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Applying the AP’s McCain Standard to Barack Obama Shows Sudanese Connections to His Campaign

It’s a strange one sided sort of game the Associated Press is playing in its latest attack against John McCain. AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn is applying a six degrees of separation style standard in trying to accuse John McCain of investing in the Sudan because his wife owned some mutual funds that had holdings in an Indian company that allegedly does business in the Sudan. The far left has picked up on this “AP newsbreak” as evidenced by its front page status at The Huffington Post.

So I decided to play the game myself by looking at the mainstream media’s favorite target of obsessive adulation, Barack Obama. My my, would you look at that? When I applied the McCain standard to Barack Obama I quickly discovered that Obama’s top contributors are being targeted by activists that are targeting financial companies to divest in the Sudan. Surprised?

According to OpenSecrets.org Barack Obama received $544,000 from people associated with or employed by Goldman Sachs. Not good. In 1998 China was set to make its first public offering on the New York Stock exchange via a company called the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC). The deal quickly came under fire because China was financing arms sales to the Sudan and allegedly used Chinese prison laborers to build oil pipelines in the region. (Src. Human Rights Watch)

In response to the outcry Goldman Sachs, Barack Obama’s number one contributor, restructured the deal to create a spin off of CNPC called PetroChina Co. The new structure was created to ensure that the IPO would involve a company that was limited to only operating inside China. Unfortunately that was not the case. (all emphasis mine)

PetroChina would rank as China’s largest company, with 70 percent of the country’s petroleum reserves and accounting for two-thirds of its oil and gas production. It would immediately become the world’s fourth-largest publicly traded oil and gas company, although the Chinese government, through CNPC, would still own 80 to 90 percent of PetroChina’s stock after the public offering.

PetroChina maintained it was neither a U.S. nor a Sudanese company nor would it have direct business dealings with Sudan. Upon closer examination, this was not the divorce it first appeared to be for at least two reasons: income and debt. Critics charged that the CNPC, as the parent company, would receive 90 percent of PetroChina’s income, including funds raised in the IPO. PetroChina’s chairman denied the company would use proceeds from its stock offering to fund projects in Sudan.

The deal came under wide protest by activists and special interest groups, including the AFL-CIO.

On March 22, 2000 the AFL-CIO and the NGO Free Tibet co-sponsored a protest at the office of PetroChina’s investment banker Goldman Sachs in New York City. Bill Patterson, director of AFL-CIO’s office of investments, was convinced that political opposition and subsequent negative press reduced interest in PetroChina’s IPO: “We haven’t found a single fund yet that even wants to get near this deal.”

Considering that the Associated Press is so obsessed with the minutiae of John McCain’s wife’s mutual funds you would think that they would be concerned about this dubious relationship between China, Sudan, Goldman Sachs and Barack Obama. Strangely however the AP doesn’t go down that route.

Let’s keep going here. Would you like to know who else has come under criticism for investing in the Sudan? That’s easy.

Barack Obama’s number 2 contributor the University of California held pensions and endowment funds that were partially held in the Sudan until the middle of 2006 when it announced its plans to divest. This announcement came a full 2 years after the U.S. labeled Darfur a genocide and nearly 6 years after President Clinton extended the 1997 U.S. sanctions on Sudan. Not exactly divestment at the speed of sound.

Yet we are just beginning. The human rights group savedarfur.org has an active campaign against JPMorgan Chase , Barack Obama’s number 3 top contributor, for investing in the Sudan. The anti-corporate green group Co-Op America spells out the criticism against Chase.

JP Morgan, along with Vanguard and Fidelity, has been criticized by human rights groups, politicians and the public for continuing to invest in PetroChina. PetroChina is one the largest players in the Sudanese oil industry, and the proceeds from Sudan’s oil exports go overwhelmingly to fund the Sudanese army.

Should I stop there? Nah. The mainstream media wouldn’t if it were applying this standard to a republican like John McCain. Let’s look at Barack Obama’s fourth largest contributor, Citigroup Inc.

Citigroup is getting flak by activists because they claim that Citigroup’s shareholders rejected proposals by amnesty international and other human rights groups to use their investments as a way to manipulate the situation in Sudan.

I could go on but there are some practical limitations; I have limited space and I think you get the point. If I applied the AP’s McCain standard to Barack Obama then I can assume that Obama is party to investing in the Sudan big time. But that would make me stupid.

