Obama Raffle: Total Bait & Switch

The Obama campaign is once again promoting a fund-raising raffle that may barely skirt the grounds of legality in at least one state, Minnesota. As Flying Debris noted here, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety had issues with the legality of the Obama campaign's last attempt at a political fund raising raffle. This morning the Obama campaign sent out an e-mail from Michelle Obama, you know Barack's wife, the one not to be questioned because she is not part of the campaign. Michelle gushed "(s)eeing it in person will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I'm excited about being there, and if you make a donation of $5 or more before the deadline, you could join Barack backstage." She is writing about meeting Barack backstage during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Co.

In very fine print at the bottom of the message, under the large DONATE button is the following message in very, very small print: "If you do not wish to make a donation, you can still be selected to join Barack at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Learn more here. "

The preceding type is actual size and the "Learn more here" link is directly to the Obama donation page and not only is the only option for not making a donation listed as "Other:" but the lowest option is for $25. Where's the $5 option Michelle? This is the type of sleazeball stuff we have come to expect from unscrupulous marketers and now the Obama campaign, and apparently the Obama family.

Well I just tried to enter the Meet Obama Raffle and found out that the page that Michelle linked to does not allow one to enter the raffle without giving the Obama campaign your credit card information. Considering the problems that the Obama campaign has had with their website there is no way that I would give them a credit card number.

Memo to Sen. Obama - the Banking Committee Meets Tuesday Morning

After dishonestly stating that he is a member of and giving the impression that he is the Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs we should all hope that Senator Obama can perform his imaginary job and at least attend Tuesday's hearing, if not take the Chairman's gavel. Attending Tuesday's scheduled hearing would be more than Obama has accomplished in the committee that he actually chairs, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Sub-Committee on European Affairs which has jurisdiction over NATO's role in Afghanistan, the sub-committee has yet to meet. Last February Obama said that the committee had not met because he "became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign," he was refering to January of 2007.

I would like to see the reaction of Senator Dodd (D-CN), the actual Chair of the Banking Committee if Obama actually showed up. The hearing will be in Room 534 - Dirksen Senate Office Building at 10:00 AM EDT.

Is This Obama Guy Serious?

Copyright: Drudge?

Obama Appeared at 10 Downing Street, the home of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, by himself. He chose not to appear with the Prime Minister Brown in front of Brown's own home. This guy gets diplomacy likes he gets religion.

"Don't Hope For More Energy - Vote For It!"

The title of this post is the best line of the McCain ad posted below.

The hopey-changey folks cannot be happy about the recent gas price increases, after all they are the ones who have exasperated our energy woes by replacing drilling and refining with hope and you know what. They are not the future that we have been waiting for, they are the past that we hope to leave behind.



Hat Tip: Backyard Conservative

Obama Excuses - Is the Third Story the Charm? -UPDATED-

Chicago Sun Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet had a report in the wee hours of this morning that completes the Obama Excuse Hat-Trick, now the Obama people are blaming the military for his failure to visit the troops at the Rammstein and Landstuhl military bases. Flying Debris posted on this story last night.

The Sun Times story is ridiculous, this is now the third story that the Obama people have come up with to excuse the fact that our Senator could not bother to spend any more of his precious time visiting any more soldiers. This is despite the fact that the soldiers were injured serving the United States. The military said that they were expecting Senator Obama to visit but that his campaign canceled:

1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. "Barack Obama will not be coming to us," a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. "I don't know why." Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.


This unseemly revelation by, ahem, the foreign press caused some scrambling in the Obama camp. First the Obama people called it a scheduling conflict, then the Obama campaign said that military would only allow members of the Senate and some of their Senate staffers on the bases. That story was accompanied with reports that one or more campaign staffer(s) had a fit over those restrictions and thus Obama did not go, that story would start to point the finger at lobbyist and Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod. Now the Obama campaign has a third story, that the military would not allow them to go to the bases.

Occams's Razor would tell any observer with an intellect that if the military had forbade Senator Obama from visiting the troops that the Obama campaign would have been out in front of the entire story, they would have broken the story with vigor instead of reacting to it with a litany of excuses that would embarrass a teenager. Instead of visiting the troops as he had promised Senator Obama hung out at the gym in the Berlin Ritz Carlton and now his minions are blaming the troops.

