But this is not how some of my countrymen in Nigeria see him. He’s their brother; he’s black; he’ll save Africa!

One of those people is Ndidi Okereke-Onyiuke, the Director General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Ndidi is the Chairman of the Africans for Obama 2008, a Nigeria-based pro-Obama group. Speaking in Lagos while inaugurating ‘Africans for Obama Presidency’ in June, she said, “the policies of Obama will have effect for Africa, not only the world, because he believes in Africa.”

On August 12, Ndidi and her friends held a fund raising dinner for Obama at the MUSON Center Lagos.

The price tag?

About $2,500 to 20,000USD per plate!

Their goal is to raise 100 million Naira (about 1 million USD) to mobilize the five million Africans in United States to support and vote for Obama in November.

There are many things wrong with this. Even if there are five million Africans with American voters registration cards, is it legal for a non-American pressure group to embark on political advocacy projects within America?

Was Ndidi and co aware of “The US Foreign Election Campaign Act (FECA) 1974?”

I don’t think so.

The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.

One thing is clear about most Nigerians, including our dear Ndidi: An obsession for foreign ready-made products. This obsession manifests in every facet of life in Nigeria. Now some have seen Obama as a prime object for that obsession.

Did Obama get to be the first American black presidential candidate because he had people like Ndidi supporting him?

Wouldn’t it be great if the Ndidis of Nigeria (and their rich friends) re-channel their obsessive energy toward something more practical and relevant to their immediate society?

Rather that obsessing over an ‘American Obama’, how about helping to create a local system that would produce a ‘Nigerian Obama’, say within the next five years?

Let me say that I harbor no resentment over the actions of Israel's leaders. For more than 60 years, they have knowingly made their country a pariah in the Arab and Islamic worlds, just as the Palestinians have made themselves pariahs in much of the West. This is, of course, the right of both parties, but neither seems to want to face the consequences of their decisions. With demographic realities and increasingly radical, well-armed Arabs making them panicky about Israel's security, Israel's leaders naturally to try to lock down as much U.S. support as possible. Having consciously – if unwisely – put all their eggs in the U.S. basket since the 1973 War, Israel's leaders must do everything possible to protect their relationship with Washington.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seems, was not enough for the Israel-firsters. Now, according to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a U.S.-launched war on Iran is needed because “the threat that the U.S. and Israel face from the Islamic Republic of Iran is today greater than ever.” Though based on the fantasy that Ahmedinejad's tin-pot regime is a threat to the world's only superpower, this is a perfectly commonsense position for Israel and its U.S.-citizen backers in AIPAC to champion. In their view, U.S. wars with Muslims are the ultimate good for Israel. Recall, if you will, the perfectly accurate April 2008, words of Benjamin Netanyahu, likely Israel's next prime minister: “We [Israel] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” These wars, Netanyahu said, have “swung American public opinion in our favor.” How much more must Netanyahu and AIPAC believe that a U.S. war with Iran would add to this “swing” in Israel's favor?

My own anger falls not on Israel, then, or on Palestine, for that matter; as I have written elsewhere, America would do just fine and would be better off without either or both. It falls rather on the lobbying efforts of AIPAC, that organization's blatant purchasing of fealty from U.S. politicians in both parties, and the media's obsequious parroting of specious canards about “Israel's right to exist” and “the duty of Americans to support an island of democracy in the Middle East.”

While few would question the right of AIPAC leaders to lobby U.S. politicians, legally bribe them with campaign contributions, or limit their right to speak as they please in public, not matter how scurrilous or libelous their words, I sometimes wonder if Americans have focused on what AIPAC lobbies for and what its acolytes in politics and the media support.

