THE BIZARRE RISE OF "FACT CHECKING" PROPAGANDISTS

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• Updated September 4, 2012, 4:19 p.m. ET

The Pinocchio Press

The bizarre rise of "fact checking" propagandists.

By JAMES TARANTO

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

In the 19th-century fairy tale "The Adventures of Pinocchio," the eponymous protagonist is a wooden puppet who dreams of becoming an actual boy. We suppose people who work as fact checkers have long dreamed of becoming writers and editors, who enjoy, respectively, the glory and the power in journalism.

Associated Press/Sven Kaestner

The new face of journalism?

Outside the world of journalism, fact checkers were pretty much unknown until recently. Like proofreaders, they work behind the scenes. Their job is quality control. The most rigorous fact-checking operations--The New Yorker's and Reader's Digest's are the best known among us who know about such things--would scrutinize every factual assertion in an article, reporting back so that any error could be corrected.

Over the past few years, many organizations have promoted "fact checkers" by making them writers, or perhaps demoted writers by making them fact checkers. No, it's more the former, because other writers have been bowing to the "fact checkers" as submissively as Barack Obama upon meeting some anti-American dictator.

"Fact-checker findings, including those by The Washington Post's project, figure prominently in campaign ads," enthuses a Post news story. "The unique rating systems used by these organizations--including the trademarked Truth-O-Meter and Pinocchios--have become part of the political vernacular." A New York Times news story laments that fact checkers "verdicts . . . are often drowned out by dissent."

Perhaps the reason other journalists are so deferential toward the "fact checkers" is that these fact checkers, unlike the traditional ones, don't check the facts of journalists but of politicians. By and large, they aren't actually checking facts but making and asserting judgments about the veracity of politicians' arguments.

The quality of their work is generally quite poor. "The MSM's ['mainstream' media's] fact-checkers often don't know what they're talking about," notes Mickey Kaus, who cites an example on a subject he knows well:

The oft-cited CNN-"fact check" of Romney's welfare ad makes a big deal of HHS secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius' pledge that she will only grant waivers to states that "commit that their proposals will move at least 20% more people from welfare to work." CNN swallows this 20% Rule whole in the course of declaring Romney's objection "wrong":

"The waivers gave 'those states some flexibility in how they manage their welfare rolls as long as it produced 20% increases in the number of people getting work.' "

Why, it looks as if Obama wants to make the work provisions tougher! Fact-check.org cites the same 20% rule.

I was initially skeptical of Sebelius' 20% pledge, since a) it measures the 20% against "the state's past performance," not what the state's performance would be if it actually tried to comply with the welfare law's requirements as written, and b) Sebelius pulled it out of thin air only after it became clear that the new waiver rule could be a political problem for the president. She could just as easily drop it in the future; and c) Sebelius made it clear the states don't have to actually achieve the 20% goal--only "demonstrate clear progress toward" it.

But Robert Rector, a welfare reform zealot who nevertheless does know what he's talking about, has now published a longer analysis of the 20% rule. Turns out it's not as big a scam as I'd thought it was. It's a much bigger scam.

The merits of the argument are beyond the scope of today's column. It is quite possible that there are people whose knowledge of the subject is a deep as Kaus's and Rector's but whose honest interpretation is more favorable to the Sebelius position. An appeal to their authority could carry as much weight as our appeal to Kaus's and Rector's.

But an appeal to the authority of "independent fact checkers" carries no weight at all. In case you're skeptical of this assertion, let's look at some other examples of their output from the past week.
Here's an excerpt from an Associated Press "fact check" of Paul Ryan's convention speech:

RYAN: "And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. . . . So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama."

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee. . . .

RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan.

In both of these cases, the AP neither disputes nor verify the factual accuracy of Ryan's statements. Each of these is simply a tu quoque--an argument against Ryan. Under the guise of fact checking, the AP is simply taking sides in a partisan political dispute.

The most disputed portion of Ryan's speech involved the closing of a General Motors plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wis. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal Friday defended Ryan's account against "the press corps 'fact checkers' and the liberals who love them."

But even the so-called fact checkers can't agree on the facts. PolitiFact rated Ryan's account "false," while CNN.com called it "true but incomplete." Anyone who really believes in the authority of "fact checkers" has a liar's paradox problem.

Sometimes the so-called checks are just red herrings. Here's an example from ABC News:

In comparing President Obama to Jimmy Carter, Ryan said in July 1980 the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent and "for the past 42 months it's been above 8 percent under Barack Obama's failed leadership."

Both parts of this sentence are true according to the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, but in July 1983, when Ronald Reagan was president, unemployment was at 9.4 percent. In July 1982 it was higher at 9.8 percent.

In July 1992, when George H.W. Bush was president, unemployment was at 7.7 percent.

Is what Ryan said factually correct? Yes, but it leaves out some important data.

Ryan compared Obama to Carter. AP thinks he should also (or instead) have compared Obama to Reagan and Bush. There is no factual dispute here whatever.
Sometimes the "fact checkers" are ignorant even of facts that, in contrast with the welfare material above, require no special expertise to know. This is from a CNN.com "fact check":

In a new policy paper, his Republican rival for the White House, Mitt Romney, says, "President Obama has intentionally sought to shut down oil, gas, and coal production in pursuit of his own alternative energy agenda." . . .

