Pelosi: Lawmakers Should Sacrifice Jobs for Health Care

(AP) House Speaker Pelosi says lawmakers aren't in Washington for job security but 'to do the job for the American people.'

Thursday: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, accompanied by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, speaks with reporters outside the White House at the end of a health care summit with President Obama and Republicans held at Blair House. (AP Photo)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.


Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."


"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."


It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."
It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmaker unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.

Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.

Her comments to ABC, in the interview released Sunday, seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall -- maybe a lot. They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.
"Time is up," she said. "We really have to go forth."

Her comments somewhat echoed those of President Obama, who said at the end of last week's bipartisan health care summit that Congress should act on the issue and let voters render their verdicts. "That's what elections are for," he said.

The White House says Obama, perhaps on Wednesday, will announce a "way forward" on health care. He, Pelosi, and Senate Democratic leaders have left little doubt that they hope to pass a Democratic-crafted bill under "budget reconciliation" rules that would bar Republican filibusters in the Senate. It's unclear whether Pelosi can muster the needed votes in the House.

White House officials say they will redouble efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December, with a super majority of 60 votes. The new plan calls for the House to pass that bill and send it to Obama's desk, and then use Senate budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats.

Following a Republican victory in Massachusetts last month, Democrats now control 59 of the Senate's 100 seats, one vote short of the number needed to block GOP filibusters.

Pelosi told CNN that "in a matter of days" Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.

"When we have a bill," she said, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."

Obama and Democratic lawmakers say they may add several more Republican ideas to their legislative package, even if it's unlikely to attract a single GOP vote. One idea, by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., would focus on battling waste and fraud in the medical system.

The main elements of the Democratic plan are known, and opposed by Republicans in Congress. It would insure about 30 million more Americans over 10 years with subsidies for the poor and a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry health insurance.

It would also bar some insurance company practices, such as denying coverage to people with medical problems. And it would establish government-run exchanges to help individuals and small businesses obtain insurance policies, although it would exclude the "public option" that many liberals wanted.

Time to hit the phones and faxes tomorrow and let the House and Senate know that we have had enough.  Dump the anti-will of the American people ideology and vote no on ObamaCare once and for all.  Save the greatest healthcare system in the world and your children’s future.  Just Say NO… to the ideologues… Pelosi, Obama and Reid, and then vote then out!!  Tell the Queen we’ve had enough!!

Olympics: Where Universal Brotherhood, Patriotism and Individual Accomplishment Meld

“The Olympics are where universal brotherhood, fierce patriotism and individual accomplishment meld creating the perfect microcosm of the world”

The modern Olympic games, where the majority of the countries of the world meet every two years now, it used to be every four years, is a microcosm of the world.  It brings out the best in us: the athletes, the spectators and the countries of the world… who really become participants in the ‘greater’ event.  We all put our differences aside as we are involved in this amazing global event, while at the same time exhibiting our deepest patriotic feelings and personal best efforts as athletes.

When Sean White exhibits his newest boarding trick in Torino or Vancouver, the youth of the world is mesmerized.  When an unknown luger from Georgia, Nodar (Kumaritashvili ), with a last name that almost no one can pronounce, dies in practice the afternoon before the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics the entire world, especially the entire Olympic athletic community, mourns. Or when Canadian Joannie Rochette loses her mother at the Olympics two days before her event, due to a massive heart attack, the entire world gasps. Joannie decided to continue on and skate in honor of her mother, who was her greatest fan. She skated her personal best and did not crack her game face until her phase-one bronze short-skate performance was completed, after which everyone cried with her.  She ultimately took home the bronze medal, ending her performance with a kiss as her eyes were raised on high to the heavens, to a chorus of applause.

In 2003 before the Beijing Olympics, when Kim Collins sprinted to a stunning victory in the 100 meters at the World Championships, most people had no idea which country the letters SKN stood for. Collins, from the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, said his victory was “the biggest thing” to happen since his country with a population of less than 40,000 gained their independence in 1983.

The Olympics are the one place where you don’t have to be from a rich or powerful country, a wealthy family or a big or well-known nation to be treated equally and have the same chance to win.  And for many, like Collins, their achievements add to their country’s national identity and help put it on the map for tourism or for others help the world see a softer side of a super power like when America’s Dan Jansen fell after dedicating his skate to his sister Jane, who died of cancer earlier in the day, to end up falling and crumbling into tears.  Dan won that Gold six years later and took his victory lap holding his one-year-old daughter named Jane… for his sister.

As Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has noted: “When the world looks at Australia, so much of their image of Australia is shaped by what our sportsmen and women have done on the field of sport, including the Olympic sports” and what the world saw of our country as the Australian’s hosted the Olympic Games.
 
When Tanzanian marathoner John Stephen Akhwari dragged his injured leg to finish last with a time of four hours 30 minutes in the marathon race in the Mexico City Games in 1968, he received warm applause and cheers from a crowd that stayed and waited for him to finish.  “My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race. They sent me to finish,” said Akhwari, then 30.  Despite finishing last, Akhwari became one of the most memorable figures in Olympic history and was honored as a national hero by his country in 1983.

National pride is ingrained in every athlete and every game or event, yet so is compassion for fellow athletes from all over the world. Over the years the world witnessed how Japanese volleyball fans roared in favor of their national team and how the Italians mourned their football team’s loss on home soil.  We have seen Canadian powerhouse in soccer defeated by a long shot American team and the favorite beaten by less rated athletes, even from their own team.

And as Olympic training, in an ever shrinking world, has changed and overlaps more and more, we see true friendships and happiness for fellow athletes that are both friends and competitors like between the Canadian and American ice dancing Gold and Silver medalists, respectively, who share coaches and practice ice.  And again as now coach Brian Orser, that the Gold always eluded as a skater, watched Kim Yu-Na become the reigning Queen as she took Gold as the first South Korean to ever win a figure skating medal.

At times it has been the host countries that were as much the story as the athletes.  There were the Hitler Olympics ( Summer and Winter 1936) that allowed a madman to use them for propaganda. And then in 1972 Germany had her chance to redeem herself with the Munich Olympics where Jewish-American Mark Spitz took an unprecedented seven Gold medals but his accomplishments were ironically upstaged by the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes by a militant Palestinian group.  There were the war years (1916 Summer, 1940 Summer and Winter, and 1944 Summer and Winter) that caused the games to be cancelled completely and the 1980 Moscow Olympics that were boycotted by the United States and affiliated countries including Japan, West Germany, China, the Philippines and Canada, which then caused the boycott of 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games by Moscow and allies, 14 Eastern Bloc countries and allies including the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany (but not Romania).  And there were the on-going doping and drug-enhancing scandals of the Eastern Bloc athletes under their influence by the Soviet Union.  And more recently there were the pre-Beijing complaints of human and animal rights violations.  But the Olympic flame apparently ignited the Chinese people’s love for their homeland and a multitude of them took to the streets after overseas attempts to disrupt, or even sabotage the Olympic torch relay early on, plus for at least 17 days the Chinese government was aware and publicly refrained from many of their practices against human and animal rights.  In the end the community of nations and the people of the world rose above the shadows.

And remember the 2002 Winter Games opening in Salt Lake City? A tattered U.S. flag recovered from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center was displayed as President George W. Bush declared the Games’ opened on behalf of a “proud, determined and grateful nation”.   The heart of the world was with them.  It was the U.S. message to the world:  Americans love their country as they stood  in the shadows of  the September 11th tragedy, and the world should stand united to promote common ideals and hope for peace.

However, in the end it is the names and performances of the athletes like: Sarah Hughes, Franz Klammer, Dick Button, Jean-Claude Killy, Bonnie Blair, Bjorn Dahlie, Nadia Comaneci, Usain Bolt, Eric Heiden, Hermann Meir, Peggy Flemming, Steven Bradley, Carl Lewis, Dorothy Hamel, Jesse Owens, Scott Hamilton, America’s Miracle on Ice Hockey Team and the list goes on and on that make the games and add to the living spirit of the Olympics.  Although Michael Phelps is generally considered the greatest Olympian, it would be hard to compile a list of the greatest.  There are so many factors.  And it is impossible to compare the athletes of the early Games against the professionals of the modern era.

Times of true crisis bring out the best in all of us, the people of the world, but the Olympics is the one event that for at least once every two years brings out the best in mankind without a crisis.  There is a great story of the airport and town of Gander in Newfoundland who allowed almost 200 inbound American flights to land at their airport, after the airspace was closed over the United States for the first time in its history within hours after 9/11.  But the 4-days that followed and the amazing hospitality of the people of Gander is the true story, and it is that essence, that emerges without the crisis, through the Olympic Games.

It takes much more than patriotism and ambition to host successful Games. It is important to show full respect to all athletes — to shining stars like Michael Phelps and Anton Apolo Ohno or those who purely persevere like Akhwari or the Cool Running Team from Jamaica, as well as to the countries and cultures of the world they come from, to the spectators who come to embrace the games, to the Olympic spirit itself, and to all those who have competed before.  It is a fine line between love of country, personal ambition and at least for 17-days every two years, world unity.  But, sitting together as a family and watching the Olympics with your children can be one of the greatest shared experiences a family can have including lessons and inspiration without a direct word ever being said.

The Olympics are the pinnacle of true global understanding and the personification of the outreach for a better world, unlike the Global coalitions, contractual leagues of nations and the talk of world orders put together and planned by selfish and scheming politicians and businessmen.  Let us hopefully all remember that and follow the light of the Olympic torch and true unity rather than the darkness of idle chatter of dividers and conquerors.

By Marion Algier

OBAMA'S HEALTH PLAN -- TAXES, TAXES EVERYWHERE

 

The White House recently released President Obama's health care reform proposal.  The plan incorporates a mixture of the many tax increases passed by the House and Senate, hiking taxes by almost $750 billion over ten years.  This is on top of $1.3 trillion in other tax increases the President recently proposed in his 2011 budget.  Not that there is ever a good time to raise taxes, but doing so as the economy is still emerging from a deep recession is particularly ill-advised and will likely prolong full recovery.  Moreover, the President's proposal deviates from his stated goal to address the soaring spending and debt problem the nation faces by piling on massive new spending and taxes, says the Heritage Foundation.

How will the president's plan affect payroll taxes?

