Obama’s White House Press Corps warned about asking certain questions

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

(WMR) — WMR has learned from a veteran member of the White House Press Corps that the Obama administration has made it known through White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and other White House Communications officials that certain questions posed by the reporters who cover the White House are definitely off-limits.

On the banned list are any questions about Obama’s post-Columbia University employment with Business International Corporation (BIC), a global financial and political information company that WMR previously reported was a front for the CIA.

White House Press Corps members have been quietly told that any questions related to BIC, Obama’s withheld records while he was a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981, or his records at Columbia, are forbidden. At the same time he was attending Occidental, Obama, using the name Barry Soetoro and an Indonesian passport issued under the same name, traveled to Pakistan during the U.S. buildup to assist the Afghan mujaheddin.

WMR has learned from informed sources in Kabul that Obama has been extremely friendly, through personal correspondence on White House letterhead, with a private military company that counts among its senior personnel a number of Afghan mujaheddin-Soviet war veterans who fought alongside the late Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Masood. The firm is also involved in counter-insurgency operations in Colombia, where Obama is building seven new military bases, and Iraq.

In 1981, Obama spent time in Jacobabad and Karachi, Pakistan, and appeared to have an older American “handler,” possibly a CIA officer. WMR previously reported that Obama also crossed the border from Pakistan and spent some time in India. At the time of Obama’s stay in Pakistan, the country was being built up as a base for the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency by President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and later by President Reagan’s CIA director William Casey.

Obama has suspiciously refused to release his transcripts from Occidental or Columbia University and he has remained cagey about his post-Columbia employment with BIC.

The word from the White House Press Corps is that if anyone were to ask Obama about BIC or possible past CIA work, domestically or abroad, the offending reporter would see a quick pulling of the White House press credential.

The White House website states the following about openness and transparency by the Obama administration:

“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

“BARACK OBAMA”

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com

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Google Bans Sale of DVD Critical Of Obama Administration

This movie has been on the Sidebar of this site for a couple of weeks. If this movie doesn’t open your eyes, and start raising a lot of questions then have another glass of obama Kool-aid and go back to sleep. 1Dragon

Statism Watch

It was revealed last September that, in a throwback to the tactics of the Nixon administration, the Obama whitehouse has an ‘enemies list’ – and Alex Jones, radio talk show host, is on it. And now this. Naturally, any attack on the First Amendment, on the right to free speech, must be resisted with ‘extreme prejudice’, as the saying goes. The target of censorship, in a rational society, is irrelevant. The right to free speech is the first and last bastion of civil society and must be defended on principle. Incidentally, here’s the video Google doesn’t want you to watch, over on Youtube.

Obama Directs NASA To Focus On Muslim Outreach

The Obama File

Corruption Chronicles blog is reporting that a few weeks after killing the U.S.A.’s world-famous moon-mission program, Barack Obama has ordered the space agency that operates it to focus on reaching out to Muslim countries.

Indeed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) mission will shift from space exploration to Muslim diplomacy, as per the commander-in-chief’s orders.  When Obama announced earlier this month that he would slash NASA’s $100 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon, he didn’t mention where some of the resources would be directed.

Obama only said the moon program (Constellation) is behind schedule, over budget and overall less important than other space investments.  NASA’s attempts to pursue its moon goals were inadequate and took funding away from other important programs, including robotic space exploration, science and earth observations, Obama claimed.

NASA’s new secret Muslim outreach mission was conveniently omitted though the head of the agency finally revealed it this week.  NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden disclosed that Obama wants him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as part of the administration’s efforts to make the space agency a tool of international diplomacy.

Bolden referred to the new mission as an effort to reach out to “non-traditional partners,” especially countries that don’t have an established space program. Of special focus is Indonesia because it’s the world’s largest Muslim nation, Bolden explained. No word yet on how much money the U.S. government will invest in the Muslim outreach.