Obama has, for sure, angered some oil and coal producers by steering federal money to alternative energy sources. But there is no evidence that he is trying to "shut down" traditional energy industries.

No evidence? How about Obama's own words? "So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them, because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Sometimes the "fact checkers" simply pronounce trivial truths. From the AP on Mitt Romney's convention speech:

ROMNEY: "I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has five steps."

THE FACTS: No one says he can't, but economic forecasters are divided on his ability to deliver. He'd have to nearly double the anemic pace of job growth lately.

This is like "fact checking" somebody's wedding vows by asserting that while marriage can be wonderful, it's are hard work and ends in divorce half the time.

Among "fact checkers," the worst of a bad lot may be the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler. On Thursday afternoon he actually wrote a post called "Previewing the 'Facts' in Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech." With those scare quotes, he declared the Republican nominee a liar before Romney had even opened his mouth.

Conservative blogger Stacy McCain describes "the pattern for Republican National Convention coverage: Democrats choose their themes, issue their talking points and their media henchpersons then repeat the partisan spin as if it were a matter of indisputable fact." Kessler didn't wait; he wrote the talking points himself.

The usual conservative complaint about all this "fact checking" is the same as the conservative complaint about the MSM's product in general: that it is overwhelmingly biased toward the left. But the form amplifies the bias. It gives journalists much freer rein to express their opinions by allowing them to pretend to be rendering authoritative judgments about the facts. The result, as we've seen, is shoddy arguments and shoddier journalism.

The partisan fault-finding directed against Republicans is accompanied by partisan excuse-making for Democrats. Thus ABCNews.com tries yet again to rationalize away Obama's most notorious presidential utterance:

Greeting Air Force One as it touched down [in Iowa] under sunny skies and sultry heat was a hand-painted banner draped across the top of an airplane hangar that reads, "Obama Welcome to SUX--We Did Build This." "SUX" is the airport code for Sioux City.

The message appeared to be a response President Obama's "you didn't build that" remark from a July campaign rally, when he was trying to explain that government--not businesses--constructed public infrastructure on which the economy relies.

"Obama is casting his net for the moron vote," wrote R. Emmett Tyrrell in a recent column. "I do not believe that there are enough morons out there to reelect him." But if ABC is right that Obama found it necessary to "explain" that government builds "public infrastructure," the president is also making a play for the idiot vote.

Bad journalism feeds into ever-more-extreme rhetoric from the left. "Last night, Paul Ryan lied to the American people," wrote Brenda Witt of MoveOn.org in a Thursday email. "Some journalists and outlets covered Ryan's lies. But others failed to check the facts and didn't call Ryan out on his brazen lies." The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Greetings from the California delegation breakfast at the DNC where before he had a cup of coffee Democratic Party Chair John Burton--much like his ol' palGuv Jerry Brown once did--just compared the Republicans to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, for "telling the big lie," a reference to several [putative] falsehoods GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan recently told.

"They lie and they don't care if people think they lie . . . Joseph Goebbels--it's the big lie, you keep repeating it," Burton said Monday before the Blake Hotel breakfast. He said Ryan told "a bold-faced lie and he doesn't care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie."

You see the progression. Journalists claiming to be engaged in "fact checking" make tendentious arguments against Republicans. Left-wing partisans rely on the authority of the "fact checkers" to call their opponents liars or even Nazis.

One gets a sense of desperation from both the Democrats, who are trying to re-elect a president with a lousy record, and the MSM, who are trying to restore the authority they enjoyed when they aspired to objectivity, or at least pretended convincingly to do so.

Obama may yet eke out an ugly victory, but the decline of the MSM's authority seems inexorable. And it's not only "fact checkers" who are acting like out-and-out partisans. Time's Joe Klein is "the Pope of American political journalists" according to the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur. RealClearPolitics notes an ex cathedra pronouncement he made the other day when he granted an audience to the New York Times's Helene Cooper:

Cooper: Four years of covering Barack Obama, he does not play the race card. Not in a negative way. He does not do that.

Klein: He hates it. He hates it. He probably should, though. He probably should address it because the bitterness out there is really becoming marked.

Some may dispute Cooper's claim that Obama doesn't "play the race card." But Klein's assertion that he "probably should" is really quite stunning. It's almost certainly bad advice. Indeed, we'd say following it in 2008 would have been one of the few ways he could have lost to John McCain. Successful or not, the attempt to foment racial division would be as repugnant coming from a black leftist as from a white conservative.

Above all, though: What in the world is a journalist doing offering such rancid advice? In general terms, the same thing all those "fact checkers" are doing. Also the same thing journalists did when they slandered the Tea Party as racist, and when they wrote puff pieces about ObamaCare and insisted the public would learn to love it, and when they falsely blamed conservatives for the Tucson massacre.

During the Obama era, so-called mainstream journalism has increasingly been characterized by a blurring of the distinction between not only fact and opinion but opinion and propaganda. One can only hope the audience sees matters more clearly.

30,000 DEAD PEOPLE CAN VOTE IN NORTH CAROLINA

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Group says it found 30,000 dead North Carolinians registered to vote

Voter Integrity Project has no evidence of any ballots cast in their names.

