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The Democratic Socialists of America
The million man march speech:
These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock ‘em up, take no prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."
"The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But it’s always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility."
Barack Obama has commented on the value of words to inspire, to bring about change. What kind of change was he talking about in his mid 30’s when most of us had already given up the rebellion we flirted with, and the resentments that beset us, in college?
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While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama is named Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. His distinguished works include passing bill to assist children and adults who cannot afford health insurance; increasing funding for AIDS prevention and care; a law requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by the death penalty; a law requiring insurance companies to cover routine mammograms; legislation to curb racial profiling.
Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in Illinois. The Born Alive bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother's wishes. Obama opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.
Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.
Obama puts rigid ideology before what's best for the people of Illinois, and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA, Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.
Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators.
Obama voted to make a criminal out of a homeowner who was forced to use a gun in his own defense in his own home.
Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would have increased penalties for drug traffickers.
Obama voted against making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.
Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty to gang members who murder first responders.
Obama’s record on anti-gang legislation is simple; because gang members are more often people of color, they shouldn’t be singled out for increased attention or special penalties by the law.
****************************
As an Illinois state senator in 2001, Mr. Obama accepted a $200 contribution from his friend William Ayers.
The directors of the Woods Fund, including Obama and Ayers, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.
The co-founder of the AAAN, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, was a director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group. He also has held a fundraiser for Obama.
Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
The $40,000 grant from Obama's Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a fifth of the Arab group's reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WND. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN's reported grants for that year.
*********************************
Obama sponsors Illinois Senate Bill 750 creating the "Halal Food Act," providing for inspections by the Department of Agriculture to ensure that all food labeled Halal is prepared according to Islamic law.
This act plays into Islamization.
Obama introduces "Islamic Community Day" bill -- Synopsis of Bill as introduced: Declares November 1, 1997 to be South Shore Islamic Community Center Day.
*********************
Controversial votes when Obama was a state senator were avoided by voting "present" or claiming later that he erred by pressing the wrong button and didn’t really mean to take that position.
************************
On the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an "absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.
"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."
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If you consider that every bill he passed as a State Senator was passed his last year in office by a Democrat-controlled legislature. Also, some of the more high profile accomplishments he cites now like the racial profiling/videotape confession legislation were bills where a lot of the legwork had been done by other Democrats in the legislature years prior when it was controlled by Republicans, but were given to Obama by his kingmaker, Senate president Emil Jones, Jr. in order for him to make the "close" (where he often did).
When asked about this by the Houston Press’ Todd Spivak, State Senator Rickey Hendon replied, "I don’t consider it bill jacking. … But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."
This isn’t to suggest that Obama’s achievements in the state senate are totally without merit, but instead to point out they weren’t all done by his leaping tall buildings in a single bound. He had a lot of help from Democrats. Consider this, too: if he wins, he will have a solid Democrat Congress to work with, so the only "reaching out" he’d have to do would be to the few moderate Republicans who have already proven themselves all too eager to vote with liberal Democrats.
*********************************
While his Web site says he's "a strong proponent of tougher measures to fight crime," his record tells a different story.
As an Illinois state senator, for example, he acted more as a friend to criminals than to cops, legislating among other things:
• Curbs on what he called a "broken" death penalty system.
• A measure to expunge some criminal records and give job grants to ex-cons.
• Tougher handgun controls.
• A vote against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if they kill someone to help their gang.
• Opposition to a bill requiring juveniles to be prosecuted as adults for firing a gun at or near a school.
At the federal level, Obama would:
• Repeal "unfair" mandatory sentences for crack convictions.
• Provide drug counseling instead of jail time for some abusers.
• Rethink criminal penalties for pot.
• Ban profiling by federal law enforcement, even if it helps catch violent criminals including terrorists.
• Strengthen hate-crime laws and beef up civil rights enforcement against police chiefs who profile.
• Provide job training, drug rehab and counseling for ex-cons.
• "Re-enfranchise" felons denied the right to vote.
