† Never Mind Marxism. Will An Obama Administration Be Totalitarian?: Part II: Apparently, President Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t think he’s given enough speeches or gone to  enough town halls to sell healthcare “reform,” reports The Washington Times. “Campaigning in Seattle, [Obama] said, ‘We had to move so fast, we were in such emergency mode, that it was very difficult for us to spend time a lot doing victory laps and advertising exactly what we were doing because we had to move onto the next thing.’” The Obama administration was apparently in such a hurry, that it advertised a victory that actually belonged to his predecessor, according to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. MSNBC reports:

The Obama administration is crediting its anti-recession stimulus plan with creating up to 50,000 jobs on dozens of wind farms, even though many of those wind farms were built before the stimulus money began to flow or even before President Barack Obama was inaugurated.

Out of 70 major wind farms that received the $4.4 billion in federal energy grants through the stimulus program, public records show that 11, which received a total of $600 million, erected their wind towers during the Bush administration. And a total of 19 wind farms, which received $1.3 billion, were built before any of the stimulus money was distributed.

Yet all the jobs at these wind farms are counted in the administration's figures for jobs created by the stimulus.

The Investigative Reporting Workshop previously reported that the majority of the money was going to foreign-owned developers, and that the majority of turbines being installed were built by foreign-owned manufacturers (penultimate item).

† Affirmative Action Is Antithetical To A True Meritocracy: Politico columnist Michael Kinsley asks, "Do people really want a stupid president?"  Washington Times, blogger Alan Caruba answers: "We got one."

† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims (The U.S. Edition): Charging that someone is a racist or a bigot is aiming a heat-seeking missile at his career, and clearly meant to blow him up. So when CAIR successfully pressured NPR to fire Juan Williams based on a Dowdification  of comments he made on “The O’Reilly Factor,” it raises the troubling question: If a man like Juan Williams can be fired, who amongst us is safe? 

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: “Experience P&G brandSAVER LIVE," a pop-up shop that will be open until October 31^st in NYC where consumers "can try samples, watch demos, and consult experts” about how to use Charmin, Tampax, Secret, Crest and other Procter & Gamble brands. Minyanville.com’s Justin Rohrlich plans to skip the Charmin and Tampax demos. [Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): Worse has come to worst for President Barack Hussein Obama on the campaign trail. The New York Times reports that “even as he welcomed President Obama to Las Vegas to help rally partisans to the polls,” Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) “bristled” when asked about “carrying water” for the president (“I don’t work for the president. I don’t carry his water or anybody in the administration’s water.”). Meanwhile, in an interview with WPRO-AM in Providence, Dem gubernatorial candidate Frank Capri said that Obama could “take his endorsement and really shove it,” and then skipped out on Obama’s small business event in Woonsocket and a DCCC fundraiser at the Providence Convention Center, explaining that the president is “treating [Rhode Island] like an ATM machine. I will wear it as a badge of honor and a badge of courage that he doesn’t want to endorse me as a Democrat.” Not to be outdone, MS Blue Dog Dem Rep. Gene Taylor let it be known that, "I did not vote for Obama. I voted for Sen. McCain. Better the devil you know."

† Updates To Previous Posts (twelfth item, Marketing To Muslims): While some food manufacturers are going out of their way to slaughter animals in the cruel manner prescribed by Sharia law so they can market their food to Muslims as halal, others are going in a different direction, reports The New York Times:

Two premium chicken producers, Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania and Mary’s Chickens in California, are preparing to switch to a system of killing their birds that they consider more humane. The new system uses carbon dioxide gas to gently render the birds unconscious before they are hung by their feet to have their throats slit, sparing them the potential suffering associated with conventional slaughter methods.

“When you grab a chicken, turn it upside down and put it on the line, it’s stress, stress, stress,” said Scott Sechler, the owner of Bell & Evans. “Our system is designed so that we put them to sleep without stress and we kill them without stress.”

That is sure to appeal to a segment of the chicken-buying public. But telling them about it presents a marketing challenge.

“Most of the time, people don’t want to think about how the animal was killed,” said David Pitman, whose family owns Mary’s Chickens.

Anglia Autoflow, the company that is building the knock-out systems for the two processors, calls the process “controlled atmosphere stunning,” but Mr. Pitman said his company was considering the phrase “sedation stunning” for use on its packages. Also on the short-list: “humanely slaughtered,” “humanely processed” or “humanely handled.”

The trick, he said, is to communicate the goal of the new system, which is to ensure that the birds “not have any extra pain or discomfort in the last few minutes of their lives.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Israel And The Armenian Question): More indirect evidence that should the Armenian Genocide Resolution come to the floor of the House this year, Israel will not lobby against it as it has in the past - after all, their new BFF has also been the victim of Ottoman Turkey's genocidal bloodlust against its Christian citizens (second item). The Washington Times reports:  

With Turkish-Israeli relations on the rocks, the Jewish state has found a new friend in Greece - Turkey's neighbor and longtime nemesis.