By Kelly Poe
kpoe@newsobserver.com

Posted: Sunday, Sep. 02, 2012

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3497857/group-says-it-found-30000-dead.html#storylink=cpy

RALEIGH A Raleigh-based group devoted to reducing the potential for voter fraud presented the N.C. Board of Elections on Friday with a list of nearly 30,000 names of dead people statewide who are still registered to vote.

The Voter Integrity Project compiled the list after obtaining death records from the state Department of Public Health from 2002 to March 31 and comparing them to the voter rolls.

“Mainly, what we’re concerned about is the potential [for fraud],” said project director Jay DeLancy. “Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else.”
DeLancy said his group has found evidence to suggest voter fraud in these numbers, but will not quantify how much until he is able to do more analysis. Most cases of what look like a dead person voting are likely just administrative errors, such as a son named Junior voting in his father’s name instead of his own.

The rolls of registered voters are updated every month when the state Department of Health and Human Services gives a list of all death certificates received that month to the state Board of Elections.

Problems arise when the names on the death certificates do not match the names on the voting records, which often happens after women get married, Board of Elections General Counsel Don Wright said Friday. Addresses are also often listed with slight differences, Wright said. An address on West Millbrook Road and Millbrook Road might be the same house, but computers won’t always catch it. “Unless there is an exact match, we do not remove people from the voter rolls,” Wright said.
DeLancy said his volunteers work to fix the discrepancies, by examining cases of similar names and addresses and confirming other pieces of data, such as whether the voter has the same date of birth.
Wright said the elections board will investigate the names provided by the Voter Integrity Project and take appropriate action. The state board can remove voters from the rolls for inactivity if they haven’t voted in two consecutive elections, which cleans up most problems over time, Wright said.
In 2009, 261 cases of voter fraud were sent to local district attorney’s offices in the state, the majority of which concluded investigations from the 2008 election, according to a report by the state Board of Elections. Of those cases, 229 involved convicted felons voting. The board did not investigate anyone for fraud in the May primaries, Wright said.

DeLancy says his group’s list of dead registered voters would have been larger had it included records from Virginia and South Carolina, which together account for 55 percent of all North Carolinians’ out-of-state deaths, he said. Although most states allow the release of death certificates for voter registration accuracy, Virginia and South Carolina do not, DeLancy said.
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We said, ‘Are you kidding? This is 2012.’ ” DeLancy said. “We want Virginia and South Carolina to fix that loophole in the law.”

The Voter Integrity Project describes itself as a nonpartisan group aimed at clean, fair elections. It supports requiring photo ID to vote, which Republicans typically support and Democrats typically oppose.

Earlier this summer, the organization sued to have 528 Wake County residents it claimed were not U.S. citizens removed from the voter registration. The county elections board investigated the complaint and found that all of the voters were citizens and eligible to vote.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3497857/group-says-it-found-30000-dead.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

BILL AYERS: "KERRY'S MEDAL-TOSSING PROTEST WAS THE SENATOR'S FINEST MOMENT."

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WND EXCLUSIVE

Obama uses 'swift-boated' Kerry to slam Navy SEAL critics

2004 candidate invokes 'notorious' group but still hasn't released military records

by Art Moore

 

Art Moore entered the media world as a public relations assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. After graduating from Seattle Pacific University, he served with a Christian ministry during the "Iron Curtain" era in Eastern Europe for 10 years. His return to media included two years as senior news writer for Christianity Today before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He met his wife of more than 20 years at Wheaton College Graduate School, where he earned a Master's Degree in communications. They have three children and a new son-in-law.

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Invoking his 2004 battle with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., thinks he can impart lessons to Barack Obama learned from his failed White House campaign as the president faces criticism from a group of former special forces and intelligence agents for exploiting sensitive national-security information and bragging about killing Osama bin Laden for political gain.

In a letter to Obama supporters, Kerry warns that “attacks, smears, and lies” can be effective, lamenting he learned the hard way eight years ago that “even completely baseless attacks can stick if people don’t call them out quickly enough.”

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“No matter how self-evidently false the attacks are, or how disreputable the people telling them may be, there’s no attack that can’t take hold,” Kerry explains.

The problem for the Massachusetts Democrat, however, is that none of the substantive charges made by the more than 250 Swift Boat veterans have been debunked.

Kerry himself never responded to the charges, other than to call the veterans liars; and his campaign simply ignored most of the accusations presented in the group’s No. 1 New York Times bestseller “Unfit for Command.”

The group’s members included Kerry’s entire chain of command in Vietnam and most of the 23 men in his own unit; the gunner from one of his boats; the doctor who treated him for his first self-inflicted ‘injury’ which inexplicably led to a Purple Heart; and POWs imprisoned during Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony accusing U.S. service members of being war criminals

Ultimately, Kerry never sued the veterans and refused to sign the Standard Form 180 request to release his full military record to the public during the campaign.

Backtrack

When the campaign did respond to specific claims, it was to backtrack, such as in the case of Kerry’s long-held assertion he was in Cambodia illegally Christmas Eve 1968.

John Kerry testifying before a U.S. Senate committee in 1971

Kerry had claimed his Swift Boat was ordered to Cambodia by President Nixon while the president denied to the world that any U.S. military forces were engaged in the country. The event was “seared, seared” into his memory, Kerry said on many occasions, including from the Senate floor. It was an experience that helped him conclude the war was immoral and worthy of protest. But Nixon did not become president until Jan. 20, 1969, and none of Kerry’s former crew members, including those who campaigned for him, back his story.

