In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we have assembled a distinguished panel to explore the “Unknown Obama.” Our guests today are:
Fred Siegel, Fred Siegel is a contributing editor of City Journal and a professor of history at the Cooper Union for Science and Art.
Jeff Herf, a professor of modern European and German political and intellectual history at the University of Maryland in College Park. His most recent book is The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006). He has been a frequent contributor to The New Republic and was one of the authors of American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto of fall 2006. He is currently writing a history of Nazi propaganda aimed at the Arab world during World War II.
and
Thomas Cushman, Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College, and the founder and Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Human Rights. He is a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and the editor of A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq (California, 2006).
FP: Fred Siegel, Jeff Herf and Thomas Cushman, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Thomas Cushman, how would you begin a discussion on the Unknown Obama?
Cushman: I should begin with an affirmation that I am impressed with Barack Obama for many reasons. He is charismatic and charming, Harvard trained and astute on many issues, especially constitutional law, which is his area of expertise. On the latter, he has offered many surprising comments, the most interesting one being his declaration the Second Amendment guarantees gun ownership as an individual right, a trend which is on the rise and which counters the liberal orthodoxy on that issue which emerged in the 1960s and has led to what I consider to be unconstitutional regulations on gun ownership. He seems to be representative of a new generation of African-American elites who have put paid to the demagogic excesses of people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who have done severe damage to the Democratic Party by alienating the broad base of moderates (although I shall end my comments by questioning whether this is really the case). A large number of Americans are sincerely disenchanted with the current leadership and policies of the United States, as it should be in a healthy democracy, and Obama serves a very useful function in invigorating and re-enchanting the public sphere.
And I would add further, that the successes of Barack Obama, especially among white voters, is an indication that many Americans do, indeed, feel badly about the African-American experience in the United States, and lacking any real means to effect "reparations", they see casting a vote for him as a way to show that they really have moved beyond the racism of the past and wish to truly show that Americans have changed for the better. The fact that Geraldine Ferraro was released from the Clinton campaign for saying what is so obviously true -- that many people are voting for him precisely because he is an African-American - is regrettable, because it should be stressed in no uncertain terms that his race is a very important variable in the calculus of many voters.
Having opened with what I consider to be the best things about the Senator, though, I want to begin answering the question of "The Unknown Obama" by focusing on some particular points about what is known about him, but which few people have dared to bring up for fear of political correctness. To cut right to the chase, the first issue has to do with the religious status of Obama. In my response, I want to avoid the kind of cheap propaganda tricks that have appeared thus far, such things as the releasing of the photo of Obama dressed in the garb of a Muslim tribal leader, or the tendency of people to refer to the Senator as "Barack Hussein Obama", tactics which try to infer that he is some kind of Islamic "Manchurian candidate."
Now it is entirely clear that Senator Obama is a Christian, and as we now know a member of a congregation with a particularly strident and apoplectic pastor who is given to expressing the kind of anti-American sentiment that gives aid and succor to America's enemies (more on that in a moment). Since the beginning of this campaign, I have many times wanted to raise the question of Obama's religious status in a strictly disinterested, sociological way, but even being of iconoclastic disposition, I have hesitated given the abuse that has been hurled at people who raise the issue. But it is important now to raise it, because we are talking about the presidency of the United States and it is attendant to raise some important questions about how it is that people might interpret the "meaning" of Barack Obama, given his particular biography, which is extremely anomalous in relation that of previous candidates for the presidency, and particularly important given the tension between the United States and the "Islamic world".
The real question of "who one is", whether in a political, religious, or more general sense, is seldom defined solely in terms of who the person says he is. It is certainly objectively true that Barack Obama is not a practicing Muslim. It is certainly the case that he is practicing Christian, and apparently a quite devout one at that. In the United States, we are free to choose our religion, and so there is nothing problematic about his religious status if we consider it in relation to our own society which places great value on the fundamental right to practice the religion of one's choosing. But the question that has nagged me from the very outset -- and it is a provocative and controversial one -- is how Obama's religious status is looked at by the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world. The fact of the matter is that there are about 1 billion Muslims in the world, many of them who are fundamentalists. According to the law of the Koran, if your father is a Muslim, you are considered to be a Muslim, regardless of whether or not you consider yourself a Muslim. In fact, if you do not assent to this ascribed religious identity, then in a literalist interpretation you are considered an apostate, the penalty for which is death. So by inference, we can surmise that a good proportion of the Muslim world considers Obama to be a Muslim and for many an apostate as well.
