It’s absolutely stunning to see the turn-around in poll numbers as they drop for Barack Obama in just 11 months into his presidency. The number of self-identified Democrats sunk in December to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of tracking. Senators Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) will not seek re-election. Michigan Democrat Lt. Gov John Cherry has pulled the plug on his campaign for governor and Colorado’s Democrat Governor *Bill Ritter announced that he will not seek re-election. In late December, former Democrat freshman Rep Parker Griffith switched to the Republican party.
The recent victories of Governors-Elect Chris Christie (R-New Jersey) and Bob McDonnell (R-Virginia) indicates good things ahead. The possibility of Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) being elected to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat is thrilling. Conservative and Independent ranks are growing.
The waves of REAL change are washing across America. But will the rising waters of reform be
enough to cleanse America’s soul?
Read the chilling and diabolical workings on how Obama’s radical power brokers plan to muddy the waters by gaming the system when you next step up to the ballot box:
January 8, 2010
Obama and the White House Chicago Boys
Ed Linsky – American ThinkerSigns are emerging that the Chicago Boys — the triumvirate of Obama, Emanuel, and Axlerod — are up to their old tricks, as I touched upon in a previous American Thinker column. My recent interest was piqued by two news items that floated across my screen in the last week.
One was the release of the White House visitor logs that showed visits by Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and named by Fortune Magazine as “the most powerful woman in the labor movement. ” We know Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, routinely visits the White House and has boasted of the tens of millions of dollars and man-hours the union spent in electing Barack Obama to the presidency. We can expect a repeat performance come 2012.
But Anna Burger is far more than an SEIU honcho; she also is the vice-chairman of a shadowy group called the ” Democracy Alliance,” composed of billionaire funders and savvy political operatives who set out a few years ago to change politics as we know it in America. Among their projects was something called the Secretary of States Project that set about electing secretaries of state in key battleground states.
These are the very officials who are charged with maintaining the integrity of the voting process. Recall the controversies in Ohio and Minnesota — including ACORN problems — regarding the accuracy of the votes in those states last year? The secretaries of state who gave a stamp of approval to these elections (where Democrats won) were Democrats supported by the Democracy Alliance. Various state chapters of the Democracy Alliance have formed to use a range of controversial methods to ensure Democratic victories. (See “The Colorado Model” by Fred Barnes for a display of the type of tactics that can be used to manipulate elections. These include creating faux controversies, spreading them through supposedly non-partisan groups created by Democrat activists, and relying on an echo chamber effect until the mainstream media picks up the “story” and broadcasts it far and wide. Other groups are formed to harass journalists and editorial writers who don’t push the liberal line.)
The Democracy Alliance has helped form front groups to get Democrats elected. David Axelrod is a master at this type of tactic.
The Alliance’s handiwork played a role in the victory of Al Franken over Norm Coleman, which helped secure a sixty-seat majority in the Senate. There was a group — Alliance for a Better Minnesota — that posed as a group of concerned citizens. The Alliance was funded by outsiders, namely the wealthy, hyper-partisan Democrats behind the Democracy Alliance. This was a so-called astrotruf group: it falsely appeared to be a true grassroots effort.
Tellingly, the Obama team has killed off disclosure rules mandating that unions reveal how they spend the billions of their members’ union dues. These, in turn, are often poured into “front groups” and other “funds” each year. Anyone care to wager whether these funds will flow to help Democrats? Thanks to Obama, we will never know. So much for transparency. But we do have change.
The second item that sparked my interest was Obama’s move to ditch the superdelegates’ role in nominating Democratic candidates for the presidency.