WND reported last year that the most vocal crew member who supported Kerry, Wade Sanders, was stripped of his Silver Star because an investigation surrounding the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself concluded the medal was undeserved.

Instead of addressing the Swift Boat vets’ specific claims, the Kerry campaign threatened lawsuits against the television stations that aired the group’s ads, demanded publisher Regnery pull “Unfit for Command,” accused the group of being run by the Republican Party and attacked the character of co-authors John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi.

Establishment media also repeated the assertion that the claims against Kerry were debunked, without providing evidence. Those who offered evidence contended the military’s records supported Kerry’s version of events, without mentioning the Swift Boat vets’ contention that it was Kerry himself who wrote the “official record” in many instances, in after-action reports.

Moreover, while Kerry used his alleged exploits in Vietnam to promote his foreign policy credentials in his campaign, half of the book “Unfit for Command” was about his post-war behavior as a radical anti-war leader. Among his actions were engaging in unauthorized talks with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leaders in Paris, infamously gave false testimony of atrocities by U.S. service members and leading the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War in a protest in which they tossed their medals over the White House fence.

As WND reported, William Middendorf, former secretary of the Navy, urged Kerry to open up his personnel files to resolve the question of whether he received a less-than-honorable discharge from the Navy because of his anti-war activities while a member of the Reserves.
Obama’s Chicago neighbor and colleague on two radical educational charities, 1960s Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers, called Kerry’s medal-tossing protest the senator’s “finest moment” and an incident that “shook the country to its core.”

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth used this photo to illustrate that only three of John Kerry's 23 fellow commanders from Coastal Division 11 supported him

Spin recycle

One month after the 2004 election, when many pundits, left and right, acknowledged the Swift Boat vets likely were a deciding factor in George W. Bush’s victory over Kerry, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill was insisting the campaign’s problem was that it just didn’t realize the impact of the Swift Boat effort and its nine powerful TV ads.

That “spin” – the same premise upon which Kerry is now writing his letter defending Obama – is “absurd,” said a partner with the media firm that produced the ads, Stevens Reed Curcio and Potholm.
Rick Reed said in December 2004 that Kerry’s “problem was that he never addressed one question or issue raised in the ads.”

“This is because there was no good answer,” Reed said. “Everything said about Kerry in the ads was accurate, but the Kerry campaign put all its effort into trying to discredit the ads, which didn’t work.”
Reed added, “Grade school kids knew the ads were hurting Kerry, so obviously Kerry’s campaign knew.”

In his new letter to donors, Kerry writes, “Seeing the new outrageous attacks made against President Obama from a shadowy Republican-allied veterans group called OPSEC, which take issue with the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, remind me all too well of the notorious ‘Swift Boat’ attacks I faced in the 2004 campaign.

“I honor and appreciate the service of my fellow veterans,” Kerry says, “but a false attack is a false attack – no matter who’s making it.”

LT. COL. TERRY LAKIN, AN AMERICAN HERO

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Officer imprisoned for challenging Obama tells story
Lt. Col. Lakin sacrificed career, freedom 'to defend the Constitution'

 by Jerome R. Corsi

Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is "Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?"
inShare30


“Officer’s Oath: Why My Vow to Defend the Constitution Demanded That I Sacrifice My Career” is Lt. Col. Terry Lakin’s moving first-hand account of faith and patriotism that led to court-martial, imprisonment and the stripping of all military rank and privileges, including his Army pension.
Lakin, an Army flight surgeon, was court-martialed because he refused to obey deployment orders, arguing Barack Obama had not documented his eligibility for the presidency under Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution.

“What I do not understand and still don’t,” Lakin writes, “is why Obama did not just come forward with his key documents and be done with it. Instead, he ordered all of his important records to be kept sealed.

Addressing both the short-form and the long-form birth certificates released by the White House, Lakin notes they are digital scans of purportedly official documents, neither of which would be acceptable as evidence in a court proceeding.

“So tell me: Who has something to hide?” he asks. “It would seem to be President Obama, and sooner or later the voters of this country are going to make it clear that his stonewalling cannot continue.”
Lakin has explained that he was compelled by his officer’s oath to uphold and defend the Constitution when he was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan. Along with questions about the authenticity of the Obama birth documents, some constitutional scholars argue Obama is not a natural born citizen because his father was not an American citizen.

Ironically, Lakin’s deployment orders required him to bring five copies of his birth certificate.
“I had read the orders several times and had glossed over a detail that had previously seemed routine, but this time I felt like Wile E. Coyote getting smacked by an anvil,” he writes. “I needed a birth certificate to deploy, but the president did not need one to order my deployment. This was nuts.”
Lakin’s day of decision was April 12, 2010.

That day he packed his car as though he were going to be on Flight 1123 out of Baltimore/Washington International Airport at 8:20 a.m. He expected to check into Fort Campbell, Ky., no later that 3 p.m. that afternoon.

Instead, he headed to the Pentagon, where he took a photo of himself with his bags to prove he was still willing to deploy if Obama’s eligibility could be validated.

That’s when Lakin’s nightmare began.

When he was court-martialed for refusing to obey orders, he found himself looking at the paintings on the wall behind the jury members.