This interpretation has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's self-professed religion or whether we in the United States consider him to be a Christian. It has to with the fact that for many Muslims, religion is an ascribed identity, so that whatever it is that Obama thinks he is there are a lot of people in the world who live by the rule that religion is ascribed at birth, and that the individual has very little choice in the matter. Islam, in particular, is a religion in which this is a central belief. One of the most powerful theorems in my field, put forward by W.I. Thomas (often called the "Thomas Theorem"), is that" if people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." It doesn't matter so much what you believe yourself to be, but what others believe you to be that is crucially important. Objective renderings of one's self are strongly mediated by subjective meanings over which the "objective self" has very little control.
I myself do not have any indication of the actual empirical sociological data about what Muslims think about Obama's religious status, but it is very likely that if many people in the world who live by the literal word of the Koran, then they will have their own meanings as to "who" (or should I say "what") Barack Obama is that have very little to do with what he says he is, or what we in the US think he is. Now the consequences of this could play out in any number of ways. For many of the world's Muslims, an American President with a Muslim heritage could be seen as a source of pride, an affirmation that people of Muslim background are not all fanatics and fundamentalists, and that even in the much-scorned US, a man of Muslim background can be elected to the highest office in the land. The election of such an impressive man with a Muslim heritage could lead people to look at America in a different light and Obama could be an inspiration for many ordinary Muslims to reject the pernicious road that the Islamists fundamentalists have forced upon them. The most important positive consequence could be that "one of ours" has succeeded in becoming the leader of the nation that our leaders tell us is the "Great Satan." It would create a legitimation crisis of the first order for the Islamists who have hijacked Islam and done it such a great injustice in recent years. Liberal-minded and moderate Muslims could take great succor in having such a role model interacting with Muslim leaders in the world, someone who represented American interests, but also would be seen as symbol of pride. I often imagine this legitimation crisis by considering Osama bin Laden sitting in a cave somewhere asking his advisors, with some consternation and apprehension, "Is his name really Obama?"
On the other hand, it is easy to imagine an alternative scenario of negative consequences based on the the Muslim practice of ascribing religious identity at birth and expecting a lifelong commitment to that religion and its beliefs and practices. It is entirely clear that radical Islam is on the ascendancy in the world today and it is the elites in this movement who have immense power to define all manner of things, including the "meaning" of Barack Obama. Look how successful they have been in defining the US as the source of all evil, of George Bush as the devil incarnate, meanings which find sympathetic audiences among many liberals and leftists in the US and the rest of the world. There is the very real possibility that Obama could be labeled as an apostate, rather than simply an "infidel" outside of the faith such as George W. Bush. Radical Islamist terrorists consider it right and just to kill any American, and we also know that apostates are a particular object of scorn, the opprobrium of which there is no escape. The case of Salman Rushdie is particularly instructive, although The Satanic Verses qualified Rusdhie as a more offensive apostate, and not just “guilty” of the "simple apostasy" of leaving Islam.
Surely, for the extremists, killing any American president would be the hallmark of glory, but killing an apostate would surely be a step even beyond that. If Obama were elected, would the radical Islamists issue a fatwah against him for the crime of defecting from his ascribed status as a Muslim? Would America become even more engorged with evil by virtue of being led by an apostate who serves the interest of America over the interests of the Muslim world? I do think it is important to raise these questions, and I am endeavoring to do it in the most disinterested way by thinking about the "meaning" of Barack Obama in a sociological way. And his "meaning" to the Muslim world is a vitally important issue to raise. Naturally, one would hope that his election, if it were to be the case, would serve to temper and moderate the views of the Muslim word -- that would be the very best consequence. But in a world where Islamic fundamentalism is ascendant, I think it is extremely important to consider also the more negative consequences of what it means to have a president who hundreds of millions of people - rightly or wrongly -- think of in religious terms over which a President Obama, or anyone else, would have little control.
It is troubling, I might add, to consider that candidate Obama has already indicated his willingness to negotiate and barter with some of the more despotic leaders of the Islamic world. This is something which is "known" about Obama. The great unknown is what the consequence of such friendliness toward these leaders might be. In a recent controversy, Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King raised a perfectly valid question, not quite realizing that he was being quite a good sociologist in asking it: "When you think about the option of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world?
