Denenberg is a former Democrat. There are so many reasons why we shouldn't elect this empty suit marxist named Obama but this guy summarizes most of them:

Too Many People Taking Obama Too Seriously
The Bulletin ^ | September 22, 2008 | Herb Denenberg

If someone woke up Rip van Winkle style after a 20 year sleep and popped right into the middle of our 2008 presidential election, he'd think it was a "Saturday Night Live" installment. The Democratic Party has nominated Sen. Barack Obama, a man with a razor-thin resume, who has never accomplished anything in his life but self-aggrandizement and running for office, who is full of wacky ideas many bordering on, if not in the realm of, pure idiocy. A man who has an anti-American perspective and associates with bigots, racists and anti-Americans, and who - despite all that - is hailed as a savior by the mainstream media and has gone almost two years into a campaign, escaping tough questions and remains essentially unvetted.

We face a new and dangerous threat to our very existence from Islamofascist terrorists. We face jihadist regimes that are already or are going nuclear. We have to deal with an economy going through a major crisis and we are being challenged by new potential superpowers such as China and India and by a whole series of dangerous autocracies such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and Syria. At such a time are we going to elect an amateur-hour candidate who is both untested and unvetted?

We need a tested leader with unquestioned experience, character and courage but we are actually considering a political toddler who comes over as an unprincipled opportunist, who will do and say anything to get elected, who stoops to playing the race card and to stirring up racial intolerance to win an election. And yet this man, whose actions are the opposite of his rhetoric, who is a product of the most corrupt political machine in America, the Cook County Chicago gang, who has always gone along with the old boy network out of Chicago and has always refused to help in reforming that machine still has a good chance of being elected.

This can't be happening. Surely, it must be a joke. To get some measure of its comic, rather than its tragic, aspects I have to call on the great comedian Jackie Mason. Here's what Mr. Mason had to say about Sen. Obama and his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, during a radio interview program:

"First thing he says this guy is his mentor, his teacher his philosopher, I learned everything from him. Then they ask, did you ever listen to him? Never. I was in the church but I never heard him. He was talking, but I didn't know I should be listening. And besides, whatever he said he didn't say it on the days that I was there. He said it on Tuesday. I came on Thursdays. Then when he saw his polls started to go down a little he said: he was always my mentor but he wasn't a close mentor. I saw him, but not very often. I heard him, but only maybe once in a while. Then he said: I never even liked him. I never got involved with him. Then he said: whatever he said was disgusting to me and if I knew he was saying these things, I would have hated him a long time ago. And he sounded like he just found out about him 20 years later, when he wasn't in the church. He was in the church 20 years and he never heard anything. Now that he's out of the church for a year, he suddenly found out what he said in church when he wasn't actually there."

The Obama phenomenon is so bizarre that it takes a comedian to best understand and unmask him. It is too far out of our usual experience for most to comprehend this irrational and dangerous Obamania.

In the interview, Mr. Mason concludes Sen. Obama is a fraud and a world-class liar. He said Sen. Obama "is a man who's a real, devastating, fraudulent liar. He makes (Bill) Clinton look like an honest man. He's already told a hundred lies about every issue ... There's no bigger fake in the history of politics than this Barack Obama.

"He is a total fraud and a fake in every respect. He lies every single day but the press is all behind him, because the press is 90 percent Democratic. And not only are they behind him but they hate Bush ... the press of America should be on his [Obama's] payroll because they are all working for him day and night. He gets like a $100 million dollars worth of [free] advertising while (John) McCain hasn't got 10 cents of advertising from the American press."

That's about what I concluded after hearing Sen. Obama discuss his relationship to Rev. Wright, and I've studied the man from almost every angle since. Everything I know about him points in the direction of Mr. Mason's conclusion: Sen. Obama is a phony, a faker, a four-flusher and a fraud.

It is frightening to even think there's a chance this man could be elected to the most important and most powerful office in the world in times like these. Any reasonable observer would conclude if Sen. Obama is in the White House, it is the end of America as we know it. He would almost certainly wreck our health care delivery system and economy and would weaken our national defense while undermining our security so severely that we would lose the war on terror. Iran is getting ready to produce nuclear weapons and has the missiles to deliver them and Sen. Obama is ready to talk to Iran ... after Europeans have spent five years negotiating with him, while he was obviously just stalling.

John Bolton, our former ambassador to the United Nations, is right - we've seen talking gets us nowhere and now we are left with limited and unattractive options. But as bad as those options are, including military force, they get much worse if Iran finally goes nuclear. We may face war against Iran or the possibility of Iran using nuclear blackmail against Europe and the Middle East. The only arrows in Sen. Obama's quiver are pretty speeches, diplomacy and the threat of arrest and prosecution for terrorists including those that might nuke us. Sen. Obama has already adopted Mr. Clinton's law enforcement strategy on terrorism, so if a terrorist blows up Philadelphia, Sen. Obama will respond by issuing a warrant for his arrest. This is real, even though it sounds like "Saturday Night Live."

