That’s right, one such bird donates her ill gotten gains to the campaign of the other.

A major donor to President Barack Obama has been accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official, creating new headaches for Obama’s re-election campaign as it deals with the questionable history of another top supporter.

The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband contributed more than $50,000 to Obama’s re-election effort this year, federal records show. But Assongba is also fending off a civil court case in Florida, where she’s accused of thieving more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in the state — a charge her husband denies.

Obama is the only presidential contender this year who released his list of “bundlers,” the financiers who raise campaign money by soliciting high-dollar contributions from friends and associates. But that disclosure has not come without snags; his campaign returned $200,000 last month to Carlos and Alberto Cardona, the brothers of a Mexican fugitive wanted on federal drug charges.

I’d like to say I’m completely amazed, shocked, even, but I’m not. Not even a little, because it seems that where President Obama’s concerned, such connections are par for the course.

As we made rather plain here awhile back, Hard Astarboard’s candidate for this year’s presidential election was, before he was “Axelrodded” out of the running, Herman Cain.

As much as it pains me to say this, we are once again placed between the proverbial rock and a hard place in which we’re faced with having to support another professional politician in order to stave off a win by a worse professional politician.

Unfortunately, the American political system is fresh out of genuine statesmen, since every time one comes along he’s pushed aside so that the political operators can run the country by partisan political proxy without anything like true patriotism, adherence to the will of the founding fathers or respect for the letter of the Constitution to stand in their way, and as a result we’re confronted by a “lesser of two evils” choice instead of a “best man (or woman) for the job” choice.

What that leaves us with is this: Worst case (by far) scenario: Obama gets reelected.

Only solution: Elect someone else, that someone else being a conservative, a Republican or both (there is a difference, as we’ve learned in recent years).

As we also know by this time, Dems vote for Dems, Republicans vote for Republicans and therefore the people needed to actually swing an election one way or the other are thosein the middle who actually vote by candidate rather than party.

If the GOP doesn’t show itself as uniting behind one candidate, the party sends a not-so-message to those swing voters; We can’t agree on our candidate. The closer the primary votes are per candidate, the more undecided we will appear, and the swing voters, who will naturally see the Democrats united behind their incumbent, might well vote Democrat — OBAMA.

It appears that Mitt Romney is going to get the nomination, so rather than further splinter our perceived support, we would do better to show some solid support for Mitt.

In the current Politico, there’s an article on Ann Romney (the candidate’s wife of 40 years) and her role in his campaign.

Ann Romney’s unexpected rock star status has the political arena buzzing about how her husband’s campaign will leverage her popularity in an election in which Michelle Obama — one of the most admired first ladies in history — will have an outsized and substantive portfolio.

Indeed, this 62-year-old grandmother’s contribution to Mitt Romney’s campaign could amount to the most relevant role a wife has ever played in a presidential effort — softening the edges of a flawed and awkward candidate who struggles to connect with voters.

As Romney closes in on his party’s nomination, Obama campaign officials and strategists view Ann Romney as a wild card in the fall campaign — a skilled and articulate advocate whose full power has yet to be unleashed. If she’s armed with a passionate vision for a Romney White House, the opposition believes she could emerge as a compelling surrogate for her husband around the country.

She has, in fact, recently begun targeting women - a demographic Republicans desperately need - talking about the economy and jobs. “I wish Ann, my wife were here,” Mitt Romney told a crowd in Wisconsin Sunday, flagging her efforts. “She’s going across the country and talking with women. We have work to do, to make sure we take our message to the women of America.”

In short,

“She rounds him out,” said Thomas Rath, longtime Republican activist from New Hampshire and Romney adviser. “You live with a guy for 40 years, and you’re qualified to speak to what kind of man he is. And that’s a message that appeals to men as well as women.”

Anyway, read the entire article.

So we have a conservative candidate who would make a better president than Obama, a former governor, which means he’s actually been the CEO of a state rather than merely a member of a large voting body, a state in which he had to preside over a mostly Democrat political machine and still prevailed in his conservative ways, and we have a very strong woman who would make a great first lady.

Given what we have to work with, what more can we ask for?

Hard Astarboard, rather than sit this one out folack of the candidate to whm we were most committed, will go with Romney for President this time out and allow the possibility of an Obama reelection….