He writes:
As fate would have it, these were portraits of various Founding Fathers, and I wondered what they would be thinking. I strongly suspected they would be seeking the truth, about Obama’s citizenship status, about his Connecticut Social Security number (there is no reason why Obama would have a Connecticut number), about the multitude of unanswered questions surrounding this man. Here, however, to emphasize the real issues would likely have resulted in a reprimand from the judge and a harsher sentence from the jury. How, I wondered, had our country descended to this level of apathy?

Lakin writes an equally emotional passage about his final moments of freedom with his family.
What does one say to a wife and children before leaving for prison? I tried to instill in my seven-year-old the conviction that he was now the man of the house and needed to take care of the family. I told my eleven-year-old daughter to be the best help to her mom she could be. All the while I was holding back the tears lest I set off my little one and turn this into an emotional free-for-all.

Lakin contends Congress should have demanded Obama show his birth credentials when he declared he was a presidential candidate in Springfield, Ill., on Feb. 10, 2007.

The officer’s downfall was his determination to seek the truth about Obama’s eligibility when the establishment media showed no interest in it.

Supporters say that by prosecuting Lakin, the United States military abandoned the principles articulated by the Nuremburg Trial at the end of World War II asserting the Nazi military and government officials had a responsibility of conscience to adhere to a higher order of morality than simply follow orders.

Lakin proclaimed his loyalty to the higher order of the oath he took as an officer, choosing on moral grounds to disobey the orders he was issued by a commander-in-chief who refused to allow the Hawaii Department of Health to open the vault and show the world Obama’s original 1961 birth records, if any truly exist.

AIR COST: $424,142; FOOD COST: $928.44 MICHELE OBAMA FLIES HIGH

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Michelle was caught cheating on her expense report.  What a show of arrogance!

I guess the Boston Globe and The NY Times forgot to print this.
This information was obtained by Judicial Watch March, 2012.  The administration  had to be sued  to get this through the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT.

Michelle Obama listed daughters as 'Senior Staffers' to justify her expensive African vacation and safari.

October 5, 2011, Judicial Watch said the U.S. Air Force provided a C-32 ( a Boeing 757 ), modified by the military for the  purpose of flying big-wigs around the world, to fly the First Lady and her entourage to and from Africa , at a cost of $424,142.   Another $928.44 was listed as ' bulk food' costs per meal for the 192 on board meals for the 21 people who made the trip . lobster ain't cheap when you fly it around the world.

The Obama daughters were listed on the manifest as senior staff.   Also included on the trip were Mrs. Obama's mother, a niece, a nephew, her make-up artist and her hair stylist. 'This trip was as much an opportunity for the Obama family to go on a safari as it was a trip to conduct government business,'  said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.   'This junket wasted tax  dollars and the resources of our overextended military.   No wonder we had  to sue to pry loose this information  .'   The nation is suffering with the economy sputtering, the national debt soaring and Obama's economic rescue policies not only failing, but actively making things worse.
Meanwhile, the First Lady justifies an expensive trip to Africa to take a vacation and safari with her daughters by saying it's 'official business' and even going so far as to list her children as staffers.   The level of arrogance and dishonesty on display here is nothing short of shocking.  But, er, 'hope for change' and yes we can.  

It's a true story.  Check  out this link and read it yourself:

 



http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-documents-detailing-the-cost-to-taxpayers-for-michelle-obama-s-family-trip-to-africa/

A BLACK MAN'S TROJAN HORSE

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A BLACK MAN'S TROJAN HORSE

This is one of the most profound messages that can be put out to the public. My respect for Lloyd Marcus is great. He is truly an American Patriot!! If a white person would have said what he says here, I would expect a backlash from the media and others. I agree with his sentiments and statements. I would ask you to read it and forward it; unless you don't agree with his analysis. And if you don't agree, then may you be blessed with no consequences from it.

A Black man's point of view.

By Lloyd Marcus

As millions of my fellow Americans, I am outraged, devastated and extremely angry by the democrat's unbelievable arrogance and disdain for We The People. Despite our screaming "no" from the rooftops, they forced Obamacare down our throats. Please forgive me for using the following crude saying, but it is very appropriate to describe what has happened. "Don't urinate on me and tell me it's raining." Democrats say their mission is to give all Americans health care. The democrats are lying. Signing Obamacare into law against our will and the Constitution is tyranny and step one of their hideous goal of having as many Americans as possible dependent on government, thus controlling our lives and fulfilling Obama's promise to fundamentally transform America.

I keep asking myself. How did our government move so far from the normal procedures of getting things done? Could a white president have so successfully pulled off shredding the Constitution to further his agenda? I think not.

Ironically, proving America is completely the opposite of the evil racist country they relentlessly accuse her of being, progressives used America 's goodness, guilt and sense of fair play against her. In their quest to destroy America as we know it, progressives borrowed a brilliant scheme from Greek mythology. They offered America a modern day Trojan Horse, a beautifully crafted golden shiny new black man as a presidential candidate. Democrat Joe Biden lauded Obama as the first clean and articulate African American candidate. Democrat Harry Reid said Obama only uses a black dialect when he wants.

White America relished the opportunity to vote for a black man naively believing they would never suffer the pain of being called racist again. Black Americans viewed casting their vote for Obama as the ultimate Affirmative Action for America 's sins of the past.

Then there were the entitlement loser voters who said, "I'm votin' for the black dude who promises to take from those rich SOBs and give to me."

