By DHS Definition - A Right-Wing Extremist!

Heritage Morning Bell via email:

Yesterday, President Obama held a town hall event in order to “sell his health care message to the public” during Congress’ July 4th recess. However, worried that the President cannot answer tough questions about his plan for health care reform, White House officials carefully screened each member of the audience in attendance and each question asked.

This time, the mainstream media took note, even grilling White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs on the choreographed spectacle. In fact, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, not known as a conservative sympathizer, even lamented:

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for the press conferences. It’s blatant. They don’t give a d–n if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.” She added: “What the h-ll do they think we are, puppets?”

The AP reported: “Some of Obama’s questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul. White House aides selected other questions submitted by people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.”

With the elaborate choreography President Obama managed to talk a good talk, despite his rhetoric not matching his plans. For example he said: “We need a permanent solution that when you lose your job, or change jobs, you can still keep your health insurance.” Absolutely. Do you lose your car or life insurance when you change your job? Of course not. The same should be true for your most important coverage: health insurance.

Heritage’s Bob Moffit, at a recent Congressional hearing, testified that “Americans need portability. If we had portability in health insurance that was tied to the person and not where they worked, the numbers of the uninsured would drop dramatically.“ Unfortunately, the President’s plan doesn’t offer this portability. Obama went on to deliver another one of his prized pieces of health care rhetoric: “If [private insurance] is such a great deal, why are [insurers] so concerned about government competing with private plans?”

The President has been searching for the logic on this one, and luckily it’s easy to explain. There’s no real competition when the Referee making the rules is also playing the game; it’s a fixed competition. Congress’ ability to pay doctors and other providers less will hide the true cost of the public plan. Undercutting private insurance will drive enrollment to the public plan. That’s not competition on a level playing field.

While bemoaning that Congress moves slowly on legislation, he offered this analysis of our Constitutional government three days before the 4th of July, saying: “Part of that is the way the Constitution is designed. We don’t have coups [de’tat] or governments collapsing. The disadvantage is it’s hard for us to make great, big, bold steps.”

At Heritage, we tend to think that one of the more important aspects of the Constitution is the very fact that it is so difficult to take “great, big, bold steps.” Perhaps, on America’s upcoming 233rd birthday, this is a quaint idea. Some still tend to agree with us, however. The point is health care reform doesn’t need to be so radical that the Constitution holds it back. There are other ways to fix health care that won’t intrude into our daily lives or our personal choices.

Nevertheless, the President is going to ask you to hold his hand and jump off the cliff with him, saying: “We’re in one of those rare moments where everybody is ready to move into the future. We just can’t be scared.” Frankly, when a plan is so big, so intrusive and so expensive to every American’s life that the President feels the Constitution might hinder its approval, you should be scared.

Yes Helen, Puppets. Indeed!

God Bless Karl Malden who came from humble beginnings in Gary, Indiana and demonstrated what hard work could accomplish. He was a member of my church and I remember him when I was a child during Holiday services when he would stand in the balcony with everyone else, no special seating, no privileges.

From AP:

LOS ANGELES – The family of Karl Malden says the actor who won an Oscar for his role in “A Streetcar Named Desire” has died at age 97. Malden’s family informed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences of his death on Wednesday. Malden served as the academy’s president from 1989-92.

He made his screen debut in the 1940 movie “They Knew What They Wanted,” and was praised for his role as Mitch in the 1951 classic “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

His greatest fame came as Detective Mike Stone in the 1970s TV series “The Streets of San Francisco,” in which he co-starred with Michael Douglas.

Malden also was a pitchman for American Express in a series of commercials airing over 21 years.

They failed to even mention “On The Waterfront” and so much more.

He was an unlikely candidate for success as an American actor, this son of a Serbian father and a Czech mother, neither of whom spoke English. Born Mladen George Sekulovich on March 12. 1912 in Gary. Indiana, he never heard a word of English until he got to first grade. The steel town of Gary was divided up into immigrant ghettos (Serbs, Poles, Irish, Greeks) and so everyone in young Mladen’s neighborhood, playgrounds, stores, and churches spoke Serbian.

As he progressed through school, he became bilingual in English and did well for himself in sports and in drama. From the former, he got the broken nose that made It look even bigger. From the latter, he obtained his life-time career. Although he spent three yeas after high school working with his father In the Gary steel mills, it was only to save up enough money to go to acting school in nearby Chicago.

After four tough years at the Chicago school, he moved to New York to find acting work and it was even tougher. Gradually his grit, talent, and determination prevailed as he worked his way up to Broadway ladder to bigger parts. He changed his name by moving the “l” in his first name and using it as his last name: Malden. For his first name, “Karl” he took his grandfather’s.

