As I write, there's a rally set to go off in Washington this week. It's in reaction to the non-political "Restoring Honor Rally," also known as 8/28. You might want to check out the endorsing organizations for the "One Nation, Working Together" here. You'll find a bunch of unions, the Democratic Socialist, the Communist Party USA, and left-leaning churches. Look up in the URL line and you'll see a star. What color is it? Why, it's a red star!

Some of the groups supporting the One Nation rally were also linked to "Progressives for Obama." (This group has now changed its identity to Progressive America Rising.) Group founders were Tom Hayden (see part 3), Bill Fletcher, Jr. (who also helped found Movement for a Democrat Society), Barbara Ehrenreich (Discover the Networks says of her: "Candid about her affinity for Marxism, Ehrenreich is the Honorary Chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America. When the Communist Manifesto was re-released on its 150th anniversary in 1998, Ehrenreich celebrated the event. She noted that in producing the Manifesto as a commercial product, capitalists were -- as Lenin had once predicted -- providing the rope that eventually would hang them."), and Hollywood actor Danny Glover. Discover the Networks says of Danny Glover: "Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Glover publicly stated that the U.S. was in no position to pass moral judgment on the terrorists responsible for those atrocities. 'One of the main purveyors of violence in this world,' said Glover,  'has been this country, whether it's been against Nicaragua, Vietnam or wherever.'"

You can find out more about the "Progressives for Obama" here.

One of the most perplexing (and infuriating) things about the Obama Administration has been their total disregard of the people's wishes concerning health care. You might recall that when the Dems took control of the House in the 2006 elections, Nancy Pelosi said they'd drain the swamp. She didn't tell us that they'd be replacing the alligators with their own alligators. Michelle Malkin in this June, 2009, column points out that 1825 K Street was the new seat of lobbying power. (Please read the whole column; it's well worth your time.)

In the Washington Post column referenced and linked to by Malkin: "Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America's Future, called this clustering of a critical mass of these groups 'a happy accident,' and a very useful one." Useful I'm sure; accident I doubt. Another quote from the Post story: "Now every weekday is a rolling meeting with staffers from each of the organizations mixing with one another on such issues as lowering prescription drug prices and increasing funding for children's health programs."

Health Care for America Now is one of the groups at 1825 K Street. Richard Kirsch is head of HCAN. Aaron Klein points out in Manchurian President that Kirsch got his start at Illinois Public Action Council where he worked with Rahm Emanuel and Jan Schakowsky. Schakowsky is a liberal U.S. Representative from the Chicago area. She just happens to be married to Robert Creamer who also came from Illionois PAC. Creamer is credited with writing the blueprint for the Democratic healthcare plan. Oh, I should mention that he wrote it from prison. Read his Discover the Networks bio. According to Networks, Creamer's book "advanced the notion that the Democratic Party could win a permanent majority in Congress by doing the following:

• passing a national health care bill, thereby turning more people into wards of an ever-expanding government, and of the party that works to grow government; and
• giving amnesty to all illegal immigrants, thereby creating, virtually  overnight, a large new constituency of Democratic voters"

George Soros is responsible for much of the generous funding of liberal causes and, many suspect, responsible for our current President. His Discover the Networks' bio is a must read for those not already familiar with this character. The son of an Orthodox Jew, he was passed off as the phony godson of a government official in his native Hungary whom he accompanied as the man confiscated property from Jews. Much later he was asked whether he felt guilty. His answer, "[T]here was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow." In 1992 he short sold the British pound, bringing the Bank of England to its knees. If George Soros would sell out his own people, I think I should be forgiven for suspecting that he might be capable of taking his adopted country out.

I was unable to cover all the radical associations of the sitting President. After all, I didn't set out to write a book, and no one is paying me for my efforts.

November is coming! Be there or be sorry. Make that "sorrier."

I've got to get this subject wrapped up. My book, The Manchurian President, is overdue at the library. So hang on. It's time to visit more of the subject on those who surround the President. This is a probably as good a place as any to refer you back to my first post on here, "Birds of a Feather" an overview of some of Obama's czars.

You may recall that one of those czars, Van Jones, had a short stint in the administration. It turns out that his radical associations were too hot to handle. Obama's right-hand woman (and other half of his brain), Valerie Jarrett, had said they had been watching Van Jones for years and were happy to have him join the White House. Were they watching when he was founding STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement)? The group's history (found here) says: "With a growing membership and a growing commitment to Marxist politics, STORM began rewriting our Points of Unity and Constitution. The resulting documents signaled a clear commitment to communist politics, drawing primarily from the traditions of Third World Marxism." Were they watching the night after 9/11 when the group held a vigil? Their own history says of that event: "That night, STORM and the other movement leaders expressed sadness and anger at the deaths of innocent working class people. We were angry, first and foremost, with the U.S. government, whose worldwide aggression had engendered such hate across the globe that working class people were not safe at home. We honored those who had lost their lives in the attack -- and those who would surely lose their lives in subsequent U.S. attacks overseas." Jones resigned over the 2009 Labor Day weekend. The question we should ask is why he was ever put in the administration.

The radical web of associations is unbelievably tortuous. Take a look at this blog by New Zealandor Trevor Louden. It ties David Axelrod, top political adviser to the President, to a Chicago lawyer who was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The committee found that David Canter and his business partner were using their publishing house business to distribute Soviet propoganda.

Have you ever heard of the Second Bill of Rights? More than likely, not. (In fact, when I blogged about this once on Star's web site, the editor changed my headline to something about the Second Amendment. I actually AM for those rights, but really! You'd think he would have least read the piece before giving it a headline.) Regulatory czar Cass Sunstein wrote a book about those rights which include: a job, the right to earn enough for food, clothing, and recreation, right to a decent home, right to adequate medical care, right to adequate protection from economic fears of old age sickness, accident, and, unemployment. Wow! I wonder how much those "rights" are going to cost us!

A new position in the Obama Administration is the diversity czar. It's filled by Mark Lloyd whom Aaron Klein identifies as "a senior fellow at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress." While there, Lloyd wrote about the imbalance in talk radio. (Cynic that I'm becoming I can't help thinking he wouldn't have a problem with it if swung the opposite direction). A follow-up essay urged liberals to take complaints to the FCC where assessed fines against stations would then be funneled to public broadcasting. (We know that's a group with no agenda!) See more here. This guy thinks you should step down from a position of power if you're white and straight and let people of color and gays get their chance! Lloyd isn't really all that big on the First Amendment, either. Don't take my word for it; read this post at Newsbusters.

The Students for a Democratic Society which was around in the '60s has recently been replaced by the Movement for a Democratic Society with some of the members of the old group on board. They're affiliated with the revived SDS which is really weird. Did someone forget to tell today's college students not to trust anyone over 30?

