Friday, October 22, 2010

OBAMA'S HISPANDERING: Deportations Down 700%

BARACK OBAMA, THE HISPANDERING PRESIDENT
MEXICANOCCUPATIOIN.blogspot.com

700% Increase In Dropped Deportation Cases In One Month
Last Updated: Mon, 10/18/2010 - 12:27pm
A month after the Department of Homeland Security launched a covert program to dismiss pending deportations there’s been an increase of more than 700% in the number of cases that have been dropped by the government in one of the nation’s busiest immigration court systems.
In August Homeland Security officials quietly began to systematically dismiss the pending removal of illegal immigrants, even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed or the aliens had a criminal record. The move, first reported by Texas’s largest newspaper, stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who said it was “absolutely fantastic” for their illegal alien clients.
Just one month later 217 cases were dismissed in Houston’s immigration court system, which is among the nation’s busiest. That marks an increase of more than 700% from the previous month’s 27 dismissals, according to a follow-up piece in the newspaper that originally broke the story. The following month, 174 cases were dropped at the request of the government agency charged with keeping America safe.
In some cases, Homeland Security officials will allow illegal immigrants with criminal convictions to go free as long as the crimes don’t involve drunken driving, family violence or a sexual offense. For the most part, illegal aliens who have been in the U.S. for at least two years without a felony conviction will be allowed to stay, according to an attorney who serves as a liaison between the government and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
This is part of President Obama’s backdoor amnesty plan, which has been widely reported by Judicial Watch and a handful of conservative news publications. It calls for legalizing the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented aliens if Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do it. While the plan is crafted, the administration is implementing other measures—such as halting deportations—to protect illegal immigrants. Among them is prohibiting both federal and local law enforcement officers from arresting illegal immigrants as a result of traffic violations.
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REALITY OF OBAMA’S OPEN BORDERS POLICY:
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JUDICIAL WATCH.org
Mexican Drug Cartel Opens U.S. Branch
Last Updated: Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:15pm
While the nation’s delusional Homeland Security chief assures that the border is as secure as it has ever been Mexican drug-smuggling gangs have deployed assassins to Arizona and a major cartel has opened a branch office in California.
The daunting new revelations come on the heels of previous reports documenting that federal agents are overwhelmed by escalating violence along the Mexican border. U.S. Border Patrol officers are increasingly attacked by heavily armed drug smugglers, even though they’ve been ordered to avoid the most crime-infested stretches because they’re “too dangerous” and patrolling them could result in an “international incident” of cross border shooting.
The violence has inevitably spilled into U.S. communities near the southern border, forcing local law enforcement agencies to create special units dedicated to combating criminal activity related to illegal immigration and drug cartels. Authorities never imagined, however, that the Mexican criminal enterprises could so easily set up shop in the U.S.
One renowned Mexican drug cartel, the Fernando Sanchez Organization, actually opened a branch office in San Diego, according to a story published this week in a mainstream newspaper. U.S. law enforcement officials claim that the most worrisome thing about the “savage trafficking ring” is how aggressively it moved to set up operations north of the border.
Meanwhile, another notoriously deadly drug-smuggling gang has sent heavily armed assassins into Arizona to hunt down bandits who are stealing loads of U.S.-bound heroin, cocaine and marijuana. While this may sound like part of a movie script, the information came from an alert that the Department of Homeland Security sent to Arizona law enforcement officials.
Obtained by the news organization that reported the story, the Homeland Security memo says that a group of "fifteen, very well-equipped and armed" assassins ,complete with bullet proof vests, had been sent into the state to identify, locate and kill the drug thieves, who are thought to be independent operators.
One Arizona sheriff who received the alert points out that this constitutes a national security issue and not just a public safety issue. “This is confirmed intelligence that Mexican drug cartels are now working in concert to protect their drug loads in the United States, literally, to send well-armed, military trained--even with ballistic vests--up to my county,” the sheriff said in the news report.
Yet, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the U.S.-Mexico border is more secure than ever.

TIME TO END MEXICO'S DEVICE OF ANCHORING THEIR OCCUPATION OF THIS NATION WITH ANCHORS?

EVEN AS AMERICAN STRUGGLES WITH SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT, AS WELL AS MEX CRIME TIDAL WAVES ACROSS THE NATION, OBAMA, BOXER, PELOSI, FEINSTEIN and REID are yet working for BIT BY BIT AMNESTY!
OFFICIAL OR BIT BY BIT… amnesty train is still mowing us down! BUT WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE?

