Topic category:  Government/Politics

President Barack Obama thinks he knows best, as he obnoxiously demonstrated during the "bi-partisan" meeting that preceded the passage of Obamacare, despite the will of most Americans, but he admittedly took "a shellacking" on Election Day 2010, as Republican won more than 60 additional House seats and control of the House and six more Senate seats, so he is repositioning himself for 2012.

President Obama, determined to win re-election, compromised with Republicans on taxes, to the consternation of radical "purists" and then put former President Bill Clinton center stage to endorse the compromise and praise his political realism.

Do not be fooled: a politically realistic stealth socialist remains very dangerous, especially when he has the powers to appoint justices and judges, to negotiate legislative compromises that facilitate wealth redistribution by increasing the national debt, to veto a repeal of Obamacare and to vilify Congressional Republicans as "hostage takers" for supporting a ten-year extension of all the Bush income tax cuts given the state of the national economy without being subject to warranted personal attack.

Now President Obama needs to be attacked from the Far Left to help him appeal again to independents and avowed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (for whom then Senator Obama had campaign when he ran for Senator) came forward to filibuster that legislative compromise.

What good fortune for President Obama!

Remember, in 2008 independent National Journal reported that then Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was the most "liberal" United States Senator. Even more liberal than Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and, yes, Sanders.

As a presidential candidate, speaking of "hope," "change" and "the urgency of now" to deflect the problems of little legislative experience and no executive or military experience or major accomplishment as a public servant, the then rookie junior United States Senator tactically tacked to the center after he was nominated and appeared as earnest, enthusiastic yet non-threatening as possible.

Enough voters were fooled and/or gave him the benefit of the doubt to put him in the White House and thus in position to push his radical agenda, especially budget-busting Big Government Obamacare.

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

The statement is attributed to President Abraham Lincoln.

President Obama not only knows that it's true, but also knows that he will need only a majority of the electoral votes to be re-elected.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

President George W. Bush said it in Nashville, Tennessee on September 17, 2002 (http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushism-foolme.htm).

Unfortunately, it's NOT true: being fooled once does not immunize against being fooled again.

Please remember this old saying--"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"--and pray that Team Obama does not succeed in fooling enough Americans again to re-elect President Obama.

America's ACORN Presidents imperil SCOTUS.

SCOTUS is the acronym for Supreme Court of the United States.

America's ACORN Presidents are Clinton and Obama.

ACORN is the acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (originally incorporated in Clinton's Arkansas as Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now).

Four of the current nine SCOTUS justices were appointed by America's ACORN Presidents and it's NOT a coincidence that all of them are "liberal" judicial activists: President Clinton appointed former ACLU general counsel Ruth Bade Ginsberg in 1993 and former Ted Kennedy assistant Stephen Breyer in 1994 and President Obama appointed former La Raza national council member Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan in 2010.

It is ominous that the "liberal" judicial activists are one vote away from a SCOTUS majority and critical that Obama not have the power to make judicial appointments.

Is it fair to call President Clinton an ACORN President?

Read this post by ACORN founder and Chief Organizer for 38 years Wade Rathke:

"Seeing President Clinton as he walked up to speak last spring at the Anniversary banquet at Citigroup for New York ACORN, he told me that he had given ACORN in his inimitable words, a big wet kiss in the book he was currently finishing. Now that Bill Clinton’s Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World has been published and is pushing the tops of the best seller list, I figured I had better invest in a copy and see if I could feel the love.

"Sure enough, ACORN finds its way into the former President’s recommendations and applause in three different instances.

"First in talking about New Orleans after Katrina, he says, About the same time, in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was virtually wiped out by Katrina, volunteers turned the first new homes over to residents. Built of pine, elevated five feet, and designed to resist hurricane winds, the houses cost only $125,000 each. The project was organized by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which also provided the financing with support from a California bank. ACORN works to empower low-and-moderate income people through the grassroots activism of more than 200,000 members in one hundred communities all over America. The owners expect to repay the mortgage and previous loans from funds from Louisiana’s Road Home project when they are released. The houses were designed with help from the Louisiana State University School of Architecture. The volunteers included university students, local church members, young people from Covenant House, and novelist Richard Ford, who recently moved back to the city and spoke at the ceremony celebrating the construction and handover. He called the occasion a valiant and hopeful house raising, an allusion to the barn raisings of early America, where neighbors pitched in to help one another erect buildings on newly settled land. All the citizens who responded to Katrina’s devastation, including many who are still working to bring back New Orleans and other communities, are part of that great tradition. Pps. 51-52.

"A second Katrina reference comes on page 79, After Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Operation HOPE joined my foundation and ACORN, an NGO of grassroots activists committed to empowering poor people, to assist eligible survivors to claim the earned income tax credit. Together HOPE and ACORN helped people secure more than $10 million to which they were entitled but for which they had to apply.

"And, once again when at the end of the book he begins making recommendations about how citizens can give and get active, he says, If you’re interested in policy changes that would strengthen the middle class and help poor people work their way into it, you can contact the Center for American Progress, which is working on ways to lift the debt burdens on the middle class; the Center for Responsible Lending; ACORN, which organizes low-income people for economic and political empowerment; and several progressive religious groups.

"Mr. President, we’re blushing, and it will be a while before we’re willing to wash that kiss off our organizational cheek!"

Clinton, Rathke and ACORN go way back.

In 1978 Rathke and his ACORN endorsed Clinton in his first race for governor of Arkansas.

In 1992 Rathke declared Clinton "the best choice" for President and later said that “there was never a campaign we (ACORN) didn’t support him (Clinton).”