These superdelegates include Democratic members of Congress, national party figures, and established leaders of the Democratic Party. They vote at the nominating convention. The system was established in the wake of the 1972 Democratic Party nominating process, when anti-war radicals seized control of the party and ended up nominating George McGovern. The superdelegates were supposed to ensure that radicals did not take over the party’s nominating process. Well, apparently that sort of restraint does not appeal to Obama, who now has taken steps to shape the nominating process to play to his preferred territory: the caucuses, where his brand of populism holds sway. The Wall Street Journal noted the trick:
One reason for the superdelegates in the first place is the disproportionate role of activists in states like Iowa, which rely on caucuses rather than primaries. Mrs. Clinton held in her own in the primary states but Mr. Obama crushed her in the caucus states where his supporters found it easy to dominate proceedings where older and frequently busier people weren’t able to invest the time to counter them. Take the case of Texas, which has both a caucus and a primary: Mrs. Clinton won the state’s primary in which 2.8 million people voted, but Mr. Obama so controlled the caucuses where far fewer people (some 800,000) participated that he ended up with more delegates overall. The new rules, if approved, would likely mean even more of the same.
Since Obama’s policies are sacrificing the careers of Democratic congressmen to fulfill his agenda, these politicians may withhold their support at a future nominating convention. What is the solution? Remove them from the equation by stripping their vote. Out they go, joining the ever-increasing number of bodies under the bus.
Of course, the boys who earned their stripes in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago
politics (where the phrase “vote early and vote often” should be the city’s motto) will not stop there in their drive to win.
Why should they? Customs, rules, ethics, and traditions were thrown under the bus to get ObamaCare bills passed by the House and the Senate. Why stop there when there are so many ways to skin Americans? Skullduggery comes naturally.
There are other cards to play (and Obama is an avid poker player).
How else will the Chicago Boys game the system and gin up victories?
While that [ACORN census] seems to be off the plate for now, there is still the prospect that sampling may be used to collect census figures. That is a statistical method that has been denounced by, among others, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal as a formula that could be abused to exaggerate the number of residents of certain states and municipalities. This would affect the number of House seats awarded to each state. Those figures also play a role in the amount of federal funding flowing to those areas. Those are also the very figures used to determine electoral votes.
Will census figures compiled by community groups chosen by this administration be reliable? Remember that this team earned their stripes in Chicago and has ties to ACORN, which is embroiled in voter registration and other scandals across our nation.
There will be a strong desire to boost numbers in blue states, especially since red states seem poised to pick up seats and electoral votes, as people vote with their feet and move to red states. This won’t do for the Obama team — not at all.
So what to do? Fool ‘em with some other numbers, this time the ones with dollar signs in front of them. But the Chicago Boys may have tipped their hands by revealing one of their cards:
The government, reports The Hill newspaper, will target $80 million of those dollars to racial and ethnic minorities and non-English speakers — groups that vote disproportionately Democratic. Nor will Democrats permit efforts to limit the count to those here legally. An effort by Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) to exclude illegal aliens from the count went nowhere.
Illegal aliens don’t (usually) vote of course. But when they are counted in the Census they do affect representation in Congress. So some of the money you pay in taxes will go toward increasing the legislative clout of one party.
And those illegal aliens will also boost electoral votes of those blue states. We can also expect a campaign to allow felons to regain their right to vote. Anything to boost those numbers and rack up some wins.
But wait, there’s more.
The push to “Rahm” through universal voter registration is a ploy ripe for voter fraud, as noted so well by my American Thinker colleague James Simpson in his recent column. This is a proposal to impose a federal mandate regarding voter registration. State laws will be overridden by federal law drafted and passed by Democrats. As John Fund notes:
The feds will tell the states: ‘take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be …’
What is the problem? Many of these lists include vast numbers of illegal immigrants, there will be felons, there will be duplicates, and there will be a lot of people who never cared enough about the country or democracy to take the simple steps to register under state laws. What will be the end result? A huge pool of likely Democratic voters will be created out of thin air — and then Obama’s army of volunteers and Democratic Party activists and paid contractors (think ACORN) will shepherd them to the voting booths. Between the pickup at home and the pulling of the lever, a lot of steps can be taken to ensure they vote the left way.
Are there any more ways for Obama and the boys to stack the deck?
Yes! Read more here on how Obama and his boys plan to overcome the rising waves of constitutional conservatism with a tsunami of their own.
Our Crook-in-Chief means to keep his power. Unless we man the fair election life-guard towers and
clean up his dirty work, Obama’s sludge of cheating, lying, and diabolical tricks will continue to pollute the waves of REAL change.
