Have you noticed that when Obama’s campaign says his association with Ayers doesn’t matter they always bring up that Walter Annenberg (namesake of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the board on which Ayers and Obama worked) was a Reagan ambassador?

I guess associations DO matter.

With this New Party – Obama association coming to light, the word “socialism” is coming up.  In my earlier post, I called the party socialist, not Obama.  But many sites have.  And some are upset about it.  I, however, am worried about it.

M-W.com defines socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”  Now, we’ve already taken ourselves closer to ”collectivism” recently.  We bought an 80% stake in AIG and put our own people in to run it.  We’re buying “bad paper” from other companies with some sort of unknown stake in them as well.  We’ll own real estate loans and securities from all over.  If that’s not quasi-socialism, I don’t know what is.

During the debate, Obama said fair / unfair a couple of times.  That SCARES me.  That is moving toward socialism, but the words resonate with the masses.  That’s the point Mr. Moran makes in the story I linked earlier.  Obama will say whatever it takes to get elected. 

But, I’m not sure that Obama’s void of any ideology.  If his sights were set so high, he HAD to know that these associations would be questioned and observed.  He couldn’t count on the media being so enamored by him.  I just can’t believe he didn’t share some of these radical ideas that Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, ACORN, and New Party had.  His shift in words from the primaries to now shows he’s willing to do what it takes to get elected, but it doesn’t prove he’s not radical.

Right now, the country is in dire straits, and Obama would make it worse.  He’s lying to people and making them believe he will give them money and health care and make life fair.  There’s NO WAY he can keep those promises, but they would follow him to the ends of the earth.  Sounds a little collectivist to me.

OK, I’m getting VERY frustrated with this whole “the bailout was filled with pork” mantra.  I’m watching a DVR of “Red Eye” and the dumb-a “financial analyst” said just that!  This is how it really went down.

Article I Section 7 of the Constitution reads:
All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

The House brought up the bailout bill, as required by the first part of the above sentence.  It did not pass on a Monday, and the House went on recess until the following Thursday.  In order for the Senate to do anything in the mean time, it took advantage of the second part of the sentence.

The Senate found a revenue bill that originated in the House, of course, and HAD ALREADY PASSED BOTH THE HOUSE AND SENATE.  It was HR6049, and the main purpose of that bill was the AMT tax extension, along with other tax issues that have been so widely reported (think wooden arrows).  The Senate picked this bill because it had already passed the Senate by a wide margin, 93-2.  They did not want the main bill to keep Senators from voting to pass the bailout they were about to attach.  Why wasn’t this bill already law since it passed both houses?  Not sure, but it was probably not a priority at the time and hadn’t finished making its way through the bureaucracy.

Anyway, the Senate took advantage of the second part of the sentence from the Constitution quote and added an amendment to the bill that had already passed the House and Senate.  It was the Dodd amendment, or the bailout bill.  They were able to begin this process on Tuesday, and they took up the vote on Wednesday.  Since the bills passed by both the House and the Senate have to be exactly the same, the bill had to go back to the House to be passed with the change (this is normally done through conference committee).  The House took up the issue on Thursday when it returned, and the bill was passed on Friday.  If the Senate had not done what it did while the House was in recess, the Senate wouldn’t have been able to vote until probably the next Monday. 

Whether you like the bailout bill or not, please understand it was not loaded with pork or useless tax breaks or sweeteners or whatever you want to call it.  It was done like this because of the Constitution.  These tax breaks were going into law ANYWAY.  The tax break bill was used to piggyback the bailout bill for the sake of expediency.  FNC spent days harping on the damn wooden arrows tax break, and it was very frustrating that they perpetuated this untruth.

Just saw a “CNN=Politics” plea for more viewers just before “America’s Election HQ” came back from commercial on FNC. 

“Every American is an Independent Thinker”
“All Sides”
“No Spin, No Affiliation, No Agenda”
“Get the Facts, Demand the Truth, We Do”
“Declare Your Independence”

I think it’s funny that the “No Affiliation” appears over Anderson Coopers picture, and “No Agenda” appears over Wolf Blitzer.  CNN is getting desperate.