That is, referring to a vote for Gingrich being a vote for Obama or, as she has titled her latest column, Re-elect Obama, Vote Newt

To talk with Gingrich supporters is to enter a world where words have no meaning. They denounce Mitt Romney as a candidate being pushed on them by “the Establishment” — with “the Establishment” defined as anyone who supports Romney or doesn’t support Newt.

Gingrich may have spent his entire life in Washington and be so much of an insider that, as Jon Stewart says, “when Washington gets its prostate checked, it tickles [Newt],” but he is deemed the rebellious outsider challenging “the Establishment” — because, again, “the Establishment” is anyone who opposes Newt.

This is the sort of circular reasoning one normally associates with Democrats, people whom small-town pharmacists refer to as “drug seekers.”

Anyway, read the rest of her column.

On another, unrelated matter:

A prominent group of Muslim advocates is calling for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his chief spokesman’s resignations over what they allege was an “attempted cover-up” of Kelly’s participation in an anti-Islamic video.

In a story posted late Tuesday, the New York Times quoted Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne saying that Kelly had indeed participated in the filming of “The Third Jihad,” on Browne’s recommendation.

The admission came a day after Browne told the paper that clips of Kelly in the video had been lifted from an old interview and that he had not cooperated with the controversial film, which was reportedly shown “on a continuous loop” to nearly 1,500 police recruits without Kelly’s knowledge.

Kelly’s role and the apparent reversal have left Muslim advocates fuming, following a year of increasingly strained relations.

“We’re at a breaking point,” said Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), which is expected to call for Kelly and Browne’s resignation Thursday morning.

“For the Police Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne to be caught taking part in and helping in the production of an anti-Muslim propaganda film is just so mind-boggling that there really cannot be anything short for resignation,” he said, adding that had the film portrayed any other ethnic group, “heads would be rolling.”

Nermeen Arastu, a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and a member of MACLC has called on the NYPD to retrain all of the officers who watched the film.

The latest incident comes after a year of growing tension between the NYPD and Muslim community, fueled by a series of reports alleging that the NYPD has been involved in a comprehensive domestic surveillance program, targeting Muslims.

Browne told the Times that Kelly found The Third Jihad “objectionable” and said he “should not have agreed to the interview” with the filmmakers, whom he described as having been “part of an ‘Emmy-nominated ‘Dateline NBC’ team.”

The NYPD did not respond to questions about Kelly’s participation.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg slammed police for exercising “terrible judgment” when they repeatedly played the film to new recruits.

A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment on Kelly’s involvement in the film Wednesday.

This looks to me like more of that same interference running muslims always do for terrorism. Anytime anyone speaks the truth about so-called “radical Islam”, there is a PC-related backlash from the usual suspects CAIR and other Islamic groups intended to make people afraid to tell the truth, on the theory that a population and its protective arms that are dumbed-down about the threat of Islamic terrorism remains more vulnerable to attacks than a well informed society.

It never fails to amaze me that, like our not-so-beloved liberals “progressives”, factions like those composed of or supporting malevolent Muslims of foreign origins can so easily get away, through proper intimidation, with censorship in America, a supposedly free country whose freedoms, it seems, only extend to those who wish to bring this great nation to her knees.

One of Seth’s observations about conservative voters and the GOP itself for that matter has been that those on our side of the political aisle, unlike the Democrats, do not always display the same level of campaign marketing savvy that the people over there on the left do.

Meaning?

While the liberal media “reports” and comments in such a way as to make one believe that the vast majority of voters in America are “progressives”, they sugar coat their candidates to deceptively make it appear that they have something for everyone.

While…

The Republicans always seem to assume that most voters want the same thing they do, generally someone with a stauchly right wing reputation, ie when we ran Bob Dole against incumbent Clinton in 1986, which was a beeg meestake, as those middle of the road voters who actually decide the elections were scared leftward by Dole’s perceived “extremism”.

Well, here we see where Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primaries: If he wins the nomination, with the right wing rep he has, we will be assuring an Obama reelection.

Better give that some thought…

From the front end of (this last) New Year’s weekend, Oliver North in Town Hall…

…This week, as we prepare to ring out 2011 and welcome 2012, President Barack Obama asked for Congress to authorize yet another increase in our national debt — the third such rise in less than 15 months. Housing prices continue to slide; more than 13 million Americans are unemployed; government spending continues unabated; and America’s credit rating is at risk of another downgrade. In January, barring action by Congress and the White House, U.S. defense spending cuts totaling $1.1 trillion over the next four years will begin to take effect. Such an outcome in the midst of these perilous times ought to be unthinkable.