It is a commonplace to say that lobbying is a pervasive activity in U.S. politics at all levels of government, especially at the federal level. People lobby for tax advantages for business or tax breaks for individuals; for the right to own guns or laws to ban them; for subsidies for agriculture or vouchers for private schools; for universal health care or smaller government. Across this diverse array of lobbyists there are two common threads: (A) None are working to push the United States to participate in other peoples' wars; and (B) All are arguing for things that will – from their perspective – improve America, whether by making it richer, better protected, more competently educated, healthier, freer, etc. The anti-gun lobby, for example, is no less confident than the NRA and its affiliates that they are working for the best interests of Americans. One or the other is wrong, but their activities are shaped by their perception of what is best for America.

It is this last point that separates the lobbyists working for and with AIPAC – most of whom are U.S. citizens – from almost all other U.S.-based lobbyists. AIPAC does not lobby, bribe, and libel to make Americans and America better off. It lobbies solely, forthrightly, and cynically to make Israel richer, better protected, and able to do as it pleases in its relations with Muslim states. AIPAC makes no pretense of doing things meant to benefit America; rather, its members take pride in seeking a goal that runs directly counter to the economic welfare and physical security of almost all other U.S citizens by seeking to keep them involved in a religious war in which no U.S. national interest is at stake.

Now, there are a few other similar anti-American lobbies – those for Armenia, Lebanon, Greece, etc. – but AIPAC is clearly primus inter pares in this dastardly group. And given that every AIPAC success is a net loss for U.S. security and the U.S. Treasury, it seems odd that our so-called political leaders take orders and funds from this fundamentally anti-U.S. organization. Odd or not, however, that is the reality. Senators Obama and McCain have become AIPAC poster boys, each strengthening his support for Israel over the course of the current presidential campaign. Obama's position, in fact, has changed so drastically in a pro-Israel direction that the Illinois senator appears to have no mind of his own on this issue. He has simply and obsequiously adopted the Democrats' traditional abject subservience to their small but powerful pro-Israel constituency.

McCain is an Israel-firster of the deepest hue. Coached by Joe Lieberman – who argues there is a U.S. duty to ensure God's promise to Abraham about Israel is kept – McCain is now considering Republican Congressman Eric Cantor for his running mate. Rep. Cantor, needless to say, is eager to spend American blood and treasure to secure Israel. Speaking in Israel, Cantor pushed the same false assertion that is the staple of U.S. leaders in both parties. “What befalls Jerusalem,” Cantor said, “threatens the security of the United States and its allies worldwide. That's because Jerusalem and Israel are Ground Zero in the global battle between tyranny and democracy, radicalism and moderation, terrorism and freedom.”

This, of course, is nonsense of a high order, and Lieberman and Cantor know it. Both men are committed to Israel as a religious idea, not because it has anything to do with U.S. security. According to Lieberman, “The rabbis say in the Talmud that a lot of rabbinic law is to put a fence around the Torah so you don't get near to violating it. Well, McCain has a series of very clear-headed policies toward terrorism and Islamic extremism [that put] extra layers behind his support for Israel.” He also told a conference of Christians United for Israel that he was pleased they recognized it was America's duty to defend Israel, blithely lying to them that “President Washington and the Founding Fathers” would support America fighting Israel's wars. Cantor, playing to both the Israel-firsters and their U.S. evangelical allies, also has made clear where his primary loyalty lies:

“Jerusalem is not merely the capital of Israel but the spiritual capital of Jews and Christians everywhere. It's the site of the First and Second Temples, which housed the Holy of Holies, and it's the direction in which we Jews face when we pray. This glorious City of David is bound to the Jewish people by an undeniable 3,000-year historical link.”

