From Russia Today:

Obama’s brother lives in a Kenyan shack

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama’s lost brother has been tracked down in Kenya. George Hussein Onyango Obama, aged 26, was found by journalists from the Italian edition of Vanity Fair. He reportedly lives in poverty in a shack on the outskirts of Nairobi.

He has the same father as the U.S. senator, Barack Hussein Obama, but a different mother.  Her name has been given as Jael.

The youngest of Obama’s half-brothers says he lives on less than a dollar per month in a 2m x 3m shack. Its walls are decorated with posters of famous footballers and a calendar featuring exotic beaches. The magazine also noted George has a newspaper picture of his brother.

He has only met his famous brother twice. Once when he was five and then in 2006 when Senator Obama visited Nairobi. George admits their meeting was very brief and cool.

It seems to us that if Barack Obama wants to redistribute wealth, he could start by redistributing his own. He could give some to his own brother, for instance. 

From the Wall Street Journal :

Reader, when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be?

Or do you call a plumber?

As a "community organizer," Obama toiled within a subculture of such abject dependency that even home repairs were "social services," provided by government (or, in Obama’s Chicago, not provided). It was an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the underclass. By Judis’s account, Obama’s Columbia degree was useless. He would have been more helpful if he’d gone to vocational school instead.

Judis quotes an Altgeld resident as telling Obama, "Ain’t nothing gonna change. . . . We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can." Certainly no one can fault Obama for doing the same thing. But what did Obama move outta there to do? To become a politician–specifically, an "idealistic" politician who wants "to make major changes in poverty." Guys like that created this mess in the first place.

In his political career, has Obama done or even said anything to suggest that he has a different approach to "poverty," one that would reduce dependency rather than promote it? His recent rediscovery of the glories of "community organizing" certainly isn’t an encouraging sign.

Read the whole thing here.

 Thanks to Indigo Red (see comments on the post below) for directing our attention to this report on ‘Public Allies’.

Though the report means to be favorable to Michelle Obama, you can get a sense of her victim mind-set from it.  In particular I was struck by this:

‘As a Harvard Law School graduate, Ms Obama said, she had struggled to get off the path that was leading her toward becoming a partner at a corporate law firm.’

You gotta feel sorry for her – don’t you? 

A nasty  Communist idea was proposed for America by Barack Obama in that acceptance speech at Denver. 

Investor’s Business Daily makes it clear that his ‘Universal Voluntary Public Service’ program involves Communist-style re-education camps :

Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use the nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, "Universal Voluntary Public Service."

Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they’ll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of "social change."

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn’t seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They’ll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.

In exchange, they’ll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky.

"Our alumni are more than twice as likely as 18-34 year olds to … engage in protest activities," Public Allies boasts in a document found with its tax filings. It has already deployed an army of 2,200 community organizers like Obama to agitate for "justice" and "equality" in his hometown of Chicago and other U.S. cities, including Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Washington. "I get to practice being an activist," and get paid for it, gushed Cincinnati recruit Amy Vincent.

Public Allies promotes "diversity and inclusion," a program paper says. More than 70% of its recruits are "people of color." When they’re not protesting, they’re staffing AIDS clinics, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare.

Public Allies brags that more than 80% of graduates have continued working in nonprofit or government jobs. It’s training the "next generation of nonprofit leaders" — future "social entrepreneurs."

The Obamas discourage work in the private sector. "Don’t go into corporate America," Michelle has exhorted youth. "Work for the community. Be social workers." Shun the "money culture," Barack added. "Individual salvation depends on collective salvation."

"If you commit to serving your community," he pledged in his Denver acceptance speech, "we will make sure you can afford a college education." So, go through government to go to college, and then go back into government.

Many of today’s youth find the pitch attractive. "I may spend the rest of my life trying to create social movement," said Brian Coovert of the Cincinnati chapter. "There is always going to be work to do. Until we have a perfect country, I’ll have a job."

Not all the recruits appreciate the PC indoctrination. "It was too touchy-feely," said Nelly Nieblas, 29, of the 2005 Los Angeles class. "It’s a lot of talk about race, a lot of talk about sexism, a lot of talk about homophobia, talk about -isms and phobias."

One of those -isms is "heterosexism," which a Public Allies training seminar in Chicago describes as a negative byproduct of "capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male-dominated privilege."

The government now funds about half of Public Allies’ expenses through Clinton’s AmeriCorps. Obama wants to fully fund it and expand it into a national program that some see costing $500 billion. "We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military, he said.

The gall of it: The Obamas want to create a boot camp for radicals who hate the military — and stick American taxpayers with the bill.

 

 The Wall Street Journal tells how Governor Sarah Palin beat  the establishment. 