What does it look like to the world of Islam?" His answer, "terrorists would be dancing in the streets", was infelicitous in the extreme, at least in a world where politicians always have to watch their words. But one must ask: in the upcoming elections, who would the Islamic world prefer to win? It is reasonable to think that it would be the man who wants to surrender Iraq, make peace with and appease dictators who wish harm to the United States, and work within the United Nations and the illiberal blocs who dominate that institution. In my speculations above, I've tried to offer various answers to these questions, with the hope that, provocative as they might seem, people will be willing to discuss them because they are perfectly valid questions. This is especially the case, given the fact that opponents of George W. Bush have spared no energy in constantly declaiming about the negative meanings of the president in the world at large, and in the Muslim world in particular. If we get to ask what George Bush "means" in the world at-large, despite whatever it is he thinks he means, we get to ask the same about Barack Obama.
Since I have focused on religion, it is important also, since the news has just broken, to mention the recent controversy over Barack Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Their close relationship has been known for some time, but it is only recently that the videos of the Reverend Wright declaiming against Hillary Clinton, damning the United States, and blaming 9/11 on America have become known. One wonders why this has taken so long; one would have expected the Clinton machine to have trotted the Reverend out a long time ago. The real controversy here is not so much that Reverend Wright presents as something like a Noam Chomsky on drugs, but Obama's claim that he wasn't present to see these performances and that he did not know about them. Even granting him the shady evasion that he wasn't there, it is impossible to imagine that he could not have known about them. In church, everyone knows what the pastor says, either by direct observation or word-of-mouth.
What is even more troubling is that Obama would appoint the pastor to a high position in his campaign and describe him as his spiritual advisor knowing that he was prone to apoplectic fits of political rage. Obama's (very Christian) condemnation of the sin, but not the sinner, was quite noble as well as tactical manoeuvre, for to condemn the man himself would have completely destroyed his claims to authenticity in his interpersonal relationships. So the issue is less about the "unknown Obama" than the fact of what Obama must have known, but would not and could not address. The best he could do was to champion the good qualities of the pastor, likening him to an uncle who has "lost it" and thereby reasserting the fact that Obama considers this political charlatan still to be like a member of his own family and his spiritual mentor. It's not quite like the situation of Jimmy Carter, who had to tolerate his drunken redneck brother Billy because they happened to share a mother and father. For Obama's association with Reverend Wright was a choice and it says a lot more about the man, his worldview, and his judgment than his charismatic personality and leadership skills seem to imply. The Senator may have figured out how to act like a moderate, how to charm people, and how to appeal to their disenchantment by invoking the slogan of "hope" and "change", but this new "unknown" relationship strips off some of that fine veneer. It is truly troubling that Obama knew about the Reverend Wright and that he was either 1. Too stupid to realize the political damage this fanatic could do to his campaign or 2. He thought we were too stupid to discover that his spiritual advisor is a fanatic, or that we wouldn’t care.
I began my thoughts here praising Obama’s abilities as a public performer and a charismatic figure in politics. He will retain those, yet behind this front stage performance of a new kind of African-American leader, it is clear that Obama remains closely tied to the most retrograde and reactionary elements of the African-American community. Backstage, the “unknown Obama” may be closer to people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson than we were at first led to believe. The truly frightening prospect is that the current infatuation with the Senator might occlude concern with his choice of spiritual advisors. This might especially be the case among young people who, led by their radical professors who support Obama en masse, might think that Rev. Wright is “right on.” There is nothing that Wright has said in his various tirades that I have not heard in the groves of academe.
What remains to be seen are the other unknown, or hidden affiliations and sentiments of the Senator, which may indicate that behind his effective and charming performances there lies a man who is deeply connected to some of the most radical and reactionary elements in American politics. And this is not purely in relation to those elements in the African-American community. It has recently come to light that Obama enjoys a close relationship to Bill Ayers a former member of the Weather Underground, whose professed aim (for which he is not apologetic) was to overthrow the American government through armed force. I suppose it is entirely reasonable and even necessary to judge a man, especially a candidate for the presidency of the United States, by the company he keeps. The main concern is whether or not rank-and-file moderates who seem to have fallen in love with Obama can look beyond the charm and charisma to take a deeper look at who the Senator really is.
Siegel: In his widely discussed speech on the rantings of his South Side of Chicago “spiritual mentor” The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Presidential candidate Barak Obama never apologized for his own failings in never having chastised Wright. This is particularly problematic for a man whose only deeds of consequence are words. Evidently, Barak Obama wants to be the nation’s conscience without having one himself. The disparity between Obama’s rhetoric of transcendence and his conventional Chicago racial and patronage politics is the leitmotif of his political career.
