted us to have influence in many ways, such as disrupting financial flows to adversaries such as Iran and North Korea. With international contracts denominated in dollars, we gain unfair advantage over all other currencies. Are you prepared to protect the dollar and drive its value up (again, working closely with the Fed chairman) or not?

Fourth, and flowing from the previous question, as noted by Benn Steil (director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations), to protect the dollar's value, we cannot let the Federal Reserve try to solve the financial crisis alone by flooding the market with dollars. If we are to strengthen the dollar, then we need the president and Congress to directly fund "on the books" the hundreds of billions of dollars the Fed is creating to help at-risk financial institutions. Of course, if you protect the dollar and fight inflation, you won't have money for new spending programs. Mr. and Ms. presidential candidates, please tell us now -- before we vote -- what your priority will be in this painfully difficult decision.

Fifth question: Notwithstanding the political usefulness of bad-mouthing NAFTA and the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, are you committed to retaining and building the public consensus for a liberalized and globally integrated economy? Do you want America to give up on free trade or not -- keeping in mind that if America stops fighting for free trade, the world will go protectionist in a hurry. For all of its drawbacks, America is 10 percent richer each year as a result of our participation in world trade. If there is a 10 percent cut in our wealth each year, pretty soon we will be a much poorer people.

Higher energy costs from climate bills
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press
April 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- People will be paying higher energy prices under a Senate bill to limit greenhouse gases, but how much will depend on how well the country can shift away from burning fossil fuels, an Energy Department analysis said Tuesday.

The Energy Information Administration said annual energy costs could increase on average of as little as $30 or as much as 10 times that much by 2020. The projected cost increases per household ranged from $76 a year more to as much as $723 a year more by 2030.

The agency said the difference depends on how successful the country will be in replacing significant amounts of energy production from coal and oil to nuclear power as well as solar and wind energy, and how successfully it adopts conservation measures.

Overall, the report said the U.S. economy will continue to grow, but at a lower pace.

The Senate bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., calls for capping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, transportation and industrial sources to attain a reduction of 70 percent in greenhouse gases by mid-century.

The bill is expected to come up for Senate debate in June, although it is unlikely that it will pass this year. Some Republican senators have vowed to force a filibuster unless it is dramatically changed.

Lieberman welcomed the EIA analysis saying it shows overall economic growth would not change much if the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas restrictions are enacted.

He said another analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency had come to similar conclusions. The EPA study also had a wide range of potential energy cost scenarios.

''Two separate government analysis have now come to the same conclusion,'' said Lieberman in a statement. ''Our bill curbs global warming without harming the U.S. economy.''