Just as the deceived Trojans dragged the beautifully crafted Trojan Horse into Troy as a symbol of their victory, deceived Americans embraced the progressive's young, handsome, articulate and so called moderate black presidential candidate as a symbol of their liberation from accusation of being a racist nation. Also like the Trojan Horse, Obama was filled with the enemy hiding inside.

Sunday, March 21, 2010, a secret door opened in Obama, the shiny golden black man. A raging army of democrats charged out. Without mercy, they began their vicious bloody slaughter of every value, freedom and institution we Americans hold dear; launching the end of America as we know it.

Wielding swords of votes reeking with the putrid odor of back door deals, the democrats landed a severe death blow to America and individual rights by passing Obamacare.

The mainstream liberal media has been relentlessly badgering the Tea Party movement with accusations of racism. Because I am a black tea party patriot, I am bombarded with interviewers asking me the same veiled question. "Why are you siding with these white racists against America 's first African American president?" I defend my fellow patriots who are white stating, These patriots do not give a hoot about Obama's skin color. They simply love their country and oppose his radical agenda. Obama's race is not an issue."

Recently, I have come to believe that perhaps I am wrong about Obama's race not being an issue. In reality, Obama's presidency has everything to do with racism, but not from the Tea Party movement. Progressives and Obama have exploited his race from the rookie senator's virtually unchallenged presidential campaign to his unprecedented bullying of America into Obamacare. Obama's race trumped all normal media scrutiny of him as a presidential candidate and most recently even the Constitution of the United States . Obamacare forces all Americans to purchase health care which is clearly unconstitutional.

No white president could get away with boldly and arrogantly thwarting the will of the American people and ignoring laws. President Clinton tried universal health care. Bush tried social security reform. The American people said "No" to both presidents' proposals and it was the end of it.

So how can Obama get away with giving the American people "the finger?" The answer: He is black.

The mainstream liberal media continues to portray all who oppose Obama in any way as racist. Despite a list of failed policies, overreaches into the private sector, violations of the Constitution and planned destructive legislation too numerous to mention in this article, many Americans are still fearful of criticizing our first black president. Incredible.

My fellow Americans, you must not continue to allow yourselves to be "played" and intimidated by Obama's race or the historical context of his presidency. If we are to save America , the greatest nation on the planet, Obama must be defeated.

SHARE THIS WITH AMERICA ! ! ! !

If he is not defeated…GOD HELP US ALL.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

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THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT THAT WAS BARACK OBAMA'S PRESIDENCY IS OVER. WAY OVER!

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IBD Editorials

Barack Obama Runs On Empty And Toward Defeat

By DOUGLAS MACKINNON
 
Posted 08/03/2012 05:33 PM ET

The social experiment that was Barack Obama's election and presidency is over. Way over.

As one who was born in the heart of Boston and worked the political world of Washington for 20 years, I know quite a few Democrats. Some are family, and many are close friends. Most voted for Obama in 2008. None at this point is inclined to vote for him in 2012.

Why? Because they view him as an abject failure across the board and have decided to put the welfare of their families and themselves before the empty rhetoric of the Obama campaign before it's too late.

Because of my time in Washington and past positions there, I also know and am friends with quite a few journalists. I speak with many on a regular basis, and it's safe to say that the majority of them lean left politically.

That said, in off-the-record conversations with my left-leaning journalistic friends, not one believes Obama is going to win re-election. Not one. While most believe Mitt Romney to be a weak candidate, they are still convinced that he will comfortably defeat Obama on Nov. 6.

These liberal and jaded journalists privately admit that Obama has been exposed for what he is: an overhyped, self-invented candidate with no real-world experience who has been frozen into inaction by the enormity of the office he holds.

Obama has no domestic policy to speak of. He has no foreign policy to speak of. He has no jobs program to speak of. His signature health care plan is driving doctors out of the field, crippling small businesses and putting thousands of Americans out of work.

The Obama of 2012 has nothing positive to run on. Nothing. And guess what? He, more than anyone else in his White House or campaign, knows it.

He knows his election and presidency were social engineering gone wrong. He knows his biography is unraveling faster than the baseball that Roy Hobbs crushed into the rain in the movie "The Natural." He knows that he has run out of all options but one: Go negative on Mitt Romney 24/7 and hope a heretofore compromised mainstream media will once again unethically act as his surrogate.
Unfortunately for Obama, two massive holes exist in his "demonize Romney with an assist from the media" campaign tactic.

First, most Americans who are paying attention to this contest have come to the conclusion that Romney is a very decent and moral person who does have a fairly impressive business background coupled with some other real-world experience.

Second, as mentioned above, more and more members of the Journalists In The Tank For Obama club seem to be having second thoughts. As one of my friends in that club said, "Hey, we have kids in school, have to pay mortgages and want to keep our jobs just like everyone else."

In 2008, Obama won a fairly impressive victory against an incredibly weak and inept Republican challenger. To pull off that victory, Obama had pull a significant number of Republican and independent voters away from John McCain. To his credit and to his ability to spin himself along with the American voters' sense of fairness and history, Obama did just that.

In 2008, Obama was an unformed piece of pottery clay molded into shape by his own false rhetoric combined with a media narrative that sought to canonize him in anticipation of having his face carved into Mount Rushmore.

