Obama's plan to defend America.

In one of the few speeches given by Obama that actually addresses policy rather than simply spouting meaningless platitudes about 'Hope!' and 'Change!', we get to see a rather chilling vision of Obama's absolute ignorance when it comes to the nation's military capabilities and the threats that we face.

In the video of a speech given to an arms control advocacy group, Caucus for Priorities, Obama outlined his plan:

"I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat system. ...

"I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."

Now, perhaps this was just campaign rhetoric and Obama secretly sent a representative to visit the Pentagon and let them know he was just making empty promises to try to win over voters like he did with Canada and NAFTA.

We don't know. We haven't seen any leaked memo to indicate it ... yet. William Arkin has already made the argument, however, that Obama doesn't really mean what he said about missile defense:

Obama in fact, supports limited missile defenses and continued "research" on a national missile defense. Even the mighty and audacious hope-meister will have to make many compromises in order to be president.

So, which is it? Did he mean what he said or not?

For just one minute, let's consider that Obama may've been speaking honestly. If that's the case, his statements reveal a rather stark picture of just how little he knows about our national security needs. So, let's take it point by point.

• "I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending."
  Good. I'm all for it. Start with earmarks. Then, look at finding ways to reform federal spending so that we're not plunking down 58.3% of every dollar the government collects on Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid -- a number which is projected to balloon in the over next decade when Baby Boomers start retiring.
  
  Oh, wait. That's not what you were talking about. You actually want to waste more money on that ...
  
  Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona points out one rather obvious flaw in Obama's audacious proposal, saying "This leading Democrat has gone from statements such as, 'I don't agree with a missile defense system,' to promising that he would save billions in wasteful defense spending by cutting missile defense system research by as much as $10 billion. He's proposing to cut $10 billion out of a budget that wasn't even $10 billion this year!"
  
  But, hey, why quibble with facts like that when pandering to constituents for votes, right?
  
  
• "I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems."
  Unproven missile defense systems? Perhaps Mr. Obama should do a little research before he speaks.
  
  We've been 'proving' our capability to shoot down missiles with other missiles since 1984, and we've been doing it with lasers since 2000.
  
  You might remember things like the Patriot Missile system that was used to defend Israel and our military outposts in Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein's SCUD missile attacks during the first gulf war.
  
  Or, our series of successful tests shooting down mock intercontinental ballistic missiles from our new defense systems in Alaska since 1999.
  
  Or, knocking that dying spy satellite -- that was travelling faster and higher than any missile would -- out of the sky with a missile launched from a submarine just last month.
  
  
• "I will not weaponize space."
  Which, you know, would be great if Russia, China, India, and Pakistan weren't already doing it.
  
  Russia and China, of course, have proposed a treaty that would ban it. But, keep in mind that it was China that fired the first salvo in this new arms race and Russia's been doing it since the 1970s.
  
  And, of course, Russia and China have always been so trustworthy about disarmament in the past ...
  
  
• "I will slow our development of future combat systems."
  I don't know about you, but I'm getting darn tired of having the best 'combat systems' in the world. I hate that, when we have to send our troops into battle, they've got a technological edge over the enemy that keeps them safe from harm and ensures that we're victorious ...
  
  Having unmanned drones that can drop bombs on our enemies without putting pilots in danger, or 'stealth' planes that are capables of evading radar, or robots that can disarms bombs or even be sent onto the battlefield instead of actual troops ...
  
  Well, it's just not fair for us to have things like that. We should have to get in there and fight our enemies face to face, on equal terms. Right?
  
  Hang on, I thought Obama was a populist who means to posture himself as a representative of the underprivileged and minorities, and one of the main talking points of the Left has been that the military tends to recruit more heavily from those two particular demographic groups.
  
  To be consistent, shouldn't he want weapons like this in order to keep us from having to put those 'underprivileged' or 'minority' boots on the ground ... ?
  
  
• "I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons."
  A lofty (if altogether unattainable) goal. "HOPE!"
  
  
• "To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons."
  Yeah, again, I'm not sure how he can be consistent and, at the same time, argue against having the latest weaponry -- even nuclear weaponry, including the 'bunker busting nukes' that would've been able to hit guys like Saddam in his concrete fortified, underground bunkers, for example -- to ensure victory and save the lives of the 'underprivileged' or 'minority' people that we send into battle ...
  
  
• "I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material ..."
  Good. I'm sure Iran and North Korea will go along with that, too. "CHANGE!"
  