And so it came as no surprise in 2004 when former Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski made clear he’d be working exclusively with three North Slope producers—ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP—to build a $25 billion pipeline to move natural gas to the lower 48. The trio had informed their political vassals that they alone would build this project (they weren’t selling their gas to outsiders) and that they expected the state to reward them. Mr. Murkowski disappeared into smoky backrooms to work out the details. He refused to release information on the negotiations. When Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin suggested terms of the contract were illegal, he was fired.

What Mr. Murkowski did do publicly was instruct his statehouse to change the oil and gas tax structure (taxes being a primary way Alaskans realize their oil revenue). Later, citizens would discover this was groundwork for Mr. Murkowski’s pipeline contract—which would lock in that oil-requested tax package for up to 40 years, provide a $4 billion state investment, and relinquish most oversight.

Enter Mrs. Palin. The former mayor of Wasilla had been appointed by Mr. Murkowski in 2003 to the state oil and gas regulatory agency. She’d had the temerity to blow the whistle on fellow GOP Commissioner Randy Ruedrich for refusing to disclose energy dealings. Mr. Murkowski and GOP Attorney General Gregg Renkes closed ranks around Mr. Ruedrich—who also chaired the state GOP. Mrs. Palin resigned. Having thus offended the entire old boy network, she challenged the governor for his seat.

Mrs. Palin ran against the secret deal, and vowed to put the pipeline back out for competitive, transparent, bidding. She railed against cozy politics. Mr. Murkowski ran on his unpopular pipeline deal. The oil industry warned the state would never get its project without his leadership. Mrs. Palin walloped him in the primary and won office in late 2006. Around this time, news broke of a federal probe that would show oil executives had bribed lawmakers to support the Murkowski tax changes.

Among Mrs. Palin’s first acts was to reinstate Mr. Irwin. By February 2007 she’d released her requirements for pipeline bidding. They were stricter, and included only a $500 million state incentive. By May a cowed state house—reeling from scandal—passed her legislation.

Read the whole impressive story here. 

 Women like Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Sarah Palin owe nothing to the lefty feminist movement.

Brains, competence, courage, character, and the right understanding of political issues equip them for  leadership, for directing whole nations, for steering the ship of state.   

The Wall Street Journal contrasts Sarah Palin with Hillary Clinton: 

Many younger women didn’t learn what it means to be an achieving woman from dormitory feminism. She didn’t abandon her hometown for the big city. She stayed home, had babies, helped her snowmobiling husband with his commercial fishing business and with him, tried to assemble a life.

She got into politics in Wasilla with zero connections – no famous father, no financing husband, no mentor, nothing. She got elected mayor. She got into politics to improve her community, not to launch herself on some career path she had figured out while in college.

Then came the interesting part. Under the standard model, you deploy your superb IQ to maneuver upward around the oppressors. Sarah Jock, learning her self-discipline in such weird pursuits as morning moose-hunts with her dad, ran at the system. Doing something few women and no males would do, she went after the men who run Alaska’s inbred politics, the machine. And cleaned their clocks. The people elected her governor.

I asked a number of women this week to account for Sarah Palin’s sudden appeal. Here are the common threads.

The angry woman-as-victim drives them nuts. They hate victimology. As one woman said, "The point is that across the ages women have been doing pretty much what Sarah Palin has been doing: bearing children, feeding families, bringing in an income, working to improve their communities."

Another woman said, "Her story reflects a more normal reality" of active women; "the harder you work, the luckier you get." Hillary Clinton still plays the victim card. Sarah Palin gives off no victim vibes. These women mentioned her grit, determination and character.

Read the whole thing here.

 In relation to the issues of energy and national security, Alaska is right now the most important state in the US, not only for America but also for its allies in Europe and the Far East. In this consideration alone, Palin is an excellent choice of McCain’s to be his running-mate. 

 Investor’s Business Daily explains:  

Palin knows energy. She’s already figured out how to deliver energy to the U.S. without Congress — by championing state legislation to create a 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline across Canada to the U.S.

It was a major feat, negotiating with the Canadian government, educating lawmakers and getting the public behind her. In a decade, the $30 billion project will ship 4.5 million cubic feet of gas a day from the North Slope to Houston’s air conditioners, Iowa’s farm machines and Boston’s winter furnaces.

There’s little doubt this is the kind of leadership the U.S. needs. Not only will getting serious about Alaska help the economy, it will also help our allies in Europe and the Far East whose economies are severely battered by high energy prices and who are seeing some of the most direct threats from the petrotyrants.

John McCain’s pick of Palin shows he’s serious about energy — and about securing America’s future. Congress mustn’t ignore Alaska any longer. Petrotyranny is moving beyond economics and becoming a national security issue. Alaska is a big part of the answer.