A member of the board of directors of MDS is the "lovely" wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn. Lest we forget, Ayer's wiki entry says, "Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days." Ironically, an article in the New York Times on 9/11 quoted the "former" homegrown terrorist as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." We must not forget that Obama launched his first campaign in the Ayers/Dohrn home in 1995. Some have even said that the Obama children were babysat by Ayers and Dohrn. This blogger said that he tried to interest Ben Smith of Politico in looking into the charge, but Smith would only take the word of non-Republicans. Smith, interestingly enough, later showed up on the jouurnalist list.

A full list of MDS board members is available here at Discover the Networks. Some other notables on the list include Howard Zinn, the progressive historian whom the FBI confirmed after his death as being an active Communist Party USA member. And then there's Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers' comrade in terrorism, who told a college group in 2009 that he gave 15% of a book advance to his agent and the rest went up his nose. (Yes, I suspect that might be responsible for lots of liberal ideas.) There is a plethora of ties to communism, socialism, and Maoism ties in the board members. And then there's Tom Hayden whose main claim to fame is being one of the former husbands of Hanoi Jane. Hayden was among the four members of the board who formed "Progressives for Obama."

Jeff Jones is a former SDS member turned Weathermen leader turned MDS board member. He also is head of the New York Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance has been credited with helping write the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. On their web site, they point out the similarities between the ARRA and their own Apollo Economic Recovery Act.

You know what? This one  is getting too long. I'm going to have to come back for fourths. Until next time, Wake up, Dude! This is your country. (Anyone want to help pay my overdue book fine?)

Obama's campaign claimed that ACORN wasn't part of Project Vote. Well, if it wasn't in '92, it certainly has been since as this New York Times article that came out shortly before the '08 election shows. "Since then (1994), the board has consisted of Acorn staff members and two Acorn members who pay monthly dues." Two of the Acorn-related Project Vote board members (as reported on tax forms) said they were unaware of Project Vote. The new executive director of Project Vote at that time (fall, 2008) attributed the memory failure of one of them to poor health. I guess we're supposed to believe that, at the age of 63, Cleo Mata has advanced dementia.

In July, 2010, ACORN-whistleblower Anita MonCrief announced she was filing Federal Election Commission charges against the Obama administration for their collusion with ACORN during the '08 election. In all the late-summer '08 misplaced euphoria about having the nation's first black presidential candidate, you may have missed this. The Obama campaign had amended reports that it had paid $800K to Citizens Service Inc. for "polling, advance work and staging major events" to say that it was for get-out-the-vote projects. CSI just happens to share an address with ACORN. A 2006 ACORN publication called CSI its "campaign services entity."

While serving on boards, Obama helped funnel money to his friends. Through the Woods Fund (where he served with Ayers--you know the one--he's that guy that just lived in the neighborhood and their kids went to the same school), he helped give ACORN $190K from 2000-2002. He voted to give $1M to a former boss who, incidentally, was in partnership with Tony Rezko. (Rezko's wife owned a lot next door to the Obama's in Chicago and gave them a good deal on part of it. His present address is unknown, but we can surmise that he's known by a number. After being convicted in '08 for bribery, fraud, and moneylaundering, he has yet to be sentenced. This blog suggest President Obama may be among those who might wish him ill.)

You can't talk about Obama's radical associations without a mention of unions. The Service Employees International Union, in particular, has been as thick as thieves with the President since he first entered politics. Most of its members work in health care, government, or building services employees. The SEIU gave $60M to the Obama campaign, along with 100,000 volunteers, including 3,000 who worked for it full time. Patrick Gaspard, director of the office for political affairs for the Administration, came from an 11-year position with the SEIU (and is a fellow former community organizer.) Andy Stern (now the former president of SEIU) visited the White House at least 19 times during the first six months of the Obama Administration and saw the President five times. One would suspect that the money proffered by the group came with a price.

The SEIU gave millions to Health Care for American Now. This article ("Unholy Union") postulates that the payback is that "(T)he subsidies and mandates in Democrats’ legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU." And in the next paragraph: "'Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option “might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions,' Wilson says." Wilson is managing director of the Center for Union Facts.

Discover the Networks (bless you, former radical David Horowitz) revealed that "In Michigan, the United Auto Workers union convinced the automobile manufacturers to make Election Day a holiday so that union workers could get paid by their companies for last-minute, door-to-door, get-out-the-vote campaigning." It also says that "...Andrew Stern, in 1996 told his members that he expected 'every leader at every level of this union - from the international president to the rank-and-file member - to devote five working days this year to political action.'"

According to Discover the Networks, Stern "was instructed in the techniques of radical union organizing by the Midwest Academy, which was formed by Paul and Heather Booth to train community organizers and infiltrate the labor movement." Both Booths are former members of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Last spring we saw the UAW given majority ownership of Chrysler. This March, 2010, list of intended appointees to the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations reveals a lot of Obama political appointees, balanced by people with union experience. I don't see a single one that I would consider management. (I'm wondering: How much will that "wise counsel" cost the taxpayer?)

If you're not bothered already by the troubling roots of unions, here's a 2004 article from when SEIU was committing $65M and 2,000 full-time organizers to defeating Bush. Or this from the Socialist Workers web site: "The AFL-CIO has always delivered votes to the Democratic Party, so that the Democratic Party would deliver public-sector jobs and dues income to the labor bureaucracy. The threat that this would dry up become a matter of life and death for the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, particularly since so few private-sector workers are union members." Card check, anyone? (Also known by the bizarre misnomer Employee Free Choice Act.)

Random clips and links to news articles about Obama's union roots:

SEIU Illinois State Council President Tom Balanoff tells friendly interviewer that he was introduced to Obama in 1993 by his Chicago cousins who had known Obama when he was a community organizer

Labor union Balanoff in the middle of the proposed Blagojevich-Jarrett job exchange?

Accountability Now formed to drive Democratic party further (how is this possible?) left. Participating organizations: SEIU (Stern and Burger); MoveOn.org (George Soros)' Daily Kos; Color of Change (Van Jones); Democracy for America (Howard Dean); 21st Century Democrats; BlogPAC. (The "good" news announced in Huff Po in February '09.)

The Communist Party USA celebrated the possibility of an Obama election. (I had to really look to find the link to this. For some mysterious reason all the links I found on conservative blogs to this editorial were no longer working.)

Oh, an update about that Stern guy. In February he was appointed to National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. By Obama. "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" as Gomer Pyle used to say. (See the pretty purple shirt?)

I think I've done enough for one day. I've done the hard part. Now it's your turn. Don't be lazy--check out the links.

I'm sure there's a part 3 in here somewhere. Stay tuned.