Update: The gist of this post was originally left in the "comment" section of Ms. Sweet's linked Sun Times article. They have posted 5 comments but they will not post my comment. They are in the bag for Obama. Unfortunately Ms. Sweet often writes about Obama in the manner of a Tiger Beat feature article. After looking at the past few years of Sweet's Obama columns I am waiting for the following - "OMG he is the cutest savior ever!!!!!!!"

Did National Lampoon Write Obama's Overseas Vacation?

 Let's see, he blatantly lied in a speech in Sderot when he told his Israeli listeners that he is a member of, or even possibly the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and in that capacity his work was crucial in the passage of the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment. He is not a member of Senator Dodd's committee and Obama was absent the day of the Senate's vote, thus he never voted on the amendment and in fact he did not support the bill. When asked he refused to state his what his support for Israel would be in the face of another Holocaust while he was touring Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Yad Vashem holds the world's largest repository of Holocaust information. Obama said that it would be improper to discuss the possibility of a future Holocaust at a research center and memorial dedicated to avoiding another Holocaust. Got that? And then there are his statements that he would not have  supported the Surge even knowing what we know today.

 Like Chevy Chase, the star of National Lampoon's Vacation movies, Barack just keeps on going. Today it came out that although Obama had scheduled visits to both Rammstein and Landstuhl to visit American troops in the hospitals of those bases, he decided to cancel the visits. It is possible that he cancelled the visits due to the fact that one of his campaign officials would not be allowed on the bases. Only the Senator and his Senate staffers are allowed on the bases, so the campaign staffer allegedly had a fit. If Obama can't even stand up to some campaign staffer and tell him/her to go to hang out at the Ritz who the heck could this man stand up to? It also has come out that instead of visiting American troops Barack Obama worked out at the Spa in the Berlin Ritz Carlton, oh and he was looking for some cool sights to see before he spoke in front some Europeans.

 So don't you dare question whether Obama supports the troops.

The Gateway Pundit has been following Barack's gaffes and errors all week, when does he sleep? The latest Obamaism that Gateway has covered is Barack's paranoid comments about FOX News.

Is Obama's Birth Certificate a Forgery?

 Why does the former Constitutional Law Professor allow an apparently forged birth certificate to masquerade as the real thing? And why did the Daily KOS release the thing before Obama's own anti-smear website? Obama should clear up this issue before it becomes one of his infamous "distractions" or the document in question becoming not the birth certificate that he once knew. This is really a distraction but I have to wonder why Obama won't even level with the American people on that basic level, after all, it's just a birth certificate.

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

The Chicago Board of Trade Building - the Home of Batman?

Photo Copyright: Weatherbug

Photo Copyright: Flying Debris

The Batman hype is pretty big here in Chicago, the set for Gotham City. I just drove past a guy made-up as the Joker driving down Ashland Ave. Both of the above photos are of the Chicago Board of Trade Building, I grabbed the top photo off of this web-cam last night, and the street shot I took one morning when I arrived at work to find firetrucks and police out front because an environmental group was protesting us (?) by climbing the building. The Board has been the home of Bruce Wayne's Wayne Corp (Enterprises) during this and the last Batman movie.

The statue on top of the real building is Ceres the goddess of grain, we were traditionally a grain exchange, her face is blank because nobody at the time (1930) thought that any nearby buildings would be taller than the Board's 44 stories., thus nobody would see her face. There is also a 50 foot tall painting of a half-naked, very buxom Ceres with an armful of wheat hanging in one of the inside atriums, the painting once hung in the old grain trading room on 4, plus the bar on the first floor is named the Ceres Cafe, so she has some fans in the building. There used to be a television studio up on 43, Soul Train was taped up there until the late '70s.

Showing that traders can sometimes get it all very wrong, we (I'm an exchange member) broke ground for the building a few weeks before the 1929 stock market crash. The exchange was forced to build the building because one corner off the previous exchange building on the same spot was sinking into Chicago's muck. The corner of Jackson and Exchange Pl. sank, causing the entire building to lean like the tower in Pisa, in fact the original building's front tower was taken down as a safety hazard early in the 1900s. The current building is noted for its Art Deco design which can be seen in details all over the both the interior and the exterior. I share an office that can be seen in the web-cam shot.