But you don't have to be a great comedian like Mr. Mason to see how ridiculous and almost comical Sen. Obama positions are. Take his position on the current financial crisis. He blames everyone except himself and the Democratic Party and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

He points the finger at Sen. John McCain and conveniently neglects the fact that Sen. McCain predicted the very problem we're now experiencing and introduced legislation to properly regulate Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae and head off its abuses, which, in turn, led to the mortgage and financial crisis we're now in.

Sen. McCain sponsored and fought for the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, and the speech he gave in support of it merits extensive quotation here as he perfectly identified the problem before calling for remedies that would have fixed it.

Here is what Sen. McCain said on May 25, 2006, more than two years ago:

"Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were 'illusions deliberately and systematically created' by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

"The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the six years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ... and the report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation."

Sen. McCain foresaw the future and where we are now with precision accuracy. Then he proposed subjecting Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to tough regulatory controls. The legislation spelled out tests of capital requirements and even regulated golden parachutes.

The bill never got out of committee, because the then ranking member of the Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was getting heavy campaign contributions from the people named by Sen. McCain in his speech and was getting a preferred mortgage rate from the infamous Countrywide Mortgage. At the same time, guess who was the No. 3 recipient of the money was - the finger-pointing Sen. Obama. He always went along with the Democratic Party line, so he, too, can be assumed to have been opposed to Sen. McCain's reform measure and he certainly wasn't fighting for its passage. Here are the four leaders in that money according to a front-page report in Investor's Business Daily (Sept. 19, 2008). The contributions came in from 1989 to 2008:

1. Sen. Chris Dodd, $133,900. 2. Sen. John Kerry, $111,000. 3. Sen. Barack Obama, $105,849. 4. Sen. Hillary Clinton, $75,550

Sen. Obama, awash in Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac money, and his advisers has the gall to talk of "crony capitalism." You might say he has the audacity of the hopeless. He is the very symbol of cronyism and the go-along-get-along mentality he has displayed since his start with the corrupt Chicago political machine.

He wouldn't bring about real reforms even if he understood what is going on. In his statement on AIG, the American International Group, he couldn't even get the name of the company right, and referred to it as the "American Insurance Group."

The Democratic Party, President Clinton, and Sen. Obama made another important contribution to the present crisis. They were all involved in lowering mortgage standards to spread home ownership. That meant many were getting mortgages without down payments and without the financial position to pay them off. This was a major factor in the fiasco that followed.

During recent years, Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae were a virtual campaign unit for the Democratic Party. Others on the list of the 25 top recipients in Congress included House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

To make matters worse, who did Sen. Obama select to head the group appointed to come up with his vice-presidential nominees. None other than Jim Johnson, who was once the top executive at Fannie Mae when these problems, including billion-dollar accounting irregularities, were developing. And to make that brew even worse, Mr. Johnson was also a top executive at the recently bankrupt Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest casualties of this fiasco. Mr. Johnson was removed from the committee to help select the vice president but is still an adviser to the Obama campaign. Another Obama campaign adviser is Franklin Raines, the above-mentioned chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, who helped bring on the crisis we're now in, but who received compensation totaling about $90 million.

And how has Sen. Obama displayed his leadership during this crisis. He had no position on the bailout of AIG, the giant insurance company. I guess we can put him down as voting "present," his vote on 130 controversial measures while in the Illinois legislature. He has no proposal now to fix the present crisis, but wants to wait till things settle down. I guess we can put him down for another "present" vote on what to do, rather than yes, no, or here's my proposal. As Rudy Giuliani so perfectly put it, when you are president there is no such thing as a present vote. Sen. Obama is not a leader. He is a speech giver. And he doesn't even do that very well without the aid of a teleprompter. Who do you want in the White House during this most dangerous and unprecedented time in our history - the unvetted, untested beginner or the battle-tested, public servant who has demonstrated he can make sound decisions and who loves his country without doubts and qualifications?