• President Obama accepted the Senate's plan to break long-held policy by raising the Hospital Insurance (HI) portion of the payroll tax on high-income earners to pay for a new and unrelated health care entitlement.
• He then doubled-down on this dangerous new precedent by separately applying the HI tax to investment income for the first time.
• The tax code already taxes investment too much; higher taxes still on dividends, interest and business income increases the cost of capital which will further depress investment and thus job creation (ironic to propose this at the very time the President wants employers to create jobs).

How will seniors be affected by the Medicare payroll tax?

• President Obama's proposed tax hike on investment will hammer seniors particularly hard because their investment income is a major supplement to their pension and Social Security checks.
• Seniors also sell assets to raise income, so raising the tax on capital gains further reduces their resources.
• Lastly, raising the taxes on capital income and capital gains will lower asset values.
• Nearly 30 percent of all stocks are held in retirement savings plans; most of the seniors that rely on the income from these plans for their livelihood are not "fat cat" investors that have been the target of other populist tax hikes.
• They are people that spent their working years saving money for their own retirement in mutual funds, 401(k)s, IRAs and other savings vehicles; this would just punish them for a lifetime of careful planning and saving.

Source: Curtis Dubay, "Obama's Health Plan -- Taxes, Taxes Everywhere," Heritage Foundation, February 24th, 2010.

For text: Heritage Foundation

A House in chaos

Is Pelosi Losing Grip on the House?

For a few hours Thursday night, the House of Representatives was in chaos.

Shortly after dinnertime, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel emerged from his private hideaway after news broke that he would be admonished by the House ethics committee.

But reporters in the Capitol rushed right past Rangel to ask House Democratic leaders about a critical intelligence bill that had just been pulled over a torture provision. The language had been inserted in defiance of leadership by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).

At the same time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was slated to meet with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to try to salvage a routine $15 billion jobs bill that had turned into a piñata for progressives, the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Any of these three issues — a floundering jobs bill, a hastily scotched intelligence authorization or an ethics committee admonishment of the powerful chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee — would qualify as a midlevel crises.

Together, these incidents illustrated a chamber in a minimeltdown near week's end.

“It’s a mystery how that language got in there,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said of the controversial intelligence bill provision backed by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). “I think there are a lot of issues about the drafting of the McDermott amendment.”

House leaders huddled on the floor to figure out what to do next when they realized that the language — adopted by Slaughter’s panel the day before — could kill the bill. The spot they chose was only 15 feet or so from the one in the well of the House where Rangel had just lit into ethics Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) in full view of their colleagues and the galleries above the chamber.

As the intelligence bill was melting down, word began circulating that House leaders might bypass the Rules Committee altogether on a jobs bill because members from multiple factions were threatening to vote against a rule that would allow its consideration.

Black lawmakers say the package is skimpy and Blue Dogs are upset that it would take a waiver of deficit-reduction rules to pass the House. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) objected to the apportionment of a small tranche of highway dollars in the measure.

But House leaders are nearly convinced that rank-and-file lawmakers won’t quash a jobs bill if they are faced with a vote on it. So, they began discussing whether to bring it up under suspension of the rules, which would require a two-thirds vote for passage but eliminate the sticky trick of getting the votes to allow it to be considered.

Meanwhile, Rangel dragged Lofgren and Bonner into two meetings in his private office just off the House floor. The ethics admonishment, leveled because of actions taken by Rangel’s aides, was accompanied by one for the ethics committee’s own former counsel, opening the door to the question of who is to blame if ethics rules are broken by the ethics committee itself.

After consulting with the ethics leaders, Rangel finally emerged to face the cameras, only to find print reporters sprinting past him to get the scoop on other legislative matters.

Amazingly, Rangel’s latest scandal was playing second fiddle even in his own home state, where a brouhaha continued over whether Gov. David Paterson’s administration improperly used state resources to intimidate a woman who accused a gubernatorial aide of domestic violence.

And all this as news of a disheartened public reacting negatively to Obama’s arrogance at the healthcare summit earlier in the day, that turned out to be the sham that most expected, was pouring in.

House leaders seemed likely to have at least the intelligence bill — and perhaps the jobs bill — in better position by Friday.

But for a few hours Thursday, nothing seemed to be going right.

“Can’t anybody here play this game?” joked a Democratic aide whose sense of humor remained intact.

Source: Politico

GOV/T USING FUNDS TO TRAIN TEENS AS "ORGANIZERS"

By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY, Investors Business Daily, 2/23/10

President Obama's budget has added more than $100 billion in federal taxpayers' money to what is called "education," so that means it will be spent by alumni of the Saul Alinsky school of radical community organizing and/or the Chicago Democratic machine. We're indebted to Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com for exposing the shocking use of some of these funds.

Obama is using the public schools to recruit a private army of high-schoolers to "build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda." We now know Obama's "agenda" is to move the U.S. into European-style socialism.

Obama's Internet outreach during his campaign, Obama for America, has been renamed Organizing for America (OFA) in order to recruit students to join a cult of Obama and become activists for his goals.

Geller discovered that the teacher of an 11th-grade government class in Massillon, Ohio, passed out the sign-up sheet, headed with Obama's "O" logo, asking students to become interns for Organizing for America.

These interns will get an intensive nine-week training course using comprehensive lesson plans. Assigned readings include Saul Alinsky's notorious "Rules for Radicals," "Stir It Up: Lessons From Community Organizing and Advocacy" by left-wing activist Rinku Sen, and parts of "Dreams From My Father" dealing with Obama's days as a Chicago community organizer.

Republican students will be filtered out of the intern program by requiring applicants to answer questions that reveal their politics. One example: "What one issue facing our country is important to you and why?"

Geller said the purpose of this training to become Alinsky-style community organizers is, "of course, to elect more Democrats." The program is specifically geared to get the kids working in the 2010 elections.

The sign-up sheet for Organizing for America starts with this instruction: "Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, is building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda of change."

The application explains that this national internship program is "working to make the change we fought so hard for in 2008 a reality in 2010 and beyond."

This is not the first time Obama has tried to enlist schoolchildren into an Obama cult.

Last fall, the instructions mailed to every school by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan added a very political dimension to Obama's speech that was broadcast to public school children on Sept. 8.

Geller explained the extensive political dimension of the intern program. The OFA student interns will be trained in the goals and language of the left: "anti-war agitation, anti-capitalism, Marx, Lenin, (Bill) Ayers, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) agenda promotion, global warming, soft-on-jihad and illegal immigration."

Also on OFA's reading list is "The New Organizers" by Zack Exley. It brags about "an insurgent generation of organizers" inside the Obama campaign that has "almost without anyone noticing ... built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level."

The 10-page "National Intern Organizer Curriculum" is very specific in describing the tactics that interns will be taught. It includes these components: "Using Story as an Organizing Tool, Building Relationships and Building Teams, Mobilizing to Win on the Issues (issue advocacy), Health Care Service Project."

Passage of ObamaCare is one of this intern project's major goals. The curriculum promises to provide "insight on the strategy and plan behind the health care campaign" and "further motivate them to work on the issue."

The sign-up sheet states that the "purpose" of training these students is "to build community" among the interns and teach them "to be leaders in OFA's organizing work." After all, Barack Obama knows a great deal about being a community organizer that was his only real job before he got into politics.

Job prospects may be bleak for many Americans, but they will be rosy for alumni of Obama's intern program.

After the students have been fully trained as Alinsky-style community organizers, they will be eligible for jobs in Senior Corps, AmeriCorps or Learn and Serve America.

Those three so-called "service" organizations, which annually dole out millions of dollars to left-wing groups, are overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The U.S. Senate just confirmed this corporation's new chief executive, Patrick Corvington, who was a senior official of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has given over a million and a half dollars to the Acorn network of organizations.

Glenn Beck’s Book Club Recommendations

February 26, 2010 - 3:39 ET

Revelations from three books, linked as 'trilogy'

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story

A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror

Who Are You In the Political System??

Are you a conservative, a liberal, a progressive, a libertarian, a
centrist, a statist?  The video attached may enlighten and surprise you!

Confessions of a Black Conservative: Blacks, Youths, and We The People At CPAC

I performed my “American Tea Party Anthem” and “Twenty Ten: We're Gonna Vote Them Out” at CPAC as a representative for TeaPartyExpress.org. I was struck and excited by the high number of youths in attendance (over 50% were under 25 years
old). With liberal iron fisted dictatorship regimes ruling most of
America's campuses, how did these kids survive attempts to
indoctrinate them? Those with whom I chatted said they simply figured it out. Just the other day, a friend's daughter who is a freshman in college complained about being forced to write a flowery essay about how Obama mirrors Martin Luther King. It is a shame this brilliant young lady must choose between publicly standing up for her principles or a passing grade. The youths at CPAC were extremely enthusiastic and upbeat. I suspect many are practicing stealth conservatism at college.

It was also exciting to see many fellow black conservatives at CPAC. Interestingly, every black with whom I spoke had an entrepreneurial gleam in their eyes which broadcast, “I'm grateful to be born in America and I am going for it!” I detected no hint of entitlement or victim mindsets in these blacks. They were truly refreshing.

At CPAC, I debuted my book, “Confessions of a Black Conservative: How the Left has shattered the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black America”. I pray it will contribute to opening the eyes of my fellow blacks who have been deceived for so many years.

Most impressive at CPAC was the upbeat, excited and empowered atmosphere. With Scott Brown's miracle win in Massachusetts and stopping the government's take over of health care under our belts, We The People were feeling good and strutting our stuff. This was a dramatic contrast to the mood of CPAC last year.
Obama had the house, the senate, and the American people under his spell. His agenda  appeared unstoppable. Like the song, “What aDifference a Day Makes”, what a huge difference a year made.

To stop the wicked King Obama, We The People took to the streets with modern day pitchforks known as home-made magic marker signs. We facebooked, twittered, blogged and tweeted when needed. Across America we tea partied hardy. Amazingly,
we put the progressives on the run. Celebrating our power at CPAC was so much fun.

The Tea Party Movement was the star of CPAC winning the prestigious annual Ronald Reagan award. This was the first time it was awarded to a movement rather than an individual. Thus, We The People were the stars of CPAC.

