Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster. ~washingtonpost.com

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they have a chance for success too.  …I think when you spread the wealth around… it’s good for everybody.”  ~breitbart.tv

It’s classic liberalism with a fresh new face. Expect the same old results. Socialism is as socialism does.

I watched Obama’s “I’ll give 95% of Americans a tax break” commercial yesterday and it that was all you had to go on you would think that Obama was a republican for tax cuts. The reality is that taxes will go up. Likely for 100% of Americans.

November 2007:

Amid reports that the U.S. military surge has helped to stabilize insurgent attacks in Baghdad and a recent Pew Research Center poll that found 48 percent of Americans now believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going well, up from 30 percent in February, Biden said, “This whole notion that the surge is working is fantasy.” ~swamppolitics.com

But wait there’s more! Biden and an entire committee of Democrats told Petraeus that his surge was a failure –even as it was being implemented– and Biden himself all but demanded that the troops should be pulled out immediately.

Democrats tell Petraeus that Iraq surge has failed

Democratic leaders in the Senate bluntly told the US military commander in Iraq today that President Bush’s troop “surge” strategy had failed in its prime objective – to force a political settlement between Iraqi factions.

…“We should stop the surge and start bringing our troops home,” Joseph Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman, said as General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Iraq, prepared to testify before the committee. ~timesonline.co.uk

Biden voted against the surge. He claimed it would fail. He claimed it had failed. Until finally faced with overwhelming evidence of it’s success he did what any rational, sane, and ethically fairminded thinking person would do– he claimed all the credit for it’s success!

SEN. BIDEN: No. The surge helped make that–what made is possible in Anbar province is they did what I’d suggested two and a half years ago: gave local control. They turned over and they said to the Sunnis in Anbar province, “We promise you, don’t worry, you’re not going to have any Shia in here. There’s going to be no national forces in here. We’re going to train your forces to help you fight al-Qaeda.” And that you–what you had was the awakening. The awakening was not an awakening by us, it was an awakening of the Sunnis in Anbar province willing to fight. ~msnbc.msn.com

In one telling and insightful paragraph Joe Biden tells us everything we need to know about what kind of man Joe Biden is. Disregarding the hard work, blood, sweat and tears of those who made the surge a success Biden nevertheless claims the credit for himself and his running mate Obama. What class.

Far from–look, the bottom line here is that it’s–let’s–the surge is over. Here’s the real point. Whether or not the surge worked is almost irrelevant now. We’re in a new deal. What is the administration doing? They’re doing what Barack Obama has suggested over 14 months ago, turn responsibility over and draw down our troops. We’re about to get a deal from the president of the United States and Maliki, the head of the Iraqi government, that’s going to land on my desk as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee saying we’re going to set a timeline to draw down our forces. The only guy in America out of step is John McCain. John McCain’s saying no timeline. They’ve signed on to Barack Obama’s proposal. ~msnbc.msn.com

The Jawa Report- “Joe Biden has become a parody of his own caricature.”

Is he afraid to debate a bucket of fluff Lt. Governor?

“I heard a very, by the way I mean this sincerely, a very strong and a very good political speech from a lieutenant governor of Alaska who I think is going to be very formidable, very formidable not only in the campaign but in the debate,” Biden said Thursday at an economic discussion at George Mason University in Manassas, Virginia.  ~blogs.abcnews.com

Biden on Obama:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” But—and the “but” was clearly inevitable—he doubts whether American voters are going to elect “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate,” and added: “I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.”  ~observer.com

Chavez says crisis-hit U.S. needs new constitution

LISBON, Sept 27 – Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday it was the capitalist system that had caused the financial crisis in the United States and the country should come up with a new constitution.

Speaking to reporters in Lisbon on the last leg of a tour that included visits to China and Russia, he said: “I think the United States should start a constituent process to create a constituent assembly, a new truly democratic model.”

A constituent assembly is a body elected to draft and sometimes adopt a new constitution.

“It was capitalism that caused the ruin” in the United States, said Chavez, who is one of Washington’s fiercest critics, calling the financial crunch “the worst financial crisis in history”.

“Let the U.S. empire end and let a great nation and great republic rise from the ruin … It’s time to shout ‘Liberty!’ again in the United States,” Chavez said, calling for a new government to be free of the “dictatorship of the elite” such as big banks and corporations.