Finally he achieved stage stardom In the late 40s in Streetcar Named Desire with newcomer, Marlon Brando. It was made into a movie in 1951 and the following year Malden won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in that film. He would go on to star in On the Waterfront, Gypsy, How the West Was Won, Patton and many other great films. He was co-lead with Michael Douglas in TV’s Streets of San Francisco which ran for five seasons (1972-77).

I was not acquainted with any of Malden’s radio work until I recently read his biography, which he co-authored with his daughter, Carla (1997, Simon & Schuster). This book gives not only a summary of his experience in radio broadcasting, but also his views on radio actors.

Like many struggling stage actors in NYC In the late 30s, Malden tried to find work in radio to meet expenses between shows. One of his first jobs was a role on Our Gal Sunday. It didn’t last too long, because he got a part in a play that required day rehearsals, so his character was “killed off” on that soap opera.

Among the other theater actors who was doing radio work to pay the bills was Richard Widmark. In fact, he was the original Front Page Farrell. He and Malden became friends as they juggled their microphone and stage employments. Later, in 1947, Malden, by then a seasoned film actor, was delighted to be in the movie debut of Widmark’s Kiss of Death. Audience members will never forget Widmark in this motion picture, as he laughingly shoved an old woman in her wheelchair down the stairs to her death.

Ed Begley was a very successful radio actor (The Fat Man, Escape, Tales of the Texas Rangers and the lead in Charlie Chan.) But Malden knew him only casually until Begley’s first big role on Broadway. “All My Sons”, In which Maiden also had a large role. Begley Initially found theater work almost terrifying since he was used to a script and a microphone.

Malden tells in his book how he became acquainted with Ezra Stone on The Aldrich Family when Malden occasionally played a boy friend of Henry’s sister. Later, when they were both drafted in WW II, Stone asked Malden to be in his Army production that he was producing for the troops, but Malden declined as he wanted to join Moss Hart’s Air Corps show, Winged Victory. Stone used his influence to get Malden into the Army Air Corps where he promptly won a role in Winged Victory.

But most of Malden’s radio work was on The Theater Guild of the Air which John Dunning asserts “..was to Broadway what ‘Lux Radio Theater’ was to Hollywood: an 80 minute package of prestige drama”. Regarding this series, Malden says in his book: “We would rehearse each play for four or five days and then broadcast in front of a live audience in a theater, instead of behind a mike in a radio studio. To this day, people often believe I played the Gentleman Caller in The Glass Menagerie because I did it so many times on radio–with Helen Hayes, Shirley Booth, and Mildred Dunnock.”

Malden also says he felt much more comfortable broadcasting from a theater since he was never completely “at home” in the radio studio. He had trouble with the rhythm and fast tempo of radio broadcasting and he was in awe of some of the big stars in radio.

He recalls that when he was on Our Gal Sunday, he’d get to studio early and would study his script intently. but he says, the “real radio pros would show up five minutes before air time and read their parts letter perfect. I could never do that.”

Karl Swenson (misspelled as “Carl Svenson” in Malden’s book) really impressed the stage actor. Malden recounts that Swenson had such a heavy radio schedule that he had an assistant who attended the rehearsals for him and marked his script. Swenson, hurrying from another show, would tip the elevator man a few bucks to hold the door so not a minute was wasted. He would then dash into the studio, take the script from his assistant and step to the mike as the “On the Air” sign flashed.

The radio work, while it paid the bills, always left Malden feeling uncomfortable and sometimes even worse. A friend of his wife’s was visiting their apartment when Malden rushed in after a broadcast. He was white as a sheet and headed straight for the bathroom. The friend asked his wife, Mona, “What’s wrong with Karl? Is he sick?” “Oh no’” ‘ Mona replied. “It’s just radio.”

Early in his NYC career, Malden noticed the big difference between stage actors and those on radio. “They all had magnificent voices, the kind of instrument I simply never had and never will have. But they also had a completely different style of acting. These were actors who could pick up a script and give you a great performance, right on the spot. I always thought of it as acting from the neck up. I admired the skill involved in their craft, but I knew it would never work for me.”

Let’s not forget the influence of ACORN on elections but at the center of the Al Franken “victory” in Minnesota is how the rules of elections are changed after the election. The similarities between Washington state and Minnesota are striking and not by accident.

Al Franken, Democrat, trailed Norm Coleman, Republican by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat’s strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.

The Franken team’s real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the they claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman’s lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs.

