Another blockbuster scoop here on Big Government today. While much of the blogosphere’s background coverage on this story will probably be focused on more recent controversies surrounding the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), such as the voter intimidation case in Philadelphia and the “kill some crackers” video from fellow NBPP leader King Samir Shabazz, I think the activity the NBPP was engaged in during the years immediately prior to 2007 is even more damning with regards to this revelation. For reasons that will soon be clear, Barack Obama, in fact any politician, would have to have been completely out of their mind to appear anywhere near Malik Shabazz or anyone else from the NBPP in 2007.

As I first reported on Verum Serum last year, in 2004-2005 Malik Shabazz and the New Black Panther Party were purveyors of some of the most vile, subversive, racist “music” you will ever hear anywhere. Including this atrocity from the leader himself, the man President Obama inexplicably shared a stage and marched with in Selma, Malik “Zulu” Shabazz:

Amerikkka’s Most Hated

Sample lyrics:

Black Power crackers
Black Power niggers
Negroes, political prostitutes, bitches and hoes

What kind of teaching I’m following?
The kind of teaching that got my picture in the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance
_
You pigs beat a nigger down in Inglewood
But we fucked up your Pentagon filled with crackers and peckerwoods
_
The Al Qaeda comparative true to life now
Cracker, I’m a terrorist
Bin Laden might look alike
I ain’t losing no sleep at night
_
In Cincinnati, we got to burn that shit
And snatch crackers out of cars
Too many young black brothers locked behind bars
For killing one of us
So why not bust on the true terrorists
The American cracker devil police officer

At what point does offensive speech move beyond First Amendment protection into illegal incitement?

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Someone will have to explain to me how you can simultaneously be the only adult in the room, and yet storm out of such room like a petulant teenager:

“Don’t call my bluff,” the president said. “I am not afraid to veto and I will take it to the American people.”

If Moody’s downgrades the United States, “it will be a tax increase on every American,” he said.

There needs to be a long-term debt extension, the president argued.

“This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this,” he said.

Then he abruptly ended the meeting, saying, “see you tomorrow.”

Apparently the President’s outburst was in response to a suggestion by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that a shorter-term extension be pursued, reflecting only the $1-1.5 trillion in spending cuts that both parties have more or less coalesced around. With an annual deficit running in the range of $1.5 trillion, this would be enough for an 8-10 month extension.

The President’s reaction is understandable, I suppose, given that this would result in the need for another increase in the debt ceiling during (gasp)…an election year. All things being equal, the GOP would probably prefer to avoid this scenario as well. But if the only other viable options are default, or agreeing to a deal with the President which includes tax increases, I can understand why Cantor would put this option on the table.

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Andrew Breitbart called Jones this in the Daily Caller this morning, and as result has apparently now been banned by the cowardly Huffington Post.

His language was a bit harsh, I’ll grant, but I would add to this that Jones is also a despicable anti-war, anti-American hypocrite. And I don’t make this charge lightly.

You see thanks to the incompetence – or outright bias – of the mainstream media, Jones has never been held accountable for his role in producing and distributing one of the most vile pieces of anti-war, anti-American propaganda produced in the last decade. An album called WarTimes: Report from the Opposition which was narrated by none other than COP-KILLING Mumia Abu-Jamal. In case you missed this when it was first reported here on this blog, here are some snippets:

It’s already indisputable that Van Jones was behind this effort, but take a closer listen to this track. Jump ahead to about the 2:00 mark: is it just me or does that sounds like Van Jones himself rapping “f*ck the government…”?

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Here is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demonstrating what real moral clarity sounds like at a speech at the American University in Cairo in June 2005. Watch:

(transcript of full speech is available here):

Rice is not the most dynamic speaker, but I believe this speech will ultimately be viewed as much more historically significant than Obama’s own turgid 2009 speech in Cairo. The spinmeisters in the White House are already shamelessly attempting to re-write history, but for all practical purposes the Administration abandoned the campaign to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East upon entering office.

