In a rare departure for the leftist press, much negative reaction has come off Obama's false claim that the US Chamber of Commerce (and a Karl Rove affiliated fund raising group called American Crossroads) has been collecting and spending foreign money on the November domestic election cycle.   Obama, and his repugnant spin-doctor-in-residence David Axlerod, made the accusations - sans any shred of evidence - and then demanded the USCC prove them wrong.  The blogosphere practically boiled over, not so much because of the false claims, but because of all publications to come to the defense of the USCC, the New York Times effectively repudiated Obama's accusation so thoroughly as to be an embarrassing ass-paddle.  Yet, undaunted by the truth, Obama continued to make the claim.

To paraphrase a famous quote from Lyndon B. Johnson - if a liberal President loses the support of the Times, that liberal has lost middle America.  Indeed, so far it's looking more and more like Obama has lost the nation (I hope).  The final outcome of the November elections will tell that tale.  I tip my hat to Yogi Berra and say "It ain't over till it's over", and so I wait to see if the people's voice remains muddled, or produces a clear clarion note to both Obama and legislatures across this land.

The Audacity of The Big Lie -

Back to Obama and the USCC -  Much has been made by conservative talking heads about the perception of thuggishness emanating from the Obama machine.  To me, this attempted sand-bag job on the Chamber strikes me as a thuggish ploy to try to intimidate the group into divulging it's donor names, which legally it is not required to do.  As the USCC executive vice president for government affairs Bruce Josten speculated - it's ultimately about trying to intimidate donors and ostensibly cut off the flow of cash to Obama's opponents.

The headwaters of Obama targeting the Chamber of Commerce comes from the US Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission .  The court struck down long standing restrictions on corporate spending for political campaigns on free speech grounds, prompting the now infamous and unseemly attack on the court by Obama during his State of the Union speech before congress.  Obama then falsely claimed that the ruling lifted a ban on foreign contributions to US domestic political campaigns - that ban, found in federal regulation 2 U.S.C. § 441e, remains in full force and effect.  The claim that foreign contributions can now flow freely into American campaign war chests is bogus.  It's a big lie, and it's meant to deceive the ignorant masses to galvanize support for limiting the free speech of American Corporations by blocking their ability to raise or spend cash on behalf of candidates whose views they support.

Why do that?  Why try to limit Corporate spending on campaigns?  The painfully obvious answer is this:  the majority of for-profit corporations will tend to support business friendly conservatives.  So, with the ban lifted, corporations around the nation are free to pour cash into opposing Obama's grand Socialist agenda.  Obama has been very busy these past two years pissing off business leaders around the country, and Obama knows a thing or two about pay back being a bitch.  He gets that. 

So, Obama's ploy to identify USCC donors fell flat.  The Chamber refused to take the bait, and found themselves being defended by major liberal media outlets.  Meanwhile, many talking heads were quick to point out the murky nature of a very large chunk of campaign funding Obama received during his own campaign, some of that gray money was almost certainly from foreign sources - which was, and still is, a crime.  That kind of blatant hypocrisy might be par for the course for your 'ordinary' run of the mill politician, but we pause to remind you all once again that this sort of seedy behavior was supposed to be the antithesis of what Obama was about.

As for the group American Crossroads, after the Obama big lie machine made it's accusations, contributions to them sky-rocketed , making Obama and his sleazy crew the best fund raisers the Republicans could have hoped for.