Obama

[Soldier4Christ]

Amen and Amen! The following is a story that all should read, especially those that are contemplating having an abortion. I do understand fully from experience just what this man felt only I was far away overseas and had to console my wife by telephone it was still just as real and very difficult. It still brings tears just to think of it.

___________________

A story of love.

Here is a truly heartbreaking story from David Hlavsa, who made the decision with his wife to give birth to their stillborn baby:

    My first son was born some time in the gray dawn. In such cases, there is no rupturing of waters. The birth sac slips out whole and unbroken. The bag was a little bigger than my fist. The midwife put it on a towel and, with a small pair of scissors, carefully snipped it open.

    She unfolded our son’s limbs, disentangling one from the other, unfurling him like a new leaf, talking softly to us all the while, describing him. He was about five inches long, she said. He was anacephalic, which means his brain and nervous system had failed to develop. He had probably died about a week earlier.

    Gingerly, she handed him to Lisa, and though it was clear that Lisa wanted to hold him longer, it was only a minute or two before she passed him to me. Later, she told me she was afraid he would come apart in her hands.

    Resting on my outstretched hand, he was thin, nearly weightless, his skin pinkish-gray and translucent. He seemed to me less like a small baby than a scale model of a stripling child. I cradled his head between the ends of my middle and ring fingers, his features peaceful, perfect, blank. His feet reaching nearly to my wrist, his toes were like mine and my father’s, the second toe longer than the big toe.

    When we got back from the hospital, the epidural had not quite worn off, so Lisa did not have full use of her legs and clung to me as we staggered up the front steps. Thinking of ourselves as a public spectacle (How must we look to the neighbors? Drunk again!), we burst out laughing. Once inside, the bleak humor continued: Anacephalic? All right, so he won’t go to Harvard.

    It wasn’t until I had settled Lisa onto the couch that my own legs quit working. I was in midsentence — something about an errand — teakettle in hand, halfway between the tap and the stove. A spasm went through me, I doubled over and I heard my own voice howling from far off, the full-throated cry of a child.

Pro-abortion advocates will tell you an unborn child is a fetus or a blob or a clump of tissue. Those who have suffered stillborns or miscarriages will tell you that it’s a baby. It’s their child.

I’ve never been pregnant, and so have never had to suffer the kind of pain that this man has.

But many of my friends have.

One friend, at nineteen, was married and pregnant with twins. The first one died, thanks to Vanishing Twin Syndrome. They lost the second in a car accident. Another friend of mine suffered five miscarriages before she finally delivered a healthy baby girl. And yet another friend made it to five months before losing hers. Each of these friends have cried to me when this happened. I’ve held their hands as they’ve expressed to me their feelings of emptiness and loss. Each of them have gone on to deliver healthy babies, but the feeling of loss does not go away. As one friend put it, “It’s like there are five empty chairs around our dinner table that will never be filled. The pain never goes away. I just pray and tell myself they’re waiting for me in Heaven.” The grief that they feel — both the mommies and the daddies — is one that I cannot begin to comprehend. I’ve dealt with loss, but this is different. And although they didn’t get to give birth to their babies, it never changed how much they loved their children. My friend with the twins, who just gave birth to a healthy baby girl last month, has told me before that she thinks of her sons every single day. She and her husband loved them. It wasn’t an empty medical term or a little meaningless clump of tissues. They were their children, and they loved them, even though they weren’t born yet. They named their children. They mourned them. And like this couple, the loss of their children was deep and painful.

Time can sometimes be fleeting. We don’t know why this can happen to some people, but all we can do is trust that God has a reason and cherish the time we do have, even if it’s just twenty weeks in pregnancy, or a few hours after being born, or a few days, or a few years. Tomorrow is promised to no one. But that doesn’t change the love we feel.

Love knows no bounds. Love has no limits.

[Soldier4Christ]

Rules 'bent' to provide Obama advisers loans
Raines, Johnson given exemptions from standard loan requirements

Two Barack Obama advisers, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, received preferential home loans as industry favors, apparently in deference to their executive positions heading Fannie Mae.

Raines and Johnson, as "friends of Angelo Mozilo," the chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp. – the now bankrupt high-flying loan originator in the sub-prime mortgage debacle – were funneled millions of dollars for personal home loans. Mozilo himself made exceptions from Countrywide policy to provide the two Fannie Mae CEO's "sweetheart deals."