A number of CPAC attendees expressed concern that the Tea Party Movement might be hijacked by a political party. I do not believe this is possible. We The People are too savvy for that to happen. We will dance with any politician who embraces our agenda of fiscal responsibility, smaller government and national
security. Be warned, we will hold their feet to the fire. Yes, we may
be deceived by an occasional liberal in conservative clothing. Such characterless politicians will suffer the consequences of their
betrayal at the polls.

Despite the Tea Party Movement's incredible victorious defensive goal line stop of Obama's agenda, some on our side still choose to be negative. They whine that both political parties are irreparably corrupt, it is all about money and power and nothing will change that. These people ridicule me for “wasting my time” traveling on the Tea Party Express tours and trying to make a difference. These sad sacks view our situation so hopelessly I almost feel it is my civic duty to refer them to their local suicide hot-line.

To my dear gloom and doomers, I offer a famous quote, “the only thing needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing”.

As acknowledged at CPAC, We The People via the Tea Party Movement are a powerful force for positive change in America. Just as nothing in life, the Tea Party Movement is not perfect. But, it is one heck of a great start.

At CPAC, I saw an army of young, brilliant and enthusiastic conservatives waiting in the wings for their opportunities to fight. I met proud grateful black Americans who did not drink the Obama Kool Aid eagerly pursuing their dreams.

Our conservative future, as the song says, “looks so bright we
have to wear shades”. So let us bask in our successes and
continue to make the weak links strong. Together, we can do this.
Together and with a smile from God, we will restore America!

Lloyd Marcus (black) Unhyphenated American, Singer/Songwriter, Entertainer, Author, Artist & Tea Party Patriot

 LloydMarcus.com'>LloydMarcus.com'>American Tea Party Anthem 

The Rise of the Black Conservative Voice

ObamaCare Summit Reviews~

Obama Threatens Reconciliation

Weak Attempt to Salvage ObamaCare

By Amanda J. Reinecker

Yesterday, after a temporary lull in the health care debates, President Obama released a "fresh attempt" to salvage his health care overhaul agenda. Though the details will not be released for some time, the ideas at the core of this 11-page outline (embedded in article) aren't really so "fresh." Based largely on the Senate's flawed plan, the "new" proposal is riddled with many of the same harmful taxes, dubious mandates, and unprecedented federal regulatory powers.

But even though the Senate bill serves as its template, the president's proposal does have some new initiatives -- and they add up to $80 billion. This would increase the overall cost of health care "reform" to a staggering $950 billion over ten years, a cost likely to rise as the legislative text is finalized.

Perhaps the most alarming difference is the prospect of a Federal Health Insurance Rate Authority, which would grant federal bureaucrats the power to set and control insurance prices and thus effectively create a government-run health plan. "If government can control both health benefits and health care pricing, that's the proverbial ball game,"writes Heritage health policy expert Bob Moffit. "Private health care is private in name only."

Although President Obama doesn't use the 'reconciliation' word, I can't imagine he meant the following statements as anything other than a threat to use pass Obamacare by reconciliation and let the voters pass judgment at the polls in November.
From the video:
“What I do know is this, if we saw movement, significant movement, not just gestures, then you wouldn’t need to start over because essentially everybody here knows what the issues are, and procedurally it could get done fairly quickly.
“We cannot have another year long debate about this. So, the question I’m going to ask myself and I ask all of you is, is there enough serious effort that in a month’s time or a few week’s time or six week’s time we could actually resolve something? And if we can’t I think we got to go ahead and make some decisions and that’s what elections are for. We have honest disagreements about the vision for the country and we’ll go ahead and test those out over the next several months until November. Alright?”
Krauthammer: "If you win the presidency...you do not become the arbiter of legitimacy in American discourse." Yet... Just how many times today did Obama use the "I'm the president" routine?

Ben Stein Accuses Obama of Treating the Republicans Like Third Graders

By Heather Thursday Feb 25, 2010 3:47pm

Stein Video

Oh my, Ben Stein is apparently upset that the Republicans weren't being treated respectfully enough during the health care summit by the President. Heaven forbid... he called them by their first names. Gasp... the horror Ben. Yeah, those poor little defenseless Republicans who never attack anyone just had to fight back here because big bad Obama was being mean to them. And CNN thinks we're supposed to take anything this clown says seriously. I'm surprised Stein didn't just come straight out and call the President "uppity" because he came pretty close here.

BLITZER: Let's bring in Donna Brazile and Ben Stein, because I want them to weigh in. First to you, Ben. This whole issue of costs, premiums going up, a trillion dollars in extra cost to US taxpayers. Some of it might be offset by some cuts in projected Medicare spending. Where do you come down on this?

STEIN: Well, the 57 percent who are going to get subsidies, where is that money going to come from? That money is going to come from taxpayers. That money is not going to just magically appear. So the costs for everyone is going to go up.

Obviously, the insurance companies are going to cover more people, cover people with preexisting conditions, cover people who have very expensive treatment options involved, without having to charge more to somebody. So, somebody's going to be paying more.
I'm also sort of floored by the whole thing that's going on here, where the president is calling the senators by their first names, as if they were kids in a third grade class. And they're all calling him Mr. President.

But I'm most floored of all by the fact that we've got a very serious jolt about the economy today, and somehow they're talking about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when it looks seriously as if the economy is now heading for a double dip in the recession. The whole thing just has a kind of surrealistic quality.

BLITZER: What was the jolt on the economic numbers that you're referring to?

STEIN: The jobless -- the first-time jobless claims came in considerably higher than was forecast, high enough to make people think that the recovery is faltering. They were expecting 455,000, came in roughly 495,000, very roughly, very roughly. That's a very bad piece of news. Housing sales declined very sharply in the last month, from the month before. This recovery is not getting the traction that it needs. And for us to be fixating on economic issues about health care that are going to be happening in 2016 when the economy is floundering right now puzzles me.
[...]
BLITZER: Ben Stein, first to you. The president, you know, he's fighting right back in the face of some strong Republican comments.
STEIN: Well, I think he's been fighting from the first moment this thing started. I think the idea that it was a bipartisan kumbaya feel-good moment was thrown out right away, as soon as he started and as soon as Senator Reid started and as soon as Speaker Pelosi started, they started with a series of attacks. And the Republicans have come right back with a series of their own attacks.

I will say, however, that I am sometimes moved to tears that in the fact that this great, great country, the greatest country in the world, people do by in large get along quite civilly. But if I may respectfully say so, I think the president could lose some of his condescension towards the people who are not agreeing with him, and nobody would be harmed.

Conrad Says HC Bill Is Dead Unless House Acts First

By Philip Klein on 2.24.10 @ 11:48AM

U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, dealt a blow to the prospects for health care legislation just a day before a White House summit, arguing that the process would be "dead" if the House doesn't act first to pass the Senate bill.
The statement is sure to enflame members of the House, who are reluctant to take a leap of faith and pass the Senate bill without knowing that it will be changed through reconciliation in the Senate.
Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler reports:

"The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here," said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) outside the upper chamber this morning. "That's the only way that works."

I pointed out that House leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has repeatedly insisted they won't take a flier on a reconciliation package--that they will only pass the Senate billafter the smaller side-car reconciliation bill has been all wrapped up.
"Fine, then it's dead," Conrad said.

Conrad added that he wouldn't personally make any promises or symbolic gestures to House members to assure them that the Senate can or will take any action in a reconciliation bill to address House concerns.

"I don't sign any blank check," Conrad said.

As I detailed yesterday, health care already faces a tough road in the House, even assuming that some changes can be made by the Senate. Statements such as this one from Conrad (who as chairman of the Budget Committee would play a key role in any reconciliation strategy) will only fuel more animosity between House and Senate Democrats, and create a dilemma in which neither side wants to act first.

Dems Lose Summit on Substance, Scramble for Nuclear Option?

It is hard to see how the Democrats are doing themselves anything but harm with the health-care summit.

Beyond particular observations about individual exchanges or moments I would say the morning’s session suggests three broad points. First, the Democrats appear to have no particular purpose in mind for this event. They’re not driving anywhere, or making a clear individual case, while Republicans clearly want to get across the point that we should scrap the current bills and start over in pursuit of a few incremental steps. The Democrats may have thought that simply putting the spotlight on Republicans when the subject is health care would make the GOP look bad. But Republicans so far seem prepared enough and focused enough to avoid that, and to make the Democrats look rather aimless by comparison.

Second, the Democrats are going to great lengths to argue that their bill incorporates some Republican ideas—by which they mean that it includes insurance exchanges and the like—suggesting that this means they are moving in the direction of Republicans and toward some middle ground. They fail to see (or to acknowledge) that while some similar mechanisms may be proposed by wonks on both sides, Republicans and Democrats in fact want to move in nearly opposite directions from our current health-care arrangements: Republicans toward a genuine individual market and Democrats toward a greater socialization of costs. That makes a great deal of what Obama and the Democrats said this morning basically meaningless. (This is a point I tried to argue more fully in this space a while back.)

Third, an important part of the Democrats’ problem is that Obama himself is their only star, and this format is not working for him. He certainly seems engaged and well informed (even given a few misstatements of fact, at least one of which John Kyl made very clear.) But he doesn’t seem like the President of the United States—more like a slightly cranky committee chairman or a patronizing professor who thinks that saying something is “a legitimate argument” is a way to avoid having an argument. He is diminished by the circumstances, he’s cranky and prickly when challenged, and he’s got no one to help him. The other Democrats around the table have been worse than unimpressive. The Republicans seem genuinely well-prepared, seem to have thought through the question of who should speak about what rather carefully, and several of them have done quite a good job making their case against the Democrats’ approach. If we were to judge by debating points, Republicans certainly won the morning handily.

It’s easy to dismiss all this by saying no one is watching anyway, but that’s not quite true. The purpose of this spectacle is not so much to move the public as to move Democratic members of Congress—to create some momentum that might last long enough to help wavering Democrats cast a very painful vote. That audience very likely is watching, and they are seeing their leadership fail to make a straightforward case for the Democratic approach to health care, or to respond to the most basic Republican objections about high costs, excessive spending, overregulation, and the effect of this plan on American families. They are managing to lose an argument about health care to Republican members of Congress—no mean feat.

Charles Krauthammer said, “In the last few minutes after 7-hours that the whole summit was a show to justify reconciliation, which is what they wanted to do all along!!”

Please keep up the good fight. The president intimated that his would be the final chapter on this Bill and HC Reform, at least for now.  Let us make it is the final chapter of ObamaCare type of reform and that it doesn't pass.  Right now they don't have the votes!!!

