Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts

Monday, June 29, 2015

THEY CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH: State Dept. Ejects, Threatens Journalist Covering Iran Nuke Talks

By The Tower

The State Department today refused to allow a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon to attend a press briefing given by lead negotiator Wendy Sherman and threatened to call security to have him removed. The Free Beacon reported:

Two State Department officials booted the Free Beacon from a room where Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was talking to reporters, despite the Free Beacon’s being credentialed by the Austrian government for the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks. …

Melissa Turley, a State Department official, approached a Free Beacon reporter and demanded that he leave the room...

“You have a press pass from the [European Union], not from me,” Turley said, after being informed that the Free Beacon was officially credentialed to cover the event.

Both Turley and a second State Department colleague threatened to call “security” to remove the reporter.

The Free Beacon cited Western observers at the talks who attributed the State Department’s behavior “to jitters over media coverage revealing a still growing list of concessions being made to Iran by the Obama administration.” Such concessions include the administration’s reported willingness to allow Iran to limit inspections of military sites, which many experts consider a necessary element of verifying that Iran’s nuclear program is strictly civilian.


Read more at The Tower
 

Sunday, June 28, 2015

The Supreme Court Has Ruled. Principled People Will Not Obey.

By Don Boys

Following the Supreme Court’s illegal, immoral, and incredible “gay” rights decision, the White House (owned by the American people, not the President) was flooded with rainbow-color lights in celebration of that disgusting, dangerous, and decadent decision. Such impudence and defiance was an insult to America and a goading of God. However, be assured that God sees the evil and the good and He is involved in our world. Sometime His judgment seems slow, but it is always sure and severe. Judgment is on the way!

Former U. S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson said about the Supreme Court’s authority, “We are not final because we are infallible; we are infallible because we are final.” That attitude is not only arrogant but audacious and asinine. However, the Supreme Court is not infallible (as only a fool would say) nor is it final (as only a fanatic would say). I remind you that their decisions are called, “opinions” and do not reach the level of the Ten Commandments–or even the Ten Recommendations. Same-sex “marriages” will continue to be abnormal, abominable, and aberrational even as shallow people applaud them.

Some have said, “The Court has spoken. That settles it.” Oh, really, what about Dred Scott? The Court, consisting of appointed, flawed individuals, has reversed itself over 200 times and it must be remembered that the Court is illegitimate when it usurps the position of legislatures. If the Court wants to write laws, they should resign, run for Congress, expose their financial souls and seek approval from the voters. The Justices are rogues in black robes drunk with power. The Court thinks it is omnipotent and omniscient and it seems to be almost omnipresent in our lives.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

WHAT EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT: Justice Antonin Scalia Repudiates a Lawless Supreme Court

JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins, dissenting.

I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately
to call attention to this Court’s threat to American
democracy.

OBAMACARE TRAVESTY: The Supreme Court Continues To Make Stuff Up Out Of Thin Air

By Michael Snyder

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s willingness to make stuff up, Obamacare has been saved once again. In order to save Obamacare from utter disaster, Chief Justice Roberts essentially rewrote the law.

If you are thinking that the Supreme Court is not supposed to do that, you would be right. But this is what our judicial system has devolved into. When I was in law school, I was horrified to discover that most judges in our country just do whatever they feel like doing. Instead of applying the law to the facts and coming to a fair and unbiased judgment, most judges in America just do whatever they want to do and then search for some law or case precedent that they can use to justify their decision. If there is no law or case precedent, some federal judges even go outside of the country to find justification for their absolutely ridiculous rulings. There have been instances where international law or international standards of morality have been cited as authority for a decision in a federal case. We have become a lawless land where the letter of the law no longer holds any real meaning, and where tyrannical judges just make stuff up out of thin air in order to advance their own personal political agendas.

This decision on Obamacare should have been quite straightforward for the court. The following is how Business Insider described the key issue in this case…

The case revolved around the interpretation of a phrase that stated that healthcare exchanges must be “established by the State” in order to receive tax credits. Scalia said that he was baffled that the majority of the justices could interpret this to mean that the federal government could give tax credits in states where exchanges weren’t established by the state.

“Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words ‘established by the State,’” Scalia said.

That sounds pretty basic, right?

“Established by the state” should mean “established by the state”?

In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia excoriated the court for discarding all usual rules of interpretation in order to preserve Obamacare…

America’s only remaining choices – civil disobedience or collapse

By Lawrence Sellin

The United States no longer has, as the Constitution designed, a government composed of executive, legislative and judicial branches, separate, but equal in power.

The federal government is now an alliance of branches, devoted to the preservation of government itself, separate, not from each other, but from the American people and dedicated to tyranny.