Rathke reportedly said recently that "he can still remember a front page photo in the Washington Post of Clinton, on the day after the election, giving...ACORN political director [Zach Polett] a “big bear hug” (http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2010/10/acorns-wade-rathke-muscle-for-money-and-your-votes-for-free/0).

Clinton was not unappreciative. For example, in 2006 the Clinton Foundation donated $250,000 to ACORN. (For a photo of happy Clinton and Rathke, go to www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2008/10/clinton-foundation-grants-250000-to-acorn-in-2006/.)

Yes, ACORN then backed Obama, not Hillary Clinton, but is that really a surprise, given Obama's history with ACORN and Rathke's resentment of her?

Excerpt from www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1205322359087:

"The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now...had helped pass a local ballot initiative that gave low-income residents a break on utility bills and increased rates for businesses. Wanting to put a quick stop to this handout, the business community called upon its lawyers at the Rose Law Firm and asked them to defeat the ordinance in court.

"Hillary soon found herself battling ACORN's founder -- and her close friend -- Wade Rathke in court. Deftly marshaling constitutional theory, she convinced the judge that the ordinance constituted an unlawful taking of property. The law was nullified. Wade Rathke never spoke to Hillary again."

Polett is the author of a little-noticed, but very illuminating article titled "What We Learned in Arkansas" in the spring 1993 issue of Social Policy (of which Rathke is publisher).

Polett is described at the end of the article as "national political director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)" who "lived most of the past 18 years in Arkansas, where he has worked as head organizer of Arkansas ACORN and state director of Service Employees International Union Local 100." (Local 100, led by Rathke, was independent before it joined SEIU or became independent again not long after the ACORN embezzlement became a public scandal.)

The last four paragraphs of Polett's article tell us what Polett though of Clinton and how "progressives" work:

"Act as Clinton's conscience. Although he may not always appear that way today, Clinton fundamentally and personally sees himself as progressive, and as a friend and supporter of the disadvantaged and victims of discrimination. He came into politics in the 1970s as a progressive crusader, though always tempered with the need to remain 'viable within the system,' as he wrote in his now well-publicized letter to the ROTC commander concerning his draft status. Clinton opposed the war in Vietnam. In 1972, he worked Texas for the McGovern campaign, at a time when many southern Democrats were running in the opposite direction. As attorney general in 1977-1978 and in his first term as governor, Clinton pushed such progressive themes as better utility rates, promotion of renewable energy sources, early-childhood education, a 'just cause' Fair Dismissal Act for teachers, home health care, and a quality-of-life crackdown on the nursing home industry. His wife, partner, and chief adviser Hillary Rodham Clinton served as board chair for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, an Arkansas child-welfare-advocacy group patterned after the national Children's Defense Fund.

"Bill Clinton's image of himself was then--and I believe still is---that of a progressive reformer. He wants to do right, to help the unfortunate. And he genuinely likes people. Just recently, and perhaps most tellingly, after Whizzer White announced his resignation from the Supreme Court, Clinton emphasized 'heart' as a quality he was looking for in his first Supreme Court appointment--a rare choice of words for a president.

"Progressive and community-based organizations should never forget this about Clinton. We need to be continually pushing him to do what he believes he ought to do, to help counter the right-ward drift that his brokering tendencies otherwise produce.

"There has been considerable speculation among progressives about whether Bill Clinton is the politician they most want to see as president. But that's not the relevant question for 1993. He is the president, and he is far better than Reagan/Bush. Because of this, progressive organizers are faced with a new political era, and a new relationship to Washington. His presidency gives progressive organizations and activists great opportunities to influence and improve government policies. But to do that we need to organize, we need to utilize public-arena strategies that build and move a very visible constituency, and we need to learn from Bill's Arkansas experience. Just as he did."

What Polett advised progressives with respect to Clinton--"We need to be continually pushing him to do what he believes he ought to do"--explains what progressives are doing to Obama now.

It doesn't make Obama a centrist.

It means Obama is a realistic stealth socialist.

Polett would know. As ACORN whistleblower Anita Moncrief told me in October 2008 and I wrote in "Why Obama and ACORN fear Anita MonCrief" (www.renewamerica.com/columns/gaynor/081028):

"Zach Polett, former Executive Director of Project Vote and former director of ACORN Political Operations mentioned that Obama had worked for us and that he even supervised him during a ACORN Political staff retreat in November 2007 (based on direct knowledge)" and "In late 2007, Anita reports, Anita received a call from the Obama campaign asking if this was the same Project Vote that Obama worked for in the 90's. With the staff retreat fresh in mind, Anita answered yes and sent an email to Zach Polett, Karyn Gillette, Nathan Henderson James, and Kevin Whelan stating that the campaign wanted someone to call them back regarding some media questions that were being asked at the time."

As Clinton did (he tried mightily to pass Hillarycare and vetoed welfare reform twice before bowing to political reality), Obama wants to do what the progressives want--and will to the extent he can safely do so, but he too wants to be re-elected, he knows that Democrats will no longer control Congress in January and he will be tactical.

ACORN supported Clinton in 1996 as well as 1992, and progressives will support Obama in 2012 (and hope that their grumbling will fool enough independents to permit Obama's re-election).

Independents especially note: like Clinton was, Obama is a threat to the rule of law that the judiciary swears to, and the Constitution obligates them to, uphold. What Clinton called "heart" and called for in judges, Obama calls "empathy." It is the quality that causes "liberal" judicial activists to legislate from the bench, that is, to impose their own personal views, instead of to follow the law, and it makes Obama unfit to be President.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.