Obama's outspoken criticism of Mozilo's exceptionally high compensation is again under attack as hypocritical in view of the preferential loans to Raines and Johnson and the degree to which Countrywide's failed sub-prime loans contributed to the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and last week's mortgage-related crisis on Wall Street.

Countrywide was acquired by Bank of America in January in an emergency rescue purchase involving a $4 billion stock deal.

As WND reported, Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year at Fannie Mae, where he served as CEO from 1991 to 1998. Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004.

WND also reported Raines and two other top Fannie Mae executives agreed to pay $24.7 million, including a $2 million fine, to settle a civil lawsuit filed in December 2006 that accused them of manipulating Fannie Mae earnings, allowing executives to pocket hundreds of millions in bonuses.

As part of the settlement, Raines was also forced to give up Fannie Mae stock options valued at $15.6 million

Johnson was appointed to head Obama's vice-presidential selection committee, but he was forced to step down when a controversy surfaced in June concerning alleged millions in questionable real estate loans he had received on favorable terms from Countrywide.

A Washington Post profile published July 17 said Raines was then playing a role advising the Obama presidential campaign on mortgage and housing policy.

The story of the alleged conflict of interest involving the Countrywide loans to Raines and Johnson broke in a Wall Street Journal story published June 7.

Authors Glenn R. Simpson and James R. Hagerty noted that customers who got their Countrywide loans through being "friends" of Countrywide chief executive Angelo Mozilo included Raines and Franklin, "two former CEO's of Fannie Mae, the biggest buyer of Countrywide's mortgages."

A follow-up Wall Street Journal article that led to the resignation of Johnson from heading Obama's vice presidential selection committee noted he received more than $5 million in loans from Countrywide that were arranged outside the company's normal underwriting process.

According to the article, Johnson received loans from Countrywide on six properties between 1998 and 2007, some at lower-than-average interest rates.

The article noted that perhaps the most unusual of Johnson's loans was one for more than $1.5 million for a real-estate project in Big Timber, Mont.

Records showed Johnson's "total income" at the time was $55,834 a month, while his "total obligations" were $97,708.97 a month, for a total debt ratio of 175 percent.

According to the Journal, Countrywide handled this as a house construction loan and bent the rules by waiving additional down payments. Other rules were waived, including a requirement that Countrywide borrowers have no more than four currently financed properties at a time.

Raines was also a repeat customer at Countrywide while he was Fannie Mae chief executive, receiving four home loans between 1999 and 2003, totaling nearly $4 million.

One of the properties included Raines' home, called Beechwoods, a 98-year-old seven-bedroom stucco colonial with a pool, a movie theater and a shared tennis court, overlooking a national park.

Josh Gerstein, writing in the New York Sun, noted that on the campaign trail, Obama had criticized Countrywide's executives, charging, "These are the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis. Two million people may end up losing their homes."

Gerstein also noted a Chicago Tribune report that Obama "fumed" over a total of $19 million in bonuses set to be paid Mozilo and the president of Countrywide, David Sambol."

"They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What's wrong with this picture?" Gerstein quotes Obama as saying.

"In a written statement issued in March, the senator called the payments 'an outrage' and suggested Mr. Mozilo and others had 'tricked' homeowners into unaffordable loans," Gerstein wrote. "'These executives crossed the line to boost their bottom line,' Mr. Obama declared."

WND has also reported a review of Federal Election Commission records back to 1989 reveals Obama in his three complete years in the Senate is the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions, behind only Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the powerful chairman of the Senate banking committee. Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980.

From 1989 to 2008, Dodd received $165,400 in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, including contributions from PACs and individuals, followed by Obama, who received $126,349 in such contributions since being elected to the Senate in 2004.

[Shammu]

Rules 'bent' to provide Obama advisers loans
Raines, Johnson given exemptions from standard loan requirements

The rules are the same for everyone, for a reason. Countrywide, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac have all had problems this year. Could it be, there are more demo-cats out there with loans, that have broken/bent more of the rules?

[Soldier4Christ]

The egomaniac

Democrat Barack Obama said he does not look like all his fellow presidents on the currency. His new coin proves it. The One has his own one. Obama contracted with a British firm in Birmingham, England, to mint the new coin of the realm: The One. To go along with the Seal of the Perfect Presidency.

