Accuracy In Media calls our attention to Obama’s communist mentor:

In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama’s life as a “secret smoker” and how he “went to great lengths to conceal the habit.” But what about Obama’s secret political life? It turns out that Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

In his books, Obama admits attending “socialist conferences” and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a “hard-core academic Marxist,” which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes. However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.” The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

[…]

Obama’s communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the U.S. presidency. In the latest Real Clear Politics poll average, Obama beats Republican John McCain by almost four percentage points.

AIM recently disclosed that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a “Global Poverty Act” designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands. The bill has passed the House and a Senate committee, and awaits full Senate action.

Will the media report on this connection (which is explained in much greater detail in the story) or will it ignore it? I think we all know the answer.

Sadly, I doubt Obama’s supporters, or a majority of Democrats would see a problem with Obama’s connections to communist and socialist groups.

Not my words:

KIGALI, Rwanda — Bob Geldof has parachuted into the White House travel pool here in Rwanda, and will join us on the flight from Air Force One to Ghana tonight.

He’s going to interview President Bush for Time magazine and several European outlets, such as Liberacion, about aid to Africa for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and business development.

Mr. Geldof is an Irish rock and roll singer and longtime social activist who has helped, along with U2 rocker Bono, raise awareness about need in Africa. His most well known achievement is organizing the Live Aid concert in 1985, which raised money for debt relief for poor African countries.

But Mr. Geldof has remained closely engaged with African affairs since then, and he spoke off the cuff to reporters today who were waiting for a press conference with Mr. Bush and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Mr. Geldof praised Mr. Bush for his work in delivering billions to fight disease and poverty in Africa, and blasted the U.S. press for ignoring the achievement.

Mr. Bush, said Mr. Geldof, “has done more than any other president so far.”

“This is the triumph of American policy really,” he said. “It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion.”

“What’s in it for [Mr. Bush]? Absolutely nothing,” Mr. Geldof said.

This is where reality entirely evaporates the leftwing critique of President Bush – which is either that he’s an idiot, or that he’s diabolical. Idiots and monsters don’t do what President Bush has done in Africa over the course of his Administration – and, lefties, this same President Bush who has worked so hard for the betterment of Africa? He’s the same President Bush who ordered the liberation of Iraq – and he did it, boys and girls, based upon the same requirements of morality. Fundamentally, as even Barack Obama recently opined, we are our brother’s keeper – President Bush understands this and during his whole Administration, he’s been motivated by this impulse.

While the left simply believes a string of lies about President Bush, the reality is that he did what he felt was best for the people of America, and the people of the world. Mistakes were made. Things didn’t go exactly as planned or hoped – but the reason he did what he did is because President Bush understands that the only proper policy for a Christian nation (such as the United States) is to do the right thing, regardless of the cost or the difficulty. As I’ve said many times of late, we’re going to miss this man President Bush when he leaves office – McCain is a fine patriot; Obama and Hillary believe in failed policies, but I’m sure they believe they have it right…but no matter which of them is sworn in on January 20th, 2009, none of them will have quite the combination of fortitude and love of humanity displayed by President Bush…all we can hope is that President Bush’s successor can grow into his shoes.

Larry Kudlow thinks so:

Please allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Obama’s landslide victory in Wisconsin. The race is over. Hillary is finished. The Clinton Restoration is over. President Bill Clinton’s political invincibility is over. Hillary’s electability is over.

Obama got to the far Left faster than she did. He out organized her in the precincts. He out fundraised her. He out speechified her. He out-hustled her. He out-dressed her. He out-presidentialed her. He outdid her and he outbid her for votes, one promised government check at a time.

A 15-point margin in Wisconsin is incredible. Wisconsin is a lot like Ohio except for the wacko ultra-Left Madison college population, which is even worse that Columbus’s Ohio State. But there are so many campuses in Ohio that will go for Obama that it is no matter. Think faculty voters, grimly determined for a left-wing takeover of America ” from the bottom up” to use the former Saul Alinsky community organizer’s phrase. As goes Wisconsin, so goes Ohio.

Not even Hillary’s last-minute bashing of business and free-market capitalism, which is a complete repudiation of her husband’s presidency, could save her. Obama got there first, with a style and elegance that Hillary simply cannot match.

Bashing Obama for plagiarizing Deval Patrick? That negativism backfired. Go after Michelle Obama’s incredible anti-American speech? You must be kidding. The women are coming ’round to Obama. Going super-negative over the next two weeks? It’ll kill her. Obama will beat her by 35 points instead of twenty. Lift the sanctions on Michigan and Florida? It’s an Obama trump card. Bribe or rent the super-delegates? Make my day, Obama is thinking.

Hillary’s best bet to preserve her career as a professional politician? Pull back significantly in Texas and Ohio, as a prelude to withdrawal. Bill will say no, ’cause his career is even deader than hers. But Hillary has more class than he does. She still has some vague sense of reality, of the difference between right and wrong, even if he does not.