We must choose between Sen. Obama who makes speeches, votes present and is a wimp. Remember he's never had the courage to stand up to his own party, to his corrupt Chicago political machine, or to even participate in town forums with Sen. McCain. For 20 years, he sat in Rev. Wright's church and didn't have the courage to object or even walk out. He needs the security of a teleprompter to face an audience. Or we can choose Sen. McCain, who has a long record not only of achievement, but also of willingness to cross party lines and confront his own party if necessary when bringing about reforms and change. He has demonstrated he has courage and loves America in every sense and in every way. He has demonstrated what he is made of by actions and sacrifice and has a long and distinguished record of service and patriotism. He has never voted present and even when you disagree with him, you know where he stands and what you can expect from him.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

How does someone even begin to post a counter-argument to that ultra-right slant on Obama? Well I'll start. Do you know who has the same amount of political experience that Barack Obama has in the federal and state level that went on to be a pretty good president? I'll give you a hint, he's on the penny and he is from the same state as Obama. Abraham Lincoln. I am not saying Obama and Lincoln are in the same political class at this point, but lets drop the stupid argument on experience. By the way, I could care less about Gov. Palin's experience either. Other presidents with LESS federal and state experience than Barack Obama at the time of their inauguration:
RONALD REAGAN
GEORGE W. BUSH
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
DWIGHT EISENHOWER
WOODROW WILSON
U.S. GRANT

HB, I know this is your board and you can do what you want, but please if you are going to post something on politics, back it with something besides ultra-right slant attacks. Obama might not be a great presidential candidate, who knows? Experience probably won't have much to do with how well he could do as a president. No one argues that McCain has more experience. For chrissakes he is 25 years older. Of course he has more experience. All these types of posts do is spread slanted tales of what really occurs. Do you or I really know how Obama or McCain feel about the current housing crisis unless we talk to them personally? The answer is no. The truth is that all of us claim to know about either candidate, but we don't. We simply have heresay from the media and the political parties that represent them and make their decisions for them. I think this might be my last post on politics for the year because this stuff is just total nonsense at this point.

"Alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief--I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper--that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America--there's a United States of America. There's not a black America and a white America and a Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

A lot people also took this seriously:
"Mission Accomplished."

And here's a little history lesson, courtesy of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden...

***

WASHINGTON — Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today’s leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,”‘ Barack Obama’s running mate recently told the “CBS Evening News.”

Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn’t introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World’s Fair.

FDR was elected three years later when voters denied Hoover a second term. The Democratic challenger appealed to the “forgotten man” by promising a “new deal” to solve the Depression era

America was still in a time of financial crisis when FDR took office in 1933. I believe Biden was referring to FDR's first fireside chat on the radio, coming clean to the American public about what type of financial problems America was in at the time. FDR issued a bank holiday to close the doors on all banks in the U.S., created the FDIC, amongst other things. Those initial problems from the stock market crash were still there. I would have to believe Sen. Biden would not make that big of a history gaffe, but it has happened before by our political leaders.

I thought you were not taking sides NWI in the election? Seems like you are with your last post. I'm pretty sure its evident that I am, so its not a big deal. You say that you will vote independent, but you must slant to the conservative side then....

Yes I broke my promise to not post about politics in all of one day. At least we are talking about politics with civility, that's a good thing.

I'm not siding one way or the other -- and when the horribly biased media posts a direct quote from McCain or Palin that is as absurd as Biden's, I'll post it as well.

And don't try and explain away Biden's gaffe, Chad...Biden is typical of the career politicians in Washington who has absolutely no grasp of the real world, and he has always been a verbal loose wheel who is prone to making stupid comments like this.

I'm sure that there will be plenty to post on all four candidates in the upcoming month or two. Sometimes I wonder what politicians think when they are asked to recollect events that happen in our past.

Speaking of Joe Biden, he may be what you call a "career politician", but I don't know how anyone can argue with him being a very solid person. To go through what he went through with the tragic losses in his family and still raise some good kids is astonishing. I'm sure that can be said about all of the candidates though for the most part.

Biden does say some dumb things from time to time, but I also think McCain is prone to losing his temper and saying some not-so-smart things as well.

We are on post 7 of a political talk and no one has gotten their feelings hurt yet. This is a record.

Experience is the least of my issues with Obama. He's plenty experienced--in raising taxes, pushing pro-communist ideas, associating with felons, anti-American pastors, terrorists and people who generally just don't like this country. Somehow I think we've seen this before. Maybe the words "Jimmy Carter" will ring a bell.

Speaking of presidents and administrative officials who've slept with those who have anti-American sentiment, we have seen this before...........

How about Donald Rumsfeld (Saddam Hussein)?
How about former president George Bush (the entire Saudi family, whom the US views as a leader in human rights abuses and where almost all of the 9/11 hijackers were from)?

And let us not forget Ronald Reagan and Osama bin Laden, the dream team........

I'd say Jimmy Carter is in good company! Great point, HB!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: SlvrHwk,

Your connections you draw to try and compare Rumsfeld and Bush to Saddam Hussein and the Saudis are weak and smack of desperation. Obama studied under a communist named Frank Marshall Davis, during his formative years in Hawaii. Davis has over 600 pages of documentation against him by the FBI. Obama worked hand in hand with Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, in an effort to take control of the Chicago Public School system-in favor of the Local School Councils-education structures similar to those found in Cuba and Venezuela. Obama holds a meet and greet for his state senate kickoff in 1995 at the home of Bill Ayers and his weather underground wife Bernadine Dohrn. Yet he lies through his teeth and says Ayers was "just a guy in my neighborhood."