Related: 

Video Flashback: Dems Howl with Rage Over Nuclear Option | The FOX Nation 

With World Watching Health Summit, Dems Sneak in Bill to Punish CIA

Democrats Look Beyond Summit to Salvage Health Care Bill

Health Care Summit: Stage Set for Reconciliation

GOP Comes to Summit with Issues, Democrats Tissues

Obama Readies a Fallback Health-Care Proposal

2/3 of the HC Bill Passed Already!  Hidden in the Stimulus Package that No One in Congress Read… Done Deal!!! – With Back-up Research But they need some kind of actual HC Bill to activate most of these diabolical measures… Wake-up America!

Arrogant Obama Attacks former McCain at HC Summit

Pelosi: It’s Not a Health Care Bill… It’s a Jobs Bill

Accurate quote should be:  It’s Not a HealthCare Bill… It’s a Power Grab Bill, America!!

I’m sure there will be many moments from today’s health-care summit that will be worthy of clipping and saving, but this one from our new colleague Greg Hengler may be the strangest one of all.  In arguing for the current version of ObamaCare, whatever that is at the moment, Nancy Pelosi claims that it will create four million jobs — or nearly half of all the jobs lost over the last two years:

Let’s put this in perspective. The health-care sector already employs 14.3 million people.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that this sector will add 3.2 million more people in the next eight years, thanks to an aging population.  It can do that now because it doesn’t operate under price controls that will come as part of the ObamaCare bill.  If Congress passes a bill that forces smaller payments to doctors and hospitals, that will actually impede hiring to meet the demand — and that is exactly what “bending the cost curve downward” means.

Pelosi also claims that passing the House version of ObamaCare would add 400,000 new jobs immediately.  Where?  Well, those would be the people that the government would have to hire to run their exchanges, manage the federal public option, and enforce individual mandates, among other ObamaCare initiatives. It’s a bureaucratic expansion, the kind of “jobs bill” that will further burden the private sector.

The last 5-minutes of the Summit said it all… Obama intimated that they would do whatever it takes (Saul Alinsky all the way) to get this bill passed without real bipartisan input or compromise and in the end that means reconciliation even if the American people don’t want this bill.  The only problem is that right now… Congress doesn’t even have the votes for that.  So stay committed and keep up the pressure.

Obama… Little Change On His Side… But Demanding Major Concessions from GOP

“Baby steps don’t get you where we want to go”, said to Obama and the true underlying stand of the President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid the Dems is that in the end they are going to push their agenda, if the GOP doesn’t make major concessions that that majority of the American people don’t want.
President Obama, trying to make the Republicans look like the party of “NO” one last time, said they would move forward with or without them.  Translation:  We will do whatever we need to do, implying reconciliation, if the GOP does not make dramatic concessions.  Is that really what bipartisan compromise is all about??

President Obama admitted that he has a plan two… a scaled down version of healthcare reform that might be both more palatable to the American People and closer to a bipartisan bill… but Democratic leaders (Pelosi and Reid) have convinced him not to go down that road, but instead to make another attempt the Obama/Pelosi/Reid ideological takeover of both U.S. healthcare and one sixth of the American Economy using reconciliation an option that  was created for and intended to be used for budget  bills and measures, not social legislation that will transform America… and the Dems know that, but choose to ignore it, just as they choose to ignore the will of the majority of their constituents and the American People.

Karl Rove said that this summit was going to be Kabuki theatre… and sadly it appears he was right!!

Snorefest 2010 – Obama’s HealthCare Summitt

So the healthcare debates have finally come to C-SPAN, but Glenn was correct in predicting it would essentially be a bunch of political grandstanding. Which makes for some pretty boring television as politicians read their talking points. In particular, this exchange between McCain and Obama was a lowlight. McCain painfully demonstrated why he got dominated in the election. Is this just another dog and pony show, or can something good actually come out of these talks? Glenn talks about it on radio today. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)

Guess We Might Be In Trouble… But Let’s Try to Scam the GOP and the American People Anyway!!

Amazingly, Reid said at today's Summit that nobody has talked about using reconciliation except for the GOP... HMMM?!? Amazingly it sounded that was what President Obama was saying during his final 5-minute... join me or else speech!?!

"You can put lipstick on a pig... but it is still a pig... and this bill is a pig!!"

Video Flashback: Dems Howl with Rage Over Nuclear Option | The FOX Nation

Charles Krauthammer said, “In the last few minutes after 7-hours that the whole summit was a show to justify reconciliation, which is what they wanted to do all along!!”

Please keep up the good fight. The president intimated that his would be the final chapter on this Bill and HC Reform, at least for now.  Let us make it is the final chapter of ObamaCare type of reform and that it doesn't pass.  Right now they don't have the votes!!!

Related:  2/3 of the HC Bill Passed Already!  Hidden in the Stimulus Package that No One in Congress Read… Done Deal!!! – With Back-up Research But they need some kind of actual HC Bill to activate most of these diabolical measures… Wake-up America!

Prescription For Healthcare Reform: A Physician's Inside Perspective of the Real Problems Plaguing the System

WH Quietly Plots 2012 Campaign Run

Obama is always talking out of both sides of his mouth…

Obama has said more than once that he would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two term president; right now whether her realizes it or not he is in the one-term mediocre to bad U.S. President category.

President Barack Obama’s top advisers are quietly laying the groundwork for the 2012 reelection campaign, which is likely to be run out of Chicago and managed by White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions.

The planning for now consists entirely of private conversations, with Obama aides at all levels indulging occasionally in closed-door 2012 discussions while focusing ferociously on the midterm elections and health care reform, the Democratic sources said. “The gathering storm is the 2010 elections,” one top official said.
But the sources said Obama has given every sign of planning to run again and wants the next campaign to resemble the highly successful 2008 effort.
David Axelrod, White House senior adviser, may leave the West Wing to rejoin his family in Chicago and reprise his role as Obama’s muse, overseeing the campaign’s tone, themes, messages and advertising, the sources said.

David Plouffe, the Obama for America campaign manager, described by one friend as "the father of all this," will be a central player in the reelect, perhaps as an outside adviser.
"The conversations are beginning, but decisions haven't been made," a top official said. "If you look at David Plouffe's stepped-up level of activity with the political organization [as an outside adviser on the 2010 races], that is obviously the beginning of the process."

Anita Dunn, former White House communications director, will be intimately involved, too. Brad Woodhouse, the Democratic National Committee’s communications director, enjoys rising stock and would be a logical choice to be communications director for the reelection campaign, the sources said.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett are likely to remain at the president’s side in Washington, while exercising major influence over the campaign. Pfeiffer, communications director of the last campaign and always a trusted insider, has a higher public profile every day.

Other central figures are likely to be DNC Executive Director Jennifer O'Malley Dillon; her husband, Patrick Dillon, who is deputy White House political director and is likely to bring his extensive gubernatorial contacts to Chicago; Mitch Stewart, executive director of the DNC's Organizing for America; Jon Carson, national field director of Obama for America; and White House political director Patrick Gaspard.
The DNC sees Republican challengers ramping up earlier than ever and has decided to begin defining potential opponents early. Operatives are already assembling research and drafting unflattering narratives to push about the leading possible 2012 candidates.

Even though the planning is still very preliminary, the campaign is likely to launch in just over a year. President Bill Clinton opened his second presidential campaign in the March after his first midterm congressional elections, and President George W. Bush opened Bush-Cheney '04 a month later in the political cycle.

Source: Politico

Obama Campaign Are Focuses on Talk Radio - But mind you, Obama and Valerie Jarrett were adamant that Obama wasn't even thinking about running...?!?

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Re-Post on Obamas' disturbing personality traits

Perhaps This Explains Part of the Confusion…

Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer
By Ali Sina
2008/09/22
This article has been published in more than 1000 sites, erroneously attributing it to Dr. Vaknin. One person even wrote to me accusing me of plagiarism (double whammy?). Those sites are in error. If you find this article attributed to anyone else but me please write to them and correct them. You are welcome to reproduce this article, or any of my articles on Obama, listed at the buttom, in part or in their entirety, but you must provide a link to the source in this site. Thank you.

I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama after the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident – a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was soon put off, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.

It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, “I love you.” Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It’s only his words, nothis achievements that is causing this much uproar.

When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change. During 1979, when the Iranians were tired of the dictatorial regime of the late Shah, they embraced Khomeini, not because they wanted Islam, but because he promised them change. The word in the street was, “anything is better than the Shah.” They found their error when it was too late.

Khomeini promised there would be separation between religion and state. He lied and they did not care to look into his past to see whether he actually meant what he said. Had they done that they would have seen that he always believed in caliphate and the rule of Islam. People gobbled everything he told them uncritically.
They wanted to believe and therefore closed their eyes so they did not see what they did not want to see. Eyes welled when he spoke. Masses poured into the streets by the millions, screamed and shouted to greet him. People kissed his pictures. Some saw his portrait reflected on the Moon.

Listening to Obama ... it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch Khomeini, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell.

I was amused to hear a listener calling Fox News Radio's Tom Sullivan Show, (Feb 11) and saying: "Listening to Obama ... it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell." ( Videos of Hitler’s speeches are available on Youtube. They are worth a look.)

Equating anyone to Hitler by highlighting the similarities between the two is a logical fallacy. This fallacy, known as reductio ad Hitlerum is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy. I believe it is wrong to trivialize the holocaust and the horrors of Nazism by comparing our opponents to Hitler.

However, Hitler, prior to coming to power had not killed anyone. He was insane, but few could see that. Far from it, he was seen as a gifted man and hailed as the savior of Germany. He was admired throughout the world. He appealed to the masses of people – the working class and particularly to women, and did not just inspire them, he “elevated” them. Thousands rallied to listen to his passionate speeches. They shed tears when he spoke. Women fainted during his speeches. To Germans, he was not a politician, but a demigod, a messiah. They envisioned him as truly a magical figure of majestic wisdom and glory. They worshiped him. They surrendered their wills to him. He restored their national pride. He projected himself as their savior. He ran on the platform of change and hope. Change he delivered all right, but hopes he shattered.

I think it is fair to say that the Illinois senator puts the same passion in his speeches that Hitler used to put in his, and he evokes similar raw emotions in his audience. This much we can agree.