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, February 11, 2008
In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Gov. Schwarzenegger said California is facing “financial Armageddon”. He is making drastic cuts in the budget for education, health care and services. But there is one place he isn’t making cuts… services for illegal immigrants. These services are estimated to cost the state four to five billion dollars a year. Schwarzenegger said he is “happy” to offer these services. We will have a full report tonight.
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State lawmakers preparing citizenship legislation
By PAUL DAVENPORT and AMANDA LEE MYERS
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 19, 2010; 9:27 PM
PHOENIX -- The state senator in Arizona who wrote the nation's toughest law against illegal immigrants said Tuesday he's collecting support across the country from legislators to challenge automatic U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce's target is the 14th Amendment, but it is unclear how the state lawmaker can or will influence a federal statue.
"This is a battle of epic proportions," Pearce said Tuesday during a news conference at the Arizona Capitol. "We've allowed the hijacking of the 14th Amendment."
Pearce declined to say how the legislation will differ from similar measures that have been introduced in each two-year congressional session since 2005. None of them made it out of committee.
He and another Arizona lawmaker did argue that wording in the amendment that guarantees citizenship to people born in the U.S. who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of this country does not apply to the children of illegal immigrants because such families don't owe sole allegiance to the U.S.
The efforts by Pearce and the other lawmakers come amid calls to change the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. Supporters cite costs to taxpayers for services provided to illegal immigrants and their children.
Changing the Constitution is difficult.
It requires approval by two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress, an impossibility now because Democrats have the majority in both houses and most oppose such a measure. Even if Republicans gain power in November and legislation is passed, an amendment would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.
Paul Bender, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University, said if the lawmakers focus their argument on the "subject to jurisdiction" wording, they won't get very far because the founders only meant it to apply to the children of foreign diplomats born in the U.S.
"If the British ambassador and his wife have a child in the U.S., that child is not a citizen because he is not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. We cannot put him in jail, we cannot even give him a parking ticket," Bender said.
The 14th Amendment "could have easily have said you're a citizen if you owe your allegiance, but our Constitution doesn't say that," he said. "It says if you're born here, and you're not a diplomat's child, then you become a citizen, and that's the way its been for 100 years."
Carlos Galindo-Elvira, vice president of Valle del Sol, a Phoenix group that provides social services to community members and advocates for immigrants, said Pearce's interpretation of the amendment is an effort to "legitimize bullying babies."
He also questioned why lawmakers would focus on this issue rather than the country's economic woes and high unemployment rate. "All it does is split the country," he said.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, the founder of a national group of legislators critical of illegal immigration, said the 14th Amendment "greatly incentives foreign invaders to violate our border and our laws." He had a news conference Tuesday in Harrisburg, Pa., on the multistate endeavor.
The effort could run afoul of the language in the 14th Amendment and lead to a court battle over the constitutionality of the law. But Metcalfe said providing birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants is an "ongoing distortion and twisting" of the amendment.
Metcalfe's office said lawmakers in at least 12 other states besides Arizona and Pennsylvania said they were making their own announcements about working on the citizenship legislation. Those other states: Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
Pearce was the main sponsor of a tough new Arizona law that would require police enforcing other laws to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the U.S. illegally. It was to go into effect this summer, but a judge put on hold key provisions pending the resolution of a legal challenge.
Pearce also was the chief sponsor of a 2007 state law targeting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the 2010 law and who is championing the state's legal defense of it against a court challenge mounted by the U.S. Justice Department, was noncommittal when asked whether lawmakers should approve legislation on citizenship.
However, Brewer said she was "always concerned" by the possibility of involving the state in a court fight. "No one wants to be in court. No one wants to be fighting the federal government," she said.
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HOW TO BREED AN EXPANDED MEXICAN OCCUPATION: ANCHOR BABIES = 18 YEARS OF WELFARE FOR PREGNANT ILLEGALS CLIMBING OUR BORDERS

