Obama's Enforcer

In Obama’s entire circle of advisers, one man rises above the pack, gaining the reputation as the most ruthless political figure in America today. This man is Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. Instead of being an impassioned ideologue, he instead enjoys utilizing Machiavellian tactics to achieve more traditional political ends. A classic Chicago-style machine politician, Rahm will do whatever is necessary to get things done his way. With his aggressive tactics, he has earned the nickname of “Rahmbo.”He lost a finger at the age of 17, and since then Emanuel has been a driven man. Working at an Arby’s he sliced his finger but he insisted on attending his prom and swimming in Lake Michigan before going to the hospital. His finger became badly infected, forcing him to have it amputated during a lengthy stay in Children’s Hospital. Never the same after the incident, Emanuel lives with an intense passion for life and a drive that alienates people, but achieves results.Once a skilled and disciplined ballet dancer, he attended college on a dance scholarship. He became involved in his first campaign as an undergraduate, and his political career took off from there. His climb began while working on Richard Daley’s mayoral campaigns in the late ‘80s, where he proved himself an avid fundraiser. As Emanuel called donors, if they gave less than he thought they could, he would refuse to accept their contribution. Then, he resorted to goading them by stating that he thought they were wealthier and bigger donors. Oftentimes donors would call him back, apologize, and then give Emanuel’s desired amount.Cutting his teeth in Chicago machine politics helped him develop his no- holds- barred style of campaigning. As a member of the Daley machine, Obama’s chief of staff has been involved in his share of shady dealings. In Emanuel’s 2002 congressional race, Daley forced city patronage workers to run a get-out-the vote campaign that is still being investigated for campaign violations.Emanuel’s exploits are legendary. Once he had a disagreement with a pollster, so he sent him a rotten fish. At a dinner party in 1992, the day after Clinton’s hard-won election, Emanuel viciously attacked those whom he called betrayers. Spouting their name and shouting, "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" he plunged a knife into the table after each name. Now, he is bringing these tactics along with his foul mouth to the White House.This hardnosed political operative employs methods and tactics that would make Karl Rove blush. Rahm fights like a rooster in a cock fight. A political street fighter, he is the enforcer lurking behind Obama’s pretty words about bipartisanship and unity.Emanuel retired from the Clinton White House in 1998 and moved to Wall Street to make his fortune. He worked for Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and Wall Street financier. Over the course of two and a half years, he milked his political connections to help broker deals, and he made $18 million. Emanuel is not ashamed to look out for number one. Once rich, he headed back to politics.As the chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee in 2006, he is largely credited as the architect of the Democratic landslide. He did it, in large measure, by remaking the Democratic Party in his own image. He won by aggressively recruiting candidates and then relentlessly driving his candidates to raise money. With money in hand, they launched a series of negative ads that are unmatched in campaign history.Emanuel famously said, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste…They are opportunities to do big things.” He is pushing Obama’s administration to do that now. Obama is the star of the show and Rahm is the one who is directing the play. Rahm is well connected inside DC and uses his friendships with John Podesta, James Carville and Paul Begala to great effect. Obama, the inexperienced “outsider,” is being taught the ropes by Rahm, the insider. One of the best examples of this inside- and outsid- the-White House coordination is the campaign to demonize and target Rush Limbaugh. You can bet that Rahm Emanuel helped to make it happen.Rahm has brought his aggressive attitude to work in implementing Obama’s agenda. He personally was instrumental in rounding up votes for the stimulus bill, by intensely pressuring three moderate Republican senators and threatening conservative Democrats. Now he is working hard to push through the $3.6 trillion Obama budget. Will he be successful? If the past is any indication, Rahm will shout, curse, stab and claw his way to victory no matter what the cost. Washington, D.C. has definitely gotten uglier as Rahmbo storms through it, hell-bent on taking no prisoners.

WHAT I BELIEVE IS COMING TO OUR COUNTRY!

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny” ~ Thomas Jefferson“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” ~ Joseph Stalin“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” ~ Abraham Lincoln“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” ~ Vladimir Lenin
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.” ~ George Washington“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke “In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell“I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.” ~ Harry TrumanThe following is a fictional narrative of what could be or might be. While perhaps extreme, I doubt anyone would disagree with or discount the potential for some or all of these events to occur. Though none of us wishes for chaos, anarchy or bloodshed, we are only fooling ourselves if we ignore the course of current events.
Tipping PointSummer, 2009 – World financial markets and major corporations are collapsing under a wave of private and state-bank failures in Europe, the UK and the US. Asian markets are woefully anemic and many are teetering on insolvency. Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, buffeted by a depressed oil market, have been forced to slash social services. In response, violent riots are daily occurrences. Hundreds are detained, dozens killed and maintaining order is slipping away from the overwhelmed governments. In Europe, France, the UK , Spain, the Netherlands and Italy have been forced to declare dusk to dawn curfews to curb violent demonstrations. In particular, France and Britain are the hardest hit due to high social services obligations and large Muslim populations taking advantage of the turmoil to agitate for more power within both governments.In the U.S., national unemployment has pushed ABOVE 10% and in California it’s over 15% and by all indications will rise to all time highs reached during the Great Depression (20%). Unable to stop the hemorrhage of citizens leaving the Golden State due to job losses, suffocating taxes and a devastating drought which has crippled its agricultural base--plus a demand for social services the legislature refuses to consider cutting--Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declares the state officially bankrupt: The world’s eighth largest economy is officially in default.
And So It BeginsFall, 2009 – Illegal immigration fueled by rival gang and drug cartel wars along the U.S. / Mexican border has reached epidemic proportions with Arizona and Texas calling up the entire Army National Guard to protect its borders. California begs for federal assistance, but the ACLU sues in federal court claiming federal assistance is excessive, unwarranted and the governor improperly requested help. Unable to control the raging border violence which has spilled across the border into San Diego, the California National Guard is mobilized to assist in protecting the city’s citizens. President Obama pleads for calm, but offers no federal assistance (fearing his leftist-base's anger at using force to stop the unrest). New Mexico’s governor quietly mobilizes its state’s national guard along its border but little notice is paid by the media.