Strong words, and hard to argue with – but I’m not so sure that Hillary will back out. It is now or never for her, and while a wise person would start to back out and make plans for a lifetime in the Senate, eventually becoming a major power in that body, Hillary doesn’t entirely strike me as a wise person. Kudlow, I think, gives her too much credit – but, of course, I could be wrong. We’ll see over the next two weeks.

When groups like the ACLU challenge the terrorist surveillance program in the courts, we get yet another example of the left actively trying to make it more difficult to fight terror. I’m glad to report that the Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s appeal of their challenge of the program, but I can’t help noting their bizarre rationale for the lawsuit:

The ACLU sued on behalf of itself, other lawyers, reporters and scholars, arguing that the program was illegal and that they had been forced to alter how they communicate with foreigners who were likely to have been targets of the wiretapping.

So, I guess the ACLU regularly communicates with terrorists overseas? Is there an Al Qaeda chapter of the ACLU?

Why are so many on the left determined to stop the war on terror? Why are they hellbent on lying about the program in order to stop it? I just heard that moron Keith Olbermann claim that the program allows the government to listen in on phone calls of Americans in this country when it doesn’t.

Byron York over at The Corner notes that Obama’s use of my governor’s campaign rhetoric is more than just an isolated incident… there’s actually a pattern of “lifting” phrases verbatim without attribution.

The debate will continue about how important this is, but as a Massachusetts resident and voter, who experienced Deval Patrick‘s empty rhetoric and saw first hand how people were fooled by it, I think this is a very big deal. Despite Deval Patrick‘s rhetoric about hope in 2006, he has since become one of the most ineffective and incompetent governors Massachusetts has ever seen. Even some of his most ardent supporters from the campaign have questioned his so-called leadership as governor.

So, along comes Barack Obama, who isn’t simply regurgitating the same themes Deval Patrick used, but phrases word for word… Let’s be honest about Barack Obama’s support… it’s not because of support for specific policies, or because of any leadership abilities… his support is largely superficial, and is a result of his powerful speech giving talent and rhetoric. Now people are learning that even his rhetoric is unoriginal… or more accurately: stolen.

Obama supporters can pretend this isn’t a big deal, but had this not come out than Obama would continue to use Deval Patrick‘s words without attribution. I knew from the beginning of Obama’s presidential campaign that Deval’s gubernatorial campaign would be used as a model… a microcosm of sorts for Obama’s national campaign… and it definitely has been. Without a doubt.

Even though Deval Patrick, who has endorsed Obama, has defended Obama’s use of his words without attribution, that doesn’t make this situation any less significant, or the actual stealing of the words any less fraudulent.

What Deval Patrick lacked in leadership he compensated for in rhetoric and his speaking ability. Barack Obama is attempting to pull the same scam on the American people, but what he’s doing is worse because he was using someone else’s words and would have continued had the origins not been revealed. Obama knew where the words came from. His speeches are scripted. He knew he was using someone else’s words. He knew he wasn’t crediting the source. Obama is a fraud. He defended the effectiveness of his words by plagiarizing Deval’s.

The sad thing is that so many on the left won’t care.

No matter how much hope Obama generates, miserable, self-absorbed liberals who always look on the dark side of life will, well, always lack real hope – via Victor Davis Hanson over at NRO’s The Corner:

Re: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” — Michelle Obama

I wrote not long ago that Michelle Obama is a loose cannon, and I fear that her latest is not her last. I would have thought that two Ivy-League degrees, a joint income of about a million dollars, exclusive private schools for the kids, and a nice home in the suburbs were not so bad and might suggest that hope had made a comeback well before Barack’s presidential run.

Were Democrats fleeing the self-absorption of the Billary power couple of two Yale-educated lawyers — only to embrace the self-absorption of a power-couple of two Harvard-educated lawyers? Or was it a Yale versus Harvard Law School intramural thing all along?

Liberals live in a very small, very dark alternate universe – peopled with devils called “Christians”, “capitalists”, “Republicans” and “conservatives” who are always out to get them and destroy the world. Bravely they stand against this, but it is mostly a stance of despair – but, sometimes, a bright light breaks through…no, not the light of God Almighty; not even the light of a saint, such as Mother Theresa…but the light of a slick-talking political hack who just says the right things in the right tone of voice.

Pathetic. And Hanson is right, Mrs. Obama is a loose cannon – and if they can’t talk some sense to her, she’s going to be a liability as bad as Theresa was for Kerry in 2004.

You probably don’t know this, but Nick Hornby is my favorite fiction writer. If you haven’t read him before, you should. If you’ve seen the movie High Fidelity, he wrote the book it was adapted from.

Anyway, his most recent novel, Slam, is about a teenaged boy (who is obsessed with Tony Hawk and skateboarding) who gets his girlfriend pregnant — that’s a short way of explaining the story. Anyway, Nick Hornby has a blog, and a while back he wrote a blog entry that I thought may be of interest to you.