The policies pursued by the Obama Administration and facilitated by cowardly politicians and a compliant media are not simply the intersection of radical ideology and incompetence, but a dangerous subversive element of an anti-American and anti-Western strategy.

Cultural Marxism and its many variants, such as political correctness and multiculturalism, is now firmly ensconced in the White House and the Democrat Party, while the Republican Party, dominated by eunuchs and the avaricious, continuously accommodates its "principles" to match an ever-shifting leftward movement of the "conventional wisdom." It does so solely in to maintain its place as the token opposition and grifter at the federal tax-revenue trough for the personal financial benefits that it provides.

After the successful 1917 communist revolution in Russia, it was widely believed that a proletarian revolt would sweep across Europe and, ultimately, North America. It did not.

As a result, the Communist International began to investigate other ways to create the state of societal hopelessness and alienation necessary as a prerequisite for socialist revolution - in essence, to destroy western democracy from within.

Time to Overthrow the Judicial Dictatorship

By Cliff Kincaid

Commentators have missed the real significance of Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the gay marriage case. He calls the decision a judicial “Putsch,” an attempt to overthrow a form of government—ours. His dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, was written “to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.”

His comment about the Court using the kind of reasoning we find in a fortune cookie is a funny line. But there is much of the Scalia dissent that is not funny and which serves as a warning to the American people about what the Court has done to us.

Scalia understands the power and meaning of words and he chose the word “putsch” for a specific purpose. One definition of the term means “a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government…” Another definition is “a plotted revolt or attempt to overthrow a government, especially one that depends upon suddenness and speed.”

Hence, Scalia is saying this was not only a blatant power grab and the creation of a “right” that does not exist, but a decision that depends on public ignorance about what is really taking place. It is our system of checks and balances and self-rule that has been undermined, he says.

In that sense, he is warning us that we need to understand the real significance of this decision, and go beyond all the commentators talking about “marriage equality” and “equal rights” for homosexuals. In effect, he is saying that the decision is really not about gay rights, but about the future of our constitutional republic, and the ability of the people to govern themselves rather than be governed by an elite panel making up laws and rights as they go.

Friday, June 26, 2015

The Day the Constitution Died

By Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

It’s been an historic week and although I am not surprised by the Supreme Court decisions, they saddened me beyond belief. I have sadly come to the conclusion that many of my colleagues are correct… our Constitutional form of government is now dead and Obama’s transformative ‘change’ is all but complete.

Things are now snowballing and it is more than most Americans can take or bear. From gay marriage and the ensuing infringement on free speech and our religious rights, to enforced Obamacare, to forced wealth redistibution in our neighborhoods, to the EPA run amok… our freedoms are being absolutely nullified. States are now saying they won’t comply with the EPA on coal and who can blame them? Americans will get very dangerous when they are hungry and cold. And then there is the Iran deadline, which is this weekend. Instead of holding their feet to fire, we are actually giving Iran nuclear reactors while they shout, “Death to America!” in their parliament.

Insanity is the norm now.

JUDICIAL RADICALS: Supreme Court Overrules All of Human History and 300 Million People to Redefine Marriage

Joshua Riddle spots a doozy of a rebuke to the Supreme Court on, of all places, Facebook:

This was a great response on Facebook right after the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is now legal in all 50 states.


Rod Dreher: "Democracy is dying, persecution is coming."
 
 

TOO LATE, RUSH LIMBAUGH: The War Over the U.S. Flag is Already Well Underway

By Daniel John Sobieski

Talk show icon Rush Limbaugh warned on Tuesday that the Confederate flag kerfuffle is bout the opening salvo in a campaign that that will eventually set its sights on that ultimate symbol of hate to the American left – the U.S. flag. Rush warned:

“If you take a look at the timeline of progressive events, their speed and rapidity with which the left is conducting this assault on all of these American traditions and institutions, if you don’t think the American flag’s in their crosshairs down the road, you had better stop and reconsider,” Limbaugh said.

The U.S. flag was already in liberal crosshairs when a group of American high school students in California made the mistake of wearing it on their t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.  As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized:

On Sept. 17, more than four years after Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., sent students home for wearing American flag t-shirts, an 11-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that it was the right choice, "tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety."

The decision upheld the court's three-judge ruling in February that justified the school's actions based on tensions between Mexican and American students. Past events, Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote, "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real."

Thursday, June 25, 2015

TED CRUZ RIPS SUPREME COURT’S OBAMACARE RULING: They are "rogue justices"

At least one American Senator is willing to speak truth to power.

Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz attacked Chief Justice John Roberts and other members of the Supreme Court in unusually harsh terms Thursday, referring to them as "rogue justices" and "robed Houdinis" after a 6-3 decision to uphold President Barack Obama's health care law.

Cruz, a Texas senator, did not mention any current high court members by name in remarks on the Senate floor. But his speech included a thinly veiled reference to Roberts, part of the court majority that upheld tax credits that defray the cost of coverage for lower-income individuals nationwide.

"These justices are not behaving as umpires calling balls and strikes. They have joined a team," the Texas lawmaker said.

IT’S OFFICIAL: "Chief Justice" John Roberts is a National Disgrace

By James Simpson

Chief Justice John Roberts today joined Anthony Kennedy and all the Supreme Court Democrats in upholding Obama’s unconstitutional, deceptive, and indescribably destructive healthcare law. Today’s decision in King v. Burwell declares that even though the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) specifically required individuals to enroll through state exchanges to obtain subsidies, enrolling directly through the federal government is essentially the same thing. This decision once again displays the Supreme Court’s willingness to ignore the clear intent of law in order to achieve a politically desired result. For Roberts it has written into stone an unmistakable pattern.

Roberts’ first betrayal was his mind-bending decision to call Obamacare a legitimate tax, whereas Obama had defended the law on the basis that it wasn’t a tax. An article in Republic magazine aptly described Roberts’ first betrayal:

‘Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,’ wrote Roberts, deploying the tactical disingenuousness such people always display whenever they ratify a federal power grab. This feigned humility was used to cloak an unambiguous lie: The measure Roberts describes is a direct un-apportioned tax, which, as we’ve seen, is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution.

His next was almost certainly throwing in with the Court’s leftists on gay rights – ignoring the clear state’s rights issue involved by voting not to hear five cases that defended traditional marriage as a state’s right. “Almost certainly” because a decision to hear the cases required only four in agreement and votes are taken in secret. Scalia, Thomas and Alito were likely willing to hear the cases. Where was the fourth vote?

Now Roberts has done all possible to seal this country’s fate by once again siding with Obama. In today’s decision, dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia wrote of its mind-numbing idiocy (see pp. 27 – 29):

SO, JASON CHAFFETZ: Exactly Who is Going to Prison?

FNC's Chad Pergram reports, via Gretawire, that multiple crimes were committed by the IRS in its systemic efforts to cover up targeting of political opponents.

Oversight Cmte hearing on Lois Lerner email inquiry expected to reveal there was destruction evidence 10 months after a preservation order for the emails was in place... On today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on the IRS and the state of the Lois Lerner email investigation from a source knowledgeable with the matter.

Fox is told the hearing will definitively state there was a destruction of evidence 10 months after a preservation order for the emails was in place, 7 months after a subpoena was in place and 30 days AFTER the IRS realized there were potential problems locating the emails. This destruction of evidence happened 22 days BEFORE the IRS Commissioner testified to Congress, in response to my questioning on March 26, 2015, that they had the documents and they would provide all of them to Congress.

In June they informed the Senate they were missing.

Further, the IG is expected to conclusively testify 5 of the 6 potential places where the emails might have been stored were never looked at by the IRS, despite the preservation order, congressional testimony, subpoena, etc.

Joel Gehrke makes Republicans sound really -- no, reallyyy -- angry.

KING V. BURWELL: James Madison and Antonin Scalia blister a lawless Supreme Court

In a letter to Henry Lee dated 25 June 1824, James Madison wrote:

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers.

If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense!

Echoing Madison's sentiments, in his dissent to the ludicrous majority decision of King v. Burwell, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State' ...

... Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved ...

... We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.

Perhaps the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will attain the enduring status of the Social Security Act or the Taft-Hartley Act; perhaps not. But this Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years….And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.

And the Constitution, already in tatters, has been torn yet again.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.
 

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

INTERESTING: Conservatives and Progressives Alike Despise Obamatrade; Only Beltway Insiders Love It

By Tyler Durden

Senator Jeff Sessions will release this statement in response to Senate's vote to advance the fast-track trade bill:

Americans increasingly believe that their country isn’t serving its own citizens. They need look no further than a bipartisan vote of Congress that will transfer congressional power to the Executive Branch and, in turn, to a transnational Pacific Union and the global interests who will help write its rules.

The same routine plays out over and again. We are told a massive bill must be passed, all the business lobbyists and leaders tell how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan. As with Obamacare and the Gang of Eight, the politicians meet with the consultants to craft the talking points—not based on what the bill actually does, but what they hope people will believe it does. And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension.