As an example of such stupidity I would like all you investors and 401K holders out there to list for me the individual holdings in your funds. Tell me off the top of your head if any of those companies do business with or are related to companies that invest in Sudan. Go ahead, look them up if need be. Anyone? No? Thought so.

The standard is bogus and would apply to all politicians somewhere along the line if we dumb it down enough.

However, since it is the AP’s game I will do them one better. I call on Barrack Obama to fully divest from any contributor even remotely tied to investments made in the Sudan. Do it tomorrow, don’t wait any longer than John McCain’s wife did. I also call on the AP to get back to me and report on it the minute that happens.

Don’t worry if you continue to go all hypocritical on me AP people because I won’t be holding my breath.

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It is no surprise that I am a conservative saying this. It’s sad actually.

The first and primary reason that the Republican has lost my vote is because I am a conservative. John McCain is front and center on this assault against conservative values. Exhibit A is this week’s article in Newsweek with the headline McCain: The New ‘Captain Climate’?.

Liberals are salivating over McCain’s stance on global warming and with good reason.

John McCain’s global warming journey started back in 2000, when a strange apparition named “Captain Climate” began to turn up at Presidential campaign events. Captain Climate was Dartmouth grad Matthew Stembridge, who wore red tights over orange long johns, a red knit stocking cap, yellow-painted galoshes, and a red cape. “What’s your position on climate?” Stembridge would yell at event after event.

McCain was intrigued. The Arizona senator called up Captain Climate for a chat. After he lost his bid for the Republican Presidential nomination to George W. Bush, McCain probed further. He held hearings. He talked to scientists. And in a stark break with the Bush Administration, which quickly joined the ranks of climate-change deniers, McCain began to call for action. With his friend and fellow Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), he even drafted the pioneering McCain-Lieberman climate bill, which would have put caps on the emissions of global-warming-causing greenhouse gases in the U.S.

Now the likely Republican nominee for President, McCain is using his bona fide climate credentials to help set himself up as a viable choice for independents—and Republicans—who want a change from the Bush years. In a May 12 speech at a wind power plant in Portland, Ore., McCain called climate “surely the most serious of all…environmental dangers.… The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington.”

First of all, as a parent of school aged children I have to fight the substandard educators on this topic on a daily basis. The last thing I need is some vote pandering ass from the Republican party making this job worse.

John Carey, the the dumbshit Newsweek journalist that penned the Captain Climate article is a prime example of this sort of idiocy. Conservatives don’t deny climate change; they recognize that the climate changes on a daily basis. They also recognize that the industrialist history of man is very short in the grand scheme of things and that politically expedient propaganda does not correlate to good science. Anyone that has an IQ above 20 could recognize the fact that the facts don’t sustain the left’s theory. Scientists that once fretted over global warming are now back tracking on that stance due to new computer models that show quite the opposite.

Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. - British Telegraph

But that is neither here nor there. John McCain is problem number 1. He expects me to vote for him with his Captain Climate credentials? I think not. I have a message for the next wannabe traitor in chief. Eat me; I’m sick of your crap.

Of course John McCain is only the cherry topping on the current Republican leadership. When it comes to inept these guys have the market cornered. Losing Hastert’s seat in Illinois was just a small indicator that trouble was still amiss after the piss poor performance in 2006. Hastert himself had brought much of the party’s fate down on his old Illinois seat. On key issues with earmarks and the Jefferson Davis search issue Hastert decided to act like a politician instead of an advocate for the people. He took the easy way out and resigned.

When it came time to fill the seat vacated by Hastert the morons in the Republican party put a many times over loser in the shoot with Jim Oberweis. They then underfunded the campaign and eventually got beat by an unheard of liberal who beat Oberweis on a mix of liberalism, anti-illegal immigration and anti-China sentiment. That’s right, you heard it here. The dirty little secret in the Oberweis debacle is that Bill Foster beat him with commercials that highlighted Oberweis’s foreign investment in China and the red herring issue of having been caught with illegal immigrants working for him on one if his farms. Yup, he ran as a liberal, used a mix of conservative issues against the Republican nominee and he doesn’t even have a record of accomplishment. But look at the stances he ran on.