Okay, we can also agree that both Hitler and Charlie Chaplin wore square moustaches. So what?

The Cult of Personality
There are other disturbing similarities. Like Hitler and Khomeini, Obama also likes to create a cult of personality around himself. As stated above, when a large number of a population is discontent, a charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and present himself as the agent of change. He can create a cult of Personality by associating himself with the idea of change. He convinces everyone that things are terrible and a drastic change is needed. He then casts himself as the only person who can deliver this revolutionary transformation that everyone is waiting for. He portrays himself as a benevolent guide; the only one who cares about people and their needs and can pull them out of their alleged misery. In reality, they have no clue about how to address the problem - have no experience, no track record. But they are convincing because they are self assured.

These revolutionary leaders need foes. They exaggerate the problems. They make everything look gloomy. They lie, cheat and slander their opponents while casting themselves as the saviors of the nation. Hitler chose the Jews to blame for everything that was wrong in Germany. Khomeini made the Shah and his westernization plans his scapegoats. Obama has chosen President George W. Bush to smear. He can rally people around himself, as long as he can instill in them the dislike of Bush and equate his rival, McCain to him. Sigmund Freud wrote, "It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness"
(Civilization and Its Discontents).

A cult of personality is excessive adulation, admiration and exaltation of a charismatic leader, often with unproven merits or achievements. It is similar to hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders.

Let us read a few of the comments Obama’s fans have made about him. Their unbounded adulation of this totally unknown figure is proof of my claim.

Jon Robin Baitz is the creator of the ABC series "Brothers & Sisters." He writes:

Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones, those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor.

For twenty years Obama was part of Jeremiah Wright’s racist church and listened to all the hate which that man spewed against the Jews and the “rich White America.” Obama did not object to any of those hateful comments and even donated $20,000 dollars to his Trinity United Church of Christ. Baitz is willing to overlook all that and, mesmerized by Obama’s speeches, he embraces a man who up until yesterday supported the racist views of his spiritual mentor. He calls Obama’s speech "glorious," and concludes he is honest and moral. How did he come to that hasty conclusion? There is no evidence of that except his "gut feeling." That observation is subjective. We have not seen any evidence of Obama's honesty yet. On the contrary, he has been caught with a litany of lies.

Clearly Sen. Obama has a charming effect on his audience, who after listening to him are so moved that they willingly give up their reason and follow their hearts. Let’s see how Baitz adulates Obama to the point of worship.

Barack Obama's speech, perhaps one of the most important in modern political history pushed us as a people to move beyond race and gender, beyond Democrat and Republican, beyond politics and into reviving the spirit of the nation itself. To talk, to talk at home, at work, at the dinner table. To really finally talk. What a great day, and where else in the world but in the United States?

Today I am very proud to be an American.

Remembering the reaction of Iranians to Khomeini’s speeches, this is all deja vu for me.

There is an old adage that says, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell who you are.” Don’t the quality of Obama’s friends and associates tell us about the man? Shouldn't we look at the history of this man to ascertain his truthfulness? One characteristic of cult of personality is that people become ready to close their eyes. They find excuses and rationalize the sins of their leader.

Another Obama worshipper is Ezra Klein. He is an associate editor at The American Prospect. Klein wrote:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Obama is not seen by his admirers as a politician but as something holy. Klein says “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh.”

The truth is that Obama is nothing but words! What is scary is that so many smart people are willing to fall for his empty words. Interestingly the same Ezra Kleinhad earlier said:

Obama is a cipher, an easy repository for the hopes and dreams of liberals everywhere...But if Obama avoided being battle-tested in 2004 by the grace of God, it's his own timidity that has kept his name clean since. Given his national profile and formidable political talents, he could have been a potent spokesman for Democratic causes in the Senate. Instead, he has refused to expend his political or personal capital on a single controversial issue, preferring to offer anodyne pieces of legislation and sign on to the popular efforts of others...Indeed, Obama is that oddest of all creatures: a leader who's never led. There are no courageous, lonely crusades to his name, or supremely unlikely electoral battles beneath his belt. He won election running basically unopposed, and then refused to open himself to attack by making a controversial but correct issue his own."

Quite a shift I would say. What did exactly Obama do, for Klein to change his views so drastically? Nothing! Obama has won this man’s heart only by the power of his mesmerizing words.

He is making his conquests, through the sheer power of his oratory. That is how Hitler won the hearts of the Germans. As Obama’s life story shows, his words don’t have any bearing on reality.


Words are powerful, but when they are not backed by any substance they are empty rhetoric.

Todd Gitlin, is professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia U... He is another worshipper of Obama. This is what he says about his leader.

This speech was a triumph on so many levels, does one dare hope it will turn the trick for hordes of parsing skeptics and listeners whose eyes did not water? First, Obama took the high road, which is also the long and demanding road. He refused to "move on" with a cursory acknowledgment that "mistakes were made." He did not acknowledge. He preached and he reasoned.”

Let us pause here and examine what this professor of journalism and sociology says. Obama was a close friend of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and listened to his racist sermons for twenty years. Wright is a man who has intense hatred for the Jews, for whites and for America. This clip shows some of his remarks made from the pulpit. Here is a gleaning from his sermons:

• We [The White controlled America] have supported state terrorism against Palestinians and Black South Africans … Because of the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own home front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
• No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America. That is in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America.
• Government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew that Japanese are going to attack.
• They [Government] purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!
• What is going on in White America, U.S. of KKK?
• Black men turning on Black men? That is fighting the wrong enemy. You both are primary targets in an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat.
• What we [America] is doing is the same thing Al Qaida is doing, under a different flag.
• Oh I am so glad, that I got a God who knows what it is to be a poor Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by and run by rich White people.
• Yes, 911 happened to us, and so did slavery happen to us. Yes the World Trade Center happened to us, and so did White supremacy happen to us.
• “Barack knows what it means to be a Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich White people.”

When all these came to light, at first the Illinois senator denied having heard them. That excuse was not believable. Wright was Obama's spiritual mentor and the most influential man in his life. And yet he expects us to believe he listened to his sermons for 20 years but did not pay attention to what he was saying?

So he changed his position and admitted to having heard them, but he categorically condemned them. Obama went one step further. He did not just condemn the racist remarks of his Pastor, but he preached and he sermonized how bad are they are. Now, this requires some audacity that only a narcissist can muster. Instead of apologizing and recognizing his error, Obama turned the table and preached to others.

How can we understand this? The man himself is the sinner but instead of acknowledging his sins, he preaches to others about the vices of those sins. The answer can be found in the
description of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists will never admit being wrong. They are always one step ahead of you.

Those who remember Rev. Jimmy Swaggart know that he was one of the most popular and successful televangelists of all times. During the 1980s, he had millions of fans all over the world. He mesmerized his audience. He was more than a rock star, he was a phenomenon. Swaggart was a preacher of "morality." He was so against promiscuity and unlawful sex that he went after two other televangelist magnates, Marvin Gorman and Jimmy Baker, exposed their adultery and brought their empires down.

However, what narcissists preach and what they do are two different things. Soon after exposing Gorman’s adultery, Swaggart himself was photographed with a prostitute in a motel room.
He was banned from giving sermons for three months. But he could not stay away from the church that provided him with adulation and the people who fed his narcissistic need. He said, "If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell." So he returned to the pulpit and after shedding a few crocodile tears of repentance, he went right on preaching morality, chastising adultery and sermoning to others, how THEY should live a chaste life.

This requires audacity. How one who has been caught with a prostitute, literally with his pants down, could have the cheek to preach to others about the very thing he is guilty of? NPD provides the answer to both Swaggart and Obama’s responses, when caught red handed. The narcissist will not apologize for his own sins; he will go on preaching to you about the evilness of those sins. If Professor Gitlin had read a book or two on narcissism, he would have not been hoodwinked by Obama’s preaching about racial harmony after being caught with his proverbial pants down in his racist church. Giltin is not alone; millions of Americans have fallen for this narcissist’s mind games.

Prof. Gitlin continues:
“The Reverend Jeremiah Wright,” he [Obama]said, “had spoken in an ‘incendiary’ manner,” but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy.
Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don't think I'm especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.

It is amazing to see to what extent people are willing to go to eulogize another human being. It is this excess that constitutes the cult of personality. The difference between admiration and cult of personality is in the degree of adulation. Is it not fair to say that Obama has the same effect on his fans that Hitler, Khomeini or other famous demagogues such as Joseph Stalin or Mao Ze Dong had? I am not equating Obama to those mass murderers. Obama has not killed anyone (at least not yet). I am only comparing their effects on their audience, particularly prior to their rise to power.

Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming.

Obama’s speeches are grandiose. They are other worldly. He may talk about the war in Iraq, taxes or social security. It does not matter how mundane is the subject, he makes them sound transcendental and his audience is moved to tears. His worshippers do not go to listen to his plans. He has yet to offer any that is workable and different. They go to bask in his glory, to get high. Obama presents himself as someone with a unique vision and grasp of the entire problems affecting, not just the nation but the world, a pretense that is incommensurate with his track record. When in a meeting with House Democrats waxing lyrical about his trip to Europe, he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is wait....”

The world is waiting for Obama, according to Obama. In one of his rallies he reiterated this delusion of grandiosity and said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for." This sentence is logically absurd. What actually Obama wanted to say, which he masked with fake modesty is “I am the one the world has been waiting for.”

When you fall for someone to the extent that Obama’s followers have fallen for him, you surrender your reason and individuality to him willingly. When millions of people surrender their hearts and their minds to one person the result can be catastrophic. This is what happened in Germany with Hitler, in China with Mao, in the Soviet Union with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Iran with Khomeini, and so on and so forth. Today, we think these men were monsters, but that was not what millions of their worshipers thought. Those people loved them. Dictators can’t dictate, unless people are willing to be dictated.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Cult of Personality:

"A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies.

"A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders."

Who is Obama?
Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love, also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”

Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens.

Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Vaknin explains: “Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious. They are subtle, refined, socially-adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. Both types [cerebral and somatic] equally lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless or driven.” These were the very traits that distinguished Hitler and Khomeini. Many of these traits can be seen in Obama. As for his ruthlessness, perhaps his support of legislation to let babies die if they survive abortion, gives a glimps into his soul, that he may lacks empathy, does not value life, and if in the position of power can be ruthless.