In 2004, Dino Rossi (R) was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire’s team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn’t been counted, setting off a hunt for “new” Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she’d discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.

Washington allows absentee ballots–used by 70% of the voters this year–to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Thus everyone knew that the way late absentee and provisional votes (cast by people not on the registration rolls, and subject to later verification) were counted might wind up swinging the election.

That set off a legal fracas over the 929 people in heavily Democratic King County whose provisional ballots hadn’t been counted because of mismatched or missing signatures. Democrats demanded the names and addresses of those voters so they could contact them and correct the errors. County officials responded that in requiring that all 50 states offer provisional ballots Congress had stipulated that such votes remain private. Republican lawyers argued that having partisans scavenge for votes would increase the potential for fraud.

But Superior Court Judge Dean Lum said such arguments weren’t as important as the need to make sure every vote counted–an echo of Florida. A full 10 days after the election, while absentee votes were still being counted, he ordered election officials to give the names and addresses of the provisional voters to the Democratic Party. Judge Lum did express regret that the judiciary was being “whipsawed in the middle” of a bitter partisan dispute and asked to “micromanage an election.” But then he proceeded to do precisely that by allowing partisan workers the opportunity to mine flawed ballots after the election, for the first time in the 20 years that Washington has used provisional ballots.

Democrats spent the next three days knocking on doors and speed-dialing voters. Ryan Bianchi, communications assistant for Ms. Gregoire, made it clear how blatantly partisan the approach was. Democratic volunteers asked if voters had cast ballots for Ms. Gregoire. “If they say no, we just tell them to have a nice day,” he told the Seattle Times. Only if they say yes, did the Democrats ask if they want to make their ballot valid. Republicans played catch-up by belatedly using their own phone banks to call up voters and identify ballots that might fall their way if made valid. In the end Democrats turned in some 600 written oaths from provisional voters and Republicans about 200.

Those votes helped narrow Mr. Rossi’s eventual lead to 261 votes as the late absentee votes were finally counted and the results certified on Nov. 17. Then the state began a mandatory machine recount. Once again, King County was the center of controversy. More than 700 previously uncounted ballots were added to the county’s total after election officials “enhanced” them to better divine voter intent. When optical scan machines didn’t accept ballots, workers would fill in ovals on ballots or create duplicate ballots if they felt the voter had meant to register a choice. Hanging chads, meet empty ovals. Through this process, Ms. Gregoire gained 245 votes in King County, dwarfing the shifts to either candidate in any other county.

Such creative counting brought Mr. Rossi’s lead down to 42 votes, a critical threshold to justify further recounts and litigation. Former governor Booth Gardner, a Democrat, told a press conference last week that he thought Ms. Gregoire should concede if the final recount margin had been 100 votes or more. But at 42 votes he now feels a hand recount is appropriate.

But is it? It certainly isn’t more precise, as the fiasco of Florida’s chad counting proved in 2000. “When you’re talking about close to 900,000 pieces of paper, I think the machine count is going to be more accurate than a manual count,” Dean Logan, the elections director of King County and a Democrat, admitted to reporters. “Every time you have human judgment and frailty enters into the process it will change the result,” agrees Bruce Chapman, a Republican who served as Washington’s secretary of state before becoming director of the U.S. census in the 1980s. In an interview, he said a hand recount will likely result in bitter litigation that will see the courts intervene to settle the dispute. John Carlson, a Seattle talk show host who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2000, worries that “this state’s reputation for clean government may not survive the bitter struggle that appears about to begin.”

When the election ended with Norm Coleman ahead the much of the legal team used by Democrats in Washington were flown into Minnesota and began their scavenger hunt to steal one more close election.

The feckless Republicans continue to allow themselves to be run over and wish to be viewed as playing nice. When Coleman finally conceded to the whims of Minnesota’s Supreme Court it was thought the state was being “spared” more legal contests. One would think every citizen was suffering torture and needed relief by allowing fraud to win the day instead of the rightful winner of the election.

In 2004 John Fund, author of Stealing Elections, Revised and Updated: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy wrote:

“There but for the grace of Ohio voters went the rest of us this election year. The country dodged the bullet of another presidential election through litigation as thousands of lawyers from both parties stood ready to challenge the results. But Washington state’s mess should remind us that it is still imperative to clean up our election systems, better educate voters, develop more precise rules on how provisional ballots should be treated, and discourage judges from “interpreting” the election rules in creative ways that second-guess the intent of legislators. If we ignore the lessons of Florida in 2000 and the lessons from Washington state this year, we will continue to play a form of Russian roulette with our vote count and make inevitable an eventual repeat of 2000.”