The Coin of the Realm will be 300 pieces of silver under a 100,000 pound ($200,000) contact with a British company. The Birmingham Post reported:

And if the Democratic candidate is elected to become the most powerful man in the world on November 4, it could open the floodgates for millions of pounds worth of business for the firm. Windsor, Elizabeth & Windsor has already sold more than 300 limited edition commemorative silver coins to the Democratic Party to hand out to key members of the campaign to elect Obama.

If? If? Infidels. He is inevitable. All hail Barack the Magnificent! He won’t be president; he’ll be emperor. Why, he’ll have his own money to prove it.

[HisDaughter]

The egomaniac

If? If? Infidels. He is inevitable. All hail Barack the Magnificent! He won’t be president; he’ll be emperor. Why, he’ll have his own money to prove it.

He is inconceivable! And all it's synonyms: ludicrous, implausible, un-thinkable, unbelievable, unimaginable, beyond belief, mind-blowing, and MANIACAL!
Can you imagine a conversation with him?  It would start out with:
"Enough about that....let's talk about ME again!"
Just saying his name, Barack, sounds like you're hocking up a fur ball.
(Sorry...just don't feel "ladylike" today.  Didn't I mention something about a cranky old lady nap a while ago.  Better go see if I can fit that in between fits.) 

[Soldier4Christ]

 

[nChrist]

He is inconceivable! And all it's synonyms: ludicrous, implausible, un-thinkable, unbelievable, unimaginable, beyond belief, mind-blowing, and MANIACAL!
Can you imagine a conversation with him?  It would start out with:
"Enough about that....let's talk about ME again!"
Just saying his name, Barack, sounds like you're hocking up a fur ball.
(Sorry...just don't feel "ladylike" today.  Didn't I mention something about a cranky old lady nap a while ago.  Better go see if I can fit that in between fits.) 

          

Your country needs you to stay just like you are!  We don't want you to be CALM AND RESTED!  DRINK A POT OF COFFEE AND WATCH SOME OBAMA ADS!

[HisDaughter]

        

Your country needs you to stay just like you are!  We don't want you to be CALM AND RESTED!  DRINK A POT OF COFFEE AND WATCH SOME OBAMA ADS!

Thanks Brother Tom, I needed that laugh!  Although since PR is the one that put up with me most of the day, he might tell you: "Shhh!  Don't encourage her!"

[nChrist]

       

Maybe we all need to miss some sleep, drink more coffee, and consider what reasonable and legal actions we can take.

Here's one thing to consider:  we could all hire someone to slap us several times per day and at least be in partial charge of who slaps us. Then we could at least say part of the time that we paid for being slapped.   

A lot of the rhetoric is also maddening. A lot of the politicians must think we don't have much common sense and just can't figure things out. I'm ready to hear about charges being filed - LOTS OF CHARGES AND LOTS OF DEFENDANTS. Part of that RIPOFF MONEY can be spent for PRISON ROOM AND BOARD for some extremely deserving people. We already should know that quite a few politicians should be on that defendant list. We shouldn't settle for a token - ALL OF THEM who broke the law should be charged! THIS ISN'T JUST MISTAKES AND STUPIDITY! It's ON PURPOSE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY!

[HisDaughter]

     

I'm ready to hear about charges being filed - LOTS OF CHARGES AND LOTS OF DEFENDANTS. Part of that RIPOFF MONEY can be spent for PRISON ROOM AND BOARD for some extremely deserving people. We already should know that quite a few politicians should be on that defendant list. We shouldn't settle for a token - ALL OF THEM who broke the law should be charged! THIS ISN'T JUST MISTAKES AND STUPIDITY! It's ON PURPOSE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY!

Heck with that BEP...I say lets just throw them in General Population and make an anouncement!  That would be justice! 

[HisDaughter]

Guess who recommended Obama to enter Harvard
Mystery man in senator's memoir now revealed as disciple of socialist agitator
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 24, 2008
8:54 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

In a revelation tying Barack Obama even closer to radical community organizing, WND has learned that a renowned disciple of the late socialist agitator Saul "The Red" Alinksy wrote a letter of recommendation for Obama when he applied to Harvard Law School.

Obama approached Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight – a loyal student of Alinsky's radical tactics – to pen the Harvard letter in the late 1980s. McKnight serves on the boards of radically anti-American groups in Chicago, including one accused of thuggery.