Narcissists need power to show their ruthlessness. Considering the fact that Obama neglected his own half brother, George Hussein Obama, who lives on one dollar per month in Kenya, we can’t vouch for Obama’s empathy or say he is a caring person.

What is Narcissism?


The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes narcissism as a personality disorder that “revolve around a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and sense of entitlement. Often individuals feel overly important and will exaggerate achievements and will accept, and often demand, praise and admiration despite worthy achievements.”

The third and fourth editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of 1980 and 1994 and the European ICD-10 describe NPD in similar language: An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met:

Pathological narcissism, is not akin to typical narcissism—someone with a hedonistic or self-centered sense of self —but rather someone with a very weak sense of self. Obama’s narcissism is pathological.
Narcissists seek power. That is the whole purpose of their existence. Power for them is the elixir of life. Those who know about NPD can’t help but notice it in Obama’s posture, the tone of his voice, his demeanor and particularly his grandiose claims and unscripted adlibs.

Narcissim has degrees. When it is extreme it shows in the posture and the way the narcissist walks and talks. Obama's posture, exudes haughtiness. He is all puffery. Compare his posture to those of Hitler, Stalin and Saddam.

According to Vaknin, Obama displays the following behaviors, which are among the hallmarks of pathological narcissism: - Subtly misrepresents facts and expediently and opportunistically shifts positions, views, opinions, and "ideals" (e.g., about campaign finance, re-districting). These flip-flops do not cause him overt distress and are ego-syntonic (he feels justified in acting this way). Alternatively, refuses to commit to a standpoint and, in the process, evidences a lack of empathy.

- Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image. This has to do with magical thinking. Obama already sees himself as president because he is firmly convinced that his dreams, thoughts, and wishes affect reality.

Additionally, he denies the gap between his fantasies and his modest or limited real-life achievements (for instance, in 12 years of academic career, he didn't publish a single scholarly paper or book).
- Feels that he is above the law.

- Talks about himself in the 3rd person singular or uses the regal "we" and craves to be the exclusive center of attention, even adulation - Has a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his "mission".

- Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)
- Displays false modesty and unctuous "folksiness" but is unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.
- Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.
- Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it).
Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers.

They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers’ souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it it too late.

One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then,his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia: a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father.

At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”

In Vaknin’s words, “Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers.”

The pathological narcissist has a very weak sense of self. He compensates his devalued and injured self with pomposity and by projecting a false image of majesty and authority. He retreats into a bubble universe of fantasy, in which he is loved, respected and omnipotent. All children create such a world. Narcissists simply don’t leave it. They carry this world of pretence into their adulthood. With the passage of time, this world becomes to them as real as the real world, to the point that they can’t tell the difference.

When Obama acts presidential, he is simply acting out his childhood fantasy of omnipotence and grandeur. Emotionally, he is still a little hurt boy, neglected and unloved in the body and mind of a grown up man.
Such people can be dangerous. Narcissists have the emotional maturity of a child, or even an animal, but the intellect of a man. They feel like a beast, but think like a human.

If we look into the childhood of all narcissists, we can see that invariably they were abused. Saddam was born to a widow who after losing her husband and her 12 year old son was so distressed that she attempted suicide. Before his birth, she would pull out clumps of her hair and pummel her pregnant abdomen with her fists. Saddam Hussein in his own official biography recounts his unhappy childhood. Hitler was the son of a very abusive man who would beat him regularly. From Saddam to Osama, to Hitler, to Stalin, to Khomeini, to Mao and to Kim Jong Ill, it is wounded childhood that causes NPD. Obama’s chaotic childhood and his continuous struggle to find his identity make him a prime candidate for NPD.

Hitler was confused about his identity. His father was an illegitimate son of a Jew. He chose to be in denial of that part of himself and his response was the genocide of the Jews.

Obama’s search for his identity led him to a racist church that preached “Black Power.” He changed his given name Barry to Barack, in an attempt to rid himself of the only vestige he had with his white heritage.

Narcissists have only one issue. They want power and will do and say anything to get it. Their words mean nothing to them. They do not intend to keep them. They look into your eyes and swear on a stack of Bibles that they are not going to do something when that is exactly what they intend to do. They break their promises when it suits them and annul their treaties when they can get away with it. They lie,
and lie,
and lie,
and lie, and lie, and lie,
and lie,
and lie,
and lie,
and lie,
and lie, and lie,
and lie,
and lie.
Narcissists are pathological liars. They lie even to themselves. Ironically, they are the first to believe their own lies. When normal people lie, they show signs of distress.

Narcissists don’t. They can pass any polygraph test with flying colors.
It is this conviction that fools people around them making them believe in their truthfulness and sincerity. In a twisted way they are sincere because, although they are conscience that they are not truthful, they believe in their own lies. This is difficult to understand and even more difficult to explain, but for a narcissist fantasy and reality are intertwined. The narcissist’s delusional thoughts of grandiosity are real to him.

Narcissistic Society


Germans are not particularly an evil race. They are no better or worse than any other nation. And yet, despite their advanced culture and civility they committed the most hideous crime in modern history. They murdered up to ten million people, because those unfortunate souls did not meet their "Master Race standards of ethnic purity.” Hitler did not kill anyone; the Germans did.

So the question is: What made these smart and highly civilized people commit such horrendous acts of savagery?

According to Vaknin, “The narcissistic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies.”

Is America a narcissistic society? Vaknin believes “Pathological narcissism is a ubiquitous phenomenon because every human being - regardless of the nature of his society and culture - develops healthy self esteem early in life [which he calls healthy narcissism].

Healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by abuse - and abuse, alas, is a universal human behavior. By 'abuse, we mean any refusal to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of the individual - smothering, doting, and excessive expectations - are as abusive as beating and incest.”

The emergence of so many cults in America is proof that America is not an exception to the norm. If demagogue narcissists, like Jim Jones, David Koresh or Jimmy Swaggart can find a fertile ground in America, why not one with a political message?

The Power of Manipulation


Narcissists are manipulative and extremely resourceful. They know how to the play their game, and how to get what they want, by using others. Obama is the least experienced senator among the Democrats. His political views are the most foolish of them all.

He opposed the surge in Iraq saying it will make the situation worse and he was wrong. He thinks the solution to terrorism is to sit with terrorist states without precondition and negotiate with them. When Russia invaded Georgia, all this genius did was to urge both sides to "exert restraint". Everything this man has said so far reveals his ignorance in economical, political and military matters. Despite that,this junior senator has managed to rally the seasoned senators of the Democratic Party around himself and, not withstanding his ineptitude, he has emerged as the leader de facto of his party and their presidential candidate.

This is a remarkable feat. One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.

Anyone can be fooled by narcissists. Just as experienced and smart senators of the Democratic Party have surrendered to the charisma of Obama, a man who is inferior to them all in every sense; many members of the media also have fallen for his charm hook, line and sinker. The American media is soft on Obama, but extremely harsh and deceitfully unfair on Governor Palin. The “rich White Americans,” the very people he despised for twenty years are swooning for him. The Jews who he opposed all his life are backing him. They are opening their wallets and supporting his campaign in an unprecedented way. He has managed to charm even the Kennedys. Ted Kennedy, the lion in Winter, passed the Kennedy mantle unto Obama. That was hugely symbolic. As for the great Clintons, he made them submissive, and for whatever reason, incomprehensible to me, they are playing his game.

Think about it. Obama is a cipher. In reality, he is nobody. And yet, thanks to his overbearing display of authority, the very mask that he is wearing to hide his devalued and injured self, he has overwhelmed all the giants of the Democratic party. Cults are full of smart people who have been hoodwinked by mentally sick needy people.

Could all this phenomenal support and unbounded adulation erupt into violence? All the abuses and killings in Nazi Germany were done by the Germans, ordinary people who loved Hitler and believed in the glorious tomorrow that he was promising them.

Hitler was insane, but those who did his bidding were not. Despite being smart, they did not hesitate to fulfill their fuehrer’s wishes and commit the most heinous crimes. The same thing happened in Iran.

Ordinary people, once under the spell of Khomeini, acted like beasts. This is what happens when sane people follow insane people.

Could the same happen in America? Why not? Look how millions of people literally worship Obama. With some people I cannot even talk about Obama. They cannot tolerate any criticism of him. They get angry and, not only they want to end the conversation but threaten to end the friendship. I am familiar with this kind of religious devotion to a person. The reaction that I get from Obama worshippers is similar to that of Muslims when their prophet is criticized. They are even prone to insult you. See how they overlook Obama's blatant lies and are willing to forgive his major sins such as racism. Note how the mainstream media bends the rules, twists the facts, exaggerates Obama’s little virtues, absolves his sins, and even lies to sell him to the public. Compare the royal treatment that the liberal press has given to Obama to how unfairly they treat Governor Palin; how they smear her character and belittle her experience and achievement. ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Governor Palin was a stain on journalistic integrity. Is it more important that Palin has not traveled the world and has not shaken hands with heads of states, or the fact that Obama has lied so many times? Under what pretext should an ordinary citizen visit heads of foreign states? The question itself is preposterous.

While not shaking hands with foreign heads of states does not disqualify one to run for any office, The Logan Act (est. 1799) makes it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.


That is exactly what Obama did during his trip to Iraq, a charge that Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi confirmed, while trying to deny it. She said, “In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.”

This is high treason. Ordinary citizens have no right to enter into negotiations with foreign countries and make deals against the interest of their Government. Obama tells the Iraqis not to let the American soldiers go, so he can call them in January,supposedly when he is the president and claim victory for himself.

Will Mr. Gibson or anyone in the liberal media question Obama for this crime?

Gibson’s questions were tricky. He asked the Governor, “what do you think of Bush’s doctrine,” and then, instead of explaining himself, he insisted that his interviewee define what he meant. After letting the Governor look puzzled, Gibson explained what he understands of "Bush Doctrine," which according to him is preemptive strike.

Assuming this is a “Bush doctrine,” is it his only doctrine? Isn’t being pro life also a Bush doctrine? Isn’t Christianity or creationism a Bush doctrine? Bush believes in a multitude of things and they change as his thinking evolves over time.

How can one know what Gibson has in mind? Do you see the trickery?.