Anchor Babies: Born in the USA -- The Abuse of the Fourteenth Amendment - Part I
Article by Stephany Gabbard and Frosty Wooldridge
July 6, 2004
Published on MICHnews.com.
My commute to work exceeds fifty miles but it gives me time to reflect. It is 1987 and I am an obstetrical nurse working in the crowded San Fernando Valley of California. Tonight I drive to my job in "Labor and Delivery," knowing the scenario before I arrive. Eight other nurses will battle through the night in this very busy obstetrical unit. Our patients are 99 percent pregnant illegal alien women who have broken United States immigration law to birth an American citizen child.
This will be their families' entry ticket into the United States. For them, no pesky visa applications and no waiting in line for several years like so many millions that enter this country through the front door. Pregnant Third World women have discovered that the only thing they have to do is cross the U.S.--Mexico border. The Fourteenth Amendment is their ticket.
It is now seventeen years later and things have worsened. The babies I helped deliver are older teenagers. When they turn 21, they will be eligible to bring their family members from Mexico, Central America and South America, i.e., chain migration on an ever-accelerating spinning wheel. Whole industries have now developed around abusing the Fourteenth Amendment. Pregnant Korean tourists come to the U.S. on travel visas to have their "anchor" babies. Coyotes dealing in human traffic are paid $1,500.00 to $25,000.00 per person to shuttle pregnant illegal aliens across our southern border. Our politicians and elites wink at this blatant law breaking and do nothing. The colonization of our country continues with the cooperation of our government. That means your senator and representative aid this illegal baby invasion. None dare call it treason. Most Americans mistakenly trust their politicians to do the right thing. Congressional members from every state betray that trust daily.
The Fourteenth Amendment: It's a simple document, a constitutional amendment drafted after the Civil War to assure that newly emancipated black slaves would never be denied citizenship by the States. The drafters had no idea that years later it would be used to make a mockery of our immigration laws. Alan Wall, an American journalist living in Mexico states, "An illegal alien can cross the border, have a baby five minutes later, and that baby is automatically declared a citizen of the USA automatically."
The illegal aliens don't have to go through any legal doors. They are exempt from that. They are, in fact, rewarded for disobeying U.S. laws by having their children granted automatic citizenship. In addition, the happy family is entitled to welfare benefits. And, illegal alien parents who have children born in the U.S. are seldom deported. That's why their children are called "anchor babies" - they anchor their families securely in the USA.
It doesn't have to be this way. Most European countries have done away with birthright citizenship because they experienced the same abuses we are seeing. The Irish Supreme Court recently ruled that immigrant parents could be deported even if they have an Irish child. "It was becoming common for 'single pregnant woman' to come to Ireland from countries outside the 15-nation EU, most frequently from Nigeria, to claim political asylum," states Shawn Pogatchnik, AP writer. Ireland saw a wave of immigration abuse and promptly put a stop to it. Recently, the Irish voted to end birthright citizenship. Britain and Australia both changed their citizenship laws in the 1980's for the same reasons. If you are born in Switzerland you will not automatically become a Swiss citizen. Why should Americans allow our country to be invaded by people who do not honor allegiance to our laws?
Allegiance is the key word. Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, stated in 1866, "Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."
The Fourteenth Amendment states,"(A) Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." However a proviso limits foreigners who have babies in America. It couldn't be clearer, children of foreigners, aliens or diplomats, who are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country, are ineligible for citizenship. At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified we didn't have immigration laws. One hundred and thirty eight years later we are paying for the misinterpretation of it.
Congress has the power to step in and correct this wrong, but don't hold your breath. There have been several bills dealing with this issue and most have died in committee. Except for a few brave individuals like Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Rep. Goode of Virginia, there isn't enough chutzpah on Capital Hill to fill a thimble. Where are the Thomas Jefferson's and Ben Franklin's when we need them? An important case, Hamdi vs Rumsfeld was recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yaser Hamdi was captured during the Afghanistan war fighting for the Taliban. It was later learned that he had been born in Louisiana to Saudi nationals when his father was employed as a chemical engineer on a work visa. The family subsequently moved back to Saudi Arabia where Hamdi was raised. Hamdi sued the U.S. government for holding him in a Navy stockade for two years. He demanded full rights of U.S. citizenship since by accident he happened to be born here. The U.S. government wanted Hamdi charged as a non-combatant and denied due process. Rumsfeld representing the U.S. government didn't raise this issue because he wanted to end birthright citizenship but other groups saw the possibility to finally challenge this fatal flaw in our immigration law that is wrecking havoc on our country.

One such group, Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, submitted a 'friend of the court' or Amicus brief. They asked the Supreme Court to address the issue of whether Hamdi should be considered an American citizen at all, since at the time of his birth his parents were foreign nationals with no fealty to this nation.