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You are probably familiar by now with this infamous graph published by the White House in January 2009 highlighting their expectations for the impact of the Recovery Act on the rate of unemployment. Far from leveling off at 8% and then declining, the actual unemployment rate ran up to 10% by the end of 2009 and has declined only slightly since to 9.5%, largely due to a decline in labor force participation. This in spite of the rapid passage of the massive $787 billion stimulus bill in February 2009. (Geoff at the Innocent Bystanders blog deserves everlasting credit for being the first to point out this disconnect.)

With the White House and other Democrats resolutely sticking to their claim that the stimulus bill “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that the very same January 2009 White House report also included an industry by industry forecast of where these 3-4 million jobs would come from. Here it is:

Thanks to the inclination of economists to model verifiable data (even when they are pulling numbers out of the sky), these industry categories happen to align perfectly with employment data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus we can easily compare the actual changes in employment to the figures forecast by the White House. In the table below, I’ve calculated the net change in employment by industry from February 2009, when the stimulus bill was passed, to July 2010, using the latest data available from the BLS. (Click row headings for data source.)

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It’s hard to respect a “journalist” who repeatedly insulted and mocked leading conservatives he was assigned cover, and even wished death on some of them, to a secretive email list compromised of liberal media figures around the country.  Whatever this says about Weigel’s political orientation, it speaks loudly and clearly to the fact that he was an unprofessional jerk, and that’s putting it kindly.

Weigel has mostly owned up to this fact, which I think says something positive about his character.

But as long as Weigel is airing more of his Journolist laundry, perhaps it should be pointed out that at one point in time Weigel aired this same kind of vitriol against leading liberal figures.

For example, do you think Dave still thinks Paul Krugman is “obviously insane”, “simple-minded” and a “cancer on the Times”? Does he still think that Krugman’s column is a “litany of propaganda, lies, and insults”?

Does he still think that Maureen Dowd “sucks” and that her work is “absolute tripe”? Does he still wonder: “why is this woman employed”?

Because I sure do (all of the above), but then I do not have a professional need to ingratiate myself with the liberal media establishment.

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While the White House really, really wants you believe that they have their boot on the neck of BP, it turns out that a key Administration official had his head inserted somewhere else just three short years ago. Do you think NOBEL LAUREATE (and Secretary of Energy) Steven Chu still thinks BP is going to help save the world?

This is one of the ironies of the disaster in the Gulf. From all available evidence, BP is as committed as anyone to the “comprehensive energy reform” agenda of the White House. No doubt this reflects both political realism and market opportunism on their part, but BP’s 2009 “Road Map for America’s Energy Future” could have been written by John Kerry. Higher energy prices, cap and trade? Bring it on, says BP.

And this isn’t a recent shift on BP’s part. Here’s embattled BP Chairman Tony Hayward back in June 2007:

From BP’s perspective, the evidence that climate change is happening, and that it is manmade, is mounting all the time. As the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found, the evidence is almost overwhelming. We could wait until the science is 100% certain, but BP believes that, as an energy company, it has a duty to act pre-emptively. When you balance the likely impacts of not taking action against the real opportunities that exist to take action, it is difficult to believe that humanity will not move towards a solution to climate change…

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For a guy known to hold some pretty strange views, this might be the most bizarre perspective on welfare policy I have ever seen. Here is Jerry Brown from his Pacifica Radio show in 1995 (full transcript here):

The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs. Jobs for every American is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter, basic food, and medical care. I’m talking about welfare for all. Without it, you’re going to have warfare for all. Without a universal health care like every other civilized country, without a minimum level of income, this country will explode. You can’t blame the guy at the bottom forever. At some point there’s a reaction and we’ll see that the real criminals are those calling the tune, making the rules, and walking to the bank. We have the money, we have the brain power. The United States now has the highest measured wealth of any nation ever in the history of the world. We could rebuild our cities, we could create the kind of buying power and community well-being that will provide for peace. The guaranteed income is one way. Another way is to have always the availability of work in a nonprofit, in community service. A third is to start giving people training to develop skills where they can be self-supporting. You could come up with a cash supplement. Even conservatives have suggested a negative income tax to cut out the bureaucracy. If we were smart, we’d get rid of welfare and give people a family assistance like they do in Europe…