One of the unwritten rules of the civil rights movement in its mid-1960s glory was that when people told insulting racial jokes or speakers engaged in defamatory rhetoric, you needed to register your immediate disapproval - not 20 yrs later when you're running for president. But not even Pastor’s Wright’s trip with Louis Farrakhan, to pay homage to Libyan dictator Momar Khadafy, elicited a response from Obama. Perhaps that’s because as Tom Cushman points out - and I disagree with little of what Tom said - while Obama is most definitely not a Muslim, he has a strong third wordlist view of international relations that he probably imbibed from his hard left grandparents and mother. It’s probably that viewpoint with its authentication of his blackness that, in part, produced his adulation of Wright.
There are no virgin births in politics, particularly Chicago politics. For all of his Camelot-like rhetoric, Obama is a product, in significant measure, of the deeply corrupt politics of Chicago and Cook County. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass bitterly described “The Chicago Way: “We've had our chief of detectives sent to prison for running the Outfit's jewellery-heist ring. And we've had white guys with Outfit connections get $100 million in affirmative action contracts from their drinking buddy, Mayor Richard Daley. . . That's the Chicago Way. At no point did the would be savior of American liberalism challenge this corruption. He was, in his own Harvard Law way, a part of it.
When he had the opportunity to back “clean” candidates for The Cook County Board of Supervisors and Governor, he stayed with the allies of The Outfit. The Gubernatorial candidate he backed, Rod Blagojevich, is now under federal investigation, in part because of his relationship with Tony Rezko, the man who helped Obama buy his house. “Some strangers to our lands,” notes Kass of the Syrian born Rezko, have used the Chicago Way with perfect pitch. Rezko's buddy, former Iraqi electricity minister (under Prime Minister Alawi), Aiham Alsammarae, escaped an Iraqi prison after he had been convicted on corruption charges. A reporter asked Alsammarae, the most senior Iraqi official arrested on corruption charges -- How did you escape? "The Chicago Way," he said upon return to his palatial Chicago home. So perhaps experience in Chicago politics provides a useful orientation for Third World politics.
Buried in the glamour of the Obama campaign is a rather conventional candidate. Obama was first drawn to Wright’s Afro-Centric church because it provided a political base for his already well developed ambitions. Writing in the Huffington Post after the Wright furor had erupted, the Illinois Senator insisted that the “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.” Clear to whom? “Obama,” notes the left-wing netzine Salon quoted Wright at length in his book "The Audacity of Hope" -- and took the name of his book from one of the first sermons he heard Wright deliver. “That first sermon included a comparison of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, which claimed 69 lives, to Hiroshima.”
Obama, deeply tied to Wright, planned to have him deliver the blessing when he was announcing for president. Only the press of ambition has separated them. In The Speech he obliquely acknowledged that he might have been present when some controversial statements were made. Delivered from Mitt Romney this would be called a flip-flop. In the words of ABC’s Brian Ross, “Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barak Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons.” In the same conventional vein, Obama initially insisted that he had taken only $60,00 from Rezko, a figure accepted by most of the national press. But when pressed on the matter by local reporters, the campaign acknowledged that $60,000 was more like $250,000, and that contrary to his earlier assertions that Rezko, Obama’s sometime business associate, had only been casually involved in the home purchase, it turns out that they had toured the house together. None of this is in and of itself definitively damning, but by no means can it represent moral leadership.
Nor is it moral leadership to play traditional South Side of Chicago racial politics. The morning after Obama’s surprise loss in New Hampshire and in anticipation of the then upcoming South Carolina, South Side Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr, Obama’s National Co-Chair appeared on Obama’s very own network MSNBC to argue, in a prepared statement, that Hillary Clinton’s teary moment on the Campaign trail reflected her deep seated racism. “Those tears,” said Jackson,” have to be analyzed," Jackson said, "they have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45 percent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest ... we saw tears in response to her appearance, so that her appearance brought her to tears, but not Hurricane Katrina, not other issues."
This brought no media rebuke. In other words, in anticipation of Rev. Wright affair, much of the press has accepted the implicit assumptions of Chicago style racial politics. Whites, who are at odds or who haven’t delivered for Chicago pols, can be accused of racism on the most oblique basis, but pillars of local black politics like Rev. Wright preaching an exclusivist racial theology are beyond criticism. Chicago is, after all, the city where Farrakhan is a respected political figure.