In the wake of overwhelming chaos and lack of leadership in Washington, seven Southern States—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina—plus Wyoming and Montana officially file secession legislation in their respective legislatures if a companion of bills pending in Congress passes. The first bill would end-run the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution by allowing the president to seek third and successive terms if congress deemed the country’s economic and national security situation were “serious and consequential”. Determination for such circumstances would be the sole responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief. Essentially, the president could merely invoke the trigger of the amendment by executive order and run for a third term of office.The second bill would grant the President extra-constitutional powers during periods of “grave” national crisis, thus federalizing all state National Guard units, state and municipal bureaucracies, and manage all media outlets. Though congress would have the option to repeal this control at any time according to the bill, opponents, most media types and even some supporters (quietly) doubt it would be so easy.
Burn Baby BurnSpring / Summer, 2010 -- Both bills pass the House and Senate. Vice President Joe Biden casts the deciding vote. All Republicans in the House and Senate walk out and refuse to participate in any future legislative activity (including—surprisingly—Senators’ Olympia Snow, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter). In response to the vote, all seven legislatures plus Montana and Wyoming vote to secede from the United States of America. President Obama immediately retaliates by invoking his newly created power and federalizes the states’ Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine National Guard Armed Forces for all 50 states. Protests break out across the nation. Gun ownership—already difficult—is made nearly impossible by a Presidential executive order suspending all gun AND ammunitions sale; including gun shows and private exchanges.Long simmering racial tensions—fueled by gas and commodity shortages, and exorbitant prices driven by runaway inflation—explode in Miami, Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston and dozens of smaller cities. Governors and mayors in the affected states and cities declare martial law and install dusk to dawn curfews. Hundreds of civilians and law enforcement officers are injured—including over a dozen killed—in the uncontrolled rioting.Several high ranking Pentagon generals and admirals resign in protest of the congressional vote and declare the President in contempt of the constitution and guilty of high crimes and treason. The Obama administration has the Generals placed under house arrest and ordered to cease ALL communication with the media. White House vetted censors are placed within all media outlets. Fox News refuses and the government immediately blocks its satellite links and shuts down internet domains. Popular conservative talk-show hosts are forbidden to broadcast—particularly Rush Limbaugh—who is placed under house arrest and forbidden to talk to the media.As the severity of economic depression both quickens and worsens, wave after wave of violent and uncontrollable riots spread across the U.S. Several other states join the original nine secessionist states and declare independence. Obama orders all military stationed abroad to immediately return to the U.S. to bring “order and unity” back to a quickly fracturing U.S.A mass arrest of senior military officers is ordered by Obama after the Secret Service and FBI allegedly uncover a high-level military plot to remove him from office. To enforce loyalty, Obama has hand-picked political loyalists appointed to the Pentagon to monitor all troop movements. Senior military officers not arrested are threatened with imprisonment if they defy the president. Secret Service and FBI personnel are also attached to monitor the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence and federal police agencies.As essential services across the U.S. spiral to a standstill and race riots and counter riots intensify, Obama further clamps down by ordering the governors to use all necessary force to stop the violence, including “unrestricted” use of lethal force. Several governors refuse and in reaction, civilian militia groups form to counter heavy-handed federal activity and maintain local order.Taking advantage of the chaos, Iran declares the “Jewish state” must perish immediately and calls on all Muslims to become martyrs by invading Israel. Iran backs up its declaration by firing two nuclear tipped missiles at Israel Both are intercepted by state-of-the-art patriot ground to air missiles and Israel immediately retaliates by exploding high altitude nuclear devices (EMPs) over Iran and Syria. The result is a complete and total meltdown of everything that operates electronically. Iran and Syria are completely defenseless and Israel takes advantage of the situation. Within 48 hours, Israeli fighters and bombers have degraded the military capability and infrastructure of both countries to rubble. It’s estimated it will take 10 years or more to rebuild the countries.
In retaliation, the UN convenes an emergency meeting and demands—in an extraordinary action—that all member nations not only boycott Israel, but the Security Council take up resolutions that would in effect place the world body at a state of war with Israel. Obama’s UN representative advises calm and reason, but does not reject or protest these resolutions. In fact, she criticizes Israel for “excessive and unwarranted” actions in defense against the Iranian provocation.
Return of the JediSpring / Summer, 2011 – Civilian militia groups loyal to secessionist states begin to increasingly—and successfully—confront military units loyal to the Obama administration. These militia groups are often lead by state and local police officers (including federalized military deserters) with substantial military training. As these armed clashes increase in number and ferocity, the Obama administration orders the military to clamp down on “unpatriotic forces” by imprisoning local leaders and quarantining cities and towns that support the freedom fighters. Obama cites Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus as his precedent.Rumors of massacres and abuses by Obama’s forces circulate in dissident internet traffic, but are not officially reported by the media. In retaliation, heavily armed and well-trained secessionist units begin a campaign of successful hit and run attacks to demoralize and frustrate Obama’s nationalized army. Captured federalized officers are forced to confess atrocities—subsequently broadcast on a heavily censored internet.As Obama’s unfocused attention is split between a Middle East in the throes of all out war, Russian expansion back into Eastern Europe, the Baltic's and southern Europe, and Chinese opportunism against Taiwan, he prepares to attend a conference to seek foreign support to maintain domestic and regional order. In the wake of this unprecedented disorder, nervous administration allies secretly reach out to active and retired military officers. Despite intense Secret Service and FBI scrutiny, a plan is hatched to end the chaos and remove Obama and his administration.A heavily armed presidential security caravan departs the White House headed for Andrews AFB where Obama will board Air Force One for the conference. After all White House personnel and security are loaded and Air Force One is prepared to take off, there is a sudden and violence-free takeover of the air traffic tower. The tower takeover is immediately followed by the sudden emergence of four Apache helicopters from behind two idle hangers. The Apache’s are bristling with laser guided missiles locked on Air Force One and the escort F-15s. With no time to react or negotiate as the Apache’s computer-guided missile systems impatiently ping Air Force One and the surprised F-15s, the tower orders Obama to depart AFO immediately or the Apaches will fire. With no time to negotiate or compromise, Obama is forced to deplane. He reluctantly walks to the bottom of the ramp where a black SUV whisks him away. Two buses pull to within a short walking distance from the ramp of AFO to accept the Secret Service, FBI and White House personnel. Reporters are ordered to remain on the aircraft while patriot forces board and interrogate them.Back in DC, the Vice President and his security detail are ambushed and overwhelmed after leaving a speaking engagement. Unfortunately, though more violent and bloody than the capture of the president, the Veep is secured as well.On vacation in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi—third in line for presidential succession—is alerted to the putsch and feverishly tries to organize an armed escort back to DC. Her chief of staff is told that if she leaves SF, her plane will be shot down. Military advisors confirm this and advise the speaker not to attempt a return. The Speaker is also cautioned to cease all legislative activities and not to resume her duties—or she will be stopped by any and all means. Forth in line for the presidency—Hillary Clinton—is also notified of the revolt while on official mission in the Middle East. After consultation with the Secret Service and her military attaché, she is advised not to return to the States. She is told that all incoming international air traffic has been stopped and ALL aircraft entering U.S.airspace will be considered hostile and shot down. Secret Service and intelligence services attached to her detail confirm this.
Meanwhile, military forces in the U.S. suspend national legislative activity, but request that state and local activity continue unrestricted. Media restrictions are lifted, but some media outlets are cautioned that they risk censor if they engage in promotion of the Obama administration or its policies. Israel is advised to mop up its operations in Iran and Syria but not to engage in further military activity. U.N representatives are ordered to their home countries immediately with no time-line for return.
All 50 states are ordered asked to send representatives to Washington to debate the future of the U.S. amid historic and nearly uncontrollable chaos. Against this backdrop of strong regional differences, ideological fissures, and U.S./ Mexican border turmoil (aggressively combated by army and civilian militia forces) several petitions are offered that would essentially break the U.S. into semi-autonomous regions. Beyond this series of scenarios, no one can theorize what might happen, but today’s headlines no doubt leave open the very real possibility that any or all of these events might come to pass. Let us hope and pray that we navigate these dangerous and unchartered waters of unfolding events safely to a desirable end.

The Real Che Guevara!

Hollywood is kicking off 2009 with a monumental deception: Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Spanish-language epic Che, rendering a sadistic Marxist killer as, according to the New York Times, a “true revolutionary through the stations of his martyrdom.”[1] The word “stations” suggests the adoration of Christ in the Stations of the Cross. The movie’s protagonist, Benicio del Toro, does indeed compare “the Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto Guevara” with Jesus Christ.[2]

Soderbergh’s Che is a fiction once created by the KGB community, including my Romanian espionage service, the DIE, and at that time that placed me squarely in the picture. The real Che was an assassin who presided over communist firing squads and founded Cuba’s ghastly gulag system. He was also a coward who called upon others to fight to the death for the communist cause and sent to the scaffold hundreds who did not do that, yet he surrendered himself to the Bolivian army without a fight even though he was armed to the teeth. “Don’t kill me,” Che begged his captors. “I am worth more to you alive than dead.”[3] Soderbergh’s movie omitted this part—it would have demolished his Che.

I could write a book on how the terrorist Che was built into an inspiring leftist idol—like a beautiful monarch butterfly emerging from a disgusting caterpillar—and someday I may well do so. For now, here is a summary of how the KGB community created its fictional Che.

In the 1960s, the Soviet bloc’s popularity stood at an all-time low. The Soviets’ brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and their instigation of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis disgusted the world, and every bloc ruler tried to save face in his own way. Khrushchev replaced the “immutable” Marxist-Leninist theory of the world proletarian revolution with a policy of peaceful coexistence, and pretended to be an advocate for peace. Dubcek gambled on a “socialism with a human face” and Gomulka on “Let Poland be Poland.” Ceausescu announced his “independence” from Moscow and portrayed himself as a “maverick” among communist leaders.

The Castro brothers, who feared any liberalization, decided to just plaster a romantic revolutionary façade over their disastrous communism, which was starving the country. They chose Che as poster-boy, because he had been executed in Bolivia, at that time a U.S. ally, and could be portrayed as a martyr of American imperialism.

“Operation Che” was launched to the world by the book Revolution in the Revolution, a primer for communist guerrilla insurrection written by French terrorist Régis Debray, which praised Che to the skies. Debray dedicated his life to exporting Cuban-style revolution throughout Latin America, but in 1967 a Bolivian special forces unit trained by the U.S. captured him, along with Che’s entire guerrilla band.

Che was sentenced to death and executed for terrorism and mass murder. Debray was sentenced to 30 years in jail, but he was released after three years following the intervention of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, a communist romantically involved with the KGB, who was also the ideologue of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist band. Sartre proclaimed Guevara “the most complete human being of our times.”[4] In 1972 Debray returned to France, where he served as adviser for Latin America to French president François Mitterrand, and he dedicated the rest of his life to spreading hatred against the United States.

In 1970, the Castro brothers shifted Che’s sanctification into high gear. Alberto Korda, a Cuban intelligence officer working undercover as a photographer for the Cuban newspaper Revolución, produced a romanticized picture of Che. That now-famous Che, wearing long, curly locks of hair and a revolutionary beret with a star on it, and looking straight into the viewer’s eyes, is the logo advertising Soderbergh’s movie.

It is noteworthy that this picture of Che was introduced to the world by a KGB operative working undercover as a writer—I. Lavretsky, in a book entitled Ernesto Che Guevara, which was edited by the KGB.[5] The KGB entitled the picture “Guerrillero Heroico” and disseminated it throughout South America—Cuba’s area of influence. Italian millionaire publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, another communist romantically involved with the KGB, flooded the rest of world with Che’s picture printed on posters and T-shirts. Feltrinelli became a terrorist himself, and he was killed in 1972 while planting a bomb outside Milan.