For American families, the health care crisis is fundamentally an affordability crisis. If they are not covered by their employer or a government program, they face tremendous health insurance costs. If families are covered by their employers, they face ever-mounting co-payments and benefit reductions. And for American business, the cost or providing coverage to their employees is putting tremendous pressure on their ability to compete with foreign competitors. - Bill Foster on Health Care

Uncontrolled Immigration: Immigration was the fuel that built this nation, but we must remain a nation of laws. It is unfair to ask businesses that are playing by the rules to compete against companies that employ workers who are here illegally. Fence or no fence, immigrants will continue to flood our borders as long as there are jobs being illegally offered to them. - Bill Foster on Immigration

You hearing this? The left and their mainstream media cohorts have been quick to frame the Hastert loss quite differently than what it really is and the Republican party has been silent.

I’ll be damned if I am going to vote for a party that won’t fight for me. That is how disgustingly stupid and ineffective the Republican national party is. They don’t deserve my money, support or vote. (and I’m just getting started, check back soon for the rest)

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Reprint: Original Post October 15, 2007

Poland’s Upper House of Parliament passed a unanimous resolution to honor a WWII hero who helped save the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during the Nazi Holocaust. Her name is Irena Sendlerowa and she banded together with a group of social worker colleagues in 1940 to secretly rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of her; today’s Western press seems loathe to cover inconvenient stories of heroes who risked life and limb to save the Jews from the murderous hands of the Nazis. Compound that with the fact that this is a story that involves Catholic charity and you have all the elements necessary to relegate her accomplishments to a passing reference somewhere in the back of a newspaper, never again to inconvenience the Holocaust deniers or those who prefer to remember the war through the prism of Hollywood’s warped lens.

Mrs. Irena Sendlerowa had been actively giving the Jews aid, food and shelter since the war came to her doorstep in 1939. By the time the war ended almost all of Poland’s 3.5 million Jews had been wiped out and Sendlerowa had been captured, imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to death for her actions.

To leave the story there however would be a gross disservice to her memory. Like so many others who lived and died as citizens of history’s greatest generation, Irena Sendlerowa does not consider herself a hero.

In conclusion let me stress most emphatically that we who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. Indeed, that term irritates me greatly.

The opposite is true - I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little.

The truth of the matter however outweighs her humble grace. Irena Sendlerowa is a tremendous hero. The kind of person whose actions should be taught in schools and printed in papers. Her message is important.

The Nazis set up the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940 as a means to isolate the Jewish population. During this time a wave of muggings and increasingly violent attacks were launched on Jews by Polish gangs; many times in front of innocent bystanders who did nothing.

The Jews were rounded up and cordoned off in the ghetto where their food was inhumanely rationed along with medical aid and other basic human rights. The prisoners of the ghetto were not even allowed to school their children and many died as a result of starvation and disease. But the ghetto was just a layover for the Jews who survived its brutality; their ultimate destination would be the Nazi death camps.

Amidst all of that was a young 30 year old Irena Sendlerowa. Her Catholic upbringing had taught her to help people of all faiths and nationality. That kindness translated into a movement to rescue children using various schemes to secretly sneak the children out of the ghetto, provide false identification as gentile Poles and find places for them to live as orphans of the war. Many children who spoke only Yiddish had to be taught Polish to complete the ruse.

[More...]

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Every time I get a small glimmer of hope that John McCain will grow a set I find that he defers to some inner sense that inexplicably turns the knife in the back of the Republican Party base. You know the group, the one that will stay home if McCain continues his ill advised tour of bone headed concessions to court a leftist constituency that will no doubt vote for the Dems come November.

Countless times we think of a John McCain presidency and we are reminded that despite the left’s warnings that he is Bush the 3rd, Republicans think of him quite differently, as liberal light; the maverick Republican the left loves to quote when he turns bad on the right.

So when it was announced that John McCain is slated to meet with pro-illegal immigrant apologists La Raza on July 14th, Republicans once again are reminded that John McCain is no better that the rest of the Republican “moderates” that sold out the party base in 2006 if not much earlier. In fact John McCain is part of that group that led to sweeping Republican defeats in 2006. I blame him just as much as I blame others who lost their way.