The Board and the streets around it make for a great movie set partially because the exchange is at the base of the t-intersection of La Salle St. (north-south) and Jackson Blvd. (east-west), the eastern terminus of Route 66 was 5 blocks east at Jackson and Michigan Ave and the world's tallest infidel building, the Sears Tower is just 2 blocks west at Jackson and Wacker Dr. The Batman crew did a lot of filming around the building last year, mostly at night during the summer. A guy I know who goes to work early used to see the five Batmobiles and Batman's wild motorcycles being put away in an underground garage behind the exchange at 4:30 or 5:00 AM.

The building and the "neighborhood" around it has been in a number of movies, you can see the Board in North by Northwest, Steve Martin got John Candy off of the La Salle and Van Buren el stop behind the building on Thanksgiving day in Trains, Planes and Automobiles and Carrie Fisher blew up the best neighborhood deli, the Dill Pickle (her targets were Jake and Elwood Blues in the flop-house upstairs) in the Blues Brothers. Sadly the Dill Pickle is now gone, replaced by a park named after a wealthy Chicago family, Pritzker Park is gated off from the street and is home to bums and pigeons. If you are going to see the movie, enjoy it, if not I hope that the travelogue didn't bore you.

Chuck Schumer, Meet George Bailey

It was not widely reported last weekend that federal banking regulators have stated that the "run" on the failed Indymac bank of Pasadena, Ca. was caused by the public grandstanding of one of New York's Senators, Democrat Charles Schumer. Schumer of course denies that his grandstanding had anything to do with the bank run that started in earnest after Schumer commenced his grandstanding.

Senator Schumer, meet George Bailey as he talks to the town of Bedford Falls, New York on the subjects of how banks work and how bank runs occur. I would suggest viewing the complete movie, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore, it is a holiday classic after all. Thank you Frank Capra and thank you Jimmy Stewart, the Senator needs the help.

Update: The more I Googled the worse it got, CNBC is suggesting that Schumer may have acted in concert with, get this, a "left wing activist group", hmm, you think? An interesting add-on is the possible involvement of short-sellers of Indymac stock, hello SEC. Here are two of the key paragraphs:

Perhaps this might help answer the question: Indymac has been under attack from the hard left. The Center for Responsible Lending issued an attack on Indymac within a few days of Schumer’s letter. CRL is part of a small army of left of center ‘research’ groups, community organizers, and public interest law firms who make their living accusing home lenders of racial redlining and predatory lending. On June 20th the Center accused Indymac of unfair practices regarding minority borrowers.

A suspicious person might think that a network of lefty attack groups proficient in bank bashing and frequently funded by trial lawyers and short-sellers, coordinated their activities with a law firm on the hunt and a Senator who works closely with the network.

Tony Snow: RIP

 Former Bush press secretary Tony Snow has succumbed to colon cancer at 53. A good man gone too early.

Pelosi Satisfies Democratic Crazies

It may be a go, Pelosi has been going crazy lately trying to make America more dangerous so why not attempt to become President? She has moved the insane Dennis Kucinich's impeachment bill into the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is chaired by John Conyers, a man whose crazy wife Monica may very well end up in jail for corruption in their hometown of Detroit. Pelosi is number three in the line of succession to the Presidency so watch for Vice-President Cheney to go down first if she can pull off this nonsense.

ACLU to Protect the "Rights" of Machines

The people at the ACLU are planning to sue over the recent FISA legislation that protects the phone companies from being sued over the fact that they will help keep America open and protected from the murderous plots of fascist terrorists. If a terrorist in Syria calls a terrorist in Afghanistan directly without that call being routed through the US his call can be tapped to find information concerning terrorist plots but if that call is routed through a machine in the US then the ACLU wants the terrorists to be free to plot the murder of Americans. More interestingly if those terrorists call a telephone in Dearborn, Michigan that is set up with call forwarding (simply push *72 and hang up the telephone) and the telephone is set up to farward all calls to a terrorist in Afghanistan then the ACLU will be suing to protect the "human right" of that telephone. Rage Against the Machine indeed.

Jesse Jackson and Obama's Nuts

Was Jesse Jackson just trying to give Barack Obama another "Sister Souljah" moment? The Instapundit thinks that it may be good news for the Obama campaign and I agree. I have long been very suspicious of the Jacksons.

Pelosi and Dems Want to Control Free Speech

Again. Two years ago the Democrats wanted to force bloggers who write about congress to register with the federal government under threat of jail time. Today Pelosi and the Democrats want to replace unused rules by placing restrictions on what members of congress can say on pre-approved internet sites. Pre-approved by the Democratic majority. They want to control public opinion using fascist techniques. Pathetic.