I first heard Che’s name in 1959 from General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the former chief Soviet intelligence adviser to Romania, who afterwards directed Castro’s “revolution” and was rewarded by being promoted to head the almighty Soviet foreign intelligence organization, a position he held for fifteen years. He landed in Bucharest with his boss, Nikita Khrushchev, for consultations on West Berlin and “our Cuban Gayane.” Gayane was the overall code name of the operation for Sovietizing Eastern Europe.

At that time, the Soviet party bureaucracy believed that Fidel Castro was just an adventurer, and it was reluctant to endorse him. But Sakharovsky had been impressed by the devotion to communism of Fidel’s brother Raúl and of his lieutenant, Ernesto Guevara, and he made them the main protagonists in “our Cuban Gayane.” The two were brought black to Moscow to be indoctrinated and trained, and were given a KGB adviser.

Returned to the Sierra Maestra, Che proved to be a real, cold-blooded assassin in the mold of the KGB—which killed over 20 million people in the Soviet Union alone. “I fired a .32 caliber bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain that came out through his temple,” Che wrote in his diary, describing the execution of Eutimio Guerra, a “traitor of the Revolution” whom he shot in February 1957.[6] Guerra was the seventh person Che had killed. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is not necessary,” he explained. “These procedures are archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolution must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”[7]

On January 1^st, 1959, the “Cuban Gayane” succeeded, and the KGB charged Che to cleanse the whole Cuba of “anti-revolutionaries.” Thousands were sent to “el paredón” (the wall) and shot. Javier Arzuaga, who was chaplain at La Cabaña prison in early 1959, wrote in his book, Cuba 1959: La Galeria de la Muerte, that he had witnessed “the criminal Che” ordering the execution of some two hundred innocent Cubans. “I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy who was only 16 years old. Che did not budge. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located. … I went to Mexico for treatment.”[8]



Che in Moscow in November 1964, just before he secretly left to fulfil his dream of spreading communist revolution to Bolivia.

According to Arzuaga, Che last words to him were: “When we take our masks off, we will be enemies.”[9] It is now time to take off Che’s smiling mask and reveal his true face. The Cuban Memorial displayed at Tamiami Park in Miami, Florida contains hundreds of crosses, each bearing the name of an identified victim of Raúl’s and Che’s communist terror.[10]

It is also time to stop the fifty-year-long lie, reinforced by Soderbergh’s movie, that the Castro brothers and their hangman Che were independent nationalists. In 1972 I attended a six-hour public speech in which Fidel preached the same lie. The next day I went ocean fishing with Raúl. The other guest on the fishing boat was a Soviet who introduced himself as Nikolay Sergeyevich. “That's Colonel Leonov,” Sergio del Valle, my Cuban counterpart, whispered into my ear. Earlier he had identified Leonov to me as Raúl’s and Che’s KGB adviser in the 1950s and 1960s. There, on that boat, it hit me more clearly than ever before or since that the KGB was holding the reins of the Castros’ revolutionary wagon. Ten years later, Nikolay Leonov was rewarded for his handling of Raúl and Che by being promoted general and deputy chairman of the whole KGB.

In the 1970s, the KGB was a state within the state. Today the KGB, rebaptized FSB, is the state in Russia, and Soderbergh’s Che is manna from heaven for its Latin American surrogates. A couple of months ago two Kremlin’s puppets, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, expelled on the same day the U.S. ambassadors to their countries. Thousands of people carrying the portrait of Soderbergh’s Che took to the streets calling for Russian military protection. Russian military ships are now back in Cuba—and newly in Venezuela—for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis.

“Deception works like cocaine,” Yury Andropov, the father of contemporary Russia’s era of deception, used to tell me when he was KGB chairman. Then he would explain. “If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man.” Mao put it his own way: “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” Soderbergh’s movie on Che is proving both correct.

Notes:

[1] A. O. Scott, “Saluting the Rebel Underneath the T-Shirt,” The New York Times, December 12, 2008.

[2] Guillermo I. Martínez, “Guevara biopic belies his ruthlessness,” The Sun Sentinel, January 1, 2009, p. 13A.

[3] Idem.

[4] Idem.

[5] I. Lavretsky, “Ernesto Che Guevara, “Progress Publishers, 1976, ASIN B000B9V7AW, p. 5. Initially published in Russian in 1973.

[6] Matthew Campbell, “Behind Che Guevara mask, the cold executioner,”The Sunday Times, September 16, 2007.

[7] Mark Goldblath, “Revenge of Che: no amount of Hollywood puferry will change the fact that commies aen’t cool,” The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2008.

[8] “The Infamous Firing Squads,” p. 1, as published in http://therealcuba.com/page5.htm.

[9] Idem.

[10] Ibidem,

THE WAR AGAINST JEWS!

The unspoken truth about the fighting in Gaza, which began on December 19, 2008, when Hamas rockets broke a voluntary truce, is that this is the frontline of a much larger war. This war began 30 years ago with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is now global in scope. Its agenda is the extermination of the Jews and the destruction of the West.

The Islamic terrorist organization Hamas makes no secret of this agenda. Its Egyptian founders and Palestinian inspirers were active followers of Adolf Hitler and enthusiasts of the Nazi Holocaust. The founding charter of Hamas, which promises that “Islam will obliterate Israel,” memorializes the Egyptian admirer of Hitler, Hassan al-Banna, as “the martyr…of blessed memory.” The same document contains the genocidal incitement of the Prophet Mohammed to “kill the Jews,” to hunt them down “until they hide behind the rocks and the trees, and the rocks and trees cry out ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

In 2006, these Islamic Nazis took possession of the Gaza Strip, which is unoccupied except by Hamas and is Jew-less (because the Palestinians would kill any Jews that moved in their state). Hamas has turned Gaza into a terrorist fortress, launching rockets into Israeli schoolyards, hospitals, and townships, and launching them from Palestinian schoolyards, hospitals, and townships to ensure that the maximum number of civilians – both Jews and Muslims – would die for their cause. They will win the Armageddon they are planning, they boast, because “the Jews love life and we love death.”

And all around the world, and across Europe and throughout the United States, Muslim and secular radicals are rallying to this Nazi cause, supporting Hamas and attacking Israel and the Jews. The unholy alliance formed by Muslim fanatics and socialist radicals is the face of the terrorist future in the West. It is a coalition for whom no party is so evil that it does not deserve aid and comfort if its enemies are Israel and the United States, and if it is willing to attack them.

The wars in the Middle East are the frontline of the Islamic Nazi offensive – a 60-year aggression of Muslim Arabs against the Jews, rationalized at each turn by epic lies that resonate with radicals in the West: that the Arab aggressors are the victims; that the Jews stole Arab land (Israel in fact was created out of the ruins of the Turkish empire); that there is a Palestinian entity that wants peace with the state of Israel (there is none – there is not a single Palestinian leader – who supports the existence of a Jewish state).

The Palestinians are the only people in history to have a majority support a national death cult, to worship the murderers of little children (including their own), and to proclaim the murderers saints and “martyrs.” The father of Palestinian Nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was an acolyte and ally of Hitler who preached the extermination of the Jews and planned to construct his own death camps for Jews in the Middle East. The miseries Palestinians have suffered are self-inflicted, the inevitable consequence of staking their national ambitions on the genocide of another people, while embracing a death cult for themselves.

Their allies in the West are either stupendously ignorant or morally blind. Here is the self-revealing declaration of the Associate Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin (both an ignoramus and a moral defective): “The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with ‘Terror.’ It has nothing to do with the long-term ‘security’ of the Jewish State….” What it has to do with is the evil Jews and their evil American supporters: “Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism…the callousness with which we indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.”

The author of this repulsive, traitorous statement, Wisconsin Professor Jennifer Lowenstein, is herself a Jew, but obviously a self-hating member of the tribe, the likes of which have a sordid lineage going back to the “capos” who shoveled their companions into the ovens and collaborated with their murderers. Like many of her political comrades in the secular and religious Left, she has joined the forces of Islamic barbarism that are ranged against the civilized people of America and Israel. And she is only one of many. In the midst of the global war that radical Islam has declared on the West, the conflict in Gaza has revealed the presence of a fifth column in the West so detached from its own communities and civilized values that it now constitutes a clear and present danger to our survival.

OBAMA'S FIRST BIG TEST? BALTIC MISSILE CRISIS!

In his first State of the State address on November 5, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that the Kremlin would soon deploy short-range Iskander missiles right next to the Polish border, in order “to neutralize if necessary the antiballistic missile system in Europe.” On its face, the provocative move was a response to this August’s U.S./Polish missile deal, which the Kremlin has vocally opposed. But the timing of Medvedev’s announcement was transparently deliberate. It was a Russian-made test of mettle directed at America’s new president elect, Barack Obama.