Obama in his 2006 memoir alludes to McKnight – whom he describes as an "older man who had been active in the civil rights efforts in Chicago in the sixties" – but stops short of identifying him by name. He referred to him only as "my friend."

But McKnight, who enforced affirmative action for Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was far more than that to young Obama. He helped trained him in the agitation tactics of Alinsky, who wrote the organizing manual, "Rules for Radicals," which he dedicated to mankind's "very first radical, Lucifer."

The Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation lists McKnight as a board director. From1985 to 1988, Obama worked for a subsidiary of Gamaliel, where he cut his teeth as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. McKnight and Gamaliel, which was founded on Alinsky's principles, provided training for the budding radical.

Before leaving for Harvard, Obama wrote an article published in a journal titled, "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois," in which he praised McKnight and his organizing strategies. He also decried "institutional racism" and called for more "power" to put in place "a systematic approach to community organization."

While at Harvard, he found time to take advanced training courses at the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Alinsky and affiliated with Gamaliel. He also would return to Chicago to work as a consultant and trainer for Gamaliel.

Under the tutelage of McKnight and other hardcore students of Alinsky, Obama says he got the "best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School." He made the remark last year while campaigning in Iowa.

His mentor McKnight also sits on the board of a militant leftist group called the National People's Action, the professor's curriculum vita reveals. NPA employs the hardball street tactics of Alinskyite organizing.

NPA claims to be simply a coalition of neighborhood advocacy groups based in Chicago, but conservative analyst Michelle Malkin describes it as a "left-wing goon squad." She says NPA has been known to bus hundreds of angry protestors to the homes of business and government leaders to demand "justice" for inner-city blacks.

While preparing to intimidate the families of officials and trample over their private property, she says NPA picketers belt out the following battle cry:

Who's on your hit list, NPA?
Who's on your hit list for today?
Take no prisoner, take no names.
Kick 'em in the a-- when they play their games.
"NPA's militant tactics cross the bounds of decent political debate," Malkin wrote in 2004.

Obama, in his 1995 memoir, said he wanted to go to Harvard Law School to "learn power's currency in all its intricacy," with the goal of "making large-scale change" as a national politician.

Before writing his recommendation, McKnight, a former ACLU director, advised Obama not to "compromise" his principles.

While Obama says he's perhaps more tolerant of compromise than McKnight, he says his views haven't really changed from his days organizing on behalf of radical Alinsky groups like Gamaliel and ACORN in Chicago.
"My views are not so much more refined than they were when I labored in obscurity as a community organizer," he averred in his 2006 autobiography.

Socialist dream

Alinsky, the father of community organizing, dreamed of socialism one day replacing the "jungle" of American capitalism. He wrote that he hoped "for a future where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful."

Alinsky dedicated the first edition of his book, "Rules for Radicals," to Satan: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer."

McKnight has advocated for another war on poverty, something Obama is proposing with his "Urban Prosperity" plan.


(All highlights, italics and color are mine - grammyluv)

[Soldier4Christ]

Thanks Brother Tom, I needed that laugh!  Although since PR is the one that put up with me most of the day, he might tell you: "Shhh!  Don't encourage her!"

No, No! I think that you need 3 or 4 more pots of coffee and a watch some more Obama speeches along with the Obama ads.

Maybe we all need to miss some sleep, drink more coffee, and consider what reasonable and legal actions we can take.

Here's one thing to consider:  we could all hire someone to slap us several times per day and at least be in partial charge of who slaps us. Then we could at least say part of the time that we paid for being slapped.  

A lot of the rhetoric is also maddening. A lot of the politicians must think we don't have much common sense and just can't figure things out. I'm ready to hear about charges being filed - LOTS OF CHARGES AND LOTS OF DEFENDANTS. Part of that RIPOFF MONEY can be spent for PRISON ROOM AND BOARD for some extremely deserving people. We already should know that quite a few politicians should be on that defendant list. We shouldn't settle for a token - ALL OF THEM who broke the law should be charged! THIS ISN'T JUST MISTAKES AND STUPIDITY! It's ON PURPOSE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY!

We are paying to get slapped and we are going to be paying even more. I think that some people though need to get some sleep instead of partying so much and to let those that are willing to get the job done to do it. Those responsible for this situation needs to be put to work at substandard wages and made to live in substandard housing  ...  Naw forget that as even that is too good for them. Perhaps a stone quarry breaking up rocks while behind bars in jail would be better. All of their millions could be used to help the economy.