My own view is that if God promised Palestine to the Israelis, God is perfectly capable of keeping that promise, and America is no way committed to expend the lives of its soldier-children in a war over conflicting interpretations of God's word. The Israelis and the Muslims should be perfectly free to fight over whether Yahweh and Abraham or Allah and Mohammed are right, and Americans should be perfectly free to draw the correct conclusion, that the United States does not have a dog in this fight. In addition, there is a genuine constitutional question of church-state separation on this issue. Why should American taxpayers have their earnings and children's lives spent to defend a theocracy in Israel or, for that matter, to protect an Islamic theocracy in Saudi Arabia.? (Imagine the howls of protest and torrents of church-state separation rhetoric from the media and both parties if a congressman introduced a bill calling for the U.S. to designate that an amount equivalent to what's spent to protect Israel and Saudi Arabia be sent to the Vatican – a nation-state like Israel and Saudi Arabia – to improve its defenses against the now well-articulated threat from al-Qaeda and other Islamists.)

Objectively, three realities are clear: (1) U.S. survival is not at stake in the Israeli-Muslim war; (2) the taxes of Americans should not be spent to defend theocratic states; and (3) holy books are insane tools to use as guides for U.S. foreign policy. In America, however, these realities lie unspoken because of the lobbying efforts of AIPAC and the pro-Israel mantras of the politicians it purchases with campaign contributions and promises of media exposure, including McCain and Obama. By their consistent anti-American actions, AIPAC and the U.S. politicians who do its bidding have fully validated the words of the real George Washington – not the figment of Washington painted by Joe Lieberman. “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” President Washington wrote in 1796, “the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

A few miles from where I live is the 20,000 member Saddleback mega church. And tonight, its pastor Rev. Rick Warren is interviewing both senators Obama and McCain. The format is that each will spend about 60 minutes on stage alone with Rev. Warren (I would've preferred all three to be on the stage at the same time, but I am sure that was opposed by both parties), and that they will get the same questions asked. And Rev. Warren assured us that Sen. McCain will be in a ‘cone of silence,' while Sen. Obama gets to go first, thanks to a coin flip.

“We got to learn to disagree without demonizing each other,” said the good reverend who claims to be friends with both senators.

CNN televised the entire two-hour event live. And McCain won Round-1!

Some highlights included Obama's admission that Jesus Christ died for his sins, that marriage is the union between a man and a woman, but that he would not support a constitutional amendment with that definition, evil does exist and that we should confront it but with an approach of humility, would not have nominated Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, and if you're making $150,000 a year or less as a family you'd be considered middle class or poor, depending on the region (to which Rev. Warren responded, “in this region you'd be poor”). But in my opinion, did not eloquently answer the question as to why he wants to be President, other than repeat the same mantra of politics and Washington is so broken, and that he has the “ability to build bridges across partisan lines, racial, regional lines, to get people to work on some common sense solutions to critical issues.” We all know what happened the last time a candidate promised reaching across partisan lines.

McCain then came onto the stage and the two candidates briefly exchanged pleasantries. In fact, Obama told McCain to “go get'em.”

McCain's greatest line might have been “serve a cause greater than your self-interest.” Or “by a strange coincidence, I was not elected Miss Congeniality again to the U.S. Senate,” when he responded to the party loyalty versus America's best interest question.

McCain's responses included the fact that religion and prayer played a very important part during his captive years in Vietnam, a baby is entitled to human rights at the moment of conception, marriage is between one man and one woman, and as a federalist, states should make their own decisions, until and unless a federal court decided that one state had to observe what another state decided, he would not favor a constitutional amendment to enforce the definition of marriage (of course both candidates reinstated their allegiance to the recognition of union between same sex couples and that they too are entitled to the same rights as married couples), evil should be defeated, radical Islamic extremism must be dealt with, with all due respect would not have nominated Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens, because he thinks they legislate from the bench and not adhere to the Constitution, believes in choice in competition when it comes to schools — public versus private, and school vouchers, etc., some of the richest people he's ever known in his life “are the most unhappy,” ‘rich' should be defined “by a home, a good job, an education, and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one we inherited,” doesn't want to take money from the rich, instead wants everyone to be rich — keep taxes low and not raise them, increase revenue, and cut spending.

McCain made the most anti-Russia statement I've heard to date as it relates to killing of innocent people, human rights abuses against Georgia, and others in that region and democracy. As to why he wants to be President, McCain believes America's best days are ahead of us, that he'll be the President of every American, and he'll always put America first.