Obama’s supporters were still celebrating his victory when Medvedev delivered a message designed not to congratulate the new president, but to put him on notice. Describing the speech as “belligerent,” The Economist reported that the date of the televised address “had changed twice before the Kremlin settled for November 5th. This timing was meant to show that Russia’s agenda is unaffected by such trivia as America’s presidential election. But it also smacked of rival attention-seeking: even as the world listened to Barack Obama’s victory speech, Medvedev was laying out a Russian version of democracy.”

In a notable breach of the usual niceties and protocols, Medvedev didn’t even acknowledge Barack Obama’s election win. Instead, he blamed the U.S. for “dragging the rest of the world down with it” during the recent economic crisis, and for supposedly “encouraging Georgia’s barbaric aggression,” a reference to the Russian war over South Ossetia this summer. “The August crisis only accelerated the arrival of the crucial moment of truth. We proved… that we are strong enough to defend our citizens and that we can indeed defend our national interests,” Medvedev said, adding ominously, “we are being tested to the limit.” Medvedev said that the era of American dominance after the collapse of the Soviet Union was over. “The world cannot be ruled from one capital,” he warned. “Those who do not want to understand this will only create new problems for themselves and others.”

Both the timing and the content of Medvedev’s address were “particularly odd,” said military analyst Alexander Golts, who noted this is the first time since the Cold War that Russia has raised the specter of military threat to the West. “Even Soviet hawks used to wait for six months after an American election to make big statements of military strategy,” Golts remarked.

David Satter of the Hudson Institute told FrontPage that Medvedev’s remarks were “essentially posturing, but posturing that is intended to push the new administration into abandoning” missile defense projects in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Satter explained that the Kremlin needs to “exploit the notion of a hostile West,” for domestic consumption, “the better to consolidate its own hold on power.”

Even non-expert observers couldn’t help but think back to some cryptic statements made by Obama’s vice presidential running mate, Senator Joe Biden, in the final weeks of the election campaign. In a speech to key donors, Biden warned that if elected, Barack Obama would face a serious “test” early in his first term. “Mark my words,” Biden said. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember, I said it standing here, if you don't remember anything else I said: Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Obama’s supporters enjoy comparing him to JFK, without quite realizing that their slain hero experienced many embarrassing, costly failures. Biden is not so historically illiterate; in that candid statement to Obama donors, he was harkening back to President Kennedy’s fateful first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev just a few months after taking office in 1961. The older, cagier Khrushchev took the measure of the new president and found him wanting. Kennedy himself admitted that during that uncongenial first encounter, Khrushchev “beat the hell out of me.” As for the Soviet Premier, he later recalled “feeling sorry” for his youthful American counterpart – but not so sorry that he would cut Kennedy any slack. Within weeks of that meeting, the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall. Within months, they’d installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States. The result was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war for thirteen days in October 1962.

When considering the comparison between Kennedy and Obama, it is important to note that unlike Obama, Kennedy was a decorated Navy veteran who’d seen combat in a shooting war. Kennedy had also served far longer as a U.S. Senator, and boasted a family background of high-level diplomacy. None of that adequately prepared him to deal with a ruthless Russian leader.

Doubts about Obama’s views on military affairs first arose during the campaign. For instance, his wavering response to the Russian invasion of Georgia left some voters doubting Obama’s leadership in times of crisis. In an August meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, he vowed to uphold the new missile defense treaty. However, he expressed doubts about missile defense research during the primaries (claiming he’d support it if “it works and if it can be financially feasible,” according to one adviser) and was then accused of “flip flopping” on the issue. In one speech, he vowed, “I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.”

In the same speech, Obama declared, “I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.” Of course, any such negotiations will have to wait until after his inauguration on January 20. In the meantime, the White House issued a statement on November 6, declaring their eagerness to sit down with Russia for a “robust dialogue” in “the next couple of weeks.”

Besides setting new limits on the size of Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals, the White House hopes to assuage Russian objections to the new European anti-missile system. Yet with President Bush now reduced to “lame duck” status, the Russians may well stall for time until they can meet with the next occupant of the Oval Office.

When that inevitable meeting occurs, says David Satter, Obama must avoid showing weakness at all costs. Agreeing to delay or even to cancel the Eastern European missile defense system would be interpreted by the Russians as a sign that “pressure on the U.S. works, even when it is a matter of American defense interests.” The Kremlin would make “new and more outrageous demands in the future."

In other words, Medvedev’s address may well be recorded by historians as Obama’s first crisis, the one his running mate warned Americans would come. How a President Obama responds when the time comes will determine whether more will follow.

BLACK RACISTS RECRUITED TO GUIDE JIHAD!!!!

Black Muslim lawyer Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour recently made news when it was revealed that he was a patron of Barack Obama and recommended him for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988. Back in the 1960s, al-Mansour, whose “slave name” was then Don Warden, was deeply involved in Bay Area racial politics as founder of a group called the African American Association. A close personal adviser to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, al-Mansour helped the pair establish the Black Panther Party but later broke with them when they entered coalitions with white radical groups. After becoming a Muslim, al-Mansour found not only an ideological justification for his racism but also a political purpose. That was, in the words of a memorandum produced by the Muslim Brotherhood and seized by the FBI as part of its probe of the Holy Land Foundation, to “eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within.” Many black racists like al-Mansour are key figures in this “stealth” jihad, whose prime recruiting grounds are the U.S. prisons and mosques where inmates and worshippers alike are taught to embrace a radical Islam engaged in an apocalyptic battle against America.

Al-Mansour met Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in the mid-1970s and formed a relationship that led to al-Mansour’s hiring as attorney to King Saud. He has since been an adviser to Saudi billionaires who fund the stealth jihad and spread Wahhabi extremism in America.

Other black racist Islamists play less glamorous but equally significant roles as Imams at major mosques in the U.S.; as chaplains in prisons and jails; and as radical figures who haunt American higher education by advising and speaking for organizations such as the Muslim Students Association (MSA) on campuses across the nation. Whatever audience they target, they speak a lingua franca of anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-American hatred—all in the name of Allah.

And why is it that black racists such as al-Mansour constitute a significant proportion of these hate mongers? In large part, it is because blacks have been specifically and aggressively targeted for recruitment by leaders of the worldwide jihad, just as they were targeted for recruitment by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s. Black grievance, combined with the evangelism of the Nation of Islam over the last seventy years, has established an audience for the ideology of hate.

The prison, as the last bastion of racism and racial separatism, has become a prime recruitment center for radical Islam. Al Qaeda training manuals found by U.S. troops in Afghanistan reveal that America’s black prisoners, who constitute nearly half of the nation’s two million inmates, are viewed by terrorists as a potentially bountiful source of new jihadi recruits. The immensely wealthy Saudi government, which has made the propagation of radical Islam in America a top priority, has shipped tens of thousands of copies of the Koran to U.S. jails in recent years. Through the National Islamic Prison Foundation, Saudi money finances an extensive “prison outreach” program that seeks to convert inmates to Islam and to anti-Americanism. Prison chaplains are typically Wahhabis (practitioners of Saudi Arabia’s most extreme, fundamentalist form of Islam) who have been certified and trained as religious officials by either the Islamic Society of North America or the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, both of which are currently under federal investigation for ties to terrorism. Islam expert Stephen Schwartz states that “radical Muslim chaplains … acting in coordination to impose an extremist agenda … have gained a monopoly over Islamic religious activities in American state, federal, and city prisons and jails.” Some 135,000 inmates convert to Islam annually, and almost all of these converts are African Americans.

Focusing their efforts and fortunes not only on prisons, the Saudis also have spent many millions of dollars funding a majority of America’s mosques, and have dispatched Imams from a number of Middle Eastern nations to settle in the U.S. as missionaries. Faheem Shuaibe, an Imam at a predominately black mosque in California, says that Saudi Arabia has set up “a very deliberate recruitment process … trying to find black Muslims who had a real potential for Islamic learning and also for submission to their agenda” of Wahhabi extremism. According to Islam scholar Daniel Pipes, there are approximately “a million American-born converts to Islam (and their descendants) in the United States and most of them have shifted allegiances away from their native country.” Pakistani religious leaders Sami ul-Haq and Fazrul Rehman predict that “in the next 10 years, Americans will wake up to the existence of an Islamic army in their midst—an army of jihadis who will force America to abandon imperialism and listen to the voice of Allah.”

The racial composition of this jihadi army is, of course, influenced by the Saudi targeting of African Americans. According to Reza Safa, an authority on Wahhabism’s spread throughout the world, “as many as 90 percent of American converts to Islam are black.”

The somewhat shadowy Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour embodies the marriage of racism and Islamism that characterizes the stealth jihad. Using his legal training to leverage his standing in the Islamic world, al-Mansour is a black nationalist and an outspoken hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally. In recent years he has accused the U.S. of plotting a “genocide” designed “to remove 15 million black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society.” He has told fellow blacks that “whatever you do to [white people], they deserve it, God wants you to do it and that’s when you cut out the nose, cut out the ears, take flesh out of their body, don’t worry because God wants you to do it.” Alleging further that Palestinians in Israel “are being brutalized like savages,” he accuses the Jews of “stealing the land the same way the Christians stole the land from the Indians in America.”