I just finished reading The Manchurian President. Although I became aware of some of the President's radical associations during 2008, this book by Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for World Net Daily, ties them all together in a tidy little bunch. No, make that big bunch. You'd have thought the MSM could have found them but, as I've heard others point out, they were criminally negligent during the election of 2008. Some say the fourth estate, designed to keep the keep the rest of society in check by revealing its wrongs, became the fifth column, a group secretly working to destroy the country from within.

Knowing everyone isn't blessed with the reading time I have (although I encourage you to read the book if you have the opportunity), I will here provide links I was able to find online that relate to Obama's far-left friends.

Obama was a member of the New Party when he was first elected to the Illinois State Senate. What's the New Party? Well, here's what wikipedia says about it. For the lazy (and the busy), this listing says: "The party could best be described as social democratic in orientation, although party statements almost invariably used the terms "small-d democratic" or "progressive" instead." You can read more about social democracy here. It seems to me the main idea is that capitalism=bad; spreading the wealth=good.

The Chicago DSA, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, whose mission is to establish democratic socialism as a political force, here and abroad, endorsed Obama's state senate candidacy.

In the December, 2008, Socialist Review, Manning Marable wrote of Obama: "He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years."

In this youtube video, Cornel West takes the stage before Obama in 2007 in Harlem. He rails against the U.S. justice system. (At least I think that's what he's doing. Subtitles, please?) When Obama takes the stage he praises West as a genius, a public intellectual, an oracle, and a loving person. Oh, and he's an author, too. He coauthored two books with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Yes, you know the name. According to the President, Philadelphia police "acted stupidly" when they arrested Gates for breaking into his own house. (I stayed around until 7 minutes where Obama was attacking Bush for failing to be the unifier that was promised and for failing to lead the half the country that voted for him. De ja vu all over again.)

David Axelrod, adviser to Obama, was on the board at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago. Father Pfleger, the white preacher at the self-proclaimed African-American Catholic Community, had some renown for a sermon he gave at Trinity United Church of Christ where the Obama's attended before they quit attending anywhere. In his "sermon" he mocked Hillary Clinton as thinking she was entitled to the nomination. You can see more about it here. It sounds like his efforts were appreciated by the new pastor, the former pastor of "God-Damn-America" fame being turned out to pasture. Don't feel too badly for Rev. Jeremiah Wright--as I recall his new digs were in a gated community.

Three weeks before the '08 election, John McCain asked Candidate Obama about his ties to ACORN during a debate. Probably a sizable number of the watchers wondered why Obama had any relationship with squirrel food. Although Obama touted his community organizing as a qualification to the top job in the land, he downplayed his relationship with The Association of Community organizations for Reform Now.

As well he should. ACORN was started by a former Students for a Democratic Society radical (the SDS is the former--I'm pretty sure Wade Rathke's still a radical.) In June, 2008, he stepped down as president of that group. A month later ACORN acknowledged that his brother Dale had embezzled nearly a million dollars from the group. According to Discover the Networks, Rathke still has lots of irons in the fire. "He is also the co-founder and Chairman of the Tides Center; a Board member of the Tides Foundation; an Executive Board member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and Chairman of the AFL-CIO's Organizers Forum."

Even the most out-of-touch probably became aware of ACORN last summer when two young conservatives strutted their stuff into ACORN offices across the country posing as a hooker and her boyfriend. Michelle Malkin came out as I write with this that shows what the HUD IG report shows about the group. The offenses are numerous; he who is shocked probably has spent too much time with his head where the sun doesn't shine.

Here is Acorn's "People Platform. Basically the goal was to get everything at the expense of energy companies, employers and, of course, the government. Its section on work focuses on workers' rights, including this: "Every person who wants to work has a right to a job - a job which pays a living wage and offers opportunities for advancement. Those who cannot work - the elderly, the disabled, single parents with small children - should receive enough income to afford them the basic necessities and allow them to live with dignity."

Discover the Networks has a lengthy post which tells the financing of the Brennan Center which is legal counsel to the Living Wage Movement. The Brennan Center is named after Justice Brennan who "discovered" that the Constitution was a living, breathing document and could be molded to fit the judge's will.

In his "Fight the Smears" web site (I wonder if that's the busiest of his many), Obama says that he never worked as an ACORN organizer or worked for them as an employee in any capacity and ACORN wasn't part of his 1992 Project Vote. It's very strange, then, that when he spoke to ACORN in 2007: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." (Source: John Fund in the Wall Street Journal.) (Watch the video that makes a liar out of Obama here.)

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Obama's Radical Ties. Just don't hold your breath. It's going to take me a bit.

I happened to catch the president's press conference last week. I noticed a plethora of statements that just begged for a rebuttal, so here I am after a four-month  recess.

Obama: "Instead of tax breaks that encourage corporations to create jobs overseas, we believe in tax breaks for companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America."
BCG: Can you tell me how $800K of stimulus money ended up in a genital-washing instruction program in Africa? (Somehow that one seems rather apropos.) Why are the majority of renewable energy grants from the "Recovery" Act going to foreign countries?

Obama: "...the hole the recession left was huge and progress has been painfully slow."
BCG: Are you kidding me? The labor in my first pregnancy lasted more than 22 hours and I got to only 5 cm. That is painfully slow. Far as I know, my progress never went backwards.

Obama (speaking of the proposed small business jobs bill): "It will more than double the amount some small business owners can borrow to grow their companies."
BCG: Are we going to have to update an old saying to this: "You can take a business owner to the bank, but you can't make him borrow"? Oh, but we saw with the banks that the government did make them borrow. For being an alleged son of an economist, you have no clue about the real world. Why would any business hire anyone when no one knows what their taxes are going to be come January? (I'll take a wild guess: higher?)

Obama: But the American people didn't send us here to think about our jobs.
BCG: And it's a really good thing we didn't! How's the golf score doing?

Obama: But today, I'm happy to announce Austan Goolsbee as her (Christina Romer's) replacement.
BCG: Oh, yeah. I heard he's the funniest member of the Administration. (You be the judge. He didn't float my boat.)

Obama: Well, the--what I said was that if it was (sic) just a referendum on whether we've made the kind of progress that we need to, then people around the country would say we're not there yet.
BCG: I'm kind of still trying to figure out where "there" is.

Obama: Now for all the progress we've made, we're not there yet.
BCG: I think you already said that. What progress was that again? The only 4 million jobs that you referred to as being lost since you took office? Somehow I would have imagined progress as looking, well, different.

Obama: Three million people have jobs that wouldn't have them otherwise had we not taken these steps.
BCG: Let me see. We were told the unemployment rate would go up to 8% if the stimulus bill wasn't passed. It's now 9.5% or some such. I'm really curious how those jobs saved and jobs created numbers are made--from whole cloth?