Washington broke arms and heads to get that 60th vote—not one to spare—to impose on the American people a plan which imperils their jobs, wages, and control over their own affairs. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want.

For instance: thousands of loyal Americans have been laid off and forced to train the foreign workers brought in to fill their jobs—at Disney, at Southern California Edison, across the country. Does Washington rush to their defense? No, the politicians and the lobbyists rush to move legislation that would double or triple the very program responsible for replacing them.

This ‘econometarian’ ideology holds that if a company can increase its bottom line - whether by insourcing foreign workers or outsourcing production - then it’s always a win, never a downside.

By way of example, here is Keith Tucker's explanation of just one aspect of the idiocy.

WALL OF SHAME: Who voted for TPP fast track in the Senate?

Courtesy of Against Crony Capitalism:


It's time to get serious about busting these Republican sellouts, once and for all.

Mike Flynn needs your help today in Illinois.

And in the near future, JD Winteregg will need your help against John Boehner (for an unknown, underfunded contender in 2014, he came amazingly close to unseating the Orange Crust).

As for the presidential race, it's time to start separating the wheat from the chaff. We conservatives need to align on a couple of serious candidates -- I'm thinking Ted Cruz and Scott Walker -- who have the chops to defeat both the Left and the Right. The time. Is. Now.
 
 

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

FEEDING HER LIES INTO THE WOODCHIPPER: Author Eviscerates Hillary Clinton’s Sgt. Schultz Defense

Writing at The New York Post, Peter Schweizer -- author of the bestselling expose of the Clinton pay-for-play money-laundering machine -- responded to Ms. Clinton's Sgt. Schultz defense ("I know nussssssing! I see nussssssing!").

For example, Manchester, NH television host Josh McElveen asked Hillary to explain the reasons for her State Department's approval of the sale of 20 percent of all U.S. uranium to Vladimir Putin's Russian government. Hillary's response: she claimed she had no involvement.

“I was not personally involved because that wasn’t something the secretary of state did,” said Clinton...

The transfer of 20 percent of US uranium — the stuff used to build nuclear weapons — to Vladimir Putin did not rise to the level of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s time and attention?

Beyond being an admission of extreme executive negligence on an issue of utmost national security, Hillary’s statement strains credulity to the breaking point for at least three other reasons.

Schweizer explains that, number one, nine investors who raked in profits from the uranium deal donated a total of $145 million to Hillary's family foundation.

Number two, when Hillary was asked about the $500,000 paid to her husband for a single speech by a Kremlin-backed bank, she evaded and misdirected, stating that "The timing doesn’t work... it happened in terms of the support for the foundation before I was secretary of state."

Monday, June 22, 2015

21 Ways Obama Attempted to Assassinate the U.S.-Israel Relationship

America's heroine Pamela Geller points us to an exceptional summary of diplomat Michael Oren's new book. The former Israeli Ambassador to the United States -- no right-winger to be sure -- has outlined a stunning insider's look at Obama's assassination of the relationship between the two longtime allies. Adam Kredo, writing at Washington Free Beacon, outlines some of the most outrageous revelations.

“Prophecy was not required to foresee that an Obama presidency might strain the U.S.-Israel alliance,” Oren writes in the early pages of his book... Obama stacked his administration with senior officials hostile to Israel and pursued a policy of “daylight” with Jewish state, Oren recounts... “The first thing Obama will do in office is pick a fight with Israel,” Oren recalls a confidant as telling him in the early days of the administration.

Below are a series of passages that reveal in detail how the U.S.-Israel alliance hit historic lows under the Obama administration.

1. ‘I know how to deal with people who oppose me’

The tension between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel began during their first meeting at the White House, Oren recalls. While the meeting appeared to go “smoothly,” behind the scenes Obama outwardly threatened Netanyahu.

“Face-to-face, I later heard, Obama had demanded that Netanyahu cease all building not only in the territories but also in the disputed areas of Jerusalem,” Oren writes. “‘Not a single brick,’” the president purportedly said. ‘I know how to deal with people who oppose me.’”

2. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Commanders Never Trusted Obama

Oren recounts listening to Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo while stationed in the IDF’s headquarters. “Their reactions typified that of a great many Israelis.”

These commanders “scoffed at what they regarded as Obama’s inexperience with the Middle East, where magnanimity is often seen as weakness. They cringed at his tendency to equate America’s moral foibles with the honor killings, human trafficking, and the suppression of women, foreign workers, and indigenous minorities rampant in many Muslim countries,” Oren writes.

Their opinions only grew dimmer when Obama “linked that legitimacy [of Israel] to the Jews’ ‘tragic history’ in the Holocaust. That linkage seemed to me to be the most damaging part of his speech.”