The good or bad of it however is that I am not alone. John McCain doesn’t have to worry about me. He has to worry about people like me. The people that won’t be sitting at the water cooler countering the enthralled giggles of messianic Barack Obama supporters. He has to worry about the people that won’t be contributing money to his underfunded campaign. And sadly, the people that won’t be getting behind him to help drive any fleeting momentum into something bigger.

I personally think this campaign is John McCain’s to lose and that is exactly what he is setting out to do. God help us. If that is the reality in 2008 he need only look in the mirror one last time. He can think to himself, “well you tried my friend, but not hard enough. At least you were a maverick one last time”

Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin

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Ever wonder why the newspaper you pick up is so devoid of substance when it comes to Barack Obama? Do you often find your self scratching your head in wonderment when the talking heads on MSNBC or CNN do one puff piece after another on the Junior Senator from Illinois; rarely explaining anything relevant about the substance behind the empty promises?

Now we know why. Catch this video of the juvenile girls in the press corp salivating over getting a clear view to Obama’s crotch to take a picture. (h/t Michelle Malkin, Hot Air).

Yeah, this group of “professional journalists” is going to tell me who I should vote for. Not!

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As reported earlier by Noel Sheppard, the drive-by media that previously downplayed Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos has changed it’s tune now that Barack Obama’s campaign is blaming the Limbaugh effect for keeping Hillary Clinton in the race.

Too bad for Keith Olberman and MSNBC because they apparently missed the memo; instead choosing to do a segment refuting the effect altogether. Last night Olbermann openly mocked Rush Limbaugh alongside his sidekick Chris Matthews who was honking in the background with giddy joy at the prospect of Limbaugh’s failure.

Huh? For a guy that doesn’t generally make much sense Keith Olbermann showed us that his ability to make even less sense is still well within reach. It also demonstrates that the moon-Batman and Robin team over at MSNBC let their bias override intelligent thought once again. (I’m beginning to see a trend.)

Contrast the MSNBC approach with that of the much maligned Fox News that simply reported the Obama campaign’s assertion. (all emphasis mine)

Barack Obama’s campaign issued an e-mail on Tuesday night that appeared to relegate Hillary Clinton’s lead in Indiana to efforts by Rush Limbaugh to wreak havoc in the Democratic presidential primary contest.

In an e-mail entitled “The Limbaugh Effect in Indiana = 7 percent,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton wrote: “According to the latest exit polling data, 17 percent of voters in the Indiana primary today said they would vote for John McCain in a Clinton/McCain match-up. Forty-one percent of that number is constituted by people who voted Clinton in the primary but also indicated they will vote for McCain in the general election. That comes out to just under 7 percent of the primary electorate the number that may be attributed to a Limbaugh Effect.”

This e-mail appears to have been the signal that allowed other drive-bys in the MSM to reverse direction and openly admit what they have been fearing all along. And that fear has now become a global phenomenon. We’ll have to wait and see how long it takes MSNBC to catch up.

Note: The video clip was originally found boasted by the smart guys over at Crooks and Liars in a post titled: Exit Polls Confirm: “Operation Chaos” Abject Failure

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The writing is on the wall here. Fuzzy math, woman for the people sentiment and all that good stuff isn’t going to be enough to save the campaign of Hillary Clinton after last night’s photo-finish in Indiana. The only question now is how long it will take for the American left (exempt the MSM that is already there) to get in line behind terrorists, racists and communists and start pumping fists in the air for Barack Obama; the man every radical seems to love.

MSNBC captured an image that says it all (right). The NYT article it promotes is no less of an obituary.

Despite narrowly winning Indiana, while losing North Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s hopes for overtaking Senator Barack Obama dwindled further on Tuesday night.

[~snip]

Beating Mr. Obama in Indiana, a state he had once been confident of winning, was an achievement for Mrs. Clinton. But it was hardly the kind of strong victory she posted in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And when paired with his comfortable victory in North Carolina — which Mr. Obama pointedly described in his victory speech as “a big state, a swing state” — it hardly seemed enough for Mrs. Clinton to convince so-called uncommitted superdelegates to rally around her candidacy.

Her showing in the two states did not permit Mrs. Clinton to cut into Mr. Obama’s lead in pledged delegates or his overall lead in the popular vote.

Indeed, Mr. Obama may have widened his delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton, an outcome with mathematic and political resonance.