In the meantime, a congressional firestorm has brewed over Obama’s plans to nix the moon-mission program, according to news reports.  Dozens of federal lawmakers have sent letters to NASA’s chief insisting that the Constellation moon program remain intact.  Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, blasted Obama for cutting the moon program since it will likely cause the U.S. to fall behind countries like China and Russia in space exploration.

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Pro-jihadist Rashad Hussain: Obama appointee’s connection to Soros

American Thinker

J.C. Arenas
The controversy involving Rashad Hussain, the president’s appointee to serve as Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, is just getting started. The turmoil caused by Hussain’s appointment centers around comments he purportedly made in defense of Sami Al-Arian, a convicted terrorist and former leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Now, questions are rightfully being raised as to how a terrorist sympathizer has risen to such a position within the president’s administration.

A quick look into Hussain reveals that he has the background of a typical Obama administration official: Ivy League education, career in public service, and an added bonus, a connection to the Soros family.

In 2003, Hussain was named a Fellow to the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation:

RASHAD HUSSAIN was born in 1978. He earned his JD from Yale University and his MPA from Harvard University. His parents are naturalized citizens from India and live in Plano, Texas. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he holds bachelor’s degrees with highest distinction in both philosophy and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which he completed in two years. He received highest honors for his philosophy thesis, “Assessing the Theistic Implications of Big Bang Cosmological Theory.” Rashad also holds an MA from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. He finds his heritage central to his identity as a Muslim American and his career goals, especially in light of events in recent history. Rashad has worked extensively on Capitol Hill, both as an intern in the office of former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt during the summer of 2000 and as a legislative aide on the House Judiciary Committee, where he worked for a year and a half between his time at Harvard University and Yale University. Rashad sees his varied academic interests converging and feels that his study of international affairs, law, and security can form a salient combination for addressing many contemporary legal and public policy issues. He finished a clerkship for Judge Damon Keith on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Detroit, MI and was a Trial Attorney at the US Department of Justice. Now he is deputy associate counsel to President Barack Obama.

Paul Soros is the elder brother of George Soros, the anti-capitalist billionaire who drives the Democrat Party–and an early supporter of Barack Obama.

Surprised at this revelation?

I’m not.

We must understand that the president and his radical minions didn’t randomly meet each other while using public transportation. They are all members of an increasing network of radical individuals whom share a common belief system and they’re working together for a common purpose; to fundamentally change America.

If you find one radical, you will find a connection to another.

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President Incompetent

American Thinker

Whether or not you support President Obama’s policies, one thing is becoming increasingly obvious: he simply lacks competence. The best indicator of this is his in effectiveness in accomplishing any of his own objectives. His first year in office resembles a quarterback who never completes a pass. His list of failures is all too familiar-health care reform, closing Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, and so on. He has failed to accomplish any of his self-identified top priorities. Other than getting himself elected, he appears to have a very limited range of abilities.

For conservatives the president’s incompetence is a mixed blessing. Conservatives are breathing sighs of relief that health care reform and cap-and-trade have crashed and burned. For his supporters his ineffectiveness must be painful to watch.

Nevertheless, the fact that the most powerful man in the world is incompetent is not a good situation. Unfortunately, he is in a position to do major damage and has, in fact, already done so. His poorly conceived economic policies have unnecessarily prolonged and deepened the recession. His foreign policy missteps have jeopardized our national security.

The frequency of the apologies and backtracks the president and his cabinet have had to make demonstrates that they don’t seem to think before they speak or act. The president likes to make promises but seems to have no serious intention to actually deliver on them. Almost immediately after taking office he promised to close Guantanamo. Doing so is obviously a much more complicated and difficult undertaking than he envisioned. As George H. W. Bush discovered, there’s no such thing as a free promise. His broken promise not to raise taxes cost him a second term.

Mr. Obama is also ineffective in helping fellow Democrats win elections. Unless his success rate improves, he will earn the title of “the biggest loser.” Democrat candidates this year may well be telling him, “thanks but no thanks.”

The president is not a good strategist. He is not a good judge of probabilities. He has a tendency for picking fights he has little or no chance of winning. It almost appears that he likes losing.