Other black racists who echo al-Mansour’s ideas include Imam Abdul Alim Musa, founder and director of the As-Sabiqun movement, which aims to “enable Islam to take complete control of … the lives of all human beings on Earth.” In 2004 the San Francisco Bay View described Musa as “one of the highest-ranking Islamic leaders in the Black community, nationwide and specifically in the Islamic movement.” Born in Arkansas as Clarence Reams, Musa was raised in Oakland, California. During the 1960s, he embraced the violent ideology of the Black Panthers. He went on to become a leading cocaine-exporter in Colombia, a crime for which he eventually was incarcerated. While in prison, he converted to Islam and took his present name. An avid supporter of Iran’s lateAyatollah Khomeini, Musa calls for Islam to “take over America.”

He praises Muslim suicide bombers as “heroes” who courageously “strike at the heart of Zionism.” He predictsthat “this way of life known as Islam will dominate all other ways of life.” He lauds those who seek to honor Allah by means of violence. He says that America holds values and attitudes consistent with those of the Ku Klux Klan. He has praised Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, and Hamas. And he holds that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were orchestrated jointly by the U.S. and Israeli governments in order to provide a pretext for waging war against Islam.

Warith Deen Umar (formerly Wallace Gene Marks), who was repeatedly incarcerated as a teenager, is a retired Muslim cleric who spent two decades helping to run New York’s Islamic prison program. A confidante of Nation of Islam kingpin Louis Farrakhan, Umarpersonally recruited and trained dozens of chaplains. With help from the Saudi government, he brought that country’s fanatical brand of Islam to New York’s Muslim inmates. Hebelieves that the 9/11 hijackers should be honored as martyrs, and that the U.S. risks further terrorist attacks because it oppresses Muslims around the world. Viewing black prisoners as potential soldiers in such attacks, Umar says, “Prisons are a powder keg. The question is the ignition.” He wrote in an unplublished memoir, “Even Muslims who say they are against terrorism secretly admire and applaud” the hijackers. The Koran, he added, does not condemn terrorism against oppressors of Muslims, even if innocent people are killed in the process. “This is the sort of teaching they don’t want in prison,” he said. “But this is what I’m doing.”

Sheikh Khalid Yasin is a U.S.-born, Atlanta-based Muslim convert (and a Malcolm X disciple) who has been a popular guest speaker at Muslim Students Association (MSA) events across the United States. He candidly states that America one day will be governed by Sharia (Islamic Law); that Muslims should steadfastly refuse to become friends with non-Muslims; that 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S. and/or Israel; that homosexuals should be killed in accordance with Koranic mandates; and that AIDS was invented at a U.S. government lab for the purpose of killing nonwhites around the world.

Former Nation of Islam member Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali is a black Imam in Oakland who also has become a familiar figure on U.S. campuses where he speaks for the MSA. A passionate supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, he endorses suicide bombings as a legitimate “resistance” tactic of Muslim “martyrs.” He calls for “an Islamic revolution” that will lead to the creation of “an Islamic state” where “Allah controls every place—the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress.” He maintains that “the Zionist Jews” were responsible for the Danish cartoon controversy that sparked Muslim riots around the world in 2006. He accuses the “apartheid State of Israel” of carrying out a “holocaust” and a “genocide” against the Palestinian people. Referring to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks,” he warns Jews: “[Y]our days are numbered…. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.”

Such are the commitments of the figures who have become the spearpoint of the Islamic jihad in America. Moving out from the hidden corners of American society into universities and other public places, these preachers of hate have made racism and Islamism into a potent toxin that they release under the cover of diversity and religious pluralism.

BIDEN'S SECRET DIPLOMACY!!!!

Here before us is a Soviet archival document,* a top secret report by a communist apparatchik who had received a delegation of US Senators led by Joseph Biden in 1979. After describing routine arms control discussions, it quotes Biden as telling the Soviets off-record that he did not really care about the persecution of Russian dissidents. He and other Senators might raise human rights issues with their Soviet counterparts, but only to be seen by the public as defenders of human rights, not to have those problems really solved. They would happily take no for an answer.

Vadim V. Zagladin, the then deputy head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee (the organization formerly known as the Comintern), wrote in the report:

The delegation did not officially raise the issue of human rights during the negotiations. Biden said they did not want 'to spoil the atmosphere with problems which are bound to cause distrust in our relations.' However, during the breaks between the sessions the senators passed to us several letters concerning these or those 'refuseniks'.

Refuseniks were one of the best known groups of oppressed citizens in the USSR at that time: thousands of Jews who were refused exit permissions to emigrate to Israel on various trumped-up pretexts.

Unofficially, Biden and [Senator Richard] Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for 'human rights'. They must prove to their voters that they are 'effective in fulfilling their wishes'. In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.

In the same conversation, Biden asked us to ensure that senators' appeals on those issues are not left unanswered - even if we just reply that the letter is received but we cannot do anything.

Like most secret documents of the Cold War years, this report still remains classified in Russia's official archives. However, a copy is available in the Gorbachev Foundation Archive in Moscow, where it was deposited by Mr. Zagladin - who himself works for the Gorbachev Foundation since the collapse of the USSR. Under pressure from the Kremlin, the archive had to limit the access to some of its documentary collections. However, Zagladin's documents (Inventory 3/1) - including the one quoted above - were still available to researchers a few years ago, and that is how we obtained copies.

Of course, when people's reputations are at stake, a natural question is: how far can we believe a document written by a communist? Other things being equal, if it is Zagladin's word against a word of a U.S. Senator, one would surely believe the latter. Hopefully, Sen. Biden and Sen. Lugar will fairly soon provide the public with their own accounts of that episode, and then we will be able to compare.

Yet, we should not forget that these top secret documents were never intended to see the light of the day. They were written not for us, but for a very narrow circle of Zagladin's communist bosses. Indeed, it was his job to deceive simple mortals; but deceiving the Politburo would be both pointless and dangerous. After reading and analyzing hundreds of suchlike reports by Zagladin, one cannot but conclude that he always portrayed his foreign collocutors as tougher, not softer, than they really were. That was natural, because that was safer for Zagladin himself. It was his job to cultivate foreign contacts, which made him to a degree responsible for their behavior. If he reported that someone was pro-Soviet and then the man turned out to be anti-Soviet, Zagladin would be held responsible. That is why he always preferred to err on the other side.

In any case, diplomacy is not so much about what you mean as how you are understood. If you go to Moscow sincerely determined to fight like a lion for human rights, and then leave the enemy with an impression that you don't care – this is a monumental failure. It hardly matters what Senators Biden and Lugar actually thought about Soviet human rights abuses in the first place. If they really cared for human rights and meant to pressure the Soviets – so much the worse. Be that as it may, they were understood as the document reads. The message which the enemy received from them was this: we don't care for those whom you keep torturing and rotting in prisons, but we would appreciate if you help us improve our public image.

There was more to it than simply the betrayal of dissidents; for this involved the question of the Senators' own independence. Indeed, they should have known that every Soviet official who dealt with high-ranking foreigners would see them not as partners, but as potential targets for recruitment, potential collaborators or fellow-travelers. On such occasions, the Soviets always searched for a way to corrupt you. The worst thing you could do was to show the enemy that you depend on him in any way. For any Western politician, telling the Soviets that his public image depends on their good will was the first step to becoming an agent of influence, de facto if not de jure.

Today, it is a fact rather than a possibility that the next U.S. administration will have to lead the free world in the Second Cold War. Respectively, the staunchest critics of Russia's authoritarianism from recent years - Senators McCain and Biden - are now at the center stage of the electoral campaign. Yet, fighting and winning this new Cold War will require more than just rhetoric. In order to work out correct strategies and tactics, it is more important than ever to analyze the lessons and mistakes of the first Cold War.

* [Top secret document is printed below]

9-20 April 1979 [?]

The memo by Vadim V. Zagladin, deputy head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee

ON THE BASIC CONTENTS OF TALKS WITH THE US SENATORS

During the official negotiations with the delegation of US senators led by J. Biden and the unofficial talks with the delegation's head and some members, our collocutors expressed a number of considerations of certain interest.

1. J. Biden, the head of the delegation, said that the mutual understanding that the SALT-2 treaty should be ratified is, basically, achieved in the Senate Commission for Foreign Affairs. However, four reservations should be formulated. The contents of those reservations have already been reported to us by our embassy in Washington.

While commenting on the contents of those reservations, Biden said they should not worry the Soviet Union because they do not concern the substance of the treaty. The only reservation which, in his opinion, may cause our 'displeasure' says that the SALT-2 should not prevent the US from providing the defence capabilities of their allies. In practice, the collocutor said, this is a way to confirm the US' preparedness to keep supplying European NATO members with modern US weapons, with the exception, naturally, of those types which are covered by the treaty itself.