The problem isn’t even a problem. Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we’re all in it together. It’ll work when there’s a shared sense of destiny. It can be done! It’s all there! What isn’t there is the leadership to create the kind of social network, the safety net, the distribution that would truly create a just and equal society…

We have to restore power to the family, to the neighborhood, and the community with a non-market principle, a principle of equality, of charity, of let’s-take-care-of-one-another. That’s the creative challenge. First, expose relentlessly the big lie that comes over the tube every night-that if you just go out and find that job, and work harder, it’ll all be fine. It won’t! There’s not enough work to go around and a lot of the pay is not fair. Unless you totally yank up that system and create a better one, unless the spirit changes, unless the heart opens, unless we confront power with the truth of our own unarmed but absolute fearless truth, we’re not going to overcome it. Evil is too embedded to be overcome by anything other than a spiritual challenge.

So let me see if I can get this straight. Since full employment is a practical impossibility, we should just give up on the idea of job promotion and hand out a minimum income or dole like they do in Europe. This has clearly worked out so well for them.

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It’s only a trespassing charge, but there is something really gratifying about seeing the corrupt, race-baiting Bertha Lewis being led away in handcuffs. This happened just yesterday, at an immigration rally in NYC. Skip ahead to the 7:30 mark to see the arrest (Lewis is dressed in all white, at the far left of the still image below):

Their attempt to feign patriotism by singing the national anthem is despicable, as the immigration “reform” movement is only the latest front in the ongoing war socialists are waging against our nation.

But don’t take my word for it, Bertha Lewis outlined the whole strategy just a couple of months ago: (more…)

This doesn’t qualify as much of a revelation since administrative law is Elena Kagan’s primary area of expertise, and one of her few items of legal scholarship is a frequently cited 2001 article entitled “Presidential Administration“. But imagine the outcry from the left if Bush had nominated someone who had taught the following course at Harvard:

In truth, many principled individuals on the left are just as opposed to Kagan as most conservatives, and her legal scholarship and advocacy for expanded Executive Branch powers are a big reason why. But in thinking about this it’s struck me that perhaps by putting so much focus on constraining judicial activism, conservatives have missed a shift in strategy over the past decade by power seekers on the left.

Maybe it’s not judicial activism we need to worry most about, but judges who support the concentration of power and expropriation of the lawmaking function by the Executive Branch.

Think about it. In just over a year, this Administration has assumed control over large swaths of the economy. They are essentially running the largest U.S. automaker, and with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac they have effective control of the entire mortgage industry. And don’t forget that the Feds essentially own AIG and a large portion of Citibank, and have also now nationalized the student lending industry.

Then there is healthcare reform which once fully implemented will represent the largest accumulation of federal power since the New Deal. Notably, the bill delegates a massive amount of “rule-making” (i.e. law-making) authority to the Health Secretary.

The other legislative priorities for the Administration, if enacted, will delegate to the executive branch regulatory control over the energy sector, and most of the remaining segments of the financial services industry. (No need to include GSE reform – they already control Fannie and Freddie).

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If any further proof is needed that Barney Frank has been completely incompetent in his oversight of the financial services industry, one need look no further than this past week. Just one day after Frank sent a memo to the White House urging the President to reject the attempt by Republicans to include GSE reform in any financial reform bill, Freddie Mac requested an additional government bailout of $10.6 billion to cover losses incurred in the first quarter. Only one day (!) after Frank defended the GSE’s, writing that “as Fannie and Freddie operate today, going forward, there is no loss”.