Competence is mainly an issue for leaders of democratic countries. A dictator does not necessarily need to worry about it. A dictator gets things done through brute force, which is also the way he maintains his power. The citizenry pays a price for his incompetence, but the dictator does not.

Mr. Obama has surrounded himself with similarly incompetent personnel. Ann Coulter has described Joe Biden as “Obama’s assassination insurance.” A president’s press secretary is his public spokesman and primary interface with the press. You have to wonder what possessed him to hire someone like Robert Gibbs for that position. Mr. Gibbs is not an impressive persona, to put it mildly. Numerous other cabinet members have also been an embarrassment.

Most of Mr. Obama’s supporters have yet to admit that he is incompetent. It’s becoming increasingly obvious, however, and they can’t be happy with his lack of results. The evidence of his incompetence is bound to accumulate further, and denial will be increasingly hard to maintain.

If anyone is surprised by Mr. Obama’s incompetence, you would have to wonder why. When he was running for the presidency, on what basis would anyone have assumed that he was competent? He had about the thinnest resume of anyone who had ever run for the office, with virtually zero executive experience. He really was the “hope” candidate, elected by voters relying on hope rather than evidence or common sense.

Election results in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts demonstrate that many voters are suffering buyers’ remorse. Unfortunately they have three years left on an unbreakable purchase contract.

What is the probability that Mr. Obama will “grow in office” and develop competence? It’s not high. After the president had gratuitously trashed his city for the second time, the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, observed that “the president is a real slow learner.”

Mr. Obama seems to be immune to feedback. He, in fact, brags about his stubbornness and refusal to give up on Obamacare in the face of overwhelming public disapproval and the high cost of prolonging a hopeless endeavor. The change candidate is himself unwilling to change.

Although Mr. Obama’s incompetence will persist, other important corrective steps are already underway. Conservatives are more energized and motivated than perhaps any time in memory. We may very well see a Democrat electoral bloodbath in November. Judging from how much fun Scott Brown’s victory was for conservatives, it could be a time to cherish.

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Why You Should Worry About the Census

Fox News

Did you know that the census does not distinguish between illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens? It does not, which raises questions such as: Should Arizona win more seats in the House of Representatives because it harbors a large number of illegal aliens? Or, should people who can’t vote decide how many electoral college votes California is awarded?

If you thought that the decennial nose-count was a $14 billion frivolity I have news for you: the 2010 census is generating the same kind of grass-roots organizing – and with many of the same participants — who carried Barack Obama into the White House. Why the excitement? The census will determine not only the number of seats each state holds in the House of Representatives but also the distribution of some $400 billion in federal program monies. It will also guide the infamous redistricting by which state legislators redraw voting districts so as to bolster their power base. In other words, the stakes are high.

What’s new this year is that the Obama administration is pushing the Census Bureau to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to reach minority communities that have been “undercounted” in the past. Reporting higher numbers of residents in poor black or Hispanic neighborhoods will attract more federal (needed) funding, and more importantly, will boost the regions’ House seats, which will likely be filled by Democrats. It’s a cozy arrangement.

Astonishingly, the Census Bureau won an extra $1 billion in stimulus program funds to further this mission, though the cost of the census surely had been included in the fiscal 2009-2010 budget. The press release tagged $250 million of this amount for minority outreach, but it appears that more than $400 million may have been so directed. In particular, the Bureau has targeted Hispanic neighborhoods, where the high concentration of illegal immigrants makes people wary of responding to a government survey. Consequently, this 2010 census will include a far greater number of illegal immigrants than ever before.

Since its beginning, the census has never required respondents to identify their citizenship status. This approach was historically not considered significant, but as the number of illegal immigrants in the country has grown to an estimated 12 to 20 million, the impact on the country’s political makeup has become a matter of contention.