[Soldier4Christ]

Illinois AG probing grant by Obama
Awarded $100,000 to onetime campaign volunteer, but project never done

$100,000 DEAL | State to charity: What happened to garden money, other cash?

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- a Democrat who is supporting Obama's presidential bid -- is investigating "whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received," Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.

In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a "member initiative," the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006.

Madigan's office has notified Obama's presidential campaign of the probe, which was launched this week. But Obama's actions in awarding the money are not a focus of the investigation, Smith said.

Questions about the grant, though, come as spending on local pet projects has become an issue in Obama's campaign against John McCain.

Obama and Kenny Smith announced the "Englewood Botanic Garden Project" at a January 2000 news conference at Englewood High School. Obama was in the midst of a failed bid to oust South Side Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush for a seat in Congress. The garden -- planned near and under L tracks between 59th Place and 62nd Place -- fell outside of Obama's Illinois Senate district but within the congressional district's borders.

Obama vowed to "work tirelessly" to raise $1.1 million to help Smith's organization turn the City of Chicago-owned lot into an oasis of trees and paths. But Obama lost the congressional race, no more money was raised, and today the garden site is a mess of weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage. The only noticeable improvement is a gazebo.

In a previous interview, Smith said the state grant money was legitimately spent, mostly on underground site preparation.

But no one ever took out construction permits required for such work, city records show. And a contractor who Smith said did most of the work told a reporter all he did was cut down trees and grade the site with a Bobcat.

Citing the garden's failure to take root, NeighborSpace -- an umbrella group for dozens of community gardens citywide -- moved Sept. 9 to return the site to the city. Its action followed a July 11 Sun-Times report on the grant.

Obama spokesman Michael Ortiz said Wednesday the senator's staff in Washington will monitor the Madigan probe and an additional review under way by Gov. Blagojevich's administration to make sure "the taxpayer funds allocated for the construction of the garden are recuperated from CBHA if the agencies determine that the funds were not properly spent." Obama's goal is to ensure the site "be used in a way that benefits the community and that any taxpayer dollars allocated are spent wisely," Ortiz said.

The relationship between Smith and Obama dates to at least 1997, when Obama wrote a letter that Smith used to help the housing association win city funding for an affordable-housing development near the garden site. Plans called for more than 50 homes; a dozen ultimately were built.

Smith also has donated $550 to Obama campaign funds.

The Sun-Times learned about Karen Smith's involvement in the project through an Aug. 12 Freedom of Information Act response from a lawyer for Blagojevich¹s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. The department, according to the lawyer, had ³discovered² 52 pages of ³additional documents² ommitted from an initial response in May to a Sun-Times¹ Freedom of Information Act request about the grant.

Neither Smith nor his wife has been accused of any wrongdoing. Smith and his lawyer did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

In an interview in July, Smith said he was never able to raise the money needed for the garden. But the state grant awarded by Obama was spent properly, he said, on the underground work, with most of the work done by a contractor whose name Smith got wrong.

The Sun-Times tracked down the contractor, Rodolfo Marin, in Austin, Texas, where he now lives.

"What I was hired for was: Clean up the area and cut the trees -- that's all," Marin said. He said he rented a Bobcat -- a sort of small bulldozer -- for the project.

And how much did Smith pay him? "If he spent about $3,000 with me, that was too much."

[Soldier4Christ]

This article was posted in the Chicago Sun-Times, Baltimore Sun and in a German on-line news source ShortNews.com but so far it isn't in any other MSM. I wonder if the others will ever pick it up.

[HisDaughter]

We are paying to get slapped and we are going to be paying even more. I think that some people though need to get some sleep instead of partying so much and to let those that are willing to get the job done to do it. Those responsible for this situation needs to be put to work at substandard wages and made to live in substandard housing  ...  Naw forget that as even that is too good for them. Perhaps a stone quarry breaking up rocks while behind bars in jail would be better. All of their millions could be used to help the economy.

I was talking to a friend last night and I thought he had a great idea.  Every lawyer/politician should be required to work for one year (minimum) in a blue collar job before ever being considered for political leadership.  And they don't get to live with mom or dad.  They need to pay rent, utilities, take a bus, etc. so that they can experience first hand what it cost and what it's like to live on the kind of budget we need to.  Want extras?  Movies, camping trip, new shoes?  Well then lets see how you handle your budgeting issues.