The decision came down this week and just like the rest of the elite establishment in this country the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the issue of birthright citizenship except for a brief statement by Justices Scalia and Stevens stating Hamdi was a "presumed American citizen." So we live to fight another day. In the meantime the invasion/colonization of our country marches on. South Korean women can continue to visit www.birthinusa.com and plan their very pregnant United States vacations!
In Part II: The costs of anchor babies will have you reaching for Pepto Bismol, Excedrin, Advil, Motrin, Paxil and Valium. And, you'll still be sick to your stomach!
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LOS ANGELES UNDER MEX OCCUPATION:
Additionally, the county spends $550 million on public safety and nearly $500 million on healthcare for illegal aliens.
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JUDICIAL WATCH.org
County’s Monthly Welfare Tab For Illegal Aliens $52 Million
09/07/2010

As the mainstream media focuses on a study that reveals a sharp decline in the nation’s illegal immigrant population, monthly welfare payments to children of undocumented aliens increased to $52 million in one U.S. county alone.
The hoopla surrounding last week’s news that the annual flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. dropped by two-thirds in the past decade overlooked an important matter; the cost of educating, incarcerating and medically treating illegal aliens hasn’t decreased along with it, but rather skyrocketed to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually.

THIS FIGURE DOES NOT INCLUDE EXTRA MILLIONS PAID FOR ANCHOR BABIES

Those figures don’t even include the extra millions that local municipalities dish out on welfare payments to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, commonly known as anchor babies. In Los Angeles County alone that figure increased by nearly $4 million in the last year, sticking taxpayers with a whopping $52 million tab to provide illegal immigrants’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare benefits for just one month.
That means the nation’s most populous county, in the midst of a dire financial crisis, will spend more than $600 million this year to provide families headed by illegal immigrants with welfare benefits. In each of the past two years Los Angeles County taxpayers have spent about half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the county spends $550 million on public safety and nearly $500 million on healthcare for illegal aliens.
About a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the figures from L.A. County’s Department of Social Services. Nationwide, Americans pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare perks that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for low-income women and their children.
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OBAMACARE... more obama lies!

starting at the top, you heard him say on the senate floor that illegal were not included in his OBAMACARE! SUCH WAS A LIE!

OBAMA’S LIES GET BIGGER AND BIGGER… it’s like he thinks we’re all stupid not to yet see through his performances!!!

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ARTICLE BELOW
“How many “Big Lies” has Obama told? Frankly, it’s becoming difficult to keep track of them. Most recently, the top actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid – a pair of programs that shouldn’t even exist in the first place – revealed that millions of American seniors will have to pay increased out-of-pocket health care costs next year for “less generous benefit packages” as a direct result of Obamacare.”
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“Obama promised to bring transparency and accountability to government, but then he negotiated his health care bill in secret so that he could steer billions of dollars to his biggest labor union supporters.”

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“Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.” WSWS.ORG

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Obama’s “Big Lies” Get Bigger
A Commentary by Howard Rich
Friday, October 22, 2010