Just recently the Senate rejected a bill introduced by Senators Vitter of Louisiana and Bennett of Utah which would have required respondents to (confidentially) indicate their citizenship status. Senator Bennett knows from experience how the Census can impact states; in 2000 Utah missed earning a fourth House seat because some 11,000 Mormon missionaries were traveling outside the state and were not counted. In proposing his bill, Mr. Bennett chides the current process, saying it “unfairly provides the advantage to those communities with high illegal populations.”

He has a point. In a Wall Street Journal piece last August, authors John Baker and Elliot Stonecipher noted that eliminating non-citizens could cost California some 9 House seats by the end of the decade, while Texas could lose 4 seats. More seats, more power and of course more money.

The Census Bureau, in order to further its ambition for a full count, has enlisted some 30,000 “partners” –community organizations around the country — for the purpose of promoting the survey. ACORN, the much-vilified organization convicted of voter fraud in the last election originally signed up to help but has since been dropped in response to wide-spread criticism.

However, their close ally the SEIU is still on the list, and has been pushing hard to promote the census among Hispanics. Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, has said that the last census “undercounted” the Latino community by some 3%, or one million people. His organization is determined to prevent that happening again. Why does he care? The SEIU is one of the fastest-growing unions in the country, with many of its new members coming from minority communities and a large portion employed by the government. Minority voters tend to elect Democrats, who generally favor expanded government, to represent them. The greater the number of Democrats in the House, the greater the expansion of the government work force, the larger the SEIU. It’s a marriage made in heaven.

As hundreds of thousands of volunteers fan out across the country in coming weeks, it will be impossible to know what message they spread. They will purportedly prompt participation in the census. It is also possible that they will encourage fraud, in an effort to boost particular communities’ benefits. Reggie Bacchus, a minister at a Chicago-area church, recently said he would “get the surveys and set up in barbershops, Laundromats, phone stores” – anywhere people might congregate. A spokesperson for the Census Bureau, Lisa Cochrane, said that forms would only be mailed to homes. Someone needs to tell Mr. Bacchus. While doubtless a large number of people are setting out to bring in funding that underserved communities need, this push to report higher numbers of residents in low income neighborhoods is certainly going to be hard to oversee. Unlike Election Day, there will be no poll watchers.

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No dip in earmarks despite White House push for transparency

The Hill

Transparency requirements pushed for by the Obama administration have not changed the total spending on earmarks for 2010, according to a study by a group critical of the practice.

The amount of money directed by lawmakers in 2010 to specific projects back in their districts adds up to $15.9 billion, according to the analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense,

Earmarks in 2009 added up to a total of $19.9 billion. But that figure drops slightly below the 2010 total to $15.6 billion when taking out $1.8 billion included in an emergency war-spending bill, another $2.3 billion in earmarks for the Army Corps of Engineers operations and maintenance projects and roughly $200 million for earmarked disaster aid.

In 2010, lawmakers received fewer earmarks to pay for Army Corps of Engineers projects but overall funding didn’t decrease. Taxpayers for Common Sense says the Obama administration included money for those projects in its budget request, a departure from the way the local projects were handled during the Bush administration.

“High levels of special interest spending remain and powerful lawmakers are hoarding cash for their districts while the rest of the Congress fights for table scraps,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“Spending should be a meritocracy,” she added. “Instead of simply rewarding the constituents or campaign contributors of the politically powerful, our taxpayer dollars must be spent on only the most critical and important projects
nationwide.”

With Congress set to consider another emergency war-spending bill this year, the 2010 number could increase.

A White House spokesman said preliminary data shows progress in reducing earmark levels.

“This is a good step forward and Congress should be applauded, but there is more work to accomplish to restore the public trust,” said Thomas Gavin, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Congress defines spending as an earmark if it goes toward a project at the formal request of a lawmaker. Most of the $1.4 trillion in 2010 discretionary spending is directed by executive branch agencies.

Appropriators, who review the president’s budget requests and win more earmarked funds for their constituents than other lawmakers, have defended the earmarking process, noting earmarks account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) have sought to make it easier for the public to review earmarks, requiring last year that all lawmakers post earmark requests on their official websites.