- Clinton finds her options dwindling, NYT analysis: Despite Clinton’s apparent Ind. victory, the N.Y. senator lost a chance to sow doubts about Obama’s broader appeal.

Wow, piling up on Hillary Clinton in MSNBC by tag teaming the New York Times. The Democrats are nervous about all the damage coming from their own and they want this over yesterday. No nuclear option, no more Operation Chaos, no more Reverend Wrights.

Too bad, I kind of like having the curtain temporarily ripped back from that tidy little facade that the Democratic party establishment had built up for themselves. Everyone could see that they didn’t really care about race or gender. The Democrats have been show to be vulnerable on their own and they gave the liberal and former MSM darling John McCain some breathing room. That of course will be all over once Hillary concedes to someone even more to the left left than herself.

It won’t be long before Chris Matthews gets that feeling in his leg again (yuck).

See also: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Rick Moran

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At a time when Democrats spread lies from pulpit to pulpit preaching about the mismanagement of the economy via George Bush they quietly find $25 Million dollars in earmarks and pork to help fund political ally and pro-immigration lobbyists La Raza.

It’s clear that Democrats who have been at the helm for the last two years are only interested in picking the pockets of struggling families for the express goal of buying votes and power. Democrats are pissing on the backs of hard working American taxpayers who live on an increasingly weaker dollar against the back drop of raising prices all in the name of funneling the money to scam artists, trial lawyers and pro-illegal immigrant forces. (h/t Michelle Malkin).

Worse, House Republican leader John Boehner is one of the lone Republicans making an issue out of this national travesty.

Washington, May 6 - Democrats are prepared to bring to the House floor legislation purportedly written to assist Americans impacted by the recent housing slump. But in recent days, it has become increasingly clear who this legislation is really out to serve: scam artists, speculators, and trial lawyers.

That’s right: the bill forces taxpayers to pay for a massive $300 billion bailout at the expense of innocent victims who truly need assistance and hard-working families who continue to pay their mortgage on time. And it includes language slipped-in by House Democrats at the last minute to fund a giant $35 million slush fund for trial lawyers seeking to capitalize on the housing downturn.

But the goodies for the friends of the Democratic Majority don’t stop there. House Democrats quietly tucked another giveaway into the long, complicated bill in order to benefit their political allies with virtually no prior public scrutiny or debate. Take a look at this political giveaway – “Assistance for the Raza Development Fund” – straight from the text of the bill:

(c) ASSISTANCE FOR RAZA DEVELOPMENT FUND.— (1) USE.—The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development may make a grant to the Raza Development Fund for the purpose of providing technical and financial assistance to local non-profit organizations to undertake community development and affordable housing projects and programs serving low- and moderate-income households, particularly through organizations located in neighborhoods with substantial populations of income-disadvantaged households of Hispanic origin. Assistance provided by the Secretary under this subsection may be used by the Raza Development Fund… (2) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.— There is authorized to be appropriated for grants under this subsection— (A) $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; and (B) $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

In short, House Democrats are expecting American taxpayers to shell out $25 million to the Raza Development Fund – an arm of the National Council of La Raza and Democratic political ally that has made its name by promoting pro-illegal immigration policies and opposing real border security.

American families are struggling with rising costs for everything from gasoline to food to mortgages. Times like these require Congress to work in a bipartisan way on behalf of the American people. But instead, this Democratic Majority has produced a bill that rewards scam artists, speculators, trial lawyers, and political allies like La Raza…all at the expense of taxpayers and homeowners who really need help. Sadly, it’s yet more example of what American taxpayers have come to expect from a broken Washington under the leadership of House Democrats.

If this doesn’t make you angry then you deserve another couple couple years of Nancy Pelosi and her merry band of thieves.

Related (Another Link from John Boehner):

In the two years since then-Minority Leader Pelosi promised the American people a “commonsense plan” to lower gas prices, not only has she refused to reveal it, but prices have actually risen at an incredible pace – from $2.33 on January 4, 2007, the day Rep. Pelosi took the Speaker’s gavel, to $3.61 today. And among those hit the hardest by this $1.28 Pelosi Premium are working families, small business owners and employees, and local communities from coast to coast, which have been forced to cut critical services such as school bus transportation and law enforcement. - Why Do Speaker Pelosi & House Democrats Want to Make Gasoline More Expensive?

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