Shortly after the Jesse Jackson Jr. Speech, Emanuel Cleaver, an African- American Congressman and Clinton supporter from Kansas City, described the attempt by Obama supporters to smear him and other Clinton Black super-delegates as an “Uncle Tom” for not switching to Obama. “African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” Cleaver explained. They are, he went on getting “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom. “This is the politics of the 1950s.”
The man who savors his intellectual ability to make interesting distinctions has shown none of that ability in his own Chicago career. Obama, his verbal fluency aside, is a clever but conventional Chicago left-liberal party hack. The legatees of the media elites who denounced former mayor Richard Daley Sr. as a racist for the way he played ethnic and patronage politics, find that similar game entirely admirable when it comes from a Harvard intoned a mixed-race, black identified candidate.
Herf: Tom Cushman and Fred Siegel raise a host of important points. I want to focus on the known, not the unknown Obama. We know, based on his public positions, that he is a conventional left-liberal, closer on most issues to The Nation and The New York Review of Books than The New Republic or The Washington Post. Yet he has won many Democratic primaries and leads in the delegate count in part because he has convinced millions of voters that this is not the case and that he is, instead, a unifying, not only post-racial, but post-partisan candidate for the Presidency.
While he has huge support in the black electorate, his early and oft-repeated opposition to the war in Iraq contributes to his support among the young, and college educated who give his campaign energy and dollars. As the course of the war shattered early optimistic predictions, opposition to it became the heart and soul of the activist base and much of the congressional representation of the Democratic Party. Support for Obama became the logical expression of this broad sentiment, especially in contrast to Hillary Clinton’s more ambiguous stance on the war. In other words, support for Obama is indicative of the fact that the base and leadership of the Democratic Party has moved to the left.
In a recent edition of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer published, in my view, an excellent column about Obama’s speech on race. As I agree with Krauthammer’s point regarding moral equivalence, I will save time by presenting the URL link and suggesting that readers read it themselves. See: A Brilliant Fraud.
As Krauthammer rightly notes, it is remarkable that Obama would equate his white grandmother’s privately expressed fears of black men who passed her on the street with Jeremiah Wright’s public, political statements about, for example, the government’s responsibility for the spread of Aids in black neighborhoods. Bill Bradley, now an Obama supporter, gave an excellent speech in the Senate around 1991 in which he contrasted the deep admiration, respect and affection he felt for his black New York Knick teammates with the fear he–a very tall, very big, very strong guy–felt about crime. Jesse Jackson once expressed similar fears. There is no denying that such fears have been exploited at times by conservative politicians for electoral gain.
As Obama knows very well, the overwhelming majority of the victims of crimes committed by blacks are other blacks. This is a fact that is most inconvenient. In 2005, I published an essay in The New Republic online (“True Crime”) in which I presented crime statistics collected by the Department of Justice and placed on the website. From the mid-1960s to 2002, about 850,000 people have been murdered in the United States. Of them, about 220,000 were African-Americans. Over 90% of those murders were black-on-black crimes. By any measure this is the greatest catastrophe to befall African-Americans since slavery. The chances of a black man being a perpetrator or a victim of a violent crime were about 6 to 7 times greater than were those of whites. So the fear that Obama’s white grandmother expressed must be rather mild compared to the fully realistic fears of crime that African-Americans in the inner cities and now close in suburbs live with.
This age of murder is one of the great disasters in the history of this country. Given that its causes are complex, it is no surprise that demagogic arguments and conspiracy theories have flourished in black neighborhoods and, as Jeremiah Wright’s sermons indicate, in some black churches as well. The facts of these murders have been on the evening television news and in the local pages of newspapers in American cities for the past half-century. Not to express fear in the face of such a cataclysm would be a form of denial. So to equate Obama’s grandmother’s fears with the political views of Jeremiah Wright is mistaken.
The problem raised by the revelation of Reverend Wright’s sermons is thus not only or even primarily the problem of race. It is that he has distinct political views that, as Obama acknowledged, badly distort the causes of the problems facing African-Americans. Obama has known of those views for many years and nevertheless decided to remain close to Wright. The question will linger: why did he continue to have a relationship, and a close relationship, with a man whose views he now finds unacceptable?