  
• "... and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."
  Just an update from the past three decades: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and the other Bush have already done that.
  
  If the Russians still haven't bothered to take their weapons off of 'hair-trigger alert', you might want to refer back to the previous comments about their trustworthiness when it comes to disarmament.

What it all boils down to is that, despite his message of 'Hope!' and 'Change!' and his supposed differences with run-of-the-mill Washington politics, Obama's views on the military and national defense are nothing more than recycled 1970s "Give Peace a Chance" left-leaning disarmament Liberalism.

And, given the world in which we live, that's dangerous.

On Obama's lunatic pastor Jeremiah Wright.

To give credit where it's due, for months now FoxNews' Sean Hannity (whom I'm no fan of) has been trying to call attention to the black seperatist church the Obamas attend. Its the church whose pastor performed the Obamas' marriage. Its the church where they're children were baptised.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is the pastor whose sermons inspired the title of Obama's The Audacity of Hope. And, he's the pastor whom Obama has called his 'spiritual advisor' and with whom Obama prayed right before announcing his run for the presidency.

NPR reports that Seattle's even-lefter-that-usual weekly newspaper, The Stranger, praised Rev. Wright, saying that he's "a fiery pastor who delivers magnificently cranky sermons on how the 'African diaspora' struggles under the yoke of the 'white supremacists' who run the 'American empire.'"

That same newspaper credits Wright with "rhetorical wizardry," and writes that Obama has been able to use Wright's thoughts and craft them in "an acceptable - even, conceivably, a winning - creed for middle-of-the road white voters."

Now, thanks to some particularly investigative journalism by ABCNews (VIDEO), you can see just exactly what the Obamas have been listening to, coming from the pulpit to them in the pews, for the last 20 years -- the message that, according to leftists, Obama has managed to make appealing to 'middle-of-the-road white voters'.

In 2007, a church publication -- Trumpet Newsmagazine -- gave the 'Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter Award' to Louis Farrakhan, saying that Farrakhan 'truly epitomized greatness'.

Perhaps, for the anti-white, anti-Semitic Dr. Jeremiah Wright, he does. After all, they seem to have common cause.

But, to most Americans, Farrakhan epitomizes racism and anti-Semitism. Farrakhan has, after all, "compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler -- 'They helped him get the Third Reich on the road.'", according to Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. "[Farrakhan] has vilified whites and singled out Jews to blame for crimes large and small, either committed by others as well or not at all."

And, yet, Obama's pastor endorses Farrakhan's worldview and praises him for his 'depth of analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation', his 'integrity and honesty', calling him 'an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose.'

In an a debate hosted by Tim Russert, Obama addressed the issue saying:

"The reason that I have such strong support [from the Jewish community in Chicago] is because they know that not only would I not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form ..."

Except, apparently, when it comes from the pulpit of his church.

When asked about his church, Barack Obama said:

I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial.

Unfortunately for Barack, after reviewing the statements of its Senior Pastor, I don't think that many Americans will agree with him.

ABC News found that, in 2003, Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Anything 'particularly controversial' there?

Then see if you can see anything 'particularly controversial' about Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermon, given on September 16, 2001 -- just five days after the September 11th attacks, while firefighters were still at ground zero performing rescue and recovery -- where he said:

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost,"

What's that? America was to blame for 9/11? Nah, no reason to see anything 'particularly controversial about that ...

The Wall Street Journal continues, quoting from a sermon Rev. Jeremiah Wright gave on January 15, 2006:

Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.

So, I'm a bit confused. Is he saying that Dr. Condoleeza Rice is only Secretary of State because she's a whore?

Rev. Wright goes on to say:

"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world ... We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers ... We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi ... We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.

"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic ... We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means ...

"We started the AIDS virus ... We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty ..."

So, apparently, the Obamas' pastor is one of the conspiracy kooks who thinks that the U.S. Government came up with crack and AIDS to kill black people. Anything controversial about that, Barack?

[ Just to give further example of how media has given Obama a pass, rather than discuss the lunatic, anti-American, anti-Semite bigot whose church the Obamas have been attending for 20 years now, MSNBC offers this 'hard hitting' piece of journalism about how Obama's 'free-spirited mother set [his] path' ... ]

Now, to 'defend' Obama a bit, he did tell a group of Jewish voters that he thought of Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with." Unfortunately, he hasn't really articulated any of his points of disagreement.