Obama: I'm concerned about all Senate confirmations these days. I mean, if I nominate somebody for dog catcher.... Hans, I wasn't trying to be funny.
BCG: Which is a good thing because you weren't.

Obama: Prior to us getting here...you had a set of policies that were skewed toward special interests, skewed towards the most powerful, and ordinary families out there were being left behind.
BCG: Now you just skew everything towards the unions and ordinary families are being a word that Town Hall probably won't allow. (Hint: it rhymes with "skewed.")

Obama: We were at war with terrorists and murderers who had perverted Islam, had stolen its banner to carry out their outrageous acts.
BCG: Or, as one former Muslim says "obedient Muslims" as opposed to hypocrites.

Obama: We stand together against those who would try to do us harm.
BCG: When you're not bowing to them?

Obama (speaking of the Israel/Palestine situation): There are going to be rejectionists who suggest that it can't happen, and there are also going to be cynics who just believe that the mistrust between the sides is too deep.)
BCG: That would be those of us who are "People of The Book"?

Obama (speaking of the Koran-burning story): So I hardly think we're the ones who elevated this story.
BCG: We can thank the New York Times for the beginnings of Terry Jones' notoriety because of a story that appeared there August 26. You, however, escalated it.

Obama: For those who aren't familiar, Cobell and Pigford relate to settlements surrounding historic discrimination against minority farmers who weren't oftentimes provided the same benefits as everybody else under the USDA.
BCG:  You forgot to mention something about the Pigford settlement--that Shirley Sherrod, the fired USDA employee who appreciated the job security of government work, benefited from that settlement. Some have found it interesting that there are more black farmers trying to get money from the government than there were black farmers. (P.S. Who says "oftentimes" anyway?)

Obama (speaking of the changes in the student loan program): ...we've been able to take tens of billions of dollars that were going to banks and financial intermediaries in the student loan program and said we're going to give that money directly to students so that they get more help going to college. And obviously poor kids are the ones who are going to benefit most from those programs.
BCG: Well, obviously! It should work out just hunky-dory for the Democratic party also, what with Harry Reid cramming the DREAM Act into a defense bill. It sounds like a Democratic voters recruiter's wet dream.

Obama: And one of the goals I think that I've set for myself and for my team is to make sure that President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu start thinking about how can they help the other succeed, as opposed to how do they figure out a way for the other to fail.
BCG: Palestinians are on record as saying they want to drive the Jews into the sea. If I were a Jew, I'd want the Palestinians to fail!

Obama: ...this country is so resilient, we are so tough, we can't be frightened by a handful of people who are trying to do us harm, especially when we've captured them and we've got the goods on them.
BCG: I don't care how good your abs are for a man of your age. When you talk tough, for some reason it makes me laugh. I imagine it causes a similar response in the Middle East.

Obama: But we have the best minds, the best intelligence officers, the best special forces, who are thinking about this day and night. And they will continue to think about it day and night as long as I'm President.
BCG: And who will, no doubt, breathe a sigh of relief when you're not. Just sayin'....

Obama (on the threatened burning of the Koran): ...when someone goes out of their way to be provocative in ways that we know can inflame the passions of over a billion Muslims around the world, at a time when we've got our troops in a lot of Muslim countries, that's a problem.
BCG: And, do you think, maybe that's a problem that Muslims are so inclined to inflammation?  Especially since they like to take people with them when they choose martyrdom. How many Bibles would you have to burn to get Christians to kill people?

Obama: We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts.
BCG: I believe I covered that above. I'll add this question: Can you name one terrorist organization that isn't Muslim?

Obama: Thank you very much, everybody.
BCG: What? No God Bless America?

It'sthe middle of what is fondly known as "Hump Day," and what a week it has already been.

A Christian Republican congressman from Indiana has announced he's resigning after it was discovered that he's been having an affair with a part-time aide. This video of Rep. Souder and the aide discussing abstinence is the sort of thing that gives some the label of hypocrite. (Either the not-so-good representative has a teleprompter in the tabletop or he's having some  just pangs of conscience.)

The attorney general of Connecticut who has his eye on Chris Dodd's seat has been outed as not actually having served in Vietnam in spite of audio proof that he's claimed to have. Richard Blumenthal will hopefully be defeated, and he may be guilty of a prosecutable offense. The Stolen Valor Act of 2005 "makes it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military." (See article from the Stars and Stripes here.) I heard a soldier on a talk show say that the claim to have served in Vietnam would fall under this law because there was a medal given for serving in  Vietnam.

In news a little closer to home, Jonathan Katz, a Washington University astrophysics professor, was asked to be part of a group working on the Gulf oil spill. But that was so last week. Since then it's come to light that he's a proud homophobe. (See his interesting writing on the subject here.) I guess there's at least one thing more important than the environment--political correctness.

Speaking of political correctness, President Obama joined Mexican President Calderon in dissing the recent Arizona immigration law which, as this Fox News article points out, makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It sounds reasonable to me.

Have you ever had the urge to migrate to Mexico? Check out Mexico's requirements here. You have to leave after 180 days and pay a fee to return. To extend your stay, you have to show that your income is coming from outside the country. If you're in the country for business, you "must comply with Foreign Investment Law requirements." If you're simply visiting the country, you must show your papers. Somehow the word "hypocrite" seems to apply here also, President Calderon.

Supposedly Obama has his justice department looking into the Arizona law. Well, it's about time. They've been dissing it freely since before the ink dried on Governor Brewer's signature, but we've discovered that they hadn't bothered to read it before criticizing. (Another ballsy Republican female governor--I love it. I would have sworn she called Obama "Commie-in-Chief.)

The Los Angeles city council has voted to boycott Arizona. They may have brownouts in their future. They get 25% of their electricity from Arizona, and Gary Pierce, a member of the Arizona Corporate Commission, has threatened to turn off the supply.

I've been trying to talk my husband into a trip to Arizona to support the state. I hear the desert is lovely this time of year.

The Tea Party's tomorrow and I'm all in a stew trying to figure out what to put on my sign. Usually I take two or three to such events--I've got to use my creative side for something--but this time is different. Remember the sign that said "It doesn't matter what this sign says, you'll call it racist anyway"?

Another variation of that might be "It doesn't matter what this sign says, you'll call me a hater."

Oh, boy, there are more than a few things going on that I hate these days!

I hate it that some people are on the public dole for the things that we purchase with my husband's paycheck. Used to be it was just food, then it was housing, then it was Medicaid, then it was forcing banks to lend money to people who had no business owning a home--they couldn't handle the cost of maintenance much less the monthly mortgage payment. More recently the Obama Administration has started Making Home Affordable, a program whose latest news includes this blurb: "New housing program enhancements offer additional help for unemployed, underwater borrowers while helping the administration meet its goals."