Round-1 goes to McCain, hands down, in my opinion . . .

Watch Larry King Live on CNN Monday night as he interviews Reverend Warren.

That invitation drew hardly any takers Tuesday on the first day of a new federal "self-deportation" program that offered 457,000 eligible illegal immigrants the chance to turn themselves in, get their affairs in order and leave the country without being detained.

The tepid response only reinforced doubts about an idea that has drawn criticism and even ridicule from both sides of the immigration debate.

"You would have to be crazy -- who would want to turn themselves in?" said Angel Martinez, a construction worker who waited Tuesday outside ICE's Charlotte, North Carolina, office while his son visited a friend detained on immigration violations.

Indeed, Mr. Martinez. I'd like to know who the knucklehead behind this idea was. I think we could have saved the government the few million they've likely spent if they would have bounced the idea off of us first.

Via / CNN

The announcement of the program by Julie Myers, on Univision's popular show ‘Al Punto’ con Jorge Ramos, is considered unofficial, as the program which asks undocumented immigrants without prior criminal records to turn themselves in to ICE to be deported, has yet to be announced or mentioned in an official capacity or through any other media outlet.

The benefit to the undocumented? ICE will be nice enough to not put the immigrants in a detention center and will give the immigrants a few weeks to get their affairs in order (like figure out who the leave the children they will be forced to leave with?)

Aww isn't ICE nice?

Post extendido - Leer más 'New ICE Policy Wants Undocumented to Raise Hands and Self-Deport'...

The story of Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s Marxist mentor, is completely intertwined with the story of the Hawaii Democrats rise to power.
Conybeare is joined in denials by UH Professor of Interdisciplinary studies Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara. In the Star Bulletin of June 29, 2008 she gives a non-denial denial: “Frank Davis loved democracy. But he was a fierce critic of racism and injustice, and in those years, anyone who was that controversial got labeled a communist.”

But in the work she is so “angry” to see cited, Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara writes (parenthesis added):

“Davis’s initial contacts with Hawaiiall had extremely strong ILWU ties. (Communist party member) Paul Robeson’s own Hawaiiacquaintances, which he passed on to Davis, insured that ‘when I came over, one of the first things that I got involved with―well, I met all the ILWU brass, (Communist Party executive committee member) Jack Hall and all of them, and I went―they had both of us over to various functions for them―Harriet Bouslog (Communist Party executive committee member) was also a good friend.’”

These contacts were arranged by leading Communist Party members on the mainland. But in her writings Takara identifies none of them as such:

“Davis himself recalls that even before he left for Hawaii, (Communist Party member Paul) Robeson and (Communist Party member Harry) Bridges who was head of the ILWU and the CIO in the Pacific Region, suggested that I should get in touch with the Honolulu Record and see if I could do something for them.”

Takara’s implied claim that Davis was just tagged Red because he was “a critic of racism” might lead Senator Inouye to ask: Has she lost any sense of political reality?

The words "white power" and "I'm gay" were etched into the car of Karen Wastradowski last Saturday. Wastradowski had left her car in the driveway of her home when the vandals struck.

She filed a report with Vancouver police. Wastradowski said a blue "Elect Obama" sign in her yard could have caused the crime.

I know that whenever I see a John McCain sign I have the uncontrollable urge to tag "Puerto Rican Power" oh but wait, I don't think I've seen a John McCain sign.

Apparently the area where the keying happened has a history of racist assholes.

Yes, Clark County has its share of unrepentant bigots. Earlier this year the son of a Battle Ground city council member was charged with cyberstalking over virulently racist emails sent to a black council member and other community members. So while vandalism is not exactly an unusual thing during the summer months, it's also not acceptable to just shrug off racist defacement of private property as "just kids being kids." They learned it somewhere.

Via / Pam's House Blend