Cushman: I am grateful for the comments of Fred Siegel and Jeffrey Herf, two of the most astute scholars and commentators I know.
In my first comments, I suggested that a man who chooses someone like Reverend Jeremiah Wright to be his spiritual mentor simply lacks the good judgment necessary for high office. And this is not simply because of his political statements, but because it suggest a close relationship to a kind of self-serving and coarse black liberation theology, which is way outside the margins of conventional religion in the US. It is ironic in the extreme, because for years now, the left-liberal critics of Bush have gone practically insane over Bush’s religious fundamentalism, which seems even somewhat mild in comparison with the Rev. Wright’s particular brand of apocalyptic and divisive theological poison. Because Obama presents himself in such a much more articulate and rational way, are we supposed to imagine that his alignment with black liberation theology is to have no bearing on his conduct as President? If liberals are so concerned about the separation of church and state, why have they not raised this question?
As all of us have indicated, Obama has been successful precisely because of he presents himself as a messianic figure, preaching “hope” and “change”. It comes out a lot more eloquent than the way he heard in church, but it is clear that Obama understands Americans’ constant need for salvation of some sort or the other. Sociologists have been telling us for years about the cynicism which characterizes American society. The most affluent society on earth is constantly unhappy about something, no matter what its material circumstances (I recall with irony that Americans, in public opinion polls have consistently registered around 30% when asked if they are hopeful about the future, in contrast to 70% of Iraqis, in national polls in 2006, admittedly a figure which has declined in the last two years). Obama has charged headlong into the cynical society with rhetoric of hope and change, and this has had great appeal, even beyond the boundaries of the most idealistic parts of the population, especially youth, as Fred Siegel points out. There is a demagogic aspect to this, I think, even when considered in light of Bush’s flawed presidency, because Obama’s strategy is to objectify the generalized pessimism of Americans in a rhetoric which shields him from real scrutiny.
And lest someone actually scrutinize the Senator, there is always the race issue to be played, which Obama clearly did in his famous speech on race in America, even after demanding that Geraldine Ferraro be fired for bringing the issue of race into the campaign. His speech, much touted as one of the most brilliant speeches in American history, masterfully resurrected the “sacred evil” of slavery and racial oppression, the best possible weapon against white people who cannot say a word in the defense of these practices and a surefire way to exponentially increase white guilt, which as I have noted is probably playing a role in the Senator’s popularity. What was truly brilliant about the speech was not the words themselves, but the strategy of countering the “shame” of the Reverend Wright with the “ur-trump” of the national shame of the historical treatment of African-Americans in US history. This is a vast pool of cultural capital which can be drawn on for political eternity without running dry. Not only Jeremiah Wright can be contextualized, but indeed, any manner of deviance among African-Americans. Jeff Herf pointed out the vastly disproportionate homicide statistics among African-Americans and this too is almost always contextualize as a result of history rather than agency. The problem with such contextualizations is that they rob African-Americans who have transcended the past, rejected violence, and become ordinary and in many cases extraordinary Americans – of their agency and status as individuals. This is all the more ironic because if what Obama says is true, he shouldn’t be the leading the contender for the Democratic nomination.
The real problem with Obama’s speech, though, is that it has called into question his so-called progressive agenda for America. It does a great disservice to the African-American community at large, since he doesn’t mention any positive social outcomes that the latter have experienced since the civil rights movement. Black incomes have grown, as has the black middle-class. Are there still problems? Of course: black incomes have grown less than those of whites, and blacks have more difficulty passing on their social mobility to the next generation.
This gets to the more fundamental issue of Obama’s status as a “progressive.” For in his association with Wright, and his recent proclamations about slavery and the negative black experience, he is taking us backwards to things that cannot be forgotten, to be sure, but should not be at the center of a progressive agenda for black Americans or for any other Americans for that matter. It is like hoping for a better past, rather than imagining a better future. This man of great “hope” got the future has now stepped backwards, purely for political advantage, when what he should be pointing out is how it can be that more people like him can be produced in the future.
One could also point out the existence of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and even Justice Clarence Thomas, but that is taboo in most of black America because they don’t have the right kinds of politics. Rev. Wright, it will be remembered, referred to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as “Condoskeezza”, from the urban slang word “skeeze”, one of the most derogatory terms for a woman imaginable. He regularly refers to Justice Thomas as “Clarence Colon.” Here is real injustice to upstanding African-Americans, and the Senator never brought such things up at all. He generally slides out of perverse comments by fellow African-Americans by invoking the First Amendment and then changing the subject. I think we have yet to see what the real consequences of Obama’s retrogression on the race issue. If he loses the election, one can expect the level of racial tension and possibly even racial violence, to skyrocket, and some part of the blame can be laid at Obama’s feet for that should these occur.