While you can’t fool “all of the people, all of the time,” it is surprisingly easy to fool a sufficient number of them to get elected.
“People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
That’s an excerpt from a World War II-era military intelligence report – a document which explored the psychological profile of one of our nation’s (and the world’s) most dangerous enemies. It also represents perhaps the most succinct encapsulation of the modern-day propaganda method commonly referred to as “The Big Lie.”
Who was the subject of this particular intelligence report? Adolf Hitler.
And while history is unlikely to witness a repeat of anything approaching the horrific genocidal barbarism perpetrated by the murderous Nazi “New Order,” that doesn’t mean American politicians of both parties aren’t still employing the same propaganda techniques utilized by its reviled leader.
In fact, after Bush Republicans used “The Big Lie” to grow government and rack up huge deficits (while telling us they were for “limited government and less spending”), President Barack Obama is now using it to expand government further and rack up even larger deficits under the banner of “hope and change.”
Of course Americans still searching for “hope” amidst our ongoing economic malaise know that the only real “change” has been the cost of these lies – which keeps adding up at the expense of our liberties.
How many “Big Lies” has Obama told? Frankly, it’s becoming difficult to keep track of them.
Most recently, the top actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid – a pair of programs that shouldn’t even exist in the first place – revealed that millions of American seniors will have to pay increased out-of-pocket health care costs next year for “less generous benefit packages” as a direct result of Obamacare.
This is due to government’s failure to acknowledge basic economic realities – which is already costing taxpayers hundreds of billions each year (even as these programs’ unfunded liabilities continue to soar).
Last month, a Kaiser Family Foundation report showed that family health care costs are up by 14 percent in 2010 – with even larger increases forecast for future years, again as a result of Obamacare.
“Health reform mandates new levels of coverage that will increase employers’ costs at least until 2014,” a Kaiser analyst noted.
Beyond higher costs, “Obamacare” is already reneging on government promises regarding prescription drug plans – another benefit that never should have been subsidized by taxpayers. According to a study released earlier this year by Avalare Heath, as many as 3.7 million seniors could be forced out of their prescription drug coverage under the new law next year – ostensibly so the government can provide them with “more meaningful choices.”
All across the country, Obamacare’s costly new mandates are driving Americans out of their existing coverage and forcing them to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses – perpetuating the worst inefficiencies of government-run health care.
“This much is clear: If the law with its expensive mandates remains on the books, millions of Americans are going to lose the health care plans they have now — plans the president repeatedly promised they could keep,” Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote recently. Obviously, these ill effects don’t even begin to address the damage done by Obamacare’s individual mandates and costly tax hikes – which not only trample on the Constitution but also violate Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000.
Of course we’ve been lied to by this administration before. Obama promised to bring transparency and accountability to government, but then he negotiated his health care bill in secret so that he could steer billions of dollars to his biggest labor union supporters. Then Obama removed new disclosure requirements for these union leaders – making it impossible for the public to know how they’re spending all of this taxpayer-funded largesse.
And who can forget “The Big Lie” of Obama’s so-called stimulus plan – which administration officials said would save or create more than 3 million jobs and keep unemployment below 8 percent? Clearly those assumptions – along with Vice President Joe Biden’s promised “Summer of Recovery” – were diversions designed to fool the American people.
As America heads to the polls in November, let’s hope we don’t get fooled again. We’ve had an elegant sufficiency of “Big Lies,” now what we need are real citizen leaders who are willing to tell us the simple truth about all of these unsustainable programs.
The author is
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THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”
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“Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.” WSWS.ORG
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“The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor
MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA RAZA – THE MEXICAN FASCIST POLITICAL PARTY. THESE FIGURES ARE DATED. CNN CALCULATES THAT WAGES ARE DEPRESSED $300 - $400 BILLION PER YEAR!
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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