[Another] article in the Guardian [link] about how movies depicting pregnancy are somehow anti-abortion: after ‘Knocked Up’, it’s the new (and very charming) ‘Juno’ that is in trouble […] “Hollywood heroines who don’t consider abortion are of a generation taking its rights for granted,” is the misleading subtitle of Hadley Freeman’s piece. Actually, sixteen-year-old Juno does consider abortion. She goes to an abortion clinic and then changes her mind. I suspect that considering abortion isn’t enough, though – Juno needs to go through with an abortion, if she’s going to keep columnists off her case.

My book ‘Slam’, which is about a sixteen-year-old father, also got attacked on these grounds in at least one American review, so I have a special interest in this debate. Alicia, the boy’s ex-girlfriend, is determined not to have an abortion because she read pro-life propaganda on the internet, and can’t be persuaded to rethink her decision. I would like Hadley Freeman, my critic and all the others to explain, patiently and carefully, to Judd Apatow (the writer of ‘Knocked Up’, Diablo Cody (‘Juno’) and myself how we can write about pregnancy and unplanned parenthood without causing offence.

Nick Hornby is liberal, and obviously supports abortion, so I couldn’t help being amused by his blog entry. I remember thinking when I read Slam, or saw Knocked Up or Juno that some pro-abortion groups or individuals would take issue with the fact that in each of these stories which involved unintended pregnancies the mother-to-be made the conscious decision to keep the baby. Hadley Freeman, who wrote the Guardian article says, “It is surely no coincidence that these films are emerging from a country that has had eight years of ultra-conservative Republican rule.” Ahh, yes, how Republicans have such an impact on Hollywood!

Continuing in his blog entry, Hornby further refutes Freeman:

Should ‘Slam’, ‘Knocked Up’ and ‘Juno’ all end a third of the way through, with a visit to a clinic? Are these people really saying that you mustn’t write about pregnancy because you’re somehow letting the side down

Now, I’ve recently been reading a lot of fiction, and seeing movies more often than I have in the past. I expect that sometimes books that don’t even have an agenda will have things in them I don’t agree with. I’ve never gotten hot and bothered over a book or a movie because a character had an abortion. Neither of the two movies or the book had an agenda against abortion. Their stories were still entertaining and I don’t see why anyone who is pro-abortion can’t enjoy them just because abortion was not chosen by the characters involved.

If abortion is really about “choice” (as the left says it is) then the choice of life shouldn’t be seen as a setback to the movement be it in life or in entertainment. Though I guess some people think it is. Can the pro-abortion movement not find happiness in the “choice” of life? Apparently not, if they get so worked up over the choice of life in fiction.

Ben Stein on was on “Kudlow & Company,” yesterday, and gave his views on Barack Obama’s economic plan:

“Mr. Obama could become president and derail everything because his understanding of economics is 100 percent wrong. … I must say I’m so scared about Mr. Obama becoming president. I can hardly tell you.

[…]

[Obama] understands nothing. He wants to shut down the oil companies, take away their profits. Kill every state teacher’s pension fund that’s invested in XOM [Exxon Mobil]. I am terrified of this guy. Either somebody has got to wise him up or he has to wise up himself or he will be real dangerous.”

Bad on the economy. Bad on fighting terror. But hey, at least he can give a good speech, right?

To protect Americans or not to protect Americans… that is the question. And Democrats have answered “not to protect American” in favor of scoring cheap political points.

Writing to President Bush regarding vital reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), House Intelligence Committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) noted that the Preamble to our Constitution states that one of the highest duties of public officials is to “provide for the common defense.” Reyes goes on to claim that he works “everyday to ensure that our defense and intelligence capabilities remain strong” and demands that the House be given more time to debate the telecommunication company protections passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin in the Senate. Reyes fails to mention that the House has had 194 days to debate this issue since temporary FISA reforms were passed last August and he does not explain why House demands for another 21-day extension will be any different than the 15-day extension the White House agreed to on Feb. 1.

Instead of actually debating this issue yesterday, the House instead chose to vote on contempt citations for White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers. This choice of how to use their precious time perfectly underscores the real priorities of the House leadership: scoring cheap political points against the White House is more important than settling real policy debates that affect our national security.

Money.

As Congress debates giving immunity to phone companies that assisted the government in tracking terrorist communications, trial lawyers prosecuting those phone companies have poured money into the coffers of Democratic senators, representatives and causes.

Court records and campaign contribution data reveal that 66 trial lawyers representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against these phone companies donated at least $1.5 million to 44 different current Democratic senators and Democratic causes.
[..]

Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.), who is in the running for the Democratic nomination, was given $28,650 from trial lawyers listed as counsel for plaintiffs who are suing those companies becuase they turned over phone records as a part of President Bush’s covert phone surveillance program. $19,150 of that was donated in the last year.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y), the other main contender for the Democratic presidential bid, also accepted money from trial lawyers on the case. Records show those lawyers have poured $34,800 to her and her husband’s campaigns over the years. $12,150 of those donations were made to her within the last year.

So there you have it. The reason why Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are putting trial lawyers before saving American lives is because trial lawyers fund their campaigns.