Instead of putting tens of thousands of Americans to work building new ships, submarines, aircraft and a missile shield to protect the American people from nuclear attack, the Obama administration wants the federal government to create temporary jobs repaving highways, painting bridges and re-roofing public schools. Rather than have unemployed construction workers build a petroleum pipeline from Canada (and improve U.S. energy security), the Obama White House wastes billions on phony “green jobs.” The administration has to hope we all will forget the word “Solyndra.”

Ollie North looks like better presidential material than anyone running in the current field.

In a burst of year-end euphoria, progressive politicians, pundits and government economists are predicting that the worst of the “Bush-era recession” is behind us and that good times are just ahead. They pin their economic hopes for 2012 less on American entrepreneurs than they do on German taxpayers.

The experts are praying Berlin will continue to bail out European PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and prevent an Old World financial collapse that would drag down the sale of U.S. goods and services on the Continent. Expect to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel feted at a White House state dinner early in the new year. A million or so American jobs could well depend on whether she likes the soup.

{In the Truth Hurts Department} OUCH!

Jobs — the word used most often by politicians running for office in 2012. Regardless of party, whether challenger or incumbent, every office seeker tells us he or she has a way of “creating,” “protecting,” “saving” or “improving” jobs for American workers. What few of our elected officials ever mention is how vulnerable these “well-paying” and “secure” jobs are to factors far more threatening than the European debt crisis. Here are the top three issues that should concern those who purport to care about our economic well-being in the year ahead:

1) An Iranian nuke. Just before Christmas, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told us Iran could have a workable nuclear weapon in 2012. He also knows — but didn’t say — that the theocrats in Tehran already have the means of delivering it. Tel Aviv, Israel, is target No. 1. American civilians are No. 2 on the ayatollahs’ hit parade. To Israelis, the expression “Never Again” isn’t a political slogan. It’s a way of life. They are not going to wait to be incinerated.

The Obama administration could stop the Iranians from building atomic weapons and perhaps even bring about regime change by forbidding any company doing any business in Iran from doing any business in the U.S. But unless the O-Team takes such a step, the Israelis will have to act pre-emptively to prevent annihilation. If you think the “2008-11 global recession” hurt, you don’t want to contemplate what the world economy would be like after an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons sites.

2) The jihad. The “Arab Spring” — once so proudly proclaimed to have been instigated by Obama’s soaring rhetoric — has become a nightmare for democratic aspirations in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi and Anwar al-Awlaki are dead, but the jihad being waged by radical Islamists is stronger than ever. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Sudan are headed for Shariah rather than secular governance in 2012. Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Nigeria and even Saudi Arabia could follow suit soon. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom forecasts that Christianity could be eradicated in these countries. The economic impact of such an upheaval is potentially catastrophic.

3) The collapse of Russian democracy. Vladimir Putin is presiding over a dying country — and he knows it. Though Russian energy exports to Europe and China currently fill the coffers of Moscow’s kleptocracy and help rebuild Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the future for the land of the czars is bleak. Russia’s population — now 141.7 million — drops by nearly 1 million per year. With an average male life span of just 59 years, look for 2012 to be the year Putin and his cronies do all they can to line their pockets — at our expense.

You have to wonder what all those people we presently pay to think about these things and govern accordingly have been doing with their time, you know? Are they so busy working on getting reelected, lining their pockets via insider trading and figuring out new perks and benefits to give themselves that they haven’t got any time for America, their employer whose shareholders are the taxpayers?

Note to all running for office in 2012: The word “entitlement” does not appear in the Constitution. The words “provide for the common defence” do. Happy new year.

Yes, to all, Happy New Year.

I’m back in Manhattan for a couple of days.

I spent the last few weeks taking care of chores at home, and now am in the city to eat at a few good restaurants with some friends and go to the theatre.

I managed to get in some reading from Seth’s list of favorite books I found while monitoring one of his email accounts, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczny and Steinbeck’s Travels With Charlie, both excellent. The second was actually a “reread”, the first a “first read” for me.

But getting down to brass tacks: We (Seth, Wolf, Chuck and I) have all become tired of the field of professional career politicians that have been running this country of late.

I’m not only speaking of the Democrats, but of the Republicans as well. Both sides are much too concerned with playing party politics to spare the needs of the American people any of their precious time. The reason for having our two party system is to allow room for compromise of one kind or another. I mean let’s face it: Both sides, while claiming that they are open to compromise, are lying: In both cases, it’s “my way or the highway”.