There is no loss.

Rep. Frank, of course, has a distinguished history of ineptitude when it comes to regulation of the housing industry, and his role in the financial market collapse. But when it comes to avoiding culpability, he is second to no one in his ability to spin a web of deceipt and reinvent history.

“It was Tom DeLay’s fault, he was in charge back then. Republicans were the ones pushing home ownership on the poor. I only advocated for rental housing.”

Lies, demonstrable lies.

But let’s not forget that Frank became chair of the House Financial Services Committee in January 2007, after the Democrats re-took congress. While the housing market decline had already begun, it would be well over a year before the financial crisis really began to accelerate. Fannie and Freddie, in fact, were not placed under federal control until September 2008.

Surely Barney Frank, with his vast intellect and experience, saw these problems developing and was preparing to do everything within his power to reign in the mortgage industry, and stem this crisis, as he assumed his new leadership role. Right?

Source: CSPAN

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Buffy Wicks, remember, was the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement who was implicated (along with Yosi Sergant) in orchestrating a propaganda campaign for health care reform with the National Endowment for the Arts. Sergant ended up resigning over this incident, but I believe “Buffy the Integrity Slayer” was more to blame.

Anyway, I’m not sure how this news slipped through the cracks but according to this press release posted by Politico on April 4, Buffy has joined David Axelrod’s old firm, AKPD Message and Media:

AKPD Message and Media today announced that political strategist Buffy Wicks has joined the firm as a vice president. Wicks will join AKPD media buyer Debra Schommer Klein in the firm’s West Coast operation, located in Los Angeles, California.

A veteran of the Obama presidential campaign and White House, Wicks will advise AKPD’s clients on matters of campaign strategy, field organizing, and grassroots mobilization.

“Buffy is one of the most respected political organizers in the country, and she knows what it takes to build a strong and successful relationship with campaign supporters,” said AKPD partner John Del Cecato. “As AKPD continues to serve our local, state, and federal clients across the nation, we’re thrilled to add someone with Buffy’s expertise to our firm.”

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If the video clip of Bertha Lewis I posted yesterday exposed her disturbing views on the tea party and conservatives in general, as well as her support for genuine socialism, the clip I am going to post here reveals the means by which she and others on the left plan on achieving their radical goals. For all the phony accusations against the Tea Party movement for racism and fomenting violence, if there is anything which will lead to racial violence and civic unrest in this country it’s the agenda on display here – watch:

Transcript:

First of all, let me just say that any group that says “I’m young, I’m democratic, and I’m a socialist” is alright with me. [applause]

The reason that you have to build your organization, and make it as big and as powerful as you can, is because you need to get into real battles. And here’s what I think you need to do. And you need make sure that you get into this battle. The next big battle that’s coming…whether healthcare lives or dies…[break]

Immigration is the next big battle. Immigration, immigration, immigration. And the reason this is so important is, you know, here’s the secret [whispers]:

We’re getting ready to me a majority, minority country. Shhhh. [applause] We’ll be like South Africa. More black people than white people. [laughter] Don’t tell anybody.

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Apparently CEO Bertha Lewis said of ACORN yesterday “we’re on life support”. Well, I think ACORN’s remaining benefactors might be a little closer to pulling the plug once and for all after watching this bizarre rant from Ms. Lewis from just a few weeks ago. She is speaking at the Winter Conference of the Young Democratic Socialists on March 25, 2010 – watch:

As I’ve said elsewhere, I think it is unbecoming of conservatives to engage in hyperbole and personal attacks. We should allow this to remain the primary tool of our opponents. Lewis is clearly a bit unhinged here, but the underlying debate is an important one for the future of America. Frankly, I wish more “progressives” would express their views so openly. The debate between socialist values of collectivism and government control, and traditional American values of individual liberty and free enterprise is one we should relish.

