OneVoteOneBrick

It’s clear that Barack has the ObamaDemocrats in his pocket. But to win the election he must adopt a more centrist stance or at least convince the electorate that he has, otherwise he has no chance of winning enough moderate Democrats and Independents votes to win.

Investment Business Daily has assembled a series of 15 articles on Obama which track his youth in HI to his Christian and political births in Chicago.

The series looks at Obama’s past associations, his writings, the folks who’ve helped mold his philosophy, those who supported and promoted him in his political life, and then passed him off to his makeover organization, Team Obama, and his campaign handlers.

Is he genuinely a born-again centrist with conviction or simply an ultra-liberal masquerading as a centrist to close the deal?

Sociologists tell us we are all mostly a product of our environment. If we are to believe them and Obama, then he has been a centrist masquerading as an ultra left-leaning liberal for twenty years since his words in 2008, do not reflect his record.

Read the series and then decide just who the authentic Obama is.

The Audacity Of Socialism

Part One - Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism.

Part Two - Obama's Global Tax.

Part Three - Obama Wants You.

Part Four - Obamanomics Flunks The Test.

Part Five - Young Obama's Red Mentor.

Part Six - Obama Finds An ACORN.

Part Seven - Reparations By Another Name.

Part Eight - Obama's Little Red Schoolhouse.

Part Nine - Obama's Radical Roots And Rules.

Part Ten - Like Father, Like Son.

Part Eleven - Finding Friends On Far, Far Left.

Part Twelve - Alice In Obamaland.

Part Thirteen - Michelle's Boot Camps For Radicals .

Part Fourteen - Sojourning Socialists.

Part Fifteen - Community Organizer In Chief .

A recent blog post here on PB pointed to the high rate of rape in Alaska compared to the national average, and that post can be found here:

http://www.politicalbase.com/profile/jnail/blog/&blogId=3937

In the interest of fairness and balance, that blog post led me to research and post this entry.

Just what are the rape stats for Chicago?

If you ask the Mayor or the junior Senator from Ilinois just how many rapes there were in Chicago, last year they probably couldn't tell you. Chicago doesn't keep stats the way the FBI suggests.

Here's the FBI's website with an Illinois city-by-city comparison of crime statistics and if you look for rapes in Chicago, well there are no numbers.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_08_il.html

If you check footnote 1, here's what you'll read.

The data collection methodology for the offense of forcible rape used by the Illinois state UCR Program (with the exception of Rockford, Illinois) does not comply with national UCR Program guidelines. Consequently, their figures for forcible rape and violent crime (of which forcible rape is a part) are not published in this table.

The fact is, if one shell-games the number of rapes or defines them as something else and the people can't see them, then maybe rape is not as big a problem in Chicago as it is in Alaska. This is typical of the corrupt machine politics in which Obama was baptized and raised. It's sorta like hiding your government-hating, Reverend in the basement of the Old Capitol Building when you announce your candidacy for president. If you can't see him, he's really not a problem. But I digress.

If you dig a little deeper, however, it becomes clear that rape is a big - a very big problem - in Chicago. A problem that community leaders and politicians refuse to deal with in a transparent fashion.

How Big A Problem is Rape and Sexual Assault in Chicago and Who Really Cares?

Here's a quote from Rape Victims Advocates (RVA) on Michigan Avenue in Chicago from their website. It offers a hint.

Thanks to the efforts of people throughout Chicago and across Illinois imploring state leaders to support essential rape crisis services, Governor Blagojevich announced today that the proposed $5.2 million cut in rape crisis services funding is off the table. For now, rape crisis services funding from Illinois will remain at the proposed $5.8 million.

In other words, RVA says: No thanks to the Mayor, No thanks to the Senator, No thanks to the Governor, but thanks to the people throughout Chicago for pushing the politicians into making rape important, at least as far as more money goes. Shameful!

Eleven million dollars in rape crisis services to deal with a problem that neither the City or State government leaders, nor the junior Senator, acknowledges needs to be tracked according to national standardized measures. Sounds big to me.

RVA also advises that the following counseling groups are forming:

Incest Survivors Support Group and Adult Sexual Assault Survivors Support Group

The Chicago Reporter , an investigative publication set on a mission of documenting struggles with the burning issues of race and poverty, did an article on the subject recently.