You won’t want to miss reading this.
I’m re-posting some of the comments found on the original article at American Thinker:
Posted by Vigilant
January 8, 20104:56 AM
The Secretary of States Project was the most brilliant, insidious effort of the last two elections. It undermines the voter registration and election process and may have accounted for the winning margin for the Kenyan.
Potentially, this may be the Tea Party’s most important single effort as Patriot foot soldiers: identify, follow, watch, report, legally preempt and impede the Secretary of States’ undermining of the electoral process day to day. Do it in each State.
On election day, man the voting precincts with real-time reporting capability, each with a designated rapid reaction force of media and lawyers prepared to act immediately to keep the voting within parameters, and to ensure there are no nightstick-carrying Democrat poll-watchers influencing the action.
We must shadow each Secretary of State and be ready to pounce with legal, media and moral suasion beginning in Spring 2010, well before the primaries.
AT can act as a key outlet with each Secretary of State followed and assessed … shine the light of reporting and assessment on the voting mechanism and the performance of State oversight … the AT SecState ‘Czar’ could be Ed Lasky. Rush, Heritage Foundation, Glenn et al will pick up on it and keep it in the public eye.
Hopefully, there will be enough political leverage left with which to force the Secretaries of State to do their jobs.
This is something the Tea Parties can coalesce around and put up one helluva fight to literally save our Republic. It is that important.
So, as much as possible, we need a strategy for pre-emption that begins now, and one for seamless in-progress oversight and remediation. And, we need to exercise that strategy several times leading to the elections … prior service folks will recognize those as dreaded, but essential, Command Post Exercises (CPX) … but let’s call them Election Place Exercises … primarily to exercise communications. (Remember that the Democrats had cell and texting communications down to individual voter level in the last elections.)
Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich or similar strategic group could pull together the National and individual State scenarios, and State-level exercise committees develop the vignettes to drive County and precinct exercises, with some selected roll playing to come as close to election day situations as possible.
None of this is far-fetched. It could be pulled together in time to do a series of crawl, walk, run level ‘command post exercises’ of one or two days each to work out the bugs for saving our Republic right on the ground in your county or precinct.
Who’s game … ?
Ed Lasky needs to do several progressive / follow-on pieces on this topic. Keep this discussion going. Get people up off the couch and focused on saving our electoral process.
Comment from American Thinker – “Obama and the White House Chicago Boys”
Posted by TheRealNCal
January 8, 2010 10:25 AM
We are preaching to the choir. How do we reach the masses?
I agree with Vigilant that we need to shine a piercing bright light on these people.
Keep the voting on paper. It is much harder to tamper with than computer ballots.
2010 is a political eternity away and I am sure that the far left is not sitting on their hands and hoping for the best.
How, where and when to spend stimulus money for one example? How easily we forget when we are handed candy (suckers) as we go to vote.
There are people out there who are in a position to shine that light; they just have to find the courage to do so. It is as easy as “tipping off” the writers for American Thinker and see what they can do with it.
How easy is that?
Now we just need those who KNOW THIS IS WRONG to act on it.
Comment from American Thinker “Obama and the White House Chicago Boys”
Posted by Tenn Slim
January 8, 1020 9:20 AM
Folks, the key here is education. WE MUST show the USA Electorate the actual rules the OBNA is playing under. The MSM and Fox can only cover so much. Fox Glenn Beck, O’Reilly etc do a good job. MSM simply will not play.
THE NET is the answer. Fwd articles, fwd petition offering AKA the Senator From La, recently petitioned for recall. E mail constantly to the Congressional Reps. They either will simply quit or MAYBE actually vote conservatively.
We can and will survive the 2010 election. It will be our last hope. Lose this one and we can kiss our USA Norman Rockwell days good bye – forever.
Semper Fi
Comment from American Thinker – “Obama and the White House Chicago Boys”
Posted by PatriotGal
January 8, 2010 12:05 OM
Certainly a very informative article and one in which I will forward as well as save.