The Senate Commission for Foreign Affairs is going to conclude the consideration of the treaty by the end of September. However, the Senate itself is starting to work on this problem later, possibly on the eve of the Christmas.

2. As for the problem of supplying Western Europe with new types of weapons, including the Pershing missiles etc.;, Biden said that no final decisions had been taken on this issue yet. Those decisions will be taken in December. And a lot there, he emphasised, will depend on the position of the Soviet Union.

During unofficial talks, Biden noted rather cynically that he personally and other members of the US Senate do not very much care about the Europeans' concerns. The main area of the US citizens' interest is the security of the US itself. Nevertheless, the feelings of our allies also 'concern us', he said. 'We cannot stop supporting our allies, because if we did that, we would have weakened America's own security'. Therefore, Biden continued, the Americans will probably have to solve the question of the supplies of the new types of armaments to Western Europe positively in principle. In any case, the majority in the Senate supports that, he said.

Then Biden meaningfully emphasised (and he was actively supported by Senator Prior here) that if the SALT-2 treaty is ratified before December, and if the Soviet Union makes some demonstrative steps in favour of further disarmament progress before the NATO meeting, the European countries probably may refrain from deploying new types of American weapons in Europe, or at least, postpone the decisions taken on this issue.

To our question on what exactly steps are meant here, Prior answered that, for example, the Soviet government might state it is not going to increase the number of SS-20 missiles any further.

3. Something that caught our attention was that this time, in both official and unofficial talks, the senators would raise more questions about the prospects, about the SALT-3, than the SALT-2. Unofficially, Biden said that 'the question of the future is more significant to the more serious senators - although not to all - than the question of the present treaty. The thing is (he explained) that many in the Senate consider the present treaty as a kind of an intermediate step, a booster for the further reduction of the arms race. Many in the US are very serious about this, believing it is possible to negotiate the reduction of the level of military confrontation with the Soviet Union. However, at the same time, many people are uncertain whether the USSR will agree to further serious steps of that kind.'

Most questions concerned two subjects. Firstly, whether the USSR would agree to a significant reduction of the number of nuclear missiles at the next stage (the senators were particularly interested in heavy missiles in this connection). Secondly, whether the USSR would agree to the explansion of control and the introduction of 'more effective methods' (for example, the 'black boxes', which were discussed during the negotiations on the prohibition of underground nuclear tests).

It emerged during that talks that, in spite of all huge work we are doing about this, many statements of Comrade L. I. Brezhnev were unknown to the majority of the senators - for example, his statement that the Soviet Union was not going to make the first nuclear strike against anyone. The relevant texts were given to them, along with some other documents of the CPSU and the Soviet government.

4. It should also be noted that, this time, the delegation did not officially raise the issue of human rights during the negotiations. Biden said the did not want 'to spoil the atmosphere with problems which are bound to cause distrust in our relations.' However, during the breaks between the sessions the senators passed to us several letters concerning these or those 'refuseniks'.

Unofficially, Biden and Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for 'human rights'. They must prove to their voters that they are 'effective in fulfilling their wishes'. In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.

In the same conversation, Biden asked us to ensure that senators' appeals on those issues are not left unanswered - even if we just reply that the letter is received but we cannot do anything. According to Biden, letters of this kind - if they are not addressed to the highest representatives of the Soviet state - sometimes remain unanswered.

JEWS AGAINST OBAMA!!!!

JEWS AGAINST OBAMA You don't have to be a Jew to join Jews Against Obama.

Why Jews Against Obama?

The Jewish Task Force (JTF.org) is an organization of right wing Jews and righteous gentiles who follow the teachings of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. Thus we are opposed to Israel surrendering land for “peace.” We are also opposed to Islamic terrorism, which we believe is an integral part of Islam.

Unfortunately America has refused to win every single war she has fought after World War II. Our leaders have been more concerned about world opinion, sparing “innocent civilians” and “winning hearts and minds.” Israel has done the equivalent in her recent battle with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This refusal to win wars is all due to the pernicious influence of the Left, which has gained a major foothold in the Democrat party in the U.S., as well as the European Union and Israel. Therefore, JTF is also opposed to domestic fifth columnists who attempt to undermine America’s and Israel’s will to defend themselves and to properly fight their wars. Barack Hussein Obama is an example of a fifth columnist. We have started Jews Against Obama to expose him as being just that.

• Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a Muslim from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and his step father was a Muslim from Indonesia.
• Obama’s childhood mentor was a communist.
• Obama attended Muslim Basuki School and a Catholic school in Indonesia and his religion was registered as Muslim in both schools. Despite this overwhelming evidence, Obama insists he was never a Muslim.
• Obama has promised that in his first year of office, he will invite Iranian terrorist dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the White House in order improve relations and relax trade restrictions with Iran. This would certainly lead to the sale of advanced American technology, which would enable Iran to develop nuclear bombs much more quickly.
• Obama is a supporter of Kenyan Muslim Raila Odinga, who recently lost in that country’s election, and who wants to institute Islamic Sharia law as the law of that land. Raila claims to be Obama’s first cousin.
• Obama wants Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo to have access to the American legal system. Note that these Guantanamo attorneys [who represent these terrorists pro bono] are supporting Obama.
• Obama’s foreign policy advisors from the Carter Administration are notoriously anti-Israel and antisemitic.
• A non-profit organization with Obama on its board gave money to the terrorist-supporting Arab American Action Network, which favors Israel's destruction and is completely against America enforcing any of her immigration laws.
• Obama helped raise money for Muslim terrorist refugee camps in the Middle East.
• Obama has been endorsed by communist Daniel Ortega (former head of the Weather Underground organization), communist Tom Hayden, Jesse Jackson, and Muslim racist and antisemite Louis Farrakhan.
• Obama’s National Campaign Cochairman is congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., a notorious racist and antisemite.
• Obama’s Pastor, who Obama claims is his mentor, traveled with Muslim racist and antisemite Louis Farrakhan to Libya in 1984 to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

These are only a few of many, many issues. Please join us in our fight against Barack Hussein Obama and help save America and Israel.

PALIN POUNCES ON OBAMAS' AYERS/REZKO CONNECTION!!!

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of his association with a former 1960s radical, stepping up the campaign's effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.

Palin's reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, during the tumultuous Vietnam War era four decades ago. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, served on a charity board with Ayers several years ago and has denounced his radical views and activities.

The Republican campaign, falling behind Obama in polls, plans to make attacks on Obama's character a centerpiece of presidential candidate John McCain's message with a month remaining before Election Day.

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Palin, Alaska's governor, said that donors on a greeting line had encouraged her and McCain to get tougher on Obama. She said an aide then advised her, "Sarah, the gloves are off, the heels are on, go get to them."

The escalated effort to attack Obama's character dovetails with TV ads by outside groups questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama live in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that develops community groups to help the poor. Obama left the board in December 2002.

Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group of which Ayers was a founder. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s.

Palin cited a New York Times story published Saturday that detailed Obama's relationship with Ayers. In an interview with CBS News earlier in the week, Palin didn't name any newspapers or magazines that had shaped her view of the world.

Summing up its findings, the Times wrote: "A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.'"

Earlier Saturday, Palin spent 35 minutes at a diner in Greenwood Village where she met with Blue Star Moms, a support group of families whose sons or daughters are serving in the armed forces. Reporters were allowed in the diner for less than five minutes before being ushered out by the campaign.

Palin, whose 19-year-old son, Track, deployed last month as a private with an Army combat team, was overheard at one point commiserating with one of the mothers: "Any time I ask my son how he's doing, he says, 'Mom, I'm in the Army now.'"

Taking one question from reporters about competing in battleground states, Palin repeated her wish that the campaign had not pulled out of Michigan, a prominent state in presidential elections where Obama leads by double-digit percentage points in recent polls.

"As I said the other day, I would sure love to get to run to Michigan and make sure that Michigan knows that we haven't given up there," she said. "We care much about Michigan and every other state. I wish there were more hours in the day so that we could travel all over this great country and start speaking to more Americans. So, not worried about it but just desiring more time and, you know, to put more effort into each one of these states."

THE PIT BULL WITH LIPSTICK RETURNS!!!!

In the weeks preceding yesterday’s vice presidential debate, one might have been forgiven for suspecting a vast right-wing conspiracy to lower expectations for Sarah Palin. A platitude-filled interview with Katie Couric, spoofed on “Saturday Night Live” and lamented by unnamed but oft-quoted “top advisers to John McCain,” seemed to underscore the impression that the attractive Alaska governor was all style and no substance – and certainly no match for a Senate heavyweight like Joe Biden.

Palin did nothing to discourage such deflationary talk. For instance, she suggested that she was overmatched by the experienced Biden when she said that she’d been listening to his “speeches since I was in the second grade.” So pronounced did the underselling of Palin become that even the Obama campaign felt compelled to bolster the case for the really “terrific debater” who would “give a great performance next Thursday.”

Alas for the Obama camp, their spin was more precise. Time and again in their Thursday night debate, Palin not only stood her ground against Biden but, on issue after issue, outperformed her Democratic counterpart. This political pit-bull, it turns out, has bark and bite.