The White House recently rescinded the ban on federal funding for ACORN after a court order, as reported by Matthew Vadum here yesterday. While the Justice Department is vigorously appealing in an attempt to re-instate this ban, it is a little late for the President, key Democrats, and certain members of the progressive media to distance themselves from Lewis and ACORN now. As much as they might like to.

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One of the more controversial elements of ObamaCare is the mandate for most individuals to purchase insurance beginning in 2014. There is really no precedent for a federal mandate of this scale requiring individuals to purchase a product or service. So not surprisingly a number of state Attorney Generals have indicated they will be filing suit questioning the constitutionality of this provision.

Of course the individual mandate is also very risky from a political standpoint, as the Democrats who orchestrated the passage of this bill are mandating not only that the young and healthy obtain insurance, but also that even their most fervent liberal constituents must purchase this coverage from the “evil”, private insurance industry.

Republicans for their part have focused on the fact that this mandate will be enforced via threat of a financial penalty (or tax), with the added assumption that it is the dreaded IRS which will be enforcing this. And sure enough, it’s already been reported that the IRS anticipates hiring possibly in excess of 15,000 additional personnel to deal with the collection of the individual mandate, and other tax related provisions within the bill.

However, it turns out that the Democrats who crafted this bill significantly – and I mean significantly – hamstrung the ability of the IRS or any other federal agency to enforce or collect on this mandate. Here is what the federal Joint Committee on Taxation had to say about this issue in a report released earlier this week:

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Well, the Democrats finally found an enemy they were willing to commit whatever it takes to defeat. Unfortunately for them this enemy was the American people. While I agree with those who assert that this bill will be difficult to reverse, this nation achieved its greatness only through the steadfast refusal of patriots to surrender to the forces of tyranny and oppression throughout our history. Let there be no mistake, in enacting this legislation the President and his allies have chosen the path of tyranny. By resorting to back-room dealmaking, the blatant payoff of special interests, and every legislative contravention imaginable, Democrats have set in motion the largest seizure of power by the federal government since the New Deal, if not our history. All at the expense of personal liberty and free enterprise, and against the clearly expressed will of the vast majority of Americans.

But this bill will not stand.

Not if freedom-loving Americans have anything to say about it, and they will starting this November. It may not happen in one fell swoop, but this assault against liberty can and will be reversed.

For everyone who has stood so passionately against this legislation for the past year, this is our main solace. But we should also take pride in the success of our opposition to this point. Clearly Democrats were ultimately willing to do anything and everything necessary to pass this bill. This outcome was predetermined when the President and Democratic leadership retained the right to use reconciliation from the very beginning of the legislative process.

Given the popularity of the President coming into office, and the overwhelming majorities his party enjoyed in Congress, no one could have anticipated the immense difficulty they would have in reaching this point. We drove them to the very brink of defeat, and in doing so we exposed the raw corruption and insatiable desire for power which will prove to be their undoing.

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Here’s budget director Peter Orszag writing on his White House blog yesterday:

Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to a claim that this deficit reduction is achieved only through a business-as-usual Washington budget gimmick: paying for just a few years of costs with many more years of savings.

This charge is simply false—and let’s get the facts straight.

• First, it’s true that loading savings up front and costs in later years is a time-honored budget gimmick. It has a single purpose—to hide the ball and make programs look paid for in the near term that will in fact substantially add to the deficit over the long-term.

• Second, it’s also true that some of savings under the health plan start sooner than the major costs in the legislation. We can move quickly to begin identifying waste and improving quality in the current health care system, as well as make certain reforms to rebalance the tax code. But, the major coverage expansion does not occur until 2014, in part because we need to take time to establish a system of state-based exchanges through which private insurance companies will provide quality insurance to those not getting it through their employer. Still, it is important to note that the vast majority of the savings in the next ten years occur in 2014 and thereafter.