Those who have said that our side is too nice are absolutely correct. We are not dealing here with political situations where everyone plays fair, if we ever did. This is war of a different sort and I don’t think most people realize it, perhaps because we in America are not accustomed to dealing with it on such a grand level. But any elderly immigrant from Russia or Czechoslovakia or Poland can tell you to beware, because they see that what is happening here is the same thing that happened in their country of origin. And it must be fought tooth and nail.
Comment from American Thinker – “Obama and the White House Chicago Boys”
Posted by DeepPowderSlUtah
January 8, 2010 12:36 PM
We live in dangerous times, and the future is our Liberty is in peril. I have read so many truths here, both positive and negative, that I feel like I’m drowning in them, and yet it is refreshing at the same time. Too many Americans have been “riding the tide” on the sea of delusion and comfort for far too long. The possibilities of the shenanigans that the Left might pull off during or prior to the election is staggering but we can not lose hope or say the game is lost…that is exactly what they want us to believe, and it will help them more than us. Besides, defeatism is not now, nor has it ever been the attitude of real Americans. I admit it is very difficult to keep on keepin’ on sometimes, though, when the stakes are so high and the deck is so heavily stacked against us.
I can’t decide if the Dems that have recently abandoned ship are doing so because they’ve suddenly developed a conscience (many Dem voters have) or if it’s part of a bigger plan that they believe will ultimately help their party achieve it’s totalitarian goals. The pattern most often demonstrated by elected Dems (and too many Republicans) is that they *never* do anything counter to the party’s interests, regardless of how they spin or market it. I really hate assuming, especially assuming the worst about people, but this is a “virtual war” and the Dems are kings of the ulterior motive.
Everyone here is making so many extremely valid points but the best truth I have been able to discern from all of these comments is simple: there are just too many wild cards still in play for either side to claim victory yet. When given serious consideration, it seem like most of those wild cards will help us, not them. The biggest is regular working class Americans. Regardless of how people identify themselves publicly (R vs D, cons vs lib, etc.) on many individual issues, most working folks know that the precarious financial position of the country is caused by out of control and irresponsible government spending, and that it can not be permitted to continue. The other side of that same coin is the fact that working Americans do still outnumber the entitlement bums by a considerable majority. As for the entitlement bums themselves, someone else pointed out that there is no outward motive or widespread slick marketing campaign compelling them to vote this time, and we already know they are lazy. (If it comes to a real fight, I doubt that most of them would risk physical harm to keep receiving their handouts, that strikes me as out of character.) The health care garbage is another wild card, although most people are already so mad about the Dems blatant disregard for the voters that actual passage may not affect voter turnout much. (That same disregard by the party that has consistently hedged it’s bets on opinion polls is certainly cause for alarm as well.)
The most likely wild card that could swing things in either direction are the terrorists. If they are able to commit a successful attack here, our worst fears about martial law, suspending elections and rights, etc could become reality. Either of those scenarios, or martial law prompted by another Katrina-like emergency could very well help the thugs, BUT just the attempt to impose martial law or suspend elections and rights could very well mobilize Americans and backfire on the thugs. They do NOT have the military or most of the police in their back pocket. Not to mention that many of these goons could very well be under investigation already. So many considerations. So much time to wait and see. So many people sick of feeling powerless and seeing their country’s wealth, freedom, blood sacrifice, and greatness being squandered.
Assuming we make it to another election, my idea to combat the ACORN-type thuggery: after (or before) voting, take a friend or spouse and drive around your cities and towns to the places where busloads of bums can be bribed with beer and smokes, and/or to the polling places in those areas, with a digital video camera and plenty of batteries and memory cards. Be prepared to record anything even resembling the possibility of tampering, fraud, intimidation, shenanigans, etc. Expose it asap. Plaster it on youtube, facebook, and the local press. I’ve often wondered how we can defeat these criminals without becoming criminals ourselves. These kinds of guerilla tactics are but one way to do that. There are others. The real power is not in the offices of DC, or the halls of Congress, it is in We The People, if we have the will to recognize it and use it to reclaim what is rightfully ours. Real Americans have stepped up and heeded the call before, it can be done again.
Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a few hours, set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.