Critics accuse Chavez of running an authoritarian, Cuban-style regime in oil-rich Venezuela.

Chavez, who has signed various deals from weapons to energy this week in China and Russia also signed an agreement with Portugal’s Socialist government on Saturday to buy 1 million ultra-cheap laptops for schools and 50,000 pre-fabricated houses in deals worth $3 billion.

They also signed a draft deal between Energias do Portugal <EDP.LS> and Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA for the development of a liquefied natural gas project from the Blanquilla Este reserve in northern Venezuela.

The computers, which the government started distributing in Portuguese primary schools this week at a subsidised price of 50 euros , will be delivered to Venezuela from December. They cost 285 euros in stores in Portugal.

The laptop is based on Intel Corp’s <INTC.O> Classmate PC, a cheap computer that has been adopted in various formats in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. ~sg.news.yahoo.com

The one problem — as with all of Hugo’s philosophy — is that it was the government who caused the problem and Chavez wants more of the same.

Just imagine what Obama will do with the reigns of power firmly in his hands.

The truth squad is ready to prosecute anyone spreading ‘lies’ and unapproved non-party propaganda.

The primary target of this ‘truth squad’ is the American Issues Project which is airing ads that Obama calls ‘lies’.

Washington, DC – September 26, 2008 – Barack Obama is now using local law enforcement officials to carry out his campaign of legal intimidation by assembling a group of high-ranking Missouri police officials and prosecutors – including St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough and City of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce – to identify and target anyone the campaign determines is producing “misleading” political advertisements.

“This is an outrageous and shocking attempt by the Obama campaign to again employ Stalinist, police state tactics against those who dare to disagree with Barack Obama,” said Ed Martin, American Issues Projects president. “I am frankly stunned to see public officials like McCullough and Joyce abusing their official prosecutorial positions to serve as attack dogs for a national political campaign. I am quite certain Missourians elected these individuals to enforce the laws and arrest criminals, not to throw people in jail for daring to practicing free speech.

“The Obama campaign continues to provide a chilling preview of what would happen to political freedom in an Obama administration.”

This new effort is only the most recent attempt by the Obama campaign to crack down on free speech. Obama’s lawyers twice demanded the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute the American Issues Project, its officers, board of directors, and donors. The campaign also threatened stations running American Issues Project’s ad in an unsuccessful attempt to compel them to pull the spot, and ran its own ad in response.

Notably, this ad failed to dispute a single fact the American Issues Project has put forth.

The governor of Missouri has condemned Obama’s thuggery as well:

Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign’s Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement

JEFFERSON CITY – Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.

“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts – not a free society.” ~governor.mo.gov

Via reformedchicksblabbing — This is incredibly arrogant and indicative of Obama himself. His effete elitism surrounds his campaign like a bad odor.

Birmingham firm strikes Barack Obama presidential coin

A company in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter is making commemorative coins for American presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

…The coins show Senator Obama’s face, along with a picture of the White House and the legend “President of the United States of America”.
~birminghampost.net

Incredible. Counting the chickens before they come home to roost?

“My job this morning is to be so persuasive . . . that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack.” ~villagevoice.com

Good luck with that.

I’m just getting around to posting the messiah stuff.

So many pictures of Obama in MSM are naked fluff and shinola that it’s amazing.

Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae – or no antennae at all – to all those who just don’t understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama’s aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there’s something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn’t assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It’s because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

Let me be completely clear: I’m not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I’m not saying the man’s going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.

Please. I’m also certainly not saying he’s perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama’s certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn’t hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it’s not even about Obama, per se. There’s a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that’s been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama’s candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It’s exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better. ~sfgate.com

“We need to help people cope with rising gas and food prices, spark job creation by repairing our schools and our roads, help states avoid painful budget cuts and tax increases, and help homeowners stay in their homes,” said the Illinois senator. “And we must also ensure that the solution we design doesn’t reward particular companies, or irresponsible borrowers or lenders, or CEOs, some of whom helped cause this mess.”

Obama’s remarks came the day after the Bush administration laid out a radical bailout plan with a breathtaking price tag — a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more for worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions.  ~ap.google.com

Obama is third on the list of the top recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money. Only Chris Dodd and John Kerry got more money and Chris Dodd is chairman of the Senate banking committee!

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.  ~rasmussenreports.com

Pelosi, Reid, congratulations.