And what would those be, pray tell? A little more income distribution? Sen. Max Baucus was caught on tape after the healthcare vote saying: "Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America." So now health care is a political shovel to be used to shift money from the industrious to the slothful.

Just how much as the entitlement mentality infected our country? On Easter Sunday there was a "Homes Not Jails" rally in San Diego. The stated mission of the group: "To march and rally in support of seizing vacant houses for people who have none and against wrongful evictions." Right now there's a poll on their website: Do human beings have a right to decent housing? "No" is winning and "only if they have money" is at 27%. Only a third say "yes."

I hate it when politicians don't pay attention to their constituents and vote against the will of the people. The healthcare legislation that was recently passed would be a prime example of that. In Kansas we didn't have that problem, with the notable exception of Rep. Dennis Moore who has announced that he will not run again. (He was going to go home and spend time with his family. Funny thing about that: Now his wife has announced that she's going to run. Apparently the Mrs. didn't want him in her house, either.)

I hate it even more that it appears that many of those legislators who voted for the healthcare bill didn't even read the cottonpicking thing! Where's tarring and feathering and riding out of town on a rail when you need them?

I hate being told that we're about to kill the planet with global warming while my husband's moving record amounts of snowfall off the drive. (Oops--now they tell us that snow is caused by global warming, too!)

I hate the main stream media that has become water boys for the Obama regime. I recently had a run-in with the head of the editorial board of the paper I did guest columns for during the election because they were deleting parts of comments I made about their columns. Now I could understand that if I were being profane or untruthful. I was invited to do my debating elsewhere. I guess that rules out my being on the ten-year reunion Midwest Voices panel. Oh well! Too bad I never said what I really wanted to say: How does it feel being a news "woman-who-does-it-for-money" instead of a newshound? (It turns out Town Hall censors also.)

I hate it that Islam is being taught in our public schools while a child that draws a picture of Jesus is reprimanded.

I hate it that our President who promised transparency in government hid almost all of the healthcare debate. His promise to unite rather than divide us also was a dud.

I hate that a portion of the population remains entranced by "The One" and his agenda. One would hope that they're the same group that would believe you if you told them that "gullible" had been removed from the dictionary. The other possibilities are too terrible to contemplate.

I've got my cameras charged up for the party tomorrow, and if I see Rep. Emanuel Cleaver headed in my direction, I'm prepared to cover my mouth. I'm sort of notorious for the spraying thing.

Have I come up with anything for my sign?

Not yet. It doesn't really matter anyway. No matter what it says, they'll say I'm a hater.

This time, I guess they'll be right.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told Jim Lehrer last week that "just being a woman is no longer a preexisting medical condition." (Watch the video here or, if you're like me and find Pelosi not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard, read the transcript here.)

Turns out the fairer sex (take that however you like) doesn't mind using its womanhood when it suits its needs. Section 4207 allows for a "reasonable break time for nursing mothers." (Find it here by using the binoculars on the left hand side of the page to search for 4207.)

Specifically it says "a reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express the milk."

Speaking as someone who spent 4 1/2 years of her life breastfeeding, exactly who is going to define "reasonable" and "need"?

I've heard it said that this applies only to businesses that employ 50 or more persons, but the actual language says "An employer that employs less than 50 employees shall not be subject to the requirements of this subsection, if such requirements would impose an undue hardship by causing the employer significant difficulty or expense when considered in relation to the size, financial resources, nature, or structure of the employer’s business."

Again, who will define that?

I'm guessing that employers will be looking for ways to avoid hiring childbearing-age women, especially since they have to provide a special room for this purpose and a bathroom won't do.

Lucky for the employer--they don't have to pay the woman for the time she spends in the activity.

President Obama signed the health care reform bill today. You can watch it or read the transcript here.

I've taken the liberty of giving the Blogging Conservative Granny's rebuttal to some of his statements.

Obama: "I'm signing this reform bill into law on behalf of my mother, who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days."
BCG: Dealing with government bureaucracy? Now that'll be a piece of cake!

Obama: "So in her memory he (Marcelas Owens) has told her story across America so that no other children have to go through what his family has experienced."
BCG: And that's because 11-year-old Marcelas's grandmother is a community organizer!

Obama: "Now she's (Natoma Canfield) lying in a hospital bed, as we speak, faced with just such an illness, praying that she can somehow afford to get well without insurance."
BCG: OK, you tried this one back in Ohio. Her sister admitted to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (March 16) that her sister will probably qualify for Medicaid or assistance from Cleveland Clinic.

Obama: "But he (Ted Kennedy) was confident that we would do the right thing."
BCG: So why didn't you?

Obama: "...it's been easy at time to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing...."
BCG: It's darn easy when you grease the skids a little though. Is there any money left from the stimulus package?

Obama: "...we are not a nation that scales back its aspiration."
BCG: Who cares if the country's almost busted?

Obama: "We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities."
BCG: If that's the case, why don't you expect your citizens to do the same? How about this video? One guy thinks that the whole world will be better; one thinks Christmas arrived before Easter this year. Have they checked with those people that thought Obama would put gas in their tank or give them a new kitchen?

Obama: "Here, in this country, we shape our own destiny."
BCG: I'm not liking what I see taking shape.

President Obama made a rare appearance on Fox News yesterday. He didn't find the usual lovelorn, weak-kneed, what-passes-for-a-journalist-in-post-Fourth-estate-America questioner. Instead he found Bret Baier.

Right out of the gate, Obama let it slip that he really doesn't care about the rules. According to the 40,000 letters he gets a day, Americans only care about their health insurance premiums going up. He must not pay a lot of attention to his own poll numbers. Rasmussen's most recent poll shows his numbers today at -20. Today's post points out: "Each time the President leads a big push for his health care plan, his job approval ratings suffer."

Rasmussen's numbers released on Monday showed that 43% support the President's health care plan and 53% oppose it.

I'm a little confused about that special deal for Louisiana that, according to the President, is also good for any state that suffers a natural catastrophe. I would have sworn that the language I remember said something about the catastrophe having to affect every county in the state. How often does that happen? (I'm not sure that I should be concerned about my confusion on all the special deals. The President didn't seem exactly as clear as a bell.)

A couple of concerning comments from the President:

"By the time the vote has taken place, not only I will know what's in it, you'll know what's in it because it's going to be posted and everybody's going to be able to evaluate it on the merits." (Whatever happened to 72 hours before the vote? Actually, I'm a pretty fast reader, but 2700 pages in three days?)

"Yes, it's one-sixth of the economy, but we're not transforming one-sixth of the economy all in one fell swoop. (I guess it may take two or three "fell swoops." On Monday, Speaker of the House Pelosi told bloggers: "“Now we go from here. We kick open that door and there will be other legislation to follow.”)