Many members of the media have been hoodwinked by the charm of the rising fuehrer. They have become his extensions, act deceitfully and dishonestly to make their beloved leader’s rise to power a reality.
How can smart people let themselves be manipulated by a psychopath to such an extent that they become quasi zombies? Recall what the smart Germans did under the spell of Hitler.

Bear in mind what the Soviets did under the influence of Stalin.

Consider what the Japanese did during WWII when they believed in the divinity of their emperor. Evoke how the Chinese Red Guard massacred millions of their own countrymen when they were blinded by their love for Mao and his faux notion of equality. Look at the Islamic terrorists. Can’t we say the same about them? Isn’t Islamic savagery the result of Muslims’ uncritical devotion to a long deceased narcissist? If you don't know what I am talking about, I invite you to read my book, Understanding Muhammad. When sane people fall for the lies of an insane man, they act insanely.

No one is born a terrorist. Terrorists are ordinary people who do the bidding of a pathological narcissist whom they love and worship as their liberator. They are so enamored with him that they stop thinking and act like automatons. To prove their love and devotion they can commit murder and even suicide. They can kill their own children, as the followers of Jim Jones did in Guyana. The narcissist encourages all of this behavior because it validates his delusion of omnipotence. It reassures him that he is loved, respected, counted, taken seriously. Did you hear the song played during the Democratic convention? It said, “This is the church.” And who do you think is the head of that church? Americans are as fallible and as gullible as everyone else. It is foolhardy to say "it won't happen to us." Just as today, Obama’s supporters happily engage in intellectual dishonesty, deceitful reporting, and even hooliganism, I predict they will soon, merrily commit the same crimes other nations committed under the spell of their narcissistic leaders.

The Sick Symbiosis
Narcissists need their narcissistic supply to fuel their narcissism. They get it through adulation from people around them. These people are often also needy people. They are known as co-dependants. The narcissist and his co-dependent therefore, form a sick symbiosis in which both benefit. Let me give you one example to explain this mechanism.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. In December 2006, in an article entitled “The Ridiculousness & Danger That Is Obama '08” Sirota lambasted the Democrats who wanted Obama, an incognito junior senator, to run for presidency.

Sometimes, you really just have to sit back and laugh at the ridiculousness of the celebrity-obsessed political culture we now live in.” wrote Sirota in his column. “Take this Chicago Sun-Times article by Lynn Sweet in which she predicts Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) will run for president. She goes through what he has to do to prepare for his run, and this is the one that just makes ou chuckle: “Develop signature legislative initiatives: Once the emocrats control Congress come January, there's a chance to pass egislation. Watch for Obama to focus on alternative energy measures, ealth care and ethics reform legislation that stalled earlier this year." 

Think about it. The national media is swooning over Obama, begging him to run for president. Yet, at the same time, they are implicitly acknowledging that he has actually not developed significant legislative initiatives." In other words, we are o simply accept that the Obama for President wave has absolutely othing to do with anything that the man HAS DONE and further, that henever he does decide to use his enormous political capital to do omething, it is all in pursuit of the White House - not any actual ense of DOING SOMETHING for the people who elected him to the Senate.

I don't blame Obama for not having accomplished much - he's been in the Senate for two years. As I wrote in the Nation, the main concern about him is that he doesn't ctually seem to ASPIRE to anything outside of the Washington power tructure (other than maybe running for another higher office), and doesn't seem to be interested in challenging the status quo in any undamental way. Using his senate career as a guide, it suggests that ny presidential run by him is about him, his speaking ability and his awned over talent for "connecting" (whatever the hell that means).” (Read he rest of Sirota’s comment in his own blog.)

I could not say it better. Sirota understood the problem with Obama. He realized that not only this man has zero experience; he is actually a power hungry charlatan that aspires to othing other than running for another higher office. He then expressed is outrage at the fellow Democrats who tried to make a leader out of his quack.

These Democrats laid all their hopes on Obama. They were captivated by his charm. They could not see that this man is wearing a mask of authority to cover his inner feeling of insecurity; hat he is a fraud, a narcissist. When approached, Obama at first onfessed to his inexperience, but the sycophants in the Democratic arty, were so desperate to find a charismatic leader that they could ot let go of their prize. It does not take much to persuade a arcissist that he can do anything. He is already convinced that he s smarter and better than everyone else. So, despite his own onfession of lack of experience, Obama could not resist the temptation.
To nurture his narcissism, the narcissist needs narcissistic supply. It is always people around him who provide that supply and encourage him in his psychosis. If it were not for Khadijah ho reassured her husband that his hallucinations were not demonic, as e had thought, but divine revelations, Muhammad may never have tarted his prophetic career. It was she who encouraged him to launch a new religion, instead of calling an exorcist.
This is called co-dependency. The co-dependent, who also suffers from low self esteem, seeks his or her grandeur and narcissistic supply in the greatness of a narcissist of whom she seeks o become a part.

According to Wikipedia, “a ‘codependent’ is loosely defined as someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for persons who depend on him or her. A codependent’ is one side of a relationship between mutually needy eople. The dependent, or obviously needy party(s) may have al, hysical, financial difficulties, or addictions they seemingly are nable to surmount.

The "codependent" party exhibits behavior which ontrols, makes excuses for, pities, and takes other actions toerpetuate the obviously needy party's condition, because of their esire to be needed and fear of doing anything that would change the relationship.”

The Democrats were desperately in need of a charismatic leader. They saw their hope in a needy man, a narcissist who portrayed himself as self assured, eloquent and authoritative and ad sex appeal. It was love at first sight and they set on to polish him as their candidate. In this relationship the Democratic Party became the co-dependant of the narcissist Obama. They needed someone to hine so they can bask in his splendor. And Obama needed them to ulfill his delusions of grandiosity. This is how codependency works. It s a sick symbiosis of two needy parties. Behind every successful arcissist, there is always a co-dependent.

When the co-dependent and the narcissist team-up the result can be catastrophic. Now we have folie à deux. The delusional belief of the narcissist about himself is ransmitted and shared by another needy, but ostensibly smart person.

The codependent validates and encourages the narcissist's delusion. As he result, the narcissist becomes bolder, more assertive, more authoritative and more confident. The partnership of the narcissist and the codependent dons their delusion with the mantle of credibility. The codependent will then do everything to persuade others s well. The narcissist's cause is himself. The codependent will champion that cause. By recruiting others, they find validation for their own belief about the narcissist. Soon the folie à deux becomes folie à trois, then folie à quatre, nd when you are a presidential candidate and are followed by a hoard f journalists and cameramen, before you blink there will be folie plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric lassifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic isorder.


The masses of people have no first hand knowledge of the narcissist, but they jump on the bandwagon thanks to a very human trait, misnomered as “herd mentality.” They reason, how an so many people be wrong and satisfied by this fallacy blindly join the cult of personality worship.

Like gasoline being poured on a fire, the sycophants around the narcissist provide him with an abundance of narcissistic fuel to feed upon. The unbounded adulations poured at his eet further reinforce and escalate the unique and divine self-image of he narcissist. The larger the narcissistic fuel supply becomes, the ore inflated becomes his ego, and the more firmly set in his own mind becomes the conviction of his own invincibility and superiority. The narcissist reaches a stage that he will claim to be a revolutionary leader, an agent of change, a renascence man, the hand of God, even a messenger or prophet of God. Just as a fire can grow infinitely large as long as it receives its fuel, there is no limit to the delusional belief of a narcissist. When millions of people yell and scream and shout “I love you,” an ordinary narcissist is prone to believe that he is God. If the narcissist happens to be a person with power and authority, in a position of high leadership commanding armies and weapons of mass destruction, the result too often leads to the horrific slaughter of millions of innocent souls in the gulag, gas chambers, or killing fields.

Unbounded adulation reconfirms the narcissist that he is right and that anyone who disagrees with him is evil and therefore it is just to punish him. Narcissists do not understand the concept of the Golden Rule. Right is what benefits them and wrong is what harms them. They fight for their own interest and are convinced that this is justice. Human rights and human lives are important only to the extent that they meet their narcissistic needs. They are worthless, and can be disposed of, if they don’t.

Ayatollah Montazeri, the man who was originally chosen to succeed Khomeini, recalled when Khomeini ordered the execution of 3000 youths who were captured during a demonstration against him. Montazeri protested and Khomeini angrily told him, “I will respond for my actions in the Day of Judgment.” Khomeini was a man of God. However, as a narcissist, he was convinced that because he was a superior being and a chosen one, a delusional belief that was reconfirmed by millions of people when they cheered for him, anyone who opposed him was opposing God and therefore by killing them he was doing the maker of the universe a favor.

There is no cure for narcissism. However, deprived of adulation, the disorder will remain dormant. The narcissist, without the narcissistic supply, may become grumpy and complain that the world does not understand them or appreciate their importance. They will continue to cheat and lie when they can get away with it, but the damage that they can cause is not earth shattering.

However, when a narcissist becomes the focus of unlimited narcissistic supply, where millions of people scream at his feet, he goes insane.

As narcissism maturates, the narcissist becomes more demanding for respect and compliance and more intolerant of criticism. He becomes paranoid, and divides the world into “us” vs. “them”. He casts himself and his minions as victims and instills in them the distrust of the “others”.

The narcissist’s anger and intolerance is projected on his servile followers who also become angry and intolerant of criticism of their leader. Remember the sick symbiosis between the narcissist and his codependents? The followers get their narcissistic supply by elevating the status of their leader. The greater he looks, the better they feel. They see their glory is his glory. Conversely, when the narcissist is criticized, his followers become offended. They take those criticisms personally and their instinct of self defense is triggered. They will become vigilantes and will silence their critics through intimidation, bullying, mocking, threats and violence (like calling those who disagree with Obama, racists).

This paragraph is a later addition. About a week after I wrote the above, Missouri sheriffs and top rosecutors formed Obama "Truth Squads" ... I am no prophet, but see how my predictions are coming to pass. This is only the beginning. Narcissists are intolerant of criticism and create a reign of terror to silence their critics.
Sirota was no fool. He saw what is wrong with Obama and was right on the money when he described him. But, as I have repeated many times, narcissists are gifted manipulators. Sirota is an influential man. Obama needed his support and called him.

It's not every day that God calls your cell phone,” wrote Sirota, sarcastically speaking of Obama, ‘This is Barack Obama.’ Thinking it was a good friend playing a joke, I said I didn't believe him. But no, the voice insisted with a laugh, it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama, otherwise known in cult-of-personality political circles as a deity, a rising Democratic star or, as George W. Bush recently called him, "the pope."