Today, in 2012, Barack Obama stands on his own — an unqualified man who did not have the gifts to grow into the presidency.

While noble in many respects, the social experiment that was Barack Obama's election and presidency is coming to its natural and expected conclusion.



• MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the memoir "Rolling Pennies in the Dark."

OBAMA, THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PRESIDENT

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August 18, 2011

 

 

 

Obama: The Affirmative Action President

By Matt Patterson

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.  He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator. 

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? 
Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. 

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back.  Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action.  Yes, racist.  Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.  And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.  What could this breed if not the sort of empty  narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character.  Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed.  The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character?  Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence.  But really, what were we to expect?  The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office. 

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while.  And really, isn't that all that matters these days?

Author's Note.  A lot of readers have written in asking me how I came to the conclusion that Obama was an unremarkable student and that he benefited from affirmative action.  Three reasons:

1)  As reported by The New York Sun: "A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that Mr. Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science. He did not receive honors..."  In spite of not receiving honors as an undergrad, Obama was nevertheless admitted to Harvard Law.  Why?

2)  Obama himself has written he was a poor student as a young man.  As the Baltimore Sun reported, in:  
"'Obama's book 'Dreams from My Father,'....the president recalled a time in his life...when he started to drift away from the path of success. 'I had learned not to care,' Obama wrote. '... Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.' But his mother confronted him about his behavior. 'Don't you think you're being a little casual about your future?" she asked him, according to the book. '... One of your friends was just arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping. You haven't even started on your college applications.'"   

3)  Most damning to me is the president's unwillingness to make his transcripts public.  If Obama had really been a stellar student with impeccable grades as an undergrad, is there any doubt they would have been made public by now and trumpeted on the front page of the New York Times as proof of his brilliance?  To me it all adds up to affirmative action.  

 Mattpattersonline.com

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/obama_the_affirmative_action_president.html#ixzz22utGSgYY

HOW CAN JEWS VOTE FOR OBAMA?

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BEHEMOTH: JEWS HAVE A BIG PROBLEM RECOGNIZING THE POLITICAL REALITY OF THE OBAMANATION

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The Jewish dilemma for Barack Obama

By Wesley Pruden

|

July 31, 2012

The Democrats have a Jewish problem, and his name is Barack Obama. Reluctantly, many Jews, loyal Democrats by birth and tradition, have concluded that he’s not The One they thought he was.

With even greater reluctance, the White House has concluded that their Jewish problem is real, growing, and they better do something about it.

Mitt Romney’s dramatic declaration Sunday in Jerusalem that preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is America’s “highest national security priority” and military force should not be excluded, and that he regards Jerusalem as the true capital of Israel, puts in stark relief the difference between what the two candidates think about America’s only real ally in the Middle East.

Mr. Romney is willing, even eager, to give heartfelt, emphatic, unadulterated, full-throated support for the Jewish state in its hour of greatest peril since the founding. Mr. Obama can’t do that because he doesn’t “feel the love.” He sprang from a culture of radicalism where Israel was regarded as illegitimate, if not evil. He gives the clear impression that he doesn’t like Jews very much.

Mr. Obama repeats only empty, bland assurances that everything is OK, that the friends of Israel shouldn’t worry because the messiah from Chicago is on the watch. U.S.-Israeli ties, he told a rally the other day in Palm Beach, are stronger than ever. That’s bunk, as Sen. John McCain bluntly told a television interviewer: “Everybody knows that relations with Israel have never been worse.”

Bland assurances are no longer enough to satisfy betrayed true believers; the monolithic Jewish support for Democrats, any Democrat, is fraying around the edges. Merely telling skeptical and suspicious Jewish voters not to believe their own eyes and ears is no longer effective. No one expects Mitt Romney to win a majority of Jewish voters on Nov. 6, or anything close to it. He doesn’t have to. If he can peel away three or four percentage points in certain swing states, particularly Florida and Ohio, that would change the game.

John McCain spent a lot of time, attention and money to attempt this four years ago. George W. Bush made such an attempt in 2004. Neither worked. But 2012 is a different ball game.
Jewish voters, like others of various passions and persuasions, have had four years to confront buyer’s remorse. Four years of Barack Obama have taught even slow learners to pay attention.

The proof is that a group of the slow learners, Jewish liberals still in love with Mr. Obama even if he isn’t in love with them, are putting together a campaign to answer the Republican Jewish Coalition’s successful work to get the friends of Israel to wake up and sniff the odor of harsh reality. This is not, a Democratic operative told Politico, the Capitol Hill daily, a case of Obama being “swift boated.”

Nobody is telling stories about the president. His Jewish critics are merely laying out what everybody who has been half-awake during the past four years already knows.

Aaron David Miller, who has worked for several Democratic presidents over a quarter of a century, warns Democrats of “turbulence ahead” in a commentary in Foreign Policy magazine that has shaken up Jewish assumptions. “I’ve watched a few presidents come and go on this issue,” he writes, “and Obama really is different. Unlike [Bill] Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel. He has a harder time making allowances for Israeli behavior he doesn’t like. . . the president doesn’t emote on many policy issues, with the possible exception of health care. But on Israel, he just doesn’t buy the ‘tiny state living on the knife’s edge with the dark past’ argument.”