Obama, he’s a cleaver actor that got us to buy his act of “change” even as he and Bush’s architect for bankster pillage, Tim Geithner, were turning whatever was left of the econ to Wall St.
HE PUNKED US!
Obama will likely be the worst president we’ve ever had. As much as I despised Bush Cheney Halliburton, at least Bush never claimed to be anything but a white collar war criminal!
Obama knows he won’t be punking us again, so he’s desperate to get the illegals’ votes! Keeping the nation flooded with “cheap” labor illegals also keeps his paymasters fat and happy.
He knows that BARBARA BOXER , WAR PROFITEER FEINSTEIN, and REID will do exactly that! EXPAND THE MEX WELFARE SYSTEM FOR ILLEGALS’ VOTES!
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Obama’s 2010 campaign: Fake populism and right-wing policies
By Patrick Martin
22 October 2010
President Barack Obama began his longest campaign swing of the 2010 elections Wednesday, a four-day tour of the West Coast and Nevada to urge a vote for beleaguered Democratic Party candidates. At each stop, he warned that the outcome of the November 2 congressional election would set the direction of the country “for the next 20 years,” making dire predictions of the right-wing policies that a Republican-controlled Congress would carry out.
While his pseudo-populist rhetoric against Wall Street won applause at large rallies in Oregon and Washington, packed with college students, there is little practical difference between the policies the Obama administration is already implementing and the measures the Republicans would carry out if they return to power.
Obama suggested that the Republicans would “cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires,” “cut rules for special interests, including polluters” and “cut middle-class families loose to fend for themselves.” These charges would be a fair summary of the domestic policies of his own administration.
Continuing the bailout of Wall Street that was begun under Bush, the Obama administration has carried the largest handout of public funds to the wealthy in American history. This was followed up by the enactment last summer of a financial system “reform” bill so toothless that it punishes no one for the greatest outbreak of swindling in history.
The White House assiduously protected oil giant BP from the repercussions of the greatest environmental disaster in US history and last week lifted its moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
As for leaving ordinary families “to fend for themselves,” the Obama administration has imposed the burden of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression on working class families, rejecting any serious action as mass unemployment, mass poverty and mass foreclosures have become permanent features of American life.
In the month leading up to the November 2 election, Obama has alternated speeches bashing the Republicans as tools of Wall Street with actions that demonstrate that the Democrats are no less committed to the defense of the financial aristocracy.
On the same day Obama boarded Air Force One to travel to the West Coast, the top administration official in the foreclosure crisis, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, held a White House briefing to declare that “we have not found any evidence at this point of systemic issues” in the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of false legal documents by mortgage bankers.
Donovan rejected any blanket moratorium on foreclosures, claiming, “We are focused on the process early, to keep people in their homes, rather than focusing late, when it is much less likely that people will be able to stay in their homes.” Translated into plain English, the administration policy is to pressure homeowners not to fall behind on their payments, rather than to rescue those who face eviction.
In a column in the New Republic magazine, liberal commentator John B. Judis observed that on the question of home foreclosure, “President Obama’s approach more closely mirrors Herbert Hoover’s than FDR’s.” This was disastrous economically, he argued: “A recovery will depend on increasing consumer demand, not boosting bank capital. And to do that, the administration needs an effective program that will allow working Americans to liquidate their debts without being thrown out on the streets.”
The administration’s indifference was also disastrous politically, he complained, given that the states hardest hit by foreclosures include such electoral battlegrounds as Nevada, Florida, California, Michigan and Ohio. Judis concluded: “It’s the working-class voters who reluctantly backed Obama in 2008, but have been turned off by the impression that the administration cares more about the banks than about them. And there’s little in the administration’s rhetoric to persuade them otherwise.”
In his West Coast speeches, Obama sought to address the mounting economic discontent that is the driving force of the political debacle facing the Democratic Party. He admitted, “There’s no doubt this is a difficult election. It’s because we have been through an incredibly difficult time as a nation.”
This argument fails to explain, however, why the Republican Party has been able to make a political comeback—something it could not do in 1934, two years into the first term of Franklin Roosevelt, although unemployment was far higher than today and living conditions for broad masses of people were far worse.
Obama pointed to the record of the Republican administration of George W. Bush in the eight years that culminated in the Wall Street crash of 2008, but did not explain how, only two years later, this thoroughly corrupted and discredited party is on the verge of recapturing control of Congress.
Unlike Roosevelt, Obama has offered nothing in the way of public works programs to restore employment, or significant checks on the most flagrant forms of Wall Street speculation. This is not merely a personal failing, or, to put more it precisely, Obama’s obvious indifference to the plight of millions of working people is not peculiar to him. It is the attitude of the entire social class, the top one percent in American society, which all the Democratic and Republican politicians represent.
American capitalism is no longer able to provide any significant reform measures. It is an economically declining power, the largest debtor nation on the planet. Consequently, there is no constituency in the American financial aristocracy for economic policies that make any concessions to the masses. Hence the spectacle of record profits and bonuses on Wall Street, while the White House rejects any aid to jobless workers facing foreclosure and eviction.
White House officials concede, albeit not publicly and on the record, that they expect the Republican Party to win control of the House of Representatives, and the president’s main electoral focus has been to safeguard Democratic control of the Senate and of governorships of key states.
There are mounting indications that the administration not only expects to share power with the Republicans after November 2, but that the White House positively welcomes this prospect and is preparing a further shift to the right in both domestic and foreign policy.
In his interview with the New York Times magazine published on Sunday, Obama told reporter Peter Baker that Republican gains would not necessarily be a defeat for him. Baker wrote: “Obama expressed optimism to me that he could make common cause with Republicans after the midterm elections. ‘It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,’ he said, ‘either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.’”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell responded by telling the Associated Press that he hoped to work more closely with Obama on tax cuts, trade agreements and other economic policies.
White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest cronies, told the CBS program “The Early Show” Wednesday that Obama still held out hopes of bipartisan cooperation with the Republicans. “He’s not going to give up on that,” she said. “He’s going to keep trying, no matter who’s in Congress.”
Another area where bipartisan cooperation is already well established is in foreign policy, particularly in Obama’s continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he has had greater support among congressional Republicans than among some sections of the Democratic Party. Obama retained Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, and escalated the Afghanistan war as troops became available from Iraq.
Obama was notably silent on foreign policy in his remarks to the first two rallies on the West Coast, where opposition to the Iraq war has been strong. The word “Afghanistan” did not appear in speeches in Portland or Seattle, and there was only one passing reference to Iraq, when he boasted of having withdrawn 100,000 troops from that country—without mentioning that more US troops are now deployed in the two countries than when George W. Bush was president