As a Kansan, we're rather intimately familiar with pastors who preach hatred. We've got a guy who preaches that "God hates America" due to its acceptance of homosexuality. He and his followers stand on street corners, and picket outside soldiers' funerals, thanking God for IEDs and loudly proclaiming a message of hatred.

Unfortunately, his message is not altogether unlike that which Obama's pastor has preached. The only difference is the 'reason' -- homosexuality or 'American terrorism' -- why God, and by default his followers, should hate America.

That pastor is roundly condemned, and rightly so.

Obama, however, while stating that he 'deeply disagrees' with some of the things his pastor has said, continues to honor this hateful, bigotted man.

Obama honors him by having him perform their marriage ceremony. He honors him by having him baptize his children. He honors him by using his sermons to title his book. He honors him by continuing to attend his church for 20 years. He thanked him specifically after his election to the Senate in 2004.

I find it a bit difficult to understand how someone can continue to attend a church and give so much respect to a man like that, much less state that the things being preached from the pulpit weren't 'particularly controversial'. And, I most certainly would not continue to attend that church for more two decades.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, the Obamas wouldn't choose to belong to Wright's church and seek his advice unless they agreed with at least some of his views. And, in light of the views preached at their church, Michelle Obama's comments about finally feeling proud of America for the first time in her adult life start to look less like a faux pas and more like actual, honest belief.

Obama's campaign regularly questions Hillary's judgment. Perhaps that is merely to deflect from Obama's own apparent lack of judgment when it comes to the people he's chosen to associate himself with.

Welcome aboard, David Mamet.

David Mamet, formerly a left-wing, dyed-in-the-wool, 'brain-dead Liberal' has realized that this idealogy doesn't work.

My thoughts on 'Kristen'.

I have, thus far, stayed out of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. I've kept my opinion to myself about Mr. Spitzer's hypocrisy or infidelity. I've not stated how I feel about Mrs. Spitzer standing next to him on the podium.

I will, however, make two comments on the girl he was apparently 'seeing': Ashley Youmans, also known as 'Ashley Alexandra Dupré' or 'Kristen'.

My first comment is this: Ashley is a very pretty girl. But, that said, I'm not sure any girl would be '$4,300 an hour pretty' (which may simply be because I've never had that kind of disposable income, or the desire to pay for sex).

My second comment is this: I feel truly bad for her.

According to the New York Times, Slate, and her own MySpace page, Ashley has had a truly rough life. She came from a broken home in Jersey. She was abused as a kid. She's a nightclub singer trying to make in into the music business. She worries about making rent each month. She has history of bad relationships. She's been 'broke and homeless' and, as a result, is known to give extra food to homeless people.

According to her MySpace page, she says that she has "learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again."

Does it excuse what she did? No.

But, it does make me a lot more empathetic towards her. She's a broken girl in a broken world trying to make-do and drag herself up out of a life that's, apparently, handed her one hardship after another.

As Hanna Rosin wrote on Slate:

I think about Ashley looking at an eviction notice and Spitzer cavalierly wiring $4,300 from one account to another, and it's very hard for me to feel sorry for him.

I'll simply close by saying that I hope that someday Ashley will find the love and healing she needs.

Pots and Kettles

“I mean the fact of the matter is that Senator Clinton, you know when she runs this 3 a.m. phone-call ad doesn’t cite and can’t cite any particular experience that makes her more effective in dealing with these issues of national security and when she did have a red phone moment, when we have the most important foreign policy decision of a generation, she got it wrong.”

— Barack Obama

Uh-huh.

And, Senator Obama, you don't and can't cite any particular experience that make you more effective in dealing with issues of national security, either.

You've never had a 'red phone moment' and, in your closest brush with that sort of responsibility that you've had (during your freshman Senatorial campaign), your 'most important foreign policy decision' was likely swayed by your allegiances to a corrupt political 'fixer' and one of Saddam Hussien's money launderers and arms suppliers ...

'Six Degrees': The Barack-Saddam connection.

Those of you familiar with the game 'Six Degrees of Separation' (or, if you prefer, 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon') may find interesting that Barack Obama can be linked to Saddam Hussein in just two links.

It goes like this.

Barack H. Obama is friends with a guy by the name of Tony Rezko. As you may have heard, Rezko's on trial in Chicago for corruption and has, just recently, had his bail revoked for not disclosing a $3.5 million loan from a British billionaire named Nadhmi Auchi. (SOURCE)

Mr. Auchi is, according to The Guardian, a Baathist who once stood trial for conspiring to assassinate the Iraqi Prime Minister, Abdul Karim Qasim. In fact, the gun that Saddam Hussein himself used in the assassination attempt was from Auchi's house.