Mr. Fund was correct about stolen elections but may not have realized he was also a prophet. Indeed!

Barack Hussein Obama and his ilk should understand that abusing the US Constitution may have dire consequences. Italian lamp posts and military intervention aside, the Liberals in America are busy fast-tracking legislation without proper notification and debate.

“Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution,” writes Mary Anastasia O’Grady.

“It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.”

Defending Zelaya and demanding his return to power are Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama as well as Hugo Chávez himself. It’s very disturbing to have the head of the US State Department and her boss defending tyrants.

Ordinary citizens of Honduras must have a very empty feeling knowing the United States government is treating them similar to Iranian citizens who want Democracy, free and honest elections with the liberties that go with a fairly elected leadership that uphold rule of law not change it to increase power and control.

How long will it be before protestor’s at Tea Parties around the US are arrested or maybe even shot at or beaten? Some might laugh but Obama has demonstrated nothing in defense of freedom for average citizens and seems to defend the likes of Hamas, Iranian Mullah’s and South American tyrants. He must be envious of that type of government authority.

“While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.”

The world press and many leaders are calling the military actions in Honduras a coup failing to point out that military commanders were following a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Honduran Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton is certainly on board with other tyrants in non-Democracies. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating “the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter” and said it “should be condemned by all.” Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Obama explicitly stated he would not get involved in Iranian affairs but his administration is doing just that in Honduras while siding with Marxist/Communist ilk from neighboring countries.

Many Hondurans are engaging in their own brand of ”Tea Parties” with street protests against Zelaya’s heavy-handed tactics. Last Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn in protests.

“We won’t go backwards,” one sign said. “We want to live in peace, freedom and development.”

American’s should take note and realize that Obama and Congress are working overtime to send the United States into an economic tailspin in order to justify government takeover of private business, the banking system and develop inordinate control over all other financial institutions.

Ms. O’Grady continues:

Earlier this month he [Zelaya] hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization.

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that “the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called ‘democratic charter.’ It seems to believe that only military ‘coups’ can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove.” A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza’s judgment is that he doesn’t mind the Chávez-style coup.

The US Constitution is meant to have checks and balances with independence between the branches that keep presidents from becoming dictators.

Mrs. Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama are on the wrong side of the US Constitution and defense of freedom loving citizens in the world. The Liberals in the US Congress are now in lock step with Obama. Indeed!

Barack Hussein Obama, Appeaser-In-Chief, would like to rid the world of missile defense systems to the applause and behind the scenes snickering of enemies to the United States.

North Korea has announced it may launch a long-range missile in the direction of Obama’s home state of Hawaii. (Note: Homestate via Kenya and Indonesia)

The Wall Street Journal provides a recent exchange between Arizona Republican Trent Franks and Lieutenant-General Patrick O’Reilly, head of the Missile Defense Agency, in a hearing last month at the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces:

Rep. Franks: “Do you believe that the threat from long-range missiles has increased or decreased in the last six months as it relates to the homeland here?”

Gen. O’Reilly: “Sir, I believe it has increased significantly. . . . The demonstration of capability of the Iranian ability to put a sat[ellite] into orbit, albeit small, shows that they are progressing in that technology. Additionally, the Iranians yesterday demonstrated a solid rocket motor test which is . . . disconcerting. Third, the North Koreans demonstrated . . . that they are improving in their capacity and we are very concerned about that.”

The Obama budget is causing defense cuts and limiting US capabilities to defend itself. Additional interceptors planned for the ground-based program in Alaska are being limited with the number around 30 interceptor missiles located at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Also part of the Obama defense cuts is the Airborne Laser, which is designed to shoot down incoming missiles in the boost phase, before they can release decoys and at a point in the missile trajectory when it would fall back down on enemy territory.

The Obama Administration is considering killing the proposed plan for a missile defense system in Europe, which would place interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, and is intended to protect Europe against Iranian missiles. This system would also protect the US by providing an additional layer of defense for the Eastern seaboard, which is a long way from the Alaskan defenses.

Obama will soon be visiting Russia and is prepared to appease them by reducing the US nuclear arsenal and agreeing to moving the deployment of the European missile defense system or at least some radar to southern Russia and Azerbaijan. From a geographical perspective, neither location would add much since an Iranian missile headed for Western Europe or the US would be on the periphery of the radars’ vision.

If North Korea launches a missile towards Hawaii will Obama order to have it shot down or will he continue to shoot down necessary technology that would make the US and its allies safe from terrorist regimes?

This is a test Mr. Obama. Indeed!