"As I said before, this--the final provisions are going to be posted for many days before this thing passes...." (So where is it?)

When questioned about the "doctors fix," Obama said, "That's a problem that I inherited."

Blame George Bush. Some things never change.

Usually I post information that refers to other sources and link to them for your further reading. When I do that, I spend lots of time finding the sources for the things I've heard discussed and linking to them. Today I'm going to do things a little differently. Today I'm raising questions.

1. Am I the only one that finds it ironic that the Democrats support abortion as the most important of all rights known to woman but then use children to push their agenda?

2. How do you cut $500 billion a year from Medicare and not cut services? This question alone causes me to wonder: Why should I not suspect that the elderly might be in danger of getting an early start to the heavenly shore? Which leads to another: At what point will I be considered elderly? In 2008, a 61-year-old woman from the United Kingdom was told that she was too old for a fairly routine surgery for atrial fibrillation. The NHS backed down only after she got the media involved.

3. Is this really about the cost of health care or is it about a complete takeover of the industry? I've listened to the President malign doctors and demonize insurance companies.

4. How many doctors will quit if they have the government, instead of or in addition to insurance companies, involved in health care decisions? I think I heard at one point that 40% of doctors surveyed said that was a real possibility.

5. How many doctors will quit accepting Medicare patients if reimbursements are even lower than they are now? (As a side note: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor's own brother doesn't take Medicare and Medicaid in his medical practice.)

6. If there's no longer some sort of profit in being a doctor, who's going to want to be one? If a person goes to school until they're nearly 30, their income-earning years have been cut back, and they need to make up for lost time.

The more I've thought about it, the more troubling #6 becomes. At least one of the proposed bills contains provisions for paying for education in medical fields. You know what they say about how he who owns the gold makes the rules. Will our brave new world of doctors and nurses and physicians' assistants come out trained to make their decisions about health care based on the perceived value of the life of the person in front of them? Will they be influenced in their decisions by a government that is going broke paying out not only Medicare and Medicaid but also welfare and Social Security?

It's something to think about as we watch a Democratic party seemingly hellbent on ignoring the will of the people.

A headline on Drudge today says that Obama is threatening not to campaign for anyone that opposes the health care bill. Democratic politicians that don't want to join the millions already unemployed come November should consider that a good reason to vote "no."

I hate to admit it, but I didn't pay as much attention to history as I should have when I was in school. I kick myself every day for that lapse on my part as I try to make up for lost time. Right now I'm reading Hitler's Mein Kampf.

"No wonder you're down," a friend commented when I told her.

Actually the condition preceded the activity. I've been down about what's been happening in our country the past fourteen months, give or take an eon.

I think we're all familiar with this demonstration of economic models. (I found these on an economic joke site that can be seen here. I did a copy/paste and assume no responsibility for grammatical content.)

SOCIALISM: You have two cows. State takes one and give it to someone else.
COMMUNISM: You have two cows. State takes both of them and gives you milk.
FASCISM: You have two cows. State takes both of them and sell you milk.
NAZISM: You have two cows. State takes both of them and shoot you.
BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. State takes both of them, kill one and spill the milk in system of sewage.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Wow! Which one of those sounds most like where the Obama Administration is trying to take us? I'm trying to decide between choices one and two.

Then there's another "ism"--Marxism. The following sections from the early part of Volume 2 of Mein Kampf caught my attention the other day:

"The Marxist will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extermination."

"...it requires a credulous mind to bind oneself, in facing such a player, by rules which for him are only good for bluff or his own profit, and are thrown overboard as soon as they cease to be to his advantage."

"Though at present a part of the Marxists shrewdly try to pretend that they are inseparably linked with the principles of democracy, do not forget if you please that in the critical hour these gentlemen didn't care a damn about a majority decision in the Western-democratic sense!"

It reminds me of Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. Known as the founder of American community organizing, Alinsky said in his book: "I have on occasion remarked that I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."

Alinsky's ethics about means and ends included "in war the end justifies almost any means"; "ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times"; "ethics is doing what is best for the most"; "the morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory"; "do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments." He also said he would use a person's private life as ammunition "without reservation" if he were convinced that was the only way to win. (Eric Massa, this may be what has just happened to you.)

One of Alinsky's power tactics was pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Does that not sound amazingly like what is happening to the health insurance companies today?

President Obama is a student of Alinsky tactics, and Obama's community organizing was his stated qualification for the Presidency. How could the voting public have been so stupid?

Have you seen Victoria Jackson's Youtube video of "There's a Communist Living in the White House"? If not see it here. If you have, pass it on.

(You may remember Victoria Jackson from "Saturday Night Live." I don't. By the time she came on in 1986, I'd been out of college for a  decade and no longer had any need for activities to keep me from my studies.)

When I heard about the leaked memo from the Department of the Interior that discusses taking over millions of acres of land in the Western States, my inquiring mind went searching. I found this list of Obama Administration appointments to the department. What caught my eye was Colorado Conservation Trust, of which appointee Will Shafroth was the former director. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, Shafroth didn't require confirmation.

When I started researching Shafroth on NewsBank, I kept coming across articles that contained his name along with those of other DOI appointees. Tom Strickland (Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks) was on the board of Great Outdoors Colorado when Shafroth was hired as director of that organization. (Daily Camera, August 23, 2002) GOCO was set up in 1993 to "distribute 50 percent of Colorado Lottery proceeds for preservation and conservation projects throughout the state." (Denver Post, July 13, 2000)

The environment was one of Strickland's campaign themes when he ran for Senate in 2002, and he and his wife founded the Rocky Mountain Advisory Board of the Environmental Defense Fund. (Rocky Mountain News, October 12, 2002) Strickland worked with Ken Salazar (Secretary of the Interior) at a Denver law firm and recommended Salazar for a cabinet position with Gov. Romer in 1986. (Denver Post, October 17, 2004) In 1992, as head of the Department of Natural Resources, Salazar helped draft the proposal for GOCO.

Although not a member of the DOI, Jane Lubchenco (head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has a Colorado connection and an interesting history. She was the lone dissenter when a National Academy of Sciences panel said, "If the greenhouse effect makes the world significantly hotter, the United States should be able to adapt at a reasonable cost" even though they were predicting 2 to 9 degrees increases by the middle of the 21st century. (AP article, Kansas City Star, September 7, 1991)

In 1993, Lubchenco was one of the recipients of of a six-figure MacArthur Fellowship, paid out over five years. (Feel free to nominate me for one of those. The 2009 ones are paying out $500,000 over five years. The overview of the foundation says: "The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world." That might be another way of saying "Conservatives need not apply.")

When Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily concluded from a study in 1994 that the world population was more than twice what Earth could support support long term and that 1.5 to 2 billion was the most it should have, Lubchenco said "What they're doing is way ahead of anybody else." The most interesting line from the AP article that appeared August 14, 1994, in the Chicago Tribune: "The best way to boost the Earth's carrying capacity and to reduce population is to promote political and social policies that remove the enormous inequities between rich and poor, men and women and industrial and developing countries." (This was attributed to the researchers who, according to the article, claimed their findings to be scientific, "not their personal political philosophy."

You might remember the name Paul Ehrlich. Another Obama appointee John Holdren co-authored two books with him. (Read more about Holdren here in my "Birds of a Feather" post about the Obama Administation.)

So what's the connection between the former zoology professor at Oregon State and the state of Colorado? According to Lubchenco's wiki entry, she grew up in Colorado and graduated from Colorado College in 1969. She would have just missed attending with Salazar who started school there in 1973 (Denver Post, October 17, 2004), and she became a member of the board of trustee there in 1994. (The Gazette (Colorado Springs), September 29, 1994)

I found an interesting tidbit about Will Shafroth on wikipedia also. His entry says that he is "the great-grandson of one of Colorado's most progressive Governors--John Shafroth."

It's enough to strike fear in the heart of any Glenn Beck listener.

Being a glutton for punishment as well as chocolate, I spent the day watching the healthcare town hall online. To paraphrase what my daughter-in-law said after reading a book that disappointed her--That's seven hours of my life that I won't get back.

I must say my side didn't disappoint me. Even Rush, whom I listened to during the recess from the proceedings, agreed with me. He had thought it was a mistake for them to show up, but they were doing us all proud.

Lamar Alexander started off by pointing out that if you took away all of the profits from the health insurance companies  for a year, it would pay the cost of the Democratic proposals for a whole two days. He asked them to renounce the idea of using reconciliation (a mere 51% majority) for passing the bill. He pointed out that Sen. Byrd opposes getting rid of the filibuster (See what Byrd says here.) Alexander even had the audacity to point out what the President the Veep, the Secretary, and the Senate majority leader (among others) said when they were the ones in the minority. Watch it here, courtesy of Naked Emperor News. (Appropriate name!)

I believe I understood Reid to say that he and Pelosi haven't discussed reconciliation. If that's what he said, he might accurately be considered veracity-challenged. According to this April 25, 2009 Boston Globe article, "Harry Reid...said the maneuver would be used only 'when bipartisan bills are not possible.'"

When McCain reminded Obama of his campaign promises about cameras at healthcare negotiations and pled for all American to be treated alike, the President snidely reminded him "the election's over."

Tom Harkin overused the word "segregation" when talking about preexisting conditions. Is he trying to make this a racial issue? Jay Rockefeller labeled the insurance companies "sharks" and "rapacious."

I may have just developed a political crush on Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. Are they taller (as well as smarter) than Obama? I believe I remember hearing about how the taller candidate has historically won the Presidential race.

Ryan that said that hiding spending doesn't reduce spending and pointed out the math behind the CBO's numbers on the bill. He pointed out "the bill has ten years of tax increases and ten years of Medicare cuts to pay for six years of spending. The true ten year cost when subsidies kick in? $2.3 trillion." You can read his comments or listen to them here. Obama said he didn't want to get bogged down in the numbers. (Pesky little things!)

Chuck Grassley backed up Ryan by reading from what the CBO said about double counting. He also said that requiring people to buy insurance is an unconstitutional mandate and the first time that the federal government has tried to tell us we have to buy something. Earlier Obama had told a silly little story about the beater car that he had and how the insurer had laughed at him when he tried to collect on it when he got rear ended. It made me wonder if he didn't understand the difference between a state mandating auto insurance (and liability at that) and the federal government mandating something that isn't remotely mentioned in the Constitution.

John Boehner called the bill "a dangerous experiment" that would "bankrupt the country." He suggested that savings on Medicare should be used to "save" Medicare and predicted that everyone would be on the healthcare exchange in five years. He also brought up taxpayer funding of abortions. Obama looked like he was getting a headache and came back with his usual "standard talking points" response.

McCain brought up reconciliation again. Obama said that Americans aren't interested in procedures. They want a vote. He said that we're the "wealthiest nation on earth." I can't help thinking he's trying to "change" that as fast as he can! I kind of doubt that's the kind of "change" most of his supporters were thinking of.

Henry Waxman came on and said that healthcare reform couldn't be done piecemeal and he doesn't think the Republicans will go along. Does anyone else think Waxman resembles a bald mouse?

Obama continued his "floor hog" ways with his closing statement. He said it would be 10 minutes. It went 22.

If the summit were a debate, the Republicans would be the hands-down winner for my money.

While I watched I finished my leftover Valentine Hershey's kisses--dark chocolate. They tell me dark chocolate's good for the heart. I'll take dark chocolate over heart surgery performed by a government doctor in a government hospital any day.

Glenn Beck often talks about the book Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism on his show. Since it isn't on the shelves of my local library, I came home with this one instead: Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.

One of the authors was William C. Bullitt who was a member of the American Peace Commission in Paris in 1919. He was then Special Assistant to the Secretary of State under FDR before becoming Ambassador to Russia (1933-36) and France (1936-41).

The other author was Sigmund Freud whom Bullitt identifies as a friend. (Wikipedia says that Bullitt had been psychoanalyzed by Freud in the '20s before they became friends.) The introduction by Bullitt says that Freud was depressed and convinced he was about to die when they started the book which took ten years for them to write. It didn't see print in the U.S. until 1966 because they agreed to wait until after Edith Wilson died to publish it here.

In his introduction, Freud makes no bones of dislike of Wilson and, of course, religion. What follows are some of the "gems" from the book. I've included the page numbers for the wary and the curious.

"Until he was forty years old, Woodrow Wilson never made an important decision of any kind without first seeking his father's advice." (p. 6, quoted from Wilson's official biographer.) He was economically dependent on his father for 29 years. (p. 9) He was sickly as a child and a  self-acknowledged mama's boy. (p. 10)

He didn't go to school until he was 13 and then only did well in things connected to speech, the only thing he was interested in because that's where his father's interest lay. (p. 13) His father was a Presbyterian preacher.

After Wilson's conversion experience at the age of 16 (an event that Freud often mocked in the book), Wilson announced his desire to be a Christian statesman. (p. 15)

With a close friend he formed "a solemn covenant that we would school all our powers and passions for the work of establishing the principles we held in common; that we would acquire knowledge that we might have power; and that we might have facility in leading others into our ways of thinking.... We were blinded by a very boyish assurance with regard to the future and our ability to mould the world as our hands might please." (pp. 20-21)

Wilson was admitted to the bar but never had a client (pp. 23-24), so he went back to school to become a teacher. (p. 24) He wrote a book--Congressional Government--to show the operation of Congress but, although only an hour away from Washington at a time Congress was in session, he didn't bother to go see it in action. (p. 27)

"...he could turn on warmth of expression like an electric light.... He always addressed audiences with this turned-on, intimate warmth. It increased his power as an orator." (p. 30)

Chapter 2 discusses the Id, Ego, Super-Ego, libido, and, of course, the Oedipus complex--the idea that the male child wants his father out of his way so that he can have his mother. (The Wikipedia entry on Freud said that his self-analysis showed that he felt sexual feelings toward his mother during his childhood. Transference, anyone?)