Auchi made his money (in part) dealing with French Oil company Elf-Aquitaine. He was later convicted of profiteering in those dealings by the Paris Criminal Court in what London's The Guardian described as "the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War."

Mr. Auchi was also the largest private shareholder in a company called BNP Paribas which was, until 2001, responsible for managing the escrow account that the money for the corrupt Iraqi Oil-for-Food program flowed through.

Which brings us to (SOURCE):

A great deal of Mr. Auchi's money was made doing business with the regime of Saddam Hussein, much of it under the table. In 1987, Mr. Auchi helped French and Italian firms win a huge oil pipeline contract in Iraq, chiefly by paying off Iraqi officials, according to testimony given by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan. In 2003, he was convicted for his role in what was then the largest scandal in French history, involving payoffs from executives of the oil company now known as Total to political figures in Spain, Germany and Africa.

And:

Mr. Auchi was a leading supplier of arms to Saddam's regime. A former Belgian ambassador to Luxembourg charged that a bank in Luxembourg owned principally by Mr. Auchi laundered funds -- including oil for food money -- for Saddam and other Islamic dictators.

Beyond that, according to Nibras Kazimi (a 'Visiting Scholar' at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC):

Back in the opposition days, the name “Nadhmi Auchi” was just another front for Saddam’s intelligence service, or so we thought. Auchi (…a Chaldean Christian; there’s a Muslim family by that name too) knew Saddam intimately enough in his youth to the point of conspiring together to pull off an assassination attempt on Soviet-leaning Iraqi strongman Col. Abdul-Karim Qasim in 1959. Auchi was considered one of Saddam’s guys, who mysteriously left his job in the Ministry of Oil to start a business in Luxembourg with school-pal Nasseer ‘Abid (…Shia from Nassiriya). Auchi’s brothers stayed behind in Iraq and fixed deals with their brother to bring oil industry spare parts, but one of them got too greedy and went too far—from the regime’s perspective—in hoarding kickbacks and was executed over corruption charges in the mid-1980s on Saddam’s personal orders. Yet, even after this, Auchi maintained a connection to Saddam, according to what we in the opposition believed at the time.

And, interestingly, Mr. Auchi helped then-cash-strapped Rezko buy a parcel of land at way-above-market value from the same guy that sold Barack and Michelle Obama their Chicago home at way-below-market value on the same day the Obamas closed their house deal. (SOURCE and SOURCE):

The most eyebrow raising connection between Mr. Rezko and Sen. Obama is the assistance Mr. Rezko provided in the purchase of the mansion on Chicago's South Side that Sen. Obama bought in 2005. The Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price -- perhaps because Mr. Rezko's wife purchased from the owner an adjacent garden plot for $625,000. (The sellers deny they offered the Obamas a discount.) The Times of London wondered where Mrs. Rezko got the money to buy the garden plot. At the time, she had a salary of $37,000 and assets of only $35,000, the Times learned. Her husband told a court that at the time he had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets," the Times said.

The Times learned Mr. Rezko received an earlier $3.5 million loan from Mr. Auchi on May 23, 2005, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA.

No wonder Obama opposed the Iraq war!

And, how do liberal bloggers feel about the accusations that are now coming to light? Well, one writes:

As an Obama supporter, I’ve tried writing all this off as Republican smear tactics run amok, but Rezko’s unsavory associations won’t so easily float from mind. That’s because Obama’s running as a sort of Boy King Arthur, pulling the sword from the stone and restoring the wasteland to a veritable garden of unity and fertility in which new idealism may take root grounded in human decency.

So what’s he doing hanging out with money launderers and influence peddlars and weapons dealers with so many Mideast ties? Honestly, I know it’s not as bad as it sounds ...

The thing is, Obama claims to be different, and cozying up to power brokers and arms merchants–if that’s what Obama did–is not C-H-A-N-G-E. Rather, it’s the oldest game in the world. If Rezko is found guilty, and Auchi is implicated, this could be toxic to Obama, given his middle name and given that, before it’s done he’ll be dodging charges (some already hurled by right-wing bloggers) that old, laundered money from Hussein made it into the real estate deal with Rezko, if not into Obama’s campaign.

If you'd like to see and hear more, check out this VIDEO.