Of course as Ayers said on a trip to meet Hugo Chavez in Venezuela several years ago-"Education is the motor coach for revolution." I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean the kind of revolution that involves bombing the pentagon or police stations. (sarc)

Its interesting that you would support a man whose top education advisor-Linda Darling Hammond-favors "education debt"-essentially reparations to people of color for slavery. This is also a view held by Bill Ayers. Maybe someone in the corrupt media should ask Obama if he is in favor of reparations for slavery.

I'm surprised you would back Obama when he one fought against teacher's unions in Chicago. Even Jesse Jackson and Rainbow PUSH didn't support the man.

Obama calls Reverend Jeramiah Wright a mentor and a dear friend-yet then says he never heard him spew the garbage about "g-damn America." Either the guy has just awful judgment or he's again, lying through his teeth about what he really believes.

How about Tony Rezko? Khalid Al Mansour? Obama's wife has a picture taken at a social function with Louis Farrakhan's wife.

Why can't Obama produce a real Certificate of Live Birth? Why can't we look at his college transcripts? What's this man hiding?

President of the United States? I don't think so.

The fact he doesn't have a single piece of legislation passed through either the state senate or the US senate is just a small reason why I wouldn't vote for this Karl Marx reincarnate.

Well good thing we can each vote for who we want in this upcoming election HB. I'll stick with my choice and you with yours. The points that you bring up are reeking of Michael Collins Piper. Weren't you also pushing Fred Thompson on this board for awhile? He would have been one heckuva choice for president also.

Honestly, this type of conversation is what makes people educated and form opinions on important matters like the presidency. Thanks HB, NWI, and Silverhawk for bringing different opinions to the table.

I will be glad when this stuff is over and we can all talk about the important stuff in life, like wrestling!

When did I ever say that I backed Obama? I don't recall ever saying that.....

Video of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam is not a desperate reach, it's a documented fact.

Video of the Bush family making merry with the Saudi family is not a desperate reach, it's a documented fact.

9/11 attackers being born, raised, and funded through Saudi Arabia, and the United States not attacking Saudi Arabia for harboring these people is not a desperate reach, it's a documented fact. But hey, as long as somebody is making a buck..........

Because one has conservative views (like I do, growing up Catholic and all) does not mean that you must unwaveringly defend the above actions. Bring them to light, see them for what they are, and admit it smells bad. It does, doesn't it?

It would be nice if BOTH candidates' actions -- and those of their parties -- could be brought to light.

The media does a fantastic job pointing out the flaws of McCain, Palin and the GOP -- yet absolutely and unequivically craps the bed when the opportunity to do the same to Obama and the Dems presents itself.

The Washington Post posted a pretty damning assessment of the left-wingers in the media (and if you rely on ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and especially NBC for your news, you are getting a healthy dose of this) on its website, and from what I've been seeing the past 18 months, it's a dead-on take on what we used to call the unbiased media...

Washington Post editorial

I did a little research on the Washington Post (founded by Sun Myung Moon who called himself "the second coming of Christ"), and you just posted an article from a newspaper that both liberals and conservatives have both labeled as having a conservative slant.

In fact, historian Thomas Frank called the Times a "propaganda sheet whose distortions are so obvious and so alien that it puts one in mind of those official party organs one encounters when traveling in authoritarian countries."

In other words, how can this article be unbiased? Where does it end? Example: You post an article by "A" that says the media is left-biased. I could find an article that says "A" has a history of being right-biased. You then could find something that refutes what I found, and so on and so on.

Let me suggest a good read for those of you that really want to know what goes on in the media.

Crazies to the Left...

HB, I read the synopsis, looks pretty good. That's the type of thing it seems like more people should be reading.

It sounds to me like this is basically a book to bash Dems and encourage Reps to get their spines back. Its a conservative slant book. What else to I need to know?

All things in life have some type of slant to them. The human being in us that writes the column, book, story, etc. makes it that way.

Bernie's book "Bias" did a tremendous job in exposing the left-wing slant of the mainstream media, and he's pretty much been blacklisted by the three major networks since he wrote that book. He exposed the mainstream media for the one-sided farce that everybody else can now see for themselves.

Bernard Goldberg worked for CBS news for 20 years. When he got tired of the facism that comes from the likes of Dan Rather, he decided to write a book. Anyone who doesn't believe that NBC, the NY Slimes, CNN and 95% of the MSM aren't died in the wool liberals, is someone that doesn't know their ass from their elbow. Maybe it looks mainstream to the leftwing kooks...