This might suffice for the more politically, logically or morally (each to his or her own morality) motivated among us, each of us “knowing” what is good and what is not good for our country, but without some kind of compromise, a little pain on both sides, perhaps, no one is going to “win”; However, the American people will be the big losers.

The government (mostly the Democrats, but still the government) put us in the economic fix we’re in by going outside the authority placed in them by the Constitution and causing the mortgage crisis that snowballed into the present mess, and every repair job they’ve executed on our broken economy has only made things worse.

These professional politicians are literally destroying what was unquestionably the greatest country in the history of civilization. I say was because they’ve about brought us to our knees, and they still persist in continuing on the same path, that of placing the welfare of we, the people as a united entity second to the whims of the special interest groups that support their campaigns.

Meanwhile, again unconstitutionally, they’ve voted themselves salary increases, elite health benefits and even six digit retirements (pretty good, that, considering that politics was not intended to be a career field); all, according to the Constitution, the kind of stuff we, the taxpayers, are supposed to decide as initiatives on the voting ballot.

They’ve also now been reported to be profiting via investments made based on privileged insider information they possess as part of their jobs, a criminal offense if we rank and file citizens do it. Politicians in the House and the Senate are becoming millionaires through insider information generated portfolios.

Oh, of course they’ll see justice done for these dastardly deeds: They merely introduce toothless legislation to prevent themselves from reaping the rewards of their malfeasance, then go back to business as usual.

I fear that our government’s become as corrupt as that of any third world country, and like in those dictatorships, the people are powerless to do anything about it, except…

…except that this is the United States of America, where we can vote them all out and replace them with patriotic, honest man and women, non-politicians who will serve six years or less and then return to the private sector, depending on their own private resources for building retirement incomes, acquiring the levels of healthcare they require, etc.

But we won’t vote them out, will we?

No, of course not. Everybody (not, however, those of us here at Hard Astarboard) will continue to support the Romneys, the Gingriches, the Obamas, the Pelosis, the Reids, the Perrys… and the politics will continue, along with our own downward spiral until there is little left to distinguish between the United States of America and any third rate country you care to name.

I say this: If we continue allowing the career politicians to stay in office, we will thoroughly deserve the price our children and grandchildren will be paying down the road, because we will have begged for it via our own stupidity.

Like Seth would say, “the government needs an enema.”

And he’d be right.

Where the presidential primaries are concerned, Herman Cain is still our man, and let the opposition keep on throwing fabricated sexual harrassment charges at him. The best thing Cain could do would be to minimize these innuendos, treat them as he might a fly buzzing around and forge ahead with his message.

And that, said Mrs. Wolf, is that.

As we know, a number of allegations have suddenly appeared, citing sexual harassment and related improprieties against Herman Cain.

The timing and organization of this “timely” crusade are simply too convenient to be taken as anything but, well, organized.

The accusations don’t seem to have had an appreciable effect on Cain’s support from the conservative side, but the entire thing has left liberals absolutely shocked. Yes, such abominable behavior (revisionist history: the fact that their own icon, B.J. Clinton, was a sexual harasser and date rapist from as far back as his days in Arkansas politics, and more recently committed adultery in the Oval Office has been stricken from the record for the duration of the accusations vs. Cain), indeed!

From Ann Coulter:

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country — Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. — but never in Chicago.

So it’s curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod.

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O’Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley’s chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain’s personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

The Daley-controlled IRA works hand-in-glove with the NRA. And strangely enough, Cain’s short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he’s alleged to have been a sexual predator.

After O’Grady’s name surfaced in connection with the miraculous appearance of Cain’s personnel files from the NRA, she issued a Clintonesque denial of any involvement in producing them — by vigorously denying that she knew Cain when he was at the NRA. (Duh.)

And now, after a week of conservative eye-rolling over unspecified, anonymous accusations against Cain, we’ve suddenly got very specific sexual assault allegations from an all-new accuser out of … Chicago.

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago. But you know who has? David Axelrod! And guess who lived in Axelrod’s very building? Right again: Cain’s latest accuser, Sharon Bialek.

Read On…

So, yes. Here at Hard Astarboard, having never doubted him, we stand by our candidate.

This time, Obama’s little helpers have not only thrown a bomb into the Republican primary, but are hoping to destroy the man who deprives the Democrats of their only argument in 2012: If you oppose Obama, you must be a racist.