Narcissists are relentless and very convincing. They tell you exactly what you want to hear. They are full of promises. Their talent to manipulate is phenomenal. Well, not this time! Sirota apparently was not ready to sell his conscience (at least not yet) and endorse a man who according to him did not “aspire to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office.)” This is the kind of patriot America needs more of – citizens of integrity and conscience.

Where does David Sirota stand today? Errr!... Amm!… Why do you want to know? Emm!... How can I put it? Mr. Sirota…, Errr!…, Ah! Yes! Mr. Sirota has had an epiphany - a Pauline sort of experience. As he neared Damas... I mean Denver, on his journey to the Democratic Convention, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice on his cell phone say to him, "David, David, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" David asked. "I am Barack, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." That is how David Sirota became a believer of Obama. He stopped blaspheming his Lord by calling him inept and opportunist.
Guess what? He has even defended Jeremiah Wright. Hallelujah! Surely “God” (the emerging one) can transform the hearts of his enemies.

Narcissists have an almost surreal power to manipulate others. They can literally charm their adversaries and turn them into cheerful scullion, who will even thank them for giving them the privilege to slave for them.
You see! The narcissist and the codependent need each other. Many members of the Democratic Party may know what Sirota knows, but they need Obama. They have to keep up appearances (think Hillary, who once said "shame on you, Barack Obama" because of his flip flopping and lies and now supports him).

Narcissists are amoral. They consider themselves to be above the law. Once in power, they will try to strengthen their hold by surrounding themselves with equally amoral people. A good example of what we should expect in Obama’s administration is the infamous NAFTA gate scandal. This is what happened:
A senior member of the Obama campaign called the Canadian government to say that “when Sen. Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t be worried; that it is just campaign rhetoric and shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

Isn't it amazing? Obama tells the Ohio voters, who are unhappy with NAFTA that he is going to kill it, when actually he does not mean to do any such thing. For a narcissist, ends justify means. He feels warranted to lie and deceive in order to accomplish what he has to accomplish.

This story was denied by Obama, but confirmed twice by sources at the highest level of the Canadian government. This is how a narcissist operates. Obama will lie to Americans and he will surround himself with equally unethical people. With a Congress and Senate controlled by Democrats, and his ability as president to replace retiring Supreme Court judges, nothing will stop him from abusing his power.

The Cause of the Narcissist


The cause of the narcissist is himself. Everything else is a tool, a stepping stone for the narcissist to ascend to power. Narcissists don’t have any ideology. They champion the cause that has a better chance of making their ascent to power easier.

Vaknin writes: “Narcissists use anything they can lay their hands on in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. If God, creed, church, faith, and institutionalized religion can provide them with narcissistic supply, they will become devout. They will abandon religion if it can't.”

Therefore, the question whether Obama is a Muslim or a Christian, whether he is pro Palestine, as he has been all his life or whether he is pro Israel, whether he is a black supremacist or an agent of racial harmony, are moot. Obama is anything you want him to be and situation dictates. He takes the side that is more expedient to his cause. To communists he is a comrade, to Islamists he is their man, to Palestinian fighters he is their hope and to the Jews he is a staunch Zionist. The narcissist’s creed is himself. Everything else is negotiable.

The best description of Obama comes from himself. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in The Audacity of Hope, “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” This is the key to Obama’s personality. He will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.
Obama will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama voted “present” in the Senate most of the time, (130 times to be precise) not because they were too difficult decisions, as Rudy Giuliani said at the GOP convention, but because those issues were not relevant to his cause.

Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “present” vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.

Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which, he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father .

Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?

Narcissists are magical thinkers. They live in a world of fantasy; fantasies of grandiosity and unlimited power. But they are convinced that those fantasies will become reality because they are special and destined for greatness. That is why Obama already sees himself as president and acts presidential. The very fact that he travelled abroad and visited with several heads of states is another sign of this man's delusions of grandiosity. He is not representing the government. Under what pretext he visited those heads of states and entered into negotiations with them?

Vaknin explains, “Bragging and false autobiography – The narcissist brags incessantly. His speech is peppered with ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘myself’, and ‘mine’. He describes himself as intelligent, or rich, or modest, or intuitive, or creative – but always excessively, implausibly, and extraordinarily so.”

Narcissists Are Dangerous.


Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.

Compare this to what the McCains did. They brought a child from Bangladesh with facial deformities - a little girl with no chance for a normal life – and with plastic surgery restored her beauty and adopted her as their daughter. Millions of ordinary people, who are not even wealthy, have fostered children of total strangers in third world countries and give about a dollar a day for their education and upbringing.
Narcissists can be very generous, but never without an ulterior motive. They are generous when their display of generosity is noticed and elevates them in the eyes of others. Obama donated $20,000 to his racist and anti-Semitic church, but neglected his brother who could get some education and live a lot better if only he had one dollar per day.

Narcissism is all about image. Vaknin says, “The narcissist is shallow, a pond pretending to be an ocean. He likes to think of himself as a Renaissance man, a Jack of all trades. The narcissist never admits to ignorance in any field – yet, typically, he is ignorant of them all. It is surprisingly easy to penetrate the gloss and the veneer of the narcissist's self-proclaimed omniscience.”

Obama’s gaffes in history and world affairs are proof of that. This man does not even know the number of states in the USA, or that Canada does not have a president. That is why Vaknin says a narcissist is a shallow pond that pretends to be an ocean. Obama's ignorance about what should be common knowledge is mind boggling.

Narcissists have a profound sense of call, as they believe they have a “special purpose” or a “high calling.” In his autobiography Hitler wrote, “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” Politics and religion offer irresistible lure for the narcissist.

And this is what Obama said about his “calling:” "Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me," he said of his walk down the aisle of the Trinity United Church of Christ. "I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth."


At least one mental health professional believes that about 6% of Americans are pathological narcissists. The percentage in countries where child abuse is more prevalent is a lot higher. Although all narcissists are cunning, and bereft of conscience, not all of them have the wits to rise to power. A narcissist with smarts can be dangerous.
Hitler was smart, and so is Obama. Hitler would not have become the monster he became had he not risen to power and had he not received so much narcissistic fodder to feed on. One man who saw Khomeini prior to rising to power recalled he would gently push flies out of his window, but would not kill them. The same man
massacred tens of thousands of Iranians. It is power that brings madness out of the narcissist.

America is at a crucial moment in its history. I cannot think of any disaster greater than putting a pathological narcissist in control of the world’s most powerful military machine.

Narcissists are empty in substance but full on promises. Obama has not proposed a single concrete workable plan, but he has raised the hopes and expectations of millions of people with his promises. The glorious tomorrow that he offers is no more real than the Styrofoam Greek columns that adorned his image during his acceptance speech.

Vaknin says, “The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments, His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. 

Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.” 

The narcissist who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first.”  

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc.
When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail - the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred.

This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?

I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self serving and selfish. Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined.

This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous.

Vaknin says, “When the narcissist reveals his true colors, it is usually far too late. His victims are unable to separate from him. They are frustrated by this acquired helplessness and angry at themselves for having failed to see through the narcissist earlier on.”

Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. Brendan Farrington, reported, evidence indicates that some black Republicans are switching parties to vote for Obama. He wrote, “Florida has 81,512 more black Democrats compared to a loss of 784 black Republicans; Louisiana has 34,325 more black Democrats, while the number of black Republicans dropped by 907; North Carolina has 92,356 more black Democrats and 2,850 fewer black Republicans. The only three states that track voting registration by party and race show black Republican registration dropping slightly since the beginning of the year."

Let us call a spade a spade. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards the blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks and to this day want to "stand up" to the Whiteman. They seem to be stuck in 19th century.

Geraldine A. Ferraro was right when she said that Senator Barack Obama had received preferential treatment because he is a black man. I can testify to that myself. Despite not favoring the Democrats political views, my very first inclination was to like Senator Obama. At that moment I had no knowledge of this man’s political views or his character. All I could see was the color of his skin and that gave me enough emotional incentive to favor him. I got over that kneejerk reaction soon, after discovering that Obama is nothing but an empty suit full of hubris. A good indication that ex-vice presidential candidate is right is the fact that when in 1979,
Ahmadinejad and his fellow Islamist militants took the American embassy workers as hostage, they released the blacks and the women, but kept the white men for 444 days.

The majority of people base the most important decisions on emotions, rather than on rationality. The first impression is often the lasting one. First impressions can be wrong.

When I prove to Obama devotees that all their arguments to support him are logical fallacies, they tell me that they know Obama is the right man, because that is what their intuition tells them and they trust their intuition. That is yet another fallacy. If a belief is not backed by logic, it is not intuition but blind faith. The followers of Jim Jones cheerfully committed suicide because they relied on their blind faith that they mistook as intuition.
The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. They are in a state of trance. They truly believe Obama is their messiah. He is the fruition of their long quest for black power.

Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. It is unlikely that Whites would ever devolve to racism, but all it takes is a substantial number of disaffected people to fuel the flames of racial tension. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions in America will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades. Despite his campaign rhetoric he has been a racist all his life. He will interpret any dissent as a rejection of his racial identity. As resentment towards him increases, so will his paranoia. He will grow distrustful of the whites and will surround himself with the blacks and other yesmen with whom he identifies himself. America’s near future is bleak.

America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations.

It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Castroists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.

Psychiatric Test


When a narcissist is running for the highest office in the world, the stakes cannot be higher. Did it matter what were Hitler’s views on abortion, economy, environment, education, old age pension, gay rights, social security, jobs or housing? With Hitler, the only thing that really mattered was his mental sanity.

I urge all Americans to make this a pivotal issue in this electoral campaign. Time is running out. Please spread the word. Talk about it with your coworkers, friends and relatives.
Invite everyone in your address book to sign this petition. Publish it in your blog. Write about it. This is the most vital issue. If a presidential candidate is mentally unfit, nothing else matters. If you are an Obama fan, please sign too, so you can vote with confidence that the man you are putting in the White House is not going to be your nightmare.

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Finally, watch this video. It PROVES that BHO is, in fact, a citizen of Indonesia and a member of Islam. It proves he has never legally applied for US citizenship nor renounced his Muslim faith. There is proof out there, we need to cling to it and shout it from the rooftops!