Obama Campaign Runs Illegal Raffle

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety is investigating the Obama campaign's online raffle, political raffles are illegal in Minnesota. "We are not conducting a raffle of any kind," said Obama spokesman Nick Kimball, however the website offered a chance to meet Obama in Denver at the convention with a friend and the prize included at least transportation and to get a chance to win that prize the player had to donate to the Obama campaign, that fulfills Minnesota's and any reasonable definition of the word "raffle".

Last night (Tuesday night) the Obama campaign took the political raffle off of their website and then announced that donations would not be required for the raffle. Is it legal to offer a prize for a political donation anywhere in America? By including at least transportation to Denver (and I would presume some sort of lodging) the prize has monetary value so I wonder what they were thinking. However this whole scheme sounds like what we should expect from the Obama campaign and a possible Obama administration, they put up an illegal fundraising scheme on their website, deny, deny when they are called on it and change the raffle before the press is forced to pay too much attention to the issue.

FARC and the NGOs - Terrorist Enablers Going Down the Media Hole Without the Flying Pigs

I was interested in checking out any reporting on the fact that the narco-terrorist group FARC was very comfortable in having some NGO ferry their prized prisoners around Columbia. Mary Anastasia O'Grady had an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on that subject and considering what's involved (American taxes and charitable donations) one would think that the American media would have some interest in such a story. Well Google's news retrieval service came up with 22 stories for the search term ngo farc in .33 seconds, Google is slipping on the speed here. Yahoo came up with 15 news stories without telling me how long it took them to find the articles. To put that in perspective Google's News service just found 129 news articles about flying pigs in a blazing .10 seconds.

A hint to newspaper owners and editors, this is an example of why you are hemorrhaging money. That means you Sam Zell.

No shock here but see-dubya at Michelle Malkin's site posted on this issue last week and see should get bonus points for use of the term "trustifarian", as in "trustifarian NGO".

More on the Democratic Party's Support of Narco-Terrorists

Yesterday in Pelosi Lied - Neighborhoods Died Flying Debris pointed out the disgrace of Democratic leaders secret communications with the narco-terrorist group FARC in Columbia. Unfortunately for the Democrats this news will likely continue to drip out, without much help from the western media, many of whom are in the bag for all sorts of unsavory tyrranical groups. As Powerline reminded us yesterday the contacts between the Democrats and FARC included assurances that the Democrats would stand in the way of a trade pact that would benefit American exporters to Columbia and that the next US president would be Barack Obama who would surely scuttle any trade treaty with Columbia (a treaty that would benefit American workers). The denial of the trade treaty has been an aim of the FARC narco-terrorists and the American Democratic Party has been supportive of those aims, to the detriment of Americans and Columbians and to the benefit of fascists everywhere. They're such good people.

Pelosi Lied - American Neighborhoods Died

No shock to those of us who pay attention but there is now more proof that Democratic Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was in charge of the Democratic Party's alliance with the cocaine-trafficking tyrannical terrorist group FARC. Sure, many of her constituents are drug-addled idiots but the rest of us have not been pining for cheaper cocaine on American streets. Having lived in a few different Chicago neighborhoods I know first hand the scourge of crack and heroin and let me tell you, liberals don't care unless it affects them or they can make money off of the situation.

When I lived on Sheffield Ave. across the street from Wrigley Field there was a crack house in a garage right down the allley (also across from Wrigley Field) that was closed by the Chicago Police just in time for the Cubs Opening Day every year. The crack house would move to a less conspicuous spot around the corner until the final game of the season when it would again be open for business. No amount of complaining got the place closed down during the Cubs' off-season.

When I lived on Grace St., a block north of Wrigley, we had a problem with homeless junkies living on Cubs property after the baseball season had ended. The property in question is on Grace St. next door to a shelter for abused women and just maybe a bunch of homeless junkies and alcoholics isn't the best thing to have next to a shelter for abused women but hey, this is liberal Chicago. When I went to the alderman (Chicago's first outwardly gay alderman) his office wanted nothing to do with the issue and stated that they would not help our neighborhood because, get this, "the homeless have to live somewhere." Considering that back then I was paying nearly $10,000 per year in property taxes alone such a response from some liberal boobs (the alderman and his employees) did not go over well with me so I went to the Cubs and received the exact same response. It is notable that the Cubs are owned by the Tribune Corp. of Chicago and that they publish a sinking liberal rag called the Chicago Tribune. Back in the '70s the late great Chicagoan John Belushi described the Tribune as "that fascist newspaper from Chicago" on Saturday Night Live. The more things change...