I’d like to end this round by noting that, in my opinion, the Senator is actually quite politically retrograde in inverse proportion to his rhetoric of hope. I’ve already discussed why this is on the race issue, but it is true of his more general politics as well. Fred Siegel masterfully pointed out that Obama has very little political experience and is, in fact, “a clever but conventional Chicago left-liberal hack”. Surely one can understand why supporters of Obama would be silent about Obama’s real political credentials and lack of experience. After Bush, he may be a hack, but at least he’s “our hack”. And he makes us feel good. Such is politics.
Obama remains mired in the past, as well, on the issue of Iraq. The dominant message of his campaign is that we never should have gone to war in the first place (another demagogic feint to anti-war sentiment). This is about as backward a form thinking as one can get, since the new president must imagine and carry out a solution that protects the nascent Iraqi society, which is a fundamental duty that we have taken on ourselves as a nation, whether we like it or not. He must also protect American interests in the region, regardless of whether he agreed with the war or not.
The other central part of his campaign message on Iraq is that the war is a lost cause – a fact with which most Iraqis and General Petraeus would not concur. He is, in effect, consigning America to defeat against al-Qaeda, which can only benefit the latter and enable radical Islam to new heights globally. It is hard to see any “hope” in Obama’s plans for Iraq. In fact, I have strained myself to find any indication whatsoever of what exactly a President Obama would do about the war on terror.
I suppose, like most left-liberals, he imagines that it only exists as a creation of George W. Bush, rather than something which was there before Bush and will be with us a long time, especially if Iraq is lost. The astute Paul Berman has recently pointed out in The New York Times that the silence of the left on radical Islam is one of the most troubling hallmarks of the discourse of modern times. Like his preacher, one gets the sneaking suspicion that Obama, like many left-liberals, really do think that we are the cause of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, as if the agents of the latter are simply reflexes of our “evil empire.”
This is the Unknown Obama that strikes fear into my heart. So-called liberals think that everything will just be better when George Bush goes away and think that someone with no political experience, armed with “the audacity of hope” and the spiritual guidance of a black liberation theologist, and with a little dash of charisma and charm, is qualified to be Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces and to protect our national interests and national security. What is even more troubling is that so many Americans, distanced as they are from the realities of the world, see this self-appointed messiah and political hack as their national savior.
Siegel: Tom Cushman asks why Rev Wright’s Church with its profoundly political perspective and Obama’s close relationship with it haven’t raised the standard issues of the separation of church and state among liberals. It’s a good question. Part of the answer is surely that darker skinned people are given a special dispensation by liberals. But in this case it’s also a matter of an ongoing love affair with Obama in the press.
In the wake of the Reverend Wright flap and Obama’s evasive response, the New York Times went out of its way to praise Obama. The Times editorial, which is entitled “Profiles in Courage,” compares Obama’s race speech to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. Writing about the Church that Obama joined in large measure to launch his political career, the Times said “Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters’ business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business.” Would the Times even begin to accept such a verbal assertion as a statement of fact from a candidate they didn’t love? Then again this is part of the broader leitmotif of the Obama campaign, words as illocutionary actions.
Jeff Herf rightly wrote that “support for Obama is indicative of the fact that the base and leadership of the Democratic Party has moved to the left.” This is true, but it’s also true that the underlying tension produced by globalization, the failures of the Bush administration and the failures of the oh-too-clever market for exotic financial instruments has pushed the center towards the left.
But even on this turf, Obama is a windbag. I sat a few seats away from Paul Volcker for Obama’s recent talk on the economy at Cooper Union. The Obama speech was thoughtful and well delivered. His plan for dealing with the sub-prime mortgage crunch is far less heavy handed that Hillary Clinton’s. But the problem as almost always with Obama is the disparity between his words and deeds.
In his speech, he denounced in no uncertain terms the "special privileges" regarding the taxation of people on Wall Street (from whence he derives many funders) But when he had an opportunity to push the repeal of the privileged tax treatment of private equity firms as the matter was before Charles Grassley's Senate finance sub-committee, he made a pro forma statement and then disappeared into the wood work. He attacked predatory lenders in the Cooper Union speech, but has taken roughly 1.3m in contributions from companies in that business.