Obama, in his State of the Union address last month, called on lawmakers to go a step further by putting “all earmark requests on a single website before there’s a vote so that the American people can see how their money is being spent.”

As a presidential candidate, Obama called for cutting earmarks down to their 1994 levels, or about $8 billion. He has since called for a competitive bidding process for earmarks going to for-profit companies, a move that has been adopted by the House but not the Senate.

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Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to lead panel on reducing U.S. budget deficits

By Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 17, 2010

President Obama will name Alan K. Simpson, a former Senate Republican leader, and Erskine B. Bowles, a top official in the Clinton White House, to chair a special commission to solve the nation’s budget problems, administration officials said Tuesday.

Obama plans to make the announcement Thursday, when he intends to sign an executive order creating the 18-member panel, which will be tasked with drafting a plan to significantly reduce soaring budget deficits by 2015.

The annual gap between spending and tax collections is expected to approach $1.6 trillion this year. At more than 10 percent of the overall economy, it would be the largest budget gap since the end of World War II. While deficits are projected to decline as the economy recovers from recession, they are projected to soar again by the end of this decade as retiring baby boomers tap into the entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare.

“How did we get to a point in America where you get to a certain age in life, regardless of net worth or income, and you’re ‘entitled’? The word itself is killing us,” Simpson said by telephone from his home in Cody, Wyo. “Our job is to move this issue forward.”

Democrats said Simpson and Bowles are uniquely equipped to blaze a path out of the fiscal wilderness — and to forge bipartisan consensus on a plan likely to require painful tax increases as well as program cuts.

Bowles, 64, served as chief of staff in the Clinton White House and helped broker the last significant bipartisan budget agreement in 1997, crafting a package of tax hikes, entitlement cuts and budget controls that helped generate the first balanced budgets in nearly 30 years. Last week, Bowles announced plans to retire as president of the University of North Carolina system.

Simpson, 78, represented Wyoming in the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1997, rising to the post of Republican whip and gaining a reputation as an independent thinker willing to break from partisan orthodoxy. Since his retirement, he has taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and served on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, a congressional panel created to recommend changes to U.S. policy in Iraq.

Though long out of office, Simpson is still widely respected among the GOP rank and file, and Democrats hope his involvement will spur Republican leaders to cooperate in the politically delicate task of reordering the nation’s fiscal priorities.

“Alan Simpson is hardly a pushover in anybody’s world,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), one of the commission’s leading advocates.

On Tuesday, however, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) again declined to say whether they would name members of the panel. “Blue-ribbon commissions are fine and dandy, but we’re still waiting for a response from the president on our proposal to start cutting spending right now,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

Simpson, who informed Boehner and McConnell of his decision to lead the panel, said he has little patience for such talk, especially since Republicans did nothing to cut spending during the George W. Bush administration.

“If they don’t participate, they run a real hazard in these times,” he said. “The [Senate] election in Massachusetts was not so much a glorious Republican victory as a bunch of people who were damned mad saying, ‘Why don’t you get a handle on this stuff?’ You can’t get a handle on it if you don’t participate.”

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The Dangerous Question That’s Not Just for Presidents

The Right Side of Life

I started this blog back on Friday, October 24, 2008 with the simple question: Is Barack Hussein Obama eligible for the presidency? Of course, as long-time readers have noted, I have since expanded to other topics, but who would have thought that such a simple question would stir such a major controversy?

Then again, in politics, isn’t it true that if there’s no “there” there, why make such a big deal about the question? Some of we bloggers, including myself, post as a hobby and happen to have garnered a fair amount of support from the blogosphere to make such a pursuit worthwhile. If it is merely we who are asking the question, what’s the big deal — why so much consternation over eligibility?

Let’s begin with prominent RedState blogger Erick Erickson, a Macon, GA councilman, lawyer, and someone who has over the past few months been featured on Hannity’s America as well as the mainstream news network CNN (incidentally, I applaud his good fortune in this respect, despite the fact that he’s wrong on eligibility). He posted this initial promise of banning those of us who question the administration, of which I will now dissect:

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