It didn’t hurt Palin that Biden seemed determined to rehearse the more dubious charges of the Obama campaign. Several times, Biden suggested that John McCain had pushed for a special tax break for oil companies like Exxon Mobil at the expense of tax relief for the middle class, a charge that first aired in an Obama TV ad earlier this summer. At the time, the non-partisan website PoltiFact.com, maintained by the St. Petersburg Times, demonstrated that it was a serious distortion of McCain’s support for a broad reduction in corporate taxes.

Palin went one better. Not only did she identify by name Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, but she went on to point out, accurately, that Obama himself had voted for the 2005 energy bill that granted tax breaks to oil companies, and contrasted it with her own much-publicized battles with oil companies in Alaska. (Palin was too nice to mention that Obama’s crusading against Exxon hasn’t prevented him from pocketing more than $30,000 from Exxon-Mobil employees.) A minor issue in the context of the wider debate, it nonetheless established straightaway that Palin not only understood the details of policy – something that her recent televised flops had given cause to doubt – but would not be bullied on politics.

And, indeed, she wasn’t. Take foreign policy. As the reigning chairman and longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was thought to have a clear advantage on the subject. It was just one of the assumptions demolished in the course of the debate. When Biden tried to defend Obama’s record on the Iraq war, Palin countered with some inconvenient praise, noting that Biden had earlier “opposed the move [Obama] made to try to cut off funding for the troops and I respect you for that.”

Going on the attack, Palin then asked how Biden could defend Obama’s position “especially with your son in the National Guard.” The reference to Beau Biden, a captain in Delaware's National Guard, was particularly clever, coming as it did from Biden’s very own political playbook: During the primaries last August, Biden had scorned his Democratic opponents for voting against funding for the troops “to make a political point,” memorably adding that “there's no political point worth my son's life.” He couldn’t have imagined then how the line would come back to haunt him.

To shift the topic, Biden reached for a standard Democratic talking point. Iraq, he insisted, was a distraction from the real war on terror. Palin again gave no ground. Democrats’ claims to the contrary notwithstanding, she countered, Iraq is indeed a central front in the war on terror. “And as for who coined that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was General Petraeus and al Qaeda,” said Palin, amusingly pointing out that this was the “only thing that they're ever going to agree on.” Against Palin’s pointed outline of the stakes in Iraq, Biden’s promise to withdraw troops in adherence with a political timeline seemed especially out of touch. And although Palin did not raise the point directly, viewers were left to wonder: How would President Obama make good on his promises to defeat al-Qaeda when he and his running mate refuse to recognize Iraq as a key battleground in the war on terror?

Palin proved even more adept in pricking the Democratic ticket’s pretensions to bi-partisanship. When Biden suggested that an Obama presidency would end polarization in Washington, Palin noted that Obama cast some 96 percent of his votes “solely along party line.” As Biden strained to play the loyal surrogate, Palin not only called attention to McCain’s record of breaking with his own party, but proudly boasted that he “never asked me to check my opinions at the door.”

Biden had hardly burnished his bi-partisan credentials when he revealed that his great insight as a senator was to recognize that judicial nominees should not be evaluated on their service record or qualifications but on the basis of their political ideology, citing as a putative achievement his successful 1987 campaign to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. Those who recall Biden’s role in misrepresenting the record of Judge Bork – a Yale law professor and a member of the prestigious Court of Appeals whose great failing was to be a judicial conservative – might wonder how it supports his pledge to usher in an era of post-partisanship.

The discrepancy was not lost on Palin. In one of her most effective lines of the evening, she rebuffed Biden’s partisan attempts to tie McCain to the Bush administration by observing that “for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going.” As with so many other times in the debate, Biden had no compelling answer.

Nor could the Washington veteran match Palin’s engaging presence, which ultimately turned the debate in her favor. Charming, gracious, and politically fluent, she deftly inserted populist references to “Main Streeters like me” and even forced a crack in Biden’s steely façade when she premised a rejoinder with a ringing, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

Biden, by contrast, was stiff and hectoring, with his recurrent admonition – “Let me say that again” – calling to mind all the pompousness of the entrenched political class. One almost expected the Senator to address himself in the third person, which in fact he did, when he assured his interviewer, Gwen Ifill, that “no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend to Israel than Joe Biden.” That is debatable. More certain is that Joe Biden has had better debates.

Presidential campaigns rarely hinge on political debates, and yesterday’s duel is unlikely to reverse this history. It does, however, confirm a point that until yesterday seemed increasingly uncertain. If John McCain loses the election, it won’t be because of Sarah Palin.

WHO IS GETTING MONEY FROM BIG OIL!!!!

Races to Watch IV: Money Flowing from Oil and Gas

Published by Eliza Krigman on September 29, 2008 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The oil and gas industry, under the spotlight this fall with energy at the forefront of political discourse, isn't hesitating to put some of its record profits into the hands of candidates who support its cause (or those it's seeking to convert). So far this election cycle, the oil and gas industry has given $12.3 million total to congressional candidates. Oil giants Chevron, Exxon Mobil and BP, each of which is among the top 100 donors of all time a (including employee and PAC donations), are among those companies that are attempting to sway congressional races.

Republicans have historically been the industry's favorite, bringing in as much as 82 percent of the contributions from oil and gas companies in the 2006 election cycle. Of the $12.3 million the industry has given to congressional candidates this cycle, Republicans have collected 75 percent. Nine of the top 10 Senate candidates and eight of the top 10 House candidates who have received the most oil money this cycle are Republicans.

The energy-related issues playing a role in the congressional races this year are numerous. Gas prices hit a new record, and renewable energy is now competing with oil and gas for subsidies. The ban on offshore drilling is likely to be lifted, and many candidates for Congress, particularly those from coastal states, are using this as a major part of their platform.

"I think energy is a big issue on people's minds mainly because of the rise in cost of gasoline, and the rise in cost of home utility bills, especially electricity," said Charles Ebinger, director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution. "The electricity bills in some northeastern states could go up to $1,500 a month this winter. These two things are perceived to be hitting people's pocketbooks the hardest. This is why issues like offshore drilling and nuclear energy are being discussed much more widely."

There is a lot at stake for the oil and gas industry this year--and for the politicians who hope to keep or gain a seat in Congress. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has identified the candidates who have received the most money from oil and gas interests in this election cycle, and Capital Eye selected a few races to more deeply examine the impact of well-digger dollars on politics.

"Oil and gas money always plays a prominent role in politics, because there is so much of it," said Daniel J. Weiss, an energy and climate expert at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "Oil company lobbyists are trying to protect their record profits by opposing an end to industry tax breaks. They're giving a lot of money to people who support those tax breaks."

Here are a few oil-supported races to watch:

Louisiana Senate Race

Mary L. Landrieu (D)* Total Raised: $9,493,299 Total from oil and gas companies: $305,950

John Neely Kennedy (R) Total Raised: $5,622,089 Total from oil and gas companies: $117,900

This election cycle, only Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) have received more money than Louisiana incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu from the oil and gas industry. Her nearly $306,000 haul is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment given that Landrieu is a Democrat and the oil and gas industry heavily favors Republicans. Landrieu's opponent, Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy, hasn't exactly been ignored by the industry, however, having pocketed more than $117,000 himself. Because the oil and gas industry plays such a big role in Louisiana, constituents there may not see the contributions as being tainted, the way constituents in other parts of the country might.

"Oil and gas provide the backbone for the Louisiana economy," said Scott Schneider, spokesman for the Landrieu campaign. "It's the source of thousands of jobs in the state and on the Gulf Coast." According to the state government, Louisiana is the number-one producer of crude oil and the number-two producer of natural gas among the 50 states. As a hub of the energy industry, and one of the few states where offshore drilling is permitted, oil money has always had a significant role in Louisiana politics.

The main reason that the oil and gas industry has been so supportive of Landrieu may be because of her action on offshore drilling. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Landrieu became the first Louisiana lawmaker to push through legislation allowing the Pelican State to recoup lost revenue by sharing royalties from offshore drilling, according to Congressional Quarterly. During fiscal year 2007, Louisiana received $23.1 million from offshore leases--and the state expects this number to go up dramatically in the next decade--and has put the funds toward coastal restoration. Those receiving a piece of the offshore pie have not been shy about contributing to Landrieu: oil rig operator Edison Chouest Offshore ranks fourth among her top contributors between 2003 and 2008.

Landrieu can use every dollar she can raise, as the she seems to be the only Senate incumbent that Democrats fear will lose a seat. "The Republican Party was a beneficiary of the demographic shakeup statewide, there is no question about that," said Thomas Langston, a political scientist at Tulane University in New Orleans. "Yellow dog Dems have been slow to die in Louisiana, and Katrina gave them a push into the grave, because Republicans realize they can win as Republicans." Another upshot for challenger Kennedy's chances is the high approval rating for Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. In addition, President Bush's approval rating in Louisiana is higher than the national average. However, it may be harder for Kennedy to lay his claim to the GOP since he only became a Republican in 2007.

