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Sunday, September 7, 2008

Obama's Policy Positions a Clear and Present Danger

Over the past several months, I've attempted three times to responsibly outline Obama's policy positions, and despite his myriad "clarifications" and outright reversals I believe I have managed to pull together what is--today, at least--a fairly accurate picture of where he stands on many key issues.

Because of his more unscrupulous and nimble flip-flops on public financing, NAFTA, Iran, Iraq, Jerusalem, special interests, Cuba, gun control, wiretapping, illegal immigration and the decriminalization of marijuana, I have necessarily and heavily relied upon his actual voting record and his verifiable public pronouncements to more accurately gauge what are most likely his core beliefs, principles and positions. For better or for worse, here it is:

During his tenure as a state legislator in Illinois, he supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of hand guns and opposed the right to carry concealed weapons; he opposed a bill which would have prohibited anyone other than a parent to accompany a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion; he voted against SB 1661 which would protect a child born alive during an abortion from being denied medical care after birth; and he voted in favor of HB 3396 which would deny the right to a secret ballot to organize a union if 50% of eligible workers publicly supported unionization.

During his time as a U.S. Senator, he opposed listing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization; he voted to restore habeas corpus rights to GITMO detainees; he pledged to remove all troops from Iraq by March 2008 (irrespective of the conditions on the ground); he supports the imposition of socialized/universal health care; he opposes school vouchers; he voted against banning partial birth abortions; he supports "alternative sentencing” and rehabilitation; he voted against the Bush tax cuts and repealing the Death Tax; he opposes declaring English as the official language of the U.S. government; he voted against confirming justices Alito and Roberts (and expressed his preference for justices like Ginsberg); he supports extending welfare, health care and social security benefits to illegal aliens; he pledges huge cuts in defense spending inclusive of funding for the anti-missile defense system and most other weapons research and development programs; he favors increasing the upper income tax bracket to 40% and supports levying a 12.5% FICA tax on ALL incomes, thus effectively rendering a 60% tax bracket for incomes over $250,000, the third highest rate in the world; he would nearly double the capital gains tax to 28% and nearly double the dividend tax; he supports passsage of the Global Poverty Act (an $845 billion boondoggle supported by the U.N. which insanely believes that such a gargantuan expenditure by American taxpayers will magically eliminate poverty in the developing world); he would require Homeland Security to notify terror suspects they are under investigation within seven days of starting an investigation; he would prohibit Homeland Security's search and seizure of documents unless there is "probable cause that the targeted individual is linked to a specific terror group" (vs the current standard that the search be "relevant to a terror investigation"); he opposes nuclear power, shale conversion, ANWR and offshore oil drilling.

I can already hear the flight of American capital as it flutters into offshore accounts and overseas investments.

Historically, the economic positions he champions have proven over and over again to be unworkable and economically destructive. The economic disincentives his policies would create and his massive spending plans would effectively debilitate America's economic competitiveness and, by most estimates, would increase the current deficit to a stifling $1 trillion by 2011!

To achieve his economic and political makeover of America, the scope and power of the government would also be grossly expanded well beyond even the limits advocated by the most progressive interpreters of the Constitution.

Apparently, his far left-wing formula for ostensibly improving Americans'lot in life is premised on what clearly appears to be his elitist and alien belief that individuals are incapable of helping themselves (despite all the evidence to the contrary), that the middle class needs to be bought off (with dollars exprpriated from the "wealthy"), and that the "upper income" class should be cut down to size, all in a Marxist effort to achieve "fairness" and "equality" through income redistribution and tighter government control over Americans' lives. (For verification of his socialist game plan, listen for the endless socialist code words "fairness" and "equality" in his florid and otherwise vapid rhetoric.)

Saul Alinksy, Karl Marx and liberal elites both in DC and on the ivy league circuit will be immensely proud of Obama, their student, if he can pull this off in November.

The crucial question is this: will enough Americans see the socialist which lurks beneath Obama's shiny veneer in time to save themselves and their country from him? Incredibly, it's still too early to tell.

Many Americans are loathe to allow a socialist takeover of an America whose traditions and values are so deeply ingrained and honored and for which so many friends and relatives have died defending.

Thank God the 2nd Amendment--though always under assault--is still alive and well.

("The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing what happened." Norman Thomas, Socialist Party of America, cir 1925)

("[Saul Alinsky] taught [community organizers] to ridicule opponents when the arguments of their opponents could not be refuted by logic, evidence, or argument; for Alinsky, the middle class was a pawn with which he could produce his desired "change" [aka social revolution] by convincing the middle class to side with him in its own destruction; Alinsky taught that power was everything and that image, words, and positioning were just methods to capture power, working from communities up." Dr. Jerome Corsi)