I guess ABC's The Blotter from Brian Ross, Investigative Team reporter, Justin Rood missed this article.

http://www.chicagoreporter.com/index.php/c/Cover_Stories/d/Black_Rape_Victims_Lack_Refuge

Here are some nuggets that provide a clue to how big a problem and to whom many of the rapes in Chicago occur:

In Chicago, only one in eight women reports the crime, said Toylee Green, director of the women’s sexual assault program at the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago Harriet M. Harris Center, 6200 S. Drexel Ave.

Couple the above RVA anouncement with the following quote, and it sure looks like it might be a domestic problem in Chicago as much as Alaska.

Victims of sexual violence are not always so easily identified. Most walk in silence. They are mothers and daughters, cousins and friends.

The following clinches suspicion that rape might even be epidemic in Chicago, although politicians, including Obama, may not see it that way if they only check their stats. Counseling services needed in each neighborhood?

Counseling services should be neighborhood based," said Madeline Rich, director of women services at the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago Loop Center. "Lots of women won’t come here, won’t come anywhere out of their communities."

Despite the shell game Chicago employs with rape numbers, the Chicago Reporter, using female assault statistics for the city's South and West sides, areas that at the very least Obama their former Community Organizer and District 13 Senator should be familiar with, concludes the following.

The city’s South and West sides were among the hardest hit by sexual assault, according to the department’s analysis of 1994-95 statistics. Fifteen community areas recorded assault rates greater than 300 female victims per 100,000 residents. All but two were at least 80 percent black, according to the census.

Now if you extrapolate the first quote above, that one in eight victims report rape, then I guess at minimum, you have to multiply the above rate to come to a whopping 2,400 female victims per 100,000 residents. Kinda makes Alaska sound like a safe haven for females when compared to Chicago. And, of course, these would be just the female victims. Little boys are another issue.

Why don't they track the rapes in Chicago according to national standards?

Well it depends with whom you speak. If you ask some in the community, they are likely to tell you, it's because, they [the police] only believe the white women who've said they've been raped as the Chicago Reporter article notes.

If you ask the police, they'll tell you that it's because of "false" and "baseless" accusations" or that they'll get back to you with an answer, but then probably won't. At least that's what Jody Raphael, Senior Research Fellow noted in her paper entitled, Taking Rape Seriously: Sexual Assault In Cook County from the DePaul University College of Law Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center.

You can find her study here.

Jody does offer the following suggestion to Ilinois and Chicago police:

Police departments should be required to keep a complete record of the number of all rape complaints, with separate calculations of the numbers removed as “false” or “baseless,” along with the criteria defining these categories. Until this occurs, it is impossible to evaluate the success of efforts to encourage reporting or to provide oversight of police investigative processes.

Jody makes the assumption that somebody in charge in Chicago or at ABC's, The Blotter from Brian Ross, really cares. Quite the contrary, they're too busy trying to get Obama elected president by ignoring his record and digging up dirt on Palin.

Once elected, Obama will probably use the "bully pulpit" and give an annual speech about abstaining from rape or including it in his Father's Day missive about irresponsible fathers or maybe just throw more money at the problem with some re-education program aimed at young men, child molesters, and paroled rapists. Forget about incarceration as a fix, Obama's all about family values and keeping families together.

Obama for president: Change Women Need? For me, I'll "Just Say No Deal"

Recently Obama told supporters that the McCain/Palin ticket is taking his "Change" campaign theme.

It's true, but they're not stealing it: they own it.

The fact is that Obama's record of reform or change from politics as usual is non-existent, while both McCain and Palin have demonstrated records of doing battle with the old style politics of both parties. The only battle with Democrats that Obama can claim is during the Democratic primaries. And that had nothing to do with waste, fraud or abuse, unless of course you want to talk about Michigan, Florida and the DNC rulings.

Senator Obama's political career, except for its fast track, followed the traditional old style politician's path in Chicago. The fast tracked path, however, speaks to just how well he mastered those politics.

Obama's rise can be attributed, in significant part, to financial contribuitons or support of:

-- coummunity and church leaders, who with money he made available to them, have done untold good while continuing to racially divide their communities and alienate their constituencies from others unlike them,

-- non-profit developers who fraudently bathed themselves in tax money and subsidies that he and others made available,

-- black politicians to whom Obama suggested a political solution, one approaching racial gerrymandering, to allay their concerns about losing their seats because of increasing hispanic populations in their districts, and,

-- political machine colleagues or their surrogates, who've either been indicted, convicted or are still under federal investigation.

How can anyone continue to believe Obama is for "Change" or "reform"?