• Third, this is not a budget gimmick. The purpose the tried-and-true gimmick described above is to make a proposal that adds to long-term deficits appear fiscally responsible. But if that were the course we were taking, we would expect to see a large fiscal hole at the end of the first decade and larger and larger deficits in the second decade. Instead, over the long-term, the savings under the President’s plan are expected to grow faster than the costs. So, when the Congressional Budget Office is done with its scoring, we expect it will find that the President’s plan reduces deficits by roughly $100 billion in the first 10 years and roughly $1 trillion in the decade after that. In other words, health reform should reduce the deficit by growing amounts over the long-term.

Put simply: Health reform will reduce the deficit in this decade, and it will reduce the deficit by even more thereafter. There’s no gimmick in that.

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The President’s health care proposal this morning includes an FAQ section for various audiences – seniors, small business owners, the uninsured, etc. Here is one of the questions and answers for individuals who currently purchase insurance directly on the individual market (click for source):

I fall into this category myself, and it is a pretty important question for a couple of reasons. One, because there are an increasing number of individuals and families (18+ million) who buy health insurance coverage on the open market as opposed to receiving it through an employer. Secondly, because everyone, including the millions currently uninsured, would be legally required to have some form of insurance based on the mandate included in the President’s proposal and both the House and Senate bills

Obviously it would not help the cause of Democrats trying to pass this bill if the millions of people who buy insurance directly, and the millions more who are forced to do so by the insurance mandate, end up paying even higher premiums than they would under current law.

But here’s the thing – many of them will. At least according to the CBO. And the White House is deliberately and irresponsibly misleading the public by claiming otherwise.

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My suspicion earlier this week that White House attorney and Islam Envoy Rashad Hussain was involved in covering up controversial comments he made in 2004 turns out to have been well-founded. Josh Gerstein from Politico reports:

President Barack Obama’s new Islamic envoy, Rashad Hussain, changed course Friday – admitting he made sharply critical statements about a U.S. terror prosecution against a Muslim professor after initially saying he had no recollection of making such comments.

“I made statements on that panel that I now recognize were ill-conceived or not well-formulated,” Hussain said, referring to a 2004 conference where he discussed the case.

Hussain’s reversal came after POLITICO obtained a recording of his presentation to a Muslim students’ conference in Chicago, where he can be heard portraying the government’s cases towards professor Sami Al-Arian, as well as other Muslim terrorism suspects, as “politically motivated persecutions.” Al-Arian later pled guilty to aiding terrorists.

First of all, major kudos to Gerstein for following through on this story. I do not think there are very many people in the MSM who would have continued to pursue a story such as this that originated in “conservative” media (CNS and Fox). And while Gerstein goes to great lengths in his latest post to present a balanced perspective on Hussain’s views as expressed in 2004, it is his job to do so and he does it commendably as far as I am concerned. The one complaint I would make is that the timing of this release (Friday 10:00 pm EST) strikes me as a weekend news dump, but its quite possible that Gerstein had little if anything to do with this.

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There is a somewhat convoluted story flying under the radar about a White House official, Rashad Hussain, who back in 2004 allegedly spoke out in support of Sami Al-Arian, a man accused (and subsequently convicted) of aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Hussain has worked in the White House Counsel’s Office since January 2009, and just last week was appointed by the President as his Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

The source of the allegation is a 2004 article unearthed from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) which originally quoted Hussain as saying the following:

Al-Arian’s situation is one of many “politically motivated persecutions,” claimed Rashad Hussain, a Yale law student. Such persecution, he stated, must be fought through hope, faith, and the Muslim vote.

…

Along with many others, said Yale’s Hussain, Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been “used politically to squash dissent.” The Muslim community must speak out against the injustices taking place in America, he emphasized. Otherwise, everyone’s rights will be in jeopardy.

Here is where the story gets interesting. I said the WRMEA article “originally” quoted Hussain because at some point after the original publication the quotes attributed to Hussain were removed from the version of the article published online. You can see the original version courtesy of the Internet Archive here, and the modified version here.

What explains the discrepancy?

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