Of Wilson Freud said: "He could on occasion admit that he had been mistaken. He could never admit that he had done wrong..... Rather than admit that he had done wrong he preferred to forget or distort facts..... (p. 62)

Freud identified 14 "breakdowns" in Wilson's life. (p. 80) Two occurred during his Presidency. One was after his first wife's death (pp. 155-157); the second during the Treaty of Versailles negotiations. Colonel Edward M. House recorded in his diary after a phone call with Wilson on April 2, 1919: "He declared the old man was stubborn and that he could not get him to come to a decision. What he really means is that he cannot get Clemenceau to come to his way of thinking.... The President admitted that he thought Mantoux did not like him. He said, 'indeed, I am not sure that anybody does." According to Freud, the next day Wilson "collapsed in a complete nervous and physical breakdown." (pp. 245-246) It was pretty amazing since, just three months earlier, he'd been received by adulating Europeans blowing kisses and had "returned from his travels convinced that the peoples of Europe would rise and follow him even against their own governments. (p. 206)

In case you had any doubt, Glenn Beck is right. Freud acknowledged that Wilson's "notable legislative program of the years 1912 to 1914 was largely the program of House's book Philip Dru: Administrator." (p. 152) And "...by the spring of 1914 the domestic program of Philip Dru had been largely embodied in legislation. The international program of Philip Dru remained  unrealized, and House attempted to interest Wilson in a new international agreement for the development of backward countries and the preservation of European peace. Although Wilson was little interested in European affairs, he agreed to allow House to try to work out something of the sort." (p. 153)

Of House Wilson said: "Mr. House is my second personality. He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one." Freud pointed out that frequently Wilson was unsure whether ideas originated in his own brain or the brain of his second personality. (pp. 145-146)

William McCombs, the head of Wilson's first campaign committee "worshiped Wilson, saying that Wilson had an almost hypnotic effect on him. (p. 144) (Does that remind anyone else of the 2008 Presidential campaign?)

The slogan for Wilson's reelection campaign was "He kept us out of war!" Quoting Freud: "Wilson, knowing that he had been doing his best for the previous eight months to get the American people into the war on his own terms, had such a bad conscience that he avoided in his personal campaign speeches all reference to the fact that he had kept the country out of war and all promises to keep the country out of war in the future." (p. 179)

"Wilson's apparent hypocrisy was nearly always self-deception. He had an enormous ability to ignore facts and an enormous belief in words.... He could not bear to allow a beautiful phrase to be slain by a refractory fact.... When he had invented a beautiful phrase, he began to believe in his phrase whatever the facts might be." (p. 193) (It kind of sounds like someone we know!)

"Both the President and House seem to have misunderstood totally the sort of respect that the governments of Europe had for Wilson. For the President as wielder of the physical strength of America, they had the greatest respect; for Woodrow Wilson as a moral leader, they had no respect. (p. 199)

"....Between the armistice negotiations and his arrival in Paris on December 14, 1918, he decided to fight for the peace he wanted not with these masculine weapons but with the weapons of femininity, not with force but with persuasion.... He had never dared to have a fist fight in his life. All his fighting had been done with his mouth." (p. 209) "He met the leaders of the Allies not with the weapons of masculinity but with the weapons of femininity: appeals, supplications, concessions, submissions." (p. 231)

Wilson in a speech in Boston in February, 1919: "I have had this sweet revenge. Speaking with perfect frankness in the name of the people of the United States, I have uttered as the objects of this war ideals, and nothing but ideals, and the war has been won by that inspiration. And now these ideals have wrought this new magic that all the peoples of Europe are buoyed up and confident in the spirit of hope, because they believe that we are at the eve of a new age in the world, when nations will understand one another; when nations will support one another in every just cause; when nations will unite every moral and every physical strength to see that right shall prevail. If America were at this juncture to fail the world, what would come of it?" (pp. 227-228)

Wilson's excuses for his compromises on the Treaty of Versailles: (1) The League of Nations will take care of it; (2) his compromises were made in the name of international cooperation (sounds like George W. abandoning free-market principles to save the free-market system); and (3) "Europe is on fire and I can't add fuel to the flames." (I'm being self-sacrificing by not fighting.) (pp. 261-263)

To try to convince the American people of the rightness of the treaty, he went on a speaking trip, leaving reality behind. He claimed to be "of the old revolutionary stock which set this government up." (His mother and his grandparents on his father's side were immigrants.) He told one crowd that the treaty was the "incomparable consummation of the hopes of mankind" and another that "It is the first treaty ever made by great powers that was not made in their own favor." (p. 285)

One day he told a crowd in St. Louis, "The real reason that the war we have just finished took place was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were getting the better of her." The next day in Des Moines he said, "The businessmen of Germany did not want the war that we have passed through." (p. 286)

On September 12, 1919, Wilson declared the treaty "a ninety-nine percent insurance against war." He started a speech in Portland on September 15th with "There is nothing I respect so much as a fact" before going on, according to the authors, "to make a speech which contained not facts but awesome predictions and figures of speech; covenanters on tombstones, poison, paralysis, tears, murder and dragons' teeth." In a speech September 24th in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he termed the treaty "the most remarkable document in human history" and said the makers of it "did not claim a single piece of territory." (pp. 287-289)

Wilson gave his last misguided discourse in Pueblo, Colorado, on the 25th, claiming "Not one foot of territory is demanded by the conquerors, not one single item of submission to their authority is demanded by them." After Wilson collapsed on the train that night, he was convinced to head back to the White House where he had a stroke three days later. (pp. 289-290)

In the end there was one compromise Wilson wouldn't make. Republican Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge wanted to make changes to the treaty which, according to the authors, "did not greatly alter the obligations of the United States under the Covenant and would have been accepted by all parties to the treaty, so that if Wilson had been ready to compromise with Lodge, the United States would have ratified the Treaty of Versailles and would have become a member of the League." (p. 293)

He didn't compromise, the Senate didn't ratify, and the U.S. didn't become a member of the short-lived League of Nations. The next election cycle the country elected a Republican President.

But Woodrow Wilson did get a Nobel Peace Prize!

And Freud got the opportunity to do a little post-mortem psychoanalyzing of a President.