He still refuses to fully discuss these associations or how he's changed their minds, their attitudes or their actions, and offers only casual reference to the good that they do. He does, however, agree to the occasional 10 minute bob-and-weave interview that always ends with his same old whine about "guilt by association" but little more.

His evasiveness, poor recollections, and incredible explanations on these and other issues has been well documented in my blog entries and posts here at PB, and demonstrate both his old-politics-as-usual approach and the level of credultiy of those who would still defend him.

Most change that comes to Illinois or Chicago corrupt politics is through the efforts of the Chicago Office of the US Attorney, but it's kind of like the old mob-boss process where you take one down and another one is elevated to take-over. In a free world, it ain't easy getting convictions.

To be fair Obama has been involved with some reforms. They are reforms, however, that one would only expect from an old stlyle liberal Democrat , who with a Harvard law degree has learned well how to repackage them, and then reach out across the aisle to sell them.

He reformed welfare rules to provide more money and assistance for the needy, although exactly who benefit more from this reform is a back-burner research project of mine. I still have questions about those non-profits involved, and with whom Obama has close ties.

He also was involved in legislation to reform law enforcement procedures for video taping during interrogations and profiling methodologies, more restrictive control measures for guns in the home, eliminating the self-defense, defense for a homeowner who shoots a home invader, prohibiting an additional capital offense charge in gang-related killings, re-education programs for felons as well as attempts to restore voting rights to felons.

Clearly, thugs and criminals welcome such reforms, but I'm not sure how law enforcement, crime victims or law abiding citizens feel more secure about such changes. I'm inclined to think that they'll "just say no deal "!

Now these are changes the American people can believe in, if Obama becomes president, but don't look for them to be hyped on the campaign trail or even fully explored by the liberal news media. They, like some of the folks here, are still tracking down faked pregnancy rumors about the opposition.

Only nine months ago I believed that in the entire scheme of world politics, Democrats considered pregnancy, abortion, trysts, and those sort of things as issues of privacy or at least non-issues for all women - not just registered Democrats. Team Obama and its light-headed legion of liberating socialists open the Democratic Party to the greatest exodus since the Israelites left Egypt.

Now that Team Obama has brought this change to the Democratic Party philosophy, I hope Donna Brazile runs for political office real soon!

Thomas Sowell attributes the wide-eyed adoration of many Americans for Obama to, "The Galbraith Effect".

Sowell does another fine job of summing up Obama. And he does it so convincingly and elloquently in only two sentences.

"Despite an impressive political machine and a huge image makeover this year to turn a decades-long, divisive grievance-promoting activist into someone who is supposed to unite us all and lead us into the promised land of "change," little glimpses of the truth keep coming out." The elitist sneers at people who believe in religion and who own guns, the Americans who don't speak foreign languages and the views of the "typical white person," are all like rays of light that show through the cracks in Obama's carefully crafted image.

Sowell also notes that while Obama's success in some all-white states intimates that many Americans have moved beyond race, he suggests that Obama, maybe not so much.

The overwhelming votes for Obama in some virtually all-white states show that many Americans are ready to move beyond race. But Obama himself wants to have it both ways, by attributing racist notions to the McCain camp that has never made race an issue.

Read the whole article here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/the_galbraith_effect.html

I cut to the chase and sum Obama up in one word: faker.

Admittedly, it's neither as convincing nor as elloquent as Sowell, but nonetheless,it is as true.

Joe is one of my favorite Democrats, but far too honest to be helpful for team Obama. See Michelle, if only you could get past it.

I'm sure this comment will bring the disenfranchised folks back to the arms of Obama soon:

"Make no mistake about this �' Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America, let’s get that straight. She’s a truly close personal friend. She is qualified to be president of the United States of America, she’s easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely. She’s first rate so let’s get that straight."

Read the story here: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/10/politics/fromtheroad/entry4437794.shtml

Seems like Democrat Party leaders see not having an abortion a qualification for Republican candidates. Does that mean having an Abortion is a liberal candidate qual?

Politico today reported:

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Carol Fowler is the wife of former DNC Chairman Don Fowler. Way to go!

Read it here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0908/SC_Dem_chair_Palin_primary_qualification_is_she_hasnt_had_an_abortion_.html?showall

Hmmm, if that's the way Democratic Party leadership sizes it up, maybe Team Obama will consider hiring, as a Abortion Advocate, Sherri Shepherd of the View, who recently said she's had more abortions than she can count.