Anyway, FARC has been a notorious drug operation for over a decade and the American Democratic Party has embraced them, the Democrats are doing some of FARC's dirty work. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have made their stand against a free trade pact with Columbia despite the fact that it would not increase Columbian access to American markets but rather the treaty would increase American access to Columbian markets. Whether the Democratic Party is supporting the narco-terrorist thugs because of the cocaine or because so many Democrats are fascists is inconsequential, their policies have demonstrably increased the availability of cocaine and crack cocaine on the streets of America and in doing so they have been lowering the quality of life for all of us.

HAt Tip: Gateway Pundit - he has a great post on the latest news from the Democratic-Cocaine connection.

Bertha Don't You Come Around Here...

...Anymore. The season's first named Atlantic hurricane has been names after relatively popular Grateful Dead song, Bertha.


I had a hard run, runnin from your window.
I was all night running, running, lord I wonder if you care,
I had a run in, run around, and run down.
Run around the corner, corner, lord run smack in to a tree.
I had to move, really had to move,
Thats why if you please, I am on my bendin knees,
Bertha dont you come around here anymore.
Dressed myself in green, I went down unto the sea.
Try to see whats goin down, try to read between the lines.
I had a feelin I was fallin, fallin, fallin,
I turned around to see,
Heard a voice al callin, lord you was comin after me.
I had to move, really had to move,Thats why if you please, I am on my bendin knees,
Bertha dont you come around here anymore.
Ran into a rainstorm, I ducked back into novato.
Its all night pourin, pourin, pourin,
Lord but not a drop on me.Test me, test me,
Test me, test me, test me,
Why dont you arrest me? Throw me in to the jailhouse,
Lord until the sun goes down, till it goes down.
I had to move, really had to move,
Thats why if you please, I am on my bendin knees,
Bertha dont you come around here anymore.
I had to move, really had to move,
Thats why if you please, I am on my bendin knees,
Bertha dont you come around here anymore.

Happy Birthday President Bush

 The President turns 62 today, on Air Force One.

Happy Birthday America

  Chicago Cub Rick Monday saves the American flag at Dodger Stadium (Chavez Ravine) on April 25, 1976. Thank you and Happy 4th Rick Monday.

Happy Independence Day

This Independence Day Photo of Lady Liberty is from July 4, 1986 - the celebration of her restoration.

New Democratic Taxes

 Here in the uber-blue Democratic utopia of Chicago today marks a new tax increase, the sales tax, a shiny new Cook County tax increase from .75% to 1.75% brings Chicago's sales tax rate to a whopping 10.25%. Add to that a restaurant sales tax of 1.25% for the "downtown" area that pays for McCormick Place and you get an 11.5% restaurant tax. At 11.5% the city and the county should pitch in, can I get Todd Stroger or Mayor Daley as a waiter? That "downtown" area covers I-55 on the south, Surf St. (2900 North) on the north, Ashland Ave. (1600 West) on the west and Lake Michigan on the east. Welcome the future that Obama envisions, sure just tax away. Lucky for me one of my local taverns is on the less taxed side of Ashland Ave.

Sox Win Second Half of Civil War

 I neglected to post this yesterday but a comment left by KL.UK at this post reminded me that I had to report that the Cubs got swept in Comiskey last weekend thus tying-up the regular season series between the two Chicago teams.

Obama Can't Count

Flying Debris has already had a humorous piece on Barack Obama's inability to express how many States are in the United States (he claimed to have campaigned in 57 States) but John Hinderaker of Power Line has helpfully pointed out that Obama's "Patriotism Speech" contained this ridiculous comment, "(a)s we begin our fourth century as a nation, it is easy to take the extraordinary nature of America for granted." I must be very old because I still remember America's 200th Birthday (July 4, 1976). The fact that Obama can't count may help to explain why the man cannot even understand Social Security and really any economic issue. Pathetic.

I should also add that I am always suspicious of anyone who has to tell me how patriotic they are.