Heh, heh…

Having heard briefly from the Big, Bad Wolf yesterday,

A) He and Seth are “okay” and hope to be back among us really soon (I can’t wait, after all this my Wolf owes me a long, exotic vacation).

B) While they are somewhat isolated from mainstream society, as it were, they are not exactly cut off from “outside” news and current events: They both agree that Herman Cain is the forerunner for the 2012 vote here at Hard Astarboard. I third the motion.

I know, I know, most Republicans whose blogs I read have a thing for staying with experienced, bona-fides produceable GOP veterans who have made their careers in politics, but face it, these people simply aren’t cutting the mustard. It’s all about politics, not about America and Americans with them, and while they duke it out, the country is sinking into an economic abyss under the direction of a government that has no direction.

Herman Cain grew up black in the “In The Heat of the Night” south and instead of being what the Democrats consider a proper “African-American” and settling into a life on the government dole, he embraced the American Dream and succeeded in life.

He brings to the table real leadership experience, hard won in the private sector, where bottom lines make it difficult if not impossible to conceal failure behind political rhetoric, as in government.

Okay, so he hasn’t committed on every issue:

Like all the candidates, Mr. Cain has weaknesses. He has stumbled on abortion. He refuses to restore the ban on homosexuals in the military. His views on trade are sketchy. In particular, he has failed to articulate a comprehensive foreign policy. On Afghanistan, Iran, China and Russia, Mr. Cain needs to outline where he stands. This is especially true regarding the seminal issue of our time: radical Islam. If Mr. Cain can’t cross that bar, then he will rightfully lose the GOP primary contest.

Fine, like the article says, “Like all the candidates…” One of the reasons we’ve missed the boat on some potentially excellent leaders is that we keep on looking for perfection in a world where nobody’s perfect. The day we find a candidate whose every single stance agrees with those of every single voter will never come.

Mr. Cain’s visceral appeal is that he is the outsider, the anti-establishment candidate. Unlike Mr. Romney, Mr. Cain is not a conventional politician. On the campaign trail, Mr. Cain’s answers are often not scripted; rather, they are blunt, raw and honest. He is articulate and passionate and uses simple, clear language that resonates with the electorate. In short, he is not a phony.

Moreover, he is a populist reformer who embodies much of the Tea Party insurgency against the decrepit governing class. Mr. Cain’s candidacy is tapping into Middle America’s frustration and anger with Imperial Washington.

Politicians have brought America to the brink of collapse. Inside the Beltway, Mr. Cain’s lack of political experience is seen as a huge negative. In the heartland, however, it is viewed as a virtue.

Three cheers for the “Fly-over Zone!”

Tax reform is Mr. Cain’s signature issue. His 9-9-9 plan is ambitious. The current tax code is burdensome, stifling and infested with special-interest loopholes and carve-outs. It is the very symbol of our bloated and corrupt federal government. Mr. Cain calls for a 9 percent income tax, a 9 percent business tax and a 9 percent national sales tax. His proposal creates a simple, efficient tax code that broadens the base of taxpayers.

It would unleash economic growth and job creation - and strike at the heart of welfare liberalism. Nearly half of all Americans no longer pay any income taxes. This means they are being subsidized by middle- and upper-income earners - one half of the country is living off the other half. Mr. Cain would end this. The 9-9-9 plan would terminate the use of the tax system to foster a culture of dependency and government handouts.

Mr. Cain’s worldview can be distilled to running America as a business, not a socialist empire. His call for across-the-board spending cuts, entitlement reform and repeal of Obamacare would revive our moribund market economy. None of the GOP candidates captures the entrepreneurial spirit better than Mr. Cain. He embodies rugged individualism and self-reliance. He is a self-made businessman and former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza. He has spent almost his entire life in the private sector. He speaks with the weight of conviction - and experience.

Mr. Cain also truly represents the promise of a post-racial America. This was the initial appeal of Mr. Obama’s presidency: The ugly legacy of race finally would be buried. Instead, under his administration, the country has become even more racially - and ideologically - polarized. Mr. Obama and his media allies constantly play the race card to demonize their critics. Mr. Cain, however, is the very opposite: His campaign so far has been completely free of racial overtones or grievance-mongering. He is running on his character and policies, not on the color of his skin. His candidacy truly transcends race.

His candidacy transcends idiotic political Romperroomism, as well.

Herman Cain in 2012