The Israeli and Greek air forces conducted a joint drill in southern Greece last week. Then on Monday in Jerusalem, the Greek and Israeli foreign ministers signed a civil-aviation agreement - the countries' first bilateral pact in 60 years - and expressed hope for cooperation in other arenas. Talks reportedly also are under way for construction of an Israeli natural-gas pipeline that would run through Greece. The idea was raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in August, when he became the first Israeli premier to visit Athens.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Illegals Can Skew Elections – Even When They Do Not Vote Fraudulently): OneAmerica, an immigrant-rights advocacy group in WA, has recruited illegal aliens to canvass neighborhoods for OneAmerica Votes, its get-out-the-vote campaign on behalf of incumbent Sen. Patty Murray (D), reports The Associated Press:

Pramila Jayapal, head of OneAmerica Votes, says the campaign is about empowering immigrants who may not feel like they can contribute to a campaign because they can't vote. …

Craig Keller, an organizer for Respect WA, a group pushing for stricter immigration law in the Washington, said he doesn't mind illegal immigrants volunteering for vote drives, he just wants to make sure mistakes on the voter rolls don't allow them to vote.

"Anybody can go out and wave a sign, but when it comes to who's making the choices, there's no question they need to be citizens," Keller said.

In close elections across the country, the immigrant and minority vote is considered key for candidates, especially Democrats.

While there are no laws being broken, the Center for Immigration Studies sees an ethical dilemma:

What's wrong with illegal immigrants taking part in the political process by trying to convince others to vote for pro-legalization candidates? …

By virtue of their illegal presence here they are able to leverage their self-interested support for their own legalization in the same way that illegal immigrants who march in favor of "comprehensive" immigration reform have done.

They have no legal standing as members of the American national community and no moral standing, either, since they are present only by virtue of their own decision to violate American immigration laws.

It's hard to know which is worse, the arrogance of undocumented immigrants using their illegal status to sway American elections, the cynicism of candidates making use of this help, or its acceptance by persons like Craig Keller who supposedly are concerned with the impact of illegal immigrants on the integrity of the our political process.

Meanwhile, voters in Portland, ME, are considering a proposal to give non-citizen legal residents the right to vote in local elections.

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, The Uniter: Part III): Interviews and government documents from a year-long investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights into why the Department of Justice dropped the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, shows “deep divisions within the Justice Department that persist today over whether the agency should focus on protecting historically oppressed minorities or enforce laws without regard to race,” reports The Washington Post:

Civil rights officials from the Bush administration have said that enforcement should be race-neutral. But some officials from the Obama administration, which took office vowing to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement, thought the agency should focus primarily on cases filed on behalf of minorities.

"The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around," said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil rights protesters such as Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia.

Before the New Black Panther controversy, another case had inflamed those passions. Ike Brown, an African American political boss in rural Mississippi, was accused by the Justice Department in 2005 of discriminating against the county's white minority. It was the first time the 1965 Voting Rights Act was used against minorities and to protect whites.

[Christopher] Coates and Adams later told the civil rights commission that the decision to bring the Brown case caused bitter divisions in the voting section and opposition from civil rights groups.

Three Justice Department lawyers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from their supervisors, described the same tensions, among career lawyers as well as political appointees. Employees who worked on the Brown case were harassed by colleagues, they said, and some department lawyers anonymously went on legal blogs "absolutely tearing apart anybody who was involved in that case," said one lawyer.

"There are career people who feel strongly that it is not the voting section's job to protect white voters," the lawyer said. "The environment is that you better toe the line of traditional civil rights ideas or you better keep quiet about it, because you will not advance, you will not receive awards and you will be ostracized."

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Is Hasan A Crazy Terrorist, Or A Terrorist Crazy?): More evidence that the Pentagon can't tell a "moderate" Muslim from a jihadi (Sun Tzu is spinning in his grave):

A few months after 9/11, a Muslim-outreach luncheon was held in the Pentagon, and one of the people in attendance was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam from Virginia, according to Fox News. If the name sounds familiar it's because he went on to inspire Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hassan and Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, assisted underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, issued a fatwa against "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoonist Molly Norris, and, it was later discovered, may have advised two of the 9/11 hijackers and known about 9/11 in advance. He's now believed to be a high-ranking Al Qaeda leader in Yemen, where he is hiding.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): In yet another report on the subject, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), criticizes the Department of Homeland Security for inadequate oversight of the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) – the "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border that contractor Boeing Co. promised to finish in 2009 – which has resulted in the multibillion-dollar project being behind schedule and over budget, reports The Washington Times:

The report said that in an effort to deliver SBInet on target and on schedule, Homeland Security officials had relied heavily on the Boeing Co., the prime contractor, from whom they regularly received "incomplete and anomalous" cost information.

As a result, the report said, the department not been able to gain "meaningful and proactive insight into potential cost and schedule performance shortfalls, and thus take corrective actions to avoid shortfalls in the future." The data submitted by Boeing, according to the report, made the SBInet appear better that it actually was.

The report noted that during a 21-month period ending in February, Earned Value Management (EVM) reports submitted by Boeing to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were not reliable because they contained misleading information, including the use of estimated rather than actual costs for subcontractor work. The report said that without reliable performance data, the true status of the SBInet program was unclear, limiting the department's ability to identify potential cost and schedule shortfalls. …

Since February 2007, the GAO has been telling Congress and Homeland Security that SBInet needed better oversight and accountability, and that it lacked realistic measures of cost, timing and benefits. …

In September 2009, GAO reported to Congress that the virtual fence scheduled for completion in 2009 would not be ready until at least 2016 - if it went forward at all.