In addition, Obama, who once vowed to repeal the Patriot Act, still talks about reforming it. He also once proposed banning executions of inmates, arguing he was against capital punishment.
It's not clear where Obama stands on the issue now, but he does think death row and the entire U.S. penal system are stacked against blacks. While so far only alluding to racism as the culprit, his mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright minces no words in blaming "racist white America."
"The brothers are in prison" largely because of their skin color, he claims.
And a racist white majority put them there, he believes, by "structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons."
In Wright's conspiracy, personal responsibility plays no role. This is the same adviser who told Obama that there are "more black men in prison than in college" -- a statement that Obama parroted until he was told that it was false.
Unfortunately, Obama listens to his preacher and buys into his conspiracy theories. "In our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites are arrested at very different rates," Obama recently complained. "It has to do with how we pursue racial justice."
He vows to pursue it with gusto, unleashing civil rights cops on police chiefs and district attorneys who dare to arrest and prosecute criminals who happen to be of color.
In last Tuesday's speech explaining his ties to Wright, he reiterated his desire to do more to enforce civil rights laws.
He cites the Jena Six case as an example of racial injustice. But one of the thugs he defends as a victim of Louisiana racism recently was arrested again for assault. The 6-6 Bryant Purvis allegedly choked and slammed a classmate's head on a table after helping five other blacks beat a white student within an inch of his life.
Would Obama go soft on such brutal crime in the name of racial equality? No justice, no peace? Obama for now speaks only in code, saying he'll fix "a criminal justice system that's broken." But how exactly is it broken? And who would he appoint to help fix it?
Who will he pick as his attorney general? His top civil rights cop? Is his pal Rep. John Conyers on the short list? Rep. Keith Ellison?
What about federal judges? Will they be frustrated social workers who go easy on criminals to "reintegrate" them into society?
More important, what kind of justices does Obama have in mind to replace aging veterans on the high court, who decide the constitutionality of capital punishment cases?
The Democratic Socialists of America
The million man march speech:
These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock ‘em up, take no prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."
"The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But it’s always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility."
Barack Obama has commented on the value of words to inspire, to bring about change. What kind of change was he talking about in his mid 30’s when most of us had already given up the rebellion we flirted with, and the resentments that beset us, in college?
**************************
While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama is named Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. His distinguished works include passing bill to assist children and adults who cannot afford health insurance; increasing funding for AIDS prevention and care; a law requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by the death penalty; a law requiring insurance companies to cover routine mammograms; legislation to curb racial profiling.
Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in Illinois. The Born Alive bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother's wishes. Obama opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.
Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.
Obama puts rigid ideology before what's best for the people of Illinois, and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA, Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.
Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators.
Obama voted to make a criminal out of a homeowner who was forced to use a gun in his own defense in his own home.
Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would have increased penalties for drug traffickers.
Obama voted against making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.
Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty to gang members who murder first responders.
Obama’s record on anti-gang legislation is simple; because gang members are more often people of color, they shouldn’t be singled out for increased attention or special penalties by the law.
****************************
As an Illinois state senator in 2001, Mr. Obama accepted a $200 contribution from his friend William Ayers.
The directors of the Woods Fund, including Obama and Ayers, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.
The co-founder of the AAAN, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, was a director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group. He also has held a fundraiser for Obama.
Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
The $40,000 grant from Obama's Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a fifth of the Arab group's reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WND. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN's reported grants for that year.
*********************************
Obama sponsors Illinois Senate Bill 750 creating the "Halal Food Act," providing for inspections by the Department of Agriculture to ensure that all food labeled Halal is prepared according to Islamic law.
This act plays into Islamization.
Obama introduces "Islamic Community Day" bill -- Synopsis of Bill as introduced: Declares November 1, 1997 to be South Shore Islamic Community Center Day.
*********************
Controversial votes when Obama was a state senator were avoided by voting "present" or claiming later that he erred by pressing the wrong button and didn’t really mean to take that position.