Kennedy, too, supports offshore drilling, and his campaign said he'd like to see it expanded to end the nation's dependence on foreign oil, spokesman Kyle Plotkin said. "John Kennedy supports drilling everywhere, including the Outer Continental Shelf and [the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve], developing oil shale in the West, investing in clean and renewable energy and conservation," he said.

North Carolina Senate Race

Elizabeth Dole (R)* Total Raised: $11,271,438 Total from oil and gas companies: $124,527

Kay R. Hagan (D) Total Raised: $3,059,918 Total from oil and gas companies: $5,550

The oil and gas industry has given incumbent Elizabeth Dole 22 times more money than Democratic challenger Kay Hagan. Of the candidates for Senate this election cycle, Dole is among the top 10 recipients of oil and gas money--an obvious industry favorite. But despite her enormous financial advantage in this area (and overall), this race supports the notion that money can't buy everything, as these two political veterans are now racing neck-and-neck to Election Day. Recent polls show that this is going to be a close race, and one where the energy debate is a priority for both campaigns.

Both Hagan and Dole have come out in support of offshore drilling, but this is a reversal for both candidates. Before this summer, Dole and Hagan supported a federal moratorium on oil exploration off North Carolina's coast. Historically, many lawmakers have been staunchly opposed to offshore drilling for environmental concerns and the damaging effects it would have on tourism, but sky-high gas prices have caused politicians to re-consider their position.

Part of the energy debate strategy of both candidates in this race has been accusing the other of profiting off of the oil and gas industry. The Dole campaign ran an ad accusing Hagan herself of owning wells and profiting every time North Carolinians go to the gas pump. The News & Observer called the ad inaccurate, because it's Hagan's husband who has investments in companies that own domestic wells, and the Hagans do not own any wells themselves. The Hagan campaign shot back by broadcasting that Bob Dole, Elizabeth Dole's husband and a former Senate majority leader, has a $1 million stake in an offshore hedge fund that speculates on oil. According to the Hagan campaign, the Dole hedge fund investment raises a question: whether Dole's vote against more regulation of hedge funds that speculate on the oil market was motivated by personal financial gain.

While both campaigns are up in arms trying to prove that the other's personal finances make them beholden to Big Oil, there is no question about who is receiving more contributions. Not only has Dole received more than Hagan this election cycle by leaps and bounds, she's raked in more than $277,700 from the oil and gas industry during her Senate career. Since her first run for Senate in 2002, oil and gas companies have been among Dole's top 20 industry supporters. They have no effect on her legislative decisions, though, said Dan McLagan, spokesman for the Dole campaign. "Sen. Dole has never been beholden to any donor," he said, citing Dole's co-sponsorship of the Clean Energy Investment Act, a bill that would establish a government-run bank to assist in the financing, and facilitate the commercial use, of clean energy and energy-efficient technologies within the United States.

Where these candidates stand on energy issues will come into play for North Carolina voters on Election Day. "Working families spent the entire month of August having to pay more and more for gas," said Colleen Flanagan, spokeswoman for the Hagan campaign. "People in Greenville, Asheville and Raleigh, they aren't in the Senate listening to the back and forth. They're feeling it at the cash register."

New Mexico's 2nd Congressional District

Harry Teague (D) Total Raised: $1,529,892 Total from oil and gas companies: $68,700

Edward Tinsley (R) Total Raised: $1,091,355 Total from oil and gas companies: $43,950

Rep. Steve Pearce is retiring from his 2nd District seat to run for Senate, leaving it to candidates Harry Teague (D) and Ed Tinsley (R) to vie for his spot. The 2nd District, which sprawls over half of New Mexico, is littered with thousands of oil wells. Teague, like Louisiana's Sen. Mary Landrieu, is an anomaly for being a Democrat who's received more money from the oil and gas industry than his Republican opponent. However, party titles in this race are deceptive; it's really more about energy politics. Both candidates have ties to the oil industry: Teague owns an oil field services company, and Tinsley is an oil investor (and restaurant owner). Tinsley is favored slightly, but Teague is raising more money and it's stacking up to be pretty competitive.

Teague is not concerned about his professional background in the oil industry, "My experience in the energy industry is an asset. I've worked in the oil fields, but I also helped to bring wind farms and nuclear energy facilities to New Mexico," Teague said in an e-mail from his spokesman. "The only way we will solve the energy crisis is by drawing on all of these sources to become energy independent, and as a member of the majority caucus in Congress, I will be able to help shape a comprehensive solution to our energy problem."

The oil industry is the top industry supporter for Teague and ranks second for Tinsley. Teaco Energy Company (Teague's own company) accounts for nearly half of the money he received from the oil and gas industry, at $32,200. It should be noted that this is not money Teague is giving to his own candidacy; it's all donations from company employees, according to campaign finance records. However, both Teague and Tinsley have injected their campaign chest with a sizable chunk of their own money: $768,900 and $235,000, respectively, through June.

"Being tied to the oil industry is not as damaging in this district as it would be in another district," said Joe Monahan, a New Mexico political blogger. "[Teague] is a good candidate. He is going to get Republican votes and Democrat votes who might otherwise crossover. It's a district where there are more registered Democrats than Republicans, but those Democrats have been crossing over for many years to vote for Republican congressional candidates."

Normally an oilman running on the Democratic ticket--who could alienate Democrats with his industry ties and Republicans with his social values--would be something of a political misfit, but in this region of New Mexico, Teague might be just right. "He would not be as competitive as he is today, if he were more liberal," said Michael Rocca, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico.

CRP Researcher Douglas Weber contributed to this report.

*Indicates incumbent

Campaign Fuel: House candidates getting the most from the oil and gas industry

Name	Race	Incumbent/Challenger/ Open Seat	Total
Dan Boren (D)	Oklahoma 02	Incumbent	$154,900
Joe Barton (R)	Texas 06	Incumbent	$146,441
Mike Conaway (R)	Texas 11	Incumbent	$128,450
Roy Blunt (R)	Missouri 07	Incumbent	$108,100
Charles J. Melancon (D)	Louisiana 03	Incumbent	$99,600
Mary Fallin (R)	Oklahoma 05	Incumbent	$94,800
Charles W. Boustany Jr (R)	Louisiana 07	Incumbent	$92,000
John Culberson (R)	Texas 07	Incumbent	$91,600
Todd Tiahrt (R)	Kansas 04	Incumbent	$90,500
Kay Granger (R)	Texas 12	Incumbent	$86,250
John Sullivan (R)	Oklahoma 01	Incumbent	$84,000
Randy Neugebauer (R)	Texas 19	Incumbent	$79,950
Jim Matheson (D)	Utah 02	Incumbent	$76,347
Chet Edwards (D)	Texas 17	Incumbent	$72,750
Harry Teague (D)	New Mexico 02	Open Seat	$68,700
Tom Cole (R)	Oklahoma 04	Incumbent	$65,200
Peter Graham Olson (R)	Texas 22	Challenger	$60,600
Gene Green (D)	Texas 29	Incumbent	$59,500
Gregg Harper (R)	Mississippi 03	Open Seat	$58,500
Pete Sessions (R)	Texas 32	Incumbent	$56,800

Totals based on data released electronically by the Federal Election Commission on Sept. 2, 2008.

Senate candidates getting the most from the oil and gas industry

Name	State	Incumbent/Challenger/ Open Seat	Total
John Cornyn (R)	Texas	Incumbent	$853,300
James M. Inhofe (R)	Oklahoma	Incumbent	$349,750
Mary L. Landrieu (D)	Louisiana	Incumbent	$305,950
Mitch McConnell (R)	Kentucky	Incumbent	$299,450
Steve Pearce (R)	New Mexico	Open Seat	$283,034
Pat Roberts (R)	Kansas	Incumbent	$174,450
Lamar Alexander (R)	Tennessee	Incumbent	$164,350
Bob Schaffer (R)	Colorado	Open Seat	$150,400
Ted Stevens (R)	Alaska	Incumbent	$127,700
Norm Coleman (R)	Minnesota	Incumbent	$127,500
Elizabeth Dole (R)	North Carolina	Incumbent	$124,527
John Neely Kennedy (R)	Louisiana	Challenger	$117,900
Max Baucus (D)	Montana	Incumbent	$109,200
John A. Barrasso (R)	Wyoming	Incumbent	$108,400
Roger Wicker (R)	Mississippi	Incumbent	$107,250
Mark Pryor (D)	Arkansas	Incumbent	$103,250
Saxby Chambliss (R)	Georgia	Incumbent	$101,000
John E. Sununu (R)	New Hampshire	Incumbent	$90,900
Jeff Sessions (R)	Alabama	Incumbent	$87,650
Thad Cochran (R)	Mississippi	Incumbent	$75,700

Totals based on data released electronically by the Federal Election Commission on Sept. 2, 2008. Senate data based on six-year totals.