Kirsten Powers is a long time Democratic Party sympathizer who can often be found on Fox News defending every bone-headed gaffe Obama and his campaign makes. She's been able to counter McCain surrogates railing about something Team Obama said, and frequently very effectively offering an "out of context" defense.

My point is, she's no McCain hack - she's one of the disenfranchised still defending the Party, but it appears she's losing faith in "the One", as Oprah has referred to Obama.

Here's one bit of advice that Kirsten gives to the Democrats in general, and Obama in particular in yesterday's article:

Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy. No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a "former mayor" when she is in fact a sitting governor.

And another bit of wisdom for "the One"and his team, who apparently believe that they know Evangelicals cause Obama gave them a lecture on Abortion and the Bible:

Evangelicals will never vote for a woman who works! they declared. This from people who've likely never met an evangelical in their lives. They could barely contain themselves when they found out Gov. Palin's daughter was pregnant, so sure were they that evangelicals would hang her from the highest tree. When evangelical leaders expressed support, there was a palpable disappointment that Palin or her daughter wasn't branded with a scarlet letter. They claimed that the Palin announcement was some desperate pick that came out of nowhere. Had they been doing their jobs, or even perusing The Weekly Standard or right-wing blogs, they'd have known that she was on the list.

Find the whole article here: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09092008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/how_obama_blew_it_128132.htm

Here's another article Kirsten wrote two weeks ago, warning the Democrats about their blunders.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08302008/news/columnists/a_brilliant_trap_makes_dems_the_male_cha_126765.htm

What is it Obama always says about the definition of Insanity? Oh yeah! Doing the same old thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I say Keep-it-Up, Mr. O. We love your school-boy antics, it make you look soooooo cute and presidential!

Because of some techical glitch I was unable to add a blog entry, so I posted the Shake-up At MSNBC in the forums.

In speaking with several colleagues not nealy as enamored nor supportive of this site as I, it was suggested that I re-post the meat of that entry because they choose not to skim the forums.

In defference to them, and at the risk of raising the ire of others here, I'm re-posting the meat of that post - minus my potatoes.

According to an article By Brian Stelter entitled, MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat, NBC does a little shaking up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/media/08msnbc.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Here are some highlights of that article:

-After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

-Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening.

-Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks.

-On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat. “I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”

August 20, 2008 the Media Research Center (MRC), a media watchdog group likely to be as conservative as Media Matters is liberal, issued a report summarizing the media's handling of the Democratic Primary.

For the moderate independent voter it's of importance to read what each political extreme says about the other, but what's much more important that he/she focus on the facts and discard the bias.

In my July 20, 2008 blog entry, I said that the left leaning media, suffering from "liberal guilt" over the poor job they did in the run-up to the Iraq War were seeking their redemption by shilling for the old-style, underperforming Chicago politician, Barack Obama. Any "free thinker" with common sense who sat through the primary could not deny the overwhelming adoration the media showered on Obama. Frankly, the media bias in favor Obama made us sick.

For those of us in the middle the MRC report confirms that diagnosis.

The report titled: Obama’s Margin of Victory: The Media and sub-titled: How Barack Obama Could Not Have Won the Democratic Nomination Without ABC, CBS and NBC. Read or Get a copy of the report here: http://www.mrc.org/SpecialReports/2008/obama/obamaExecSum.asp

Here are some of the key findings:

- The three broadcast networks treated Obama to nearly seven times more good press than bad 462 positive stories (34% of the total), compared with only 70 stories (just 5%) that were critical.

• NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports (37%), more than ten times the number of anti-Obama stories (17, or 3%). The CBS Evening News was nearly as skewed, with 156 stories spun in favor of Obama (38%), compared to a mere 21 anti-Obama reports (5%). ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor (127 stories to 32, or 27% to 7%).

• The networks minimized Obama’s liberal ideology, only referring to him as a "liberal" 14 times in four years. In contrast, reporters found twice as many occasions (29) to refer to Obama as either a "rock star," "rising star" or "superstar" during the same period.

• In covering the campaign, network reporters highlighted voters who offered favorable opinions about Obama. Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 (78%) were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 (19%) that had a negative view, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.

• The networks downplayed or ignored major Obama gaffes and scandals. Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full reports (one each on ABC and NBC) and mentioned in just 15 other stories. CBS and NBC also initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright, but heavily praised Obama’s March 18 speech on race relations.