Alas, the knife’s edge is exactly where Israel lives, like it or not, and Israel must act accordingly. Mitt Romney, like his constituents – some Jewish, most not, and many of them evangelical Christians – understands that. Mr. Romney, like that constituency, is not embarrassed to “emote” about it. Barack Obama can’t “emote” because to him Israel is not a natural friend and ally, bound to America by considerations of blood, faith and circumstance, but a nuisance. Why can’t Israel just go away?

This is hard for Jews, who have been voting Democratic since their grandfathers rallied to FDR and the New Deal, to accept as the new reality. It has been easier to pretend there’s no problem. But now there is a problem, and it’s too big to hide with convenient pretense.


Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

RUNAWAY SLAVE

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About Runaway Slave

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the summer of 1963, he delivered one of the most powerful speeches in our nation's history. Known for its famous line, "I have a dream," Dr. King concluded his speech with these words:

"And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!'"

Now, nearly a half-century later, has his dream become reality? Have we allowed freedom to truly ring? Or has that longed-for freedom somehow become even more elusive?
In RUNAWAY SLAVE, an intriguing new documentary that opens in theaters this summer, Rev. C.L. Bryant journeys across America to find answers. A one-time NAACP local chapter president, Rev. Bryant discovers that by buying into the entitlement mindset of "progressives," the black community has traded one form of tyranny for another.
Using leading black conservatives as "conductors," Rev. Bryant believes it is time for a new Underground Railroad to help liberate all Americans from the Government plantation that has left the black community dealing with a new form of slavery: entitlements.
"Why are we still thinking we are not free at last? What ideas are keeping us down?" Rev. Bryant asks. "For too long, we have been depending on other people for our success. We have to pursue our happiness; our happiness is not provided to us. If we are relying on someone else for our wellbeing, that in itself is a form of slavery."
From our nation's capital and freedom's birthplace, to the dens of slavery and Jim Crow, to wherever a light for liberty is shining, this runaway slave looks to bring hope to the oppressed. Among the leaders he talks with along the way are Dr. King's niece, Dr. Alveda King; former presidential candidate Herman Cain; Congressman Allen West; economist and author Dr. Thomas Sowell; talk-show host and author Glenn Beck; the late Andrew Breitbart. We also meet a new generation of young freedom fighters who are on the front lines of change!
Rev. Bryant's conclusion? It's time to run. "Run away from economic slavery. Run toward the blessings of liberty. Let us remain strong in this fight. Run away from socialism; run away from progressivism. And if you get tired, America … run harder!"
This summer, celebrate your freedom by running as fast and as hard as you can to see RUNAWAY SLAVE in theaters.

Our film's logo comes from the hidden language of the quilts created by slaves along the underground railroad. We chose the Shoofly, a symbol that possibly identifies a person who can guide and help; a person who helped slaves escape along the Underground Railroad and who knew the codes. The star represents the destination of freedom at the center of the journey. Learn more about the language of the quilts here...

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BEING DEPENDENT ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MEANS YOU WILL PROBABLY VOTE FOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

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If Barack Hussein Obama wins the presidential election next November it will be in large part
because he has made so many Americans dependent on the largesse of the Federal Government.

In 1979, 7 percent of Americans received means-tested government benefits; by 2009, it was over 30 percent.  In 2000, 17 million Americans were on food stamps; today it is 46,000,000.  In the last three years, 2.6 million Americans have signed on with new employers, 3.1 have signed on for disability checks.

In little more then a generation, dependency has metastasized in America.  Workplace death and accident rates have fallen by 40 percent since the Sixties, but apparently the safer the American work environment gets the more people are disabled by it.  


To be disabled in the government sense it is not necessary to be disabled in any meaningful sense.  To be on food stamps it is not necessary to be in need of food:  Massachusetts, as Governor Patrick has recently clarified, it is fine to use them to buy porn and get tattoos


- Mark Steyn

 

AH, THE SWEET SOUND OF THE MEUZZIN CALLING ME TO PRAYER

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AN EXCERPT FROM OBAMA'S SPEECH AT CAIRO UNIVERSITY

I'm a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims.  As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk.  As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.
As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam.  It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment.  It was innovation in Muslim communities -- (applause) -- it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.  Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.  And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.  (Applause.)
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story.  The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco.  In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."  And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.  They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch.  And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers -- Thomas Jefferson -- kept in his personal library.  (Applause.)
So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.  That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't.  And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Barack Obama, we love you!
PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  The fifth issue that we must address together is religious freedom.

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.  We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition.  I saw it firsthand as a child in Indonesia, where devout Christians worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly Muslim country.  That is the spirit we need today.  People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul.  This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it's being challenged in many different ways.
Among some Muslims, there's a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of somebody else's faith.  The richness of religious diversity must be upheld -- whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.  (Applause.)  And if we are being honest, fault lines must be closed among Muslims, as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.
Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.  We must always examine the ways in which we protect it.  For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation.  That's why I'm committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat. 
Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.  We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.
In fact, faith should bring us together.  And that's why we're forging service projects in America to bring together Christians, Muslims, and Jews.  That's why we welcome efforts like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue and Turkey's leadership in the Alliance of Civilizations.  Around the world, we can turn dialogue into interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action -- whether it is combating malaria in Africa, or providing relief after a natural disaster. 

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/$m.local.contentUrl#ixzz21eUIUS6m

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/$m.local.contentUrl#ixzz21eRuHVU5