 

 Investor’s Business Daily carries this in an editorial today:

Forget warnings of catastrophic melting polar ice and rising sea levels, though, and consider for a moment the effects of a warming Earth.

Food output would increase as growing seasons become longer and climates now too cold for agriculture evolve into temperate zones that can support crops. With a world population that is expected to grow from its current 6.7 billion to 8.9 billion in 2050, harvests will have to become more abundant to keep up with the demand.

A warming Earth would also mean a healthier human race. Heat kills, but it’s not as deadly as cold. A 1990s study found that cold-related deaths kill 80,000 year in the United Kingdom — 100 times the number of those who die heat-related deaths.

Cold weather is lethal because it increases blood clots, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes, and promotes the transmission of respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia and influenza, that are among the top causes of death in the U.S. and other developed nations. Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institution figures that a temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius would cut deaths due to respiratory and circulatory diseases by roughly 40,000 a year.

While global warm-ongers talk in gloomy tones about SUV-induced droughts, higher temperatures would actually boost precipitation. There is little or no argument among scientists about this. On a planet with a growing population where as much as 40% of the human race could be living in regions with insufficient water supplies by 2035, an increase in precipitation is not insignificant.

Finally, a warmer planet would be a greener planet as well. Isn’t this what the environmentalists want — more green? Or is their real goal to roll back concrete, asphalt, steel and glass, the building blocks of human advancement and prosperity?

No one can be sure how the sun will behave in the coming decades. There’s even disagreement over August’s solar activity. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now thinks it saw a small sun spot on Aug. 21 while UCLA researchers still say it was a spotless month.

But if historical patterns hold, the sun is entering a down cycle that will make ours a more frosty world. The facts are enough to make Al Gore shiver.

 In foreign affairs, no presidential candidate since Thomas Jefferson has had experience. Fortunately, many have had good judgment. Not so Barack Obama, as Thomas Sowell says:

Out of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates this year, only Governor Palin has had to make executive decisions and live with the consequences.

As for Senator Obama, his various pronouncements on foreign policy have been as immature as they have been presumptuous.

He talked publicly about taking military action against Pakistan, one of our few Islamic allies and a nation with nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama’s first response to the Russian invasion of Georgia was to urge "all sides" to negotiate a cease-fire and take their issues to the United Nations. That is standard liberal talk, which even Obama had second thoughts about, after Senator John McCain gave a more grown-up response.

We should all have second thoughts about what is, and is not, foreign policy "experience."

Read the whole article here.

 That lone voice crying the truth in the wilderness of Europe, Melanie Phillips declares in The Spectator:

The message Putin wants to deliver is that no-one messes with Russia. Like a Mafia godfather, he wants respect for his country’s power – and will mow down anyone who fails to offer it. That’s also why Russia is busy murdering those of its own citizens who oppose its fascistic regime. (It is, after all, the only country so far to have carried out an act of nuclear terrorism in Britain by murdering Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium 210 and leaving a trail of radioactive poison across London – for which it has never been brought to account, flicking away our huffing and puffing Foreign Office like a mosquito on the nose of a bear).

It is behaving in this way because it has correctly perceived that America is paralysed and Europe is steadily destroying itself, and so there is an enormous vacuum in global power which it thinks it can fill. It has no less correctly concluded that the west will no longer defend itself or the values for which it once stood. See yesterday’s entirely predictable and futile hand-wringing over Georgia by the EU, full of sound and fury but signifying no action at all. Once upon a time, the west believed it should go to war to defend the sovereignty of nations. Now, it supports instead those who destroy that sovereignty – as it did when it recognised Kosovo as an independent state, thus demonstrating contempt for the sovereignty of Serbia. Who therefore can be surprised that Russia, which not only complained bitterly about Kosovo but had previously insisted on the virtue of its own suppression of the Chechens on the grounds that national sovereignty had to be upheld or else chaos would follow, is now cynically using that very same Kosovo precedent to justify its support for South Ossetia and Abkhazia breaking away from Georgia?

Despite the fact that Russia is threatened by Islamism, there are nevertheless notable similarities between the attempt to re-establish the Russian empire and the attempt to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate. In similar fashion, both employ not only violent force but cultural infiltration and sedition; both use sophisticated propaganda and covert influence; both invert truth and lies; both hijack the concept of victimhood. Thus Russia’s patently absurd claim of genocide in south Ossetia parallels the preposterous Islamist claims of genocide in Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza; thus both claim that their own aggression is merely self-defence against victimisation. Such similarities are scarcely surprising considering that Islamism borrowed so much from Communism (as it did also from fascism). Nor is it surprising that both Russians and Islamists make common cause against the west – their common enemy.

The whole article is a must-read.