3. The Anti-Israel State Department

Nullifying Tyranny

By Baron Bodissey

Last November voters in Washington State passed ballot initiative I-594 (Initiative Measure No. 594), which requires background checks whenever firearms change hands.

This weekend, in defiance of the new law, supporters of the Second Amendment organized an arms expo in Yakima, WA. Participants are invited to sell or barter guns without any background checks. The event opened yesterday, and is continuing today.

Below is the statement made by Mike Vanderboegh yesterday at the opening of the event:

I’d like to speak to you about the uniqueness of what we are doing here today and the efforts we are making to deal with this unprecedented event and how it effects the way we’re handling the competing interests of the participants and the press. First of all, I’d like to thank y’all for coming and taking your courage in your own two hands and braving the uncertainties to be here. In looking out at you I see the Founders’ descendants, only the Founders didn’t have to deal with the modern surveillance state. There were no cameras at the Boston Tea Party, the Green Dragon Tavern where the Sons of Liberty met was not bugged by the secret political police of Ministry of Homeland Security, the Committees of Correspondence did not have their communications photographed by the Royal Mail, General Gage did not possess surveillance drones and Captain Parker was not plagued by agents provocateurs within his own ranks working for the King and determined to discredit the Patriot cause by goading them into firing first. It is fortunate for us that King George did not possess these instruments of tyranny. But the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama and his minions do possess them. So when you come here today, you are, I believe, exhibiting every bit as much courage as the Founders, for you do face these threats and still you refuse to comply. By your very presence here today, you are sending the message: WE WILL NOT COMPLY WITH THE INSTRUMENTS OF OUR OWN SLAVERY.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

BUSHCLINTON BUSHCLINTON BUSHCLINTON: Death by Dynasty

By Bill Whittle

Guess what, Jeb Bush has officially announced his candidacy for President of the United States.

Now, to me, it looked like a joyless, heavily-staged, enthusiasm suite ritual, much like the baptism of the royal heir or some other pointless ceremonial drudgery. Now this, of course, is coming on the heels of Hillary Clinton's announcement, one of the 13 or 14 times that she's announced that she, too, is running for the top job.

Hillary's campaign has been something less than a snowy white dove released into an azure blue sky. It's been the kind of scandal-plagued disaster that makes one look at people running from the collapse of the flaming wreckage of the Hindenburg and mutter to themselves, those lucky bastards, under one's breath.

Now, both the Bush camp and the Clinton camp want to sell the American people on the idea of dynasty and they're both doing it in the same way emphasizing things like experience and leadership and connections.

But if the truth be told, and one of the major perks of coming from a great house is a facility for shading the truth, the real reason both of them are running is because that's what Bushes and Clintons do. They run for president.

Now, I'm not alone in noting that neither of these mediocre people really seem to want the job. Both of them seem to labor under the burden of unmet expectations. Neither one seems genuine, neither one seems to have anything new to say, and as I said, neither one seems to be having very much fun at all.

You know, they have something else in common, these two, and that's the scathing contempt for the common person.

What the Obama worshippers missed

By Richard Baehr

It is not surprising that former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren is now in the sights of the Obama Defenders Corps, a collection of U.S. administration officials, sycophantic journalists and other obsessive critics of Israel.

The former ambassador has revealed in his new book what most Israelis and many Americans now know to be true: that U.S. President Barack Obama abandoned Israel ever since the beginning of his term in 2009, and that the breach in U.S.-Israel relations is primarily his doing. In fact it was a deliberate policy to create distance between the United States and Israel, since the president was far more interested in making nice to the likes of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim world in general. Close U.S. ties with Israel presented an obstacle in Obama's path toward accomplishing these other goals.

In essence, Obama had swallowed the message of Professors Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer in their book: "The Israel Lobby" in its entirety. Obama was also educated in Third World/academic perspectives on international conflicts, which always tend to favor the weaker or non-Western party. So it was predictable that he would come into office believing Israel was primarily at fault in its conflict with the Palestinians, and so pressure needed to be applied to them.

None of this should have been a surprise to anyone who honestly explored Obama's history before he became president. That of course excludes the likes of New Yorker editor David Remnick who managed to miss all the essentials despite a multi-pound tome that later filled many remainder shelves. Why would Obama and his family have remained in the church of anti-Semitic, America-bashing Rev. Jeremiah Wright for so many years? What exactly were the connections between Obama and Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, or between Obama and Professors Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said? How much of Obama's autobiography did he write himself and how much was it the work of far more than "casual acquaintance on the street" Bill Ayers, the former domestic terrorist? When Obama declared that his presidency would be transformative, he meant it.