************************
On the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an "absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.
"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."
****************************
If you consider that every bill he passed as a State Senator was passed his last year in office by a Democrat-controlled legislature. Also, some of the more high profile accomplishments he cites now like the racial profiling/videotape confession legislation were bills where a lot of the legwork had been done by other Democrats in the legislature years prior when it was controlled by Republicans, but were given to Obama by his kingmaker, Senate president Emil Jones, Jr. in order for him to make the "close" (where he often did).
When asked about this by the Houston Press’ Todd Spivak, State Senator Rickey Hendon replied, "I don’t consider it bill jacking. … But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."
This isn’t to suggest that Obama’s achievements in the state senate are totally without merit, but instead to point out they weren’t all done by his leaping tall buildings in a single bound. He had a lot of help from Democrats. Consider this, too: if he wins, he will have a solid Democrat Congress to work with, so the only "reaching out" he’d have to do would be to the few moderate Republicans who have already proven themselves all too eager to vote with liberal Democrats.
*********************************
While his Web site says he's "a strong proponent of tougher measures to fight crime," his record tells a different story.
As an Illinois state senator, for example, he acted more as a friend to criminals than to cops, legislating among other things:
• Curbs on what he called a "broken" death penalty system.
• A measure to expunge some criminal records and give job grants to ex-cons.
• Tougher handgun controls.
• A vote against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if they kill someone to help their gang.
• Opposition to a bill requiring juveniles to be prosecuted as adults for firing a gun at or near a school.
At the federal level, Obama would:
• Repeal "unfair" mandatory sentences for crack convictions.
• Provide drug counseling instead of jail time for some abusers.
• Rethink criminal penalties for pot.
• Ban profiling by federal law enforcement, even if it helps catch violent criminals including terrorists.
• Strengthen hate-crime laws and beef up civil rights enforcement against police chiefs who profile.
• Provide job training, drug rehab and counseling for ex-cons.
• "Re-enfranchise" felons denied the right to vote.
In addition, Obama, who once vowed to repeal the Patriot Act, still talks about reforming it. He also once proposed banning executions of inmates, arguing he was against capital punishment.
It's not clear where Obama stands on the issue now, but he does think death row and the entire U.S. penal system are stacked against blacks. While so far only alluding to racism as the culprit, his mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright minces no words in blaming "racist white America."
"The brothers are in prison" largely because of their skin color, he claims.
And a racist white majority put them there, he believes, by "structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons."
In Wright's conspiracy, personal responsibility plays no role. This is the same adviser who told Obama that there are "more black men in prison than in college" -- a statement that Obama parroted until he was told that it was false.
Unfortunately, Obama listens to his preacher and buys into his conspiracy theories. "In our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites are arrested at very different rates," Obama recently complained. "It has to do with how we pursue racial justice."
He vows to pursue it with gusto, unleashing civil rights cops on police chiefs and district attorneys who dare to arrest and prosecute criminals who happen to be of color.
In last Tuesday's speech explaining his ties to Wright, he reiterated his desire to do more to enforce civil rights laws.
He cites the Jena Six case as an example of racial injustice. But one of the thugs he defends as a victim of Louisiana racism recently was arrested again for assault. The 6-6 Bryant Purvis allegedly choked and slammed a classmate's head on a table after helping five other blacks beat a white student within an inch of his life.
Would Obama go soft on such brutal crime in the name of racial equality? No justice, no peace? Obama for now speaks only in code, saying he'll fix "a criminal justice system that's broken." But how exactly is it broken? And who would he appoint to help fix it?
Who will he pick as his attorney general? His top civil rights cop? Is his pal Rep. John Conyers on the short list? Rep. Keith Ellison?
What about federal judges? Will they be frustrated social workers who go easy on criminals to "reintegrate" them into society?
More important, what kind of justices does Obama have in mind to replace aging veterans on the high court, who decide the constitutionality of capital punishment cases?