On the more general matter of regulating brokerage houses in the wake of the Fed’s bail out/liquidation of Bear Stearns, Obama presented himself as a fearless pioneering foe of Wall Street’s special privileges. But as always with this silver tongued Chicago-hack, he fools himself and the press into believing that it’s the rustling of the leaves that moves the winds. The substance of Obama’s reform proposal followed inevitably from the bailout and had already been put in motion, in part, by none other than Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson.
The theme of both Obama’s and Rev Wright is Do As I Say Not As I Do. Obama is the Chicago politician who speaks of post-racialism but belongs to a black nationalist church, the man who says he's post-partisan but has a 100% partisan voting record. He and his wife are quite well off with an estimate income of $1.2 million dollars from 2003 to 2004. But the man who preaches compassion and mutuality gave all of 1% of that income to charity in that period. This the guy who says he represents ethics in government, but when given a chance to back reformers in Illinois supported the party hacks, including the current famously unethical governor who is under federal investigation and is likely to be indicted. And to complete matter his beloved Rev Wright who has preached against “middle classism” and its “materialism” and rants that “White folks greed runs a world in need,” this same humble servant of the Lord, has just bought 10,340 square foot $1.6 million dollar home-in a gated community. No doubt, he’s looking for protection from Obama’s grandma.
Herf: Thomas Cushman is right to raise the issue of liberals’ double-standards regarding the issue of religions fundamentalism and of separation of church and state. It is clear that if a conservative politician belonged to a church whose minister, for example, said that 9/11 was punishment for the “sins” of homosexuality and abortion, he would be finished as a viable political candidate for national office. The issue of Barack Obama’s willingness to sit in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s church for over twenty years is not going to go away. Conspiracy theories are not only, as Christopher Hitchens wrote, “wicked and stupid.” Conspiracy theories are also dangerous. Barack Obama is a sophisticated, highly educated person who must know how dangerous conspiracy theories and theorists are. Yet for twenty years he listened to them, uttered no public criticism and then compared his white grandmother’s fears of black crime to Jeremiah Wright’s nonsensical notions about the causes of the condition of blacks on the South Side of Chicago.
As Fred Siegel notes, this reluctance to antagonize or offend is something many politicians do. It is not a new, different or post-racial politics. Given that Obama’s experience on the national stage is so brief, his political activities in Chicago and Illinois should, and I think will, assume a larger significance in the election. I agree with both Cushman and Siegel that Obama’s now famous speech on race fell far short of what was needed. The critique came too late and it was too mild.
Obama, and Hillary Clinton as well, are competing with one another about who will be a most convincing advocate of an exit from Iraq. Obama has a peculiar optimism about the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq. Here, as Fred Siegel notes, the press has been easy on him. A President Obama would argue that such a withdrawal was really in the American national interest. Yet if the United States does leave Iraq before it succeeds, radical Islamists of varying hues, Shiites as well as Sunnis, in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and in many other places where radical Islam has adherents will all see this exit as the greatest victory for radical Islamism since the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In the wake of an American defeat in Iraq, why would Ahmadinejad’s Iran feel any hesitation about proceeding even more quickly to development of nuclear weapons or intensifying its threats against Israel and, for that matter, the Arab states?
What incentive would a President Obama create for Iran to change its ways?
If a President Obama implemented the views in foreign policy of candidate Obama, I think the result would be snatching defeat from the jaws of uncertain, tenuous and potential, modest success in Iraq. If the worst happened, political turmoil in Washington would be intense and the hopes for bipartisan policy would collapse in bitter recriminations about who “lost Iraq.” The prospect for bipartisan consensus on domestic issues would also be undermined.
Candidates for President like to talk about the marvellous, soaring future they will make for us all. Sometimes avoiding catastrophe needs to be a larger part of the campaign speech. This is one of those times. We need a President who knows the reality of evil in international politics but does not see that as a license for American self-righteousness, one who will continue a fight that, no matter who is President, will be unpopular in many quarters. While Obama articulates a full catalogue of American miscues, he has not tried to create a mandate to continue American leadership in the–call it what you will–war, confrontation, struggle, fight–with radical Islam. This issue will not go away. It will continue to be a defining element of American foreign policy for the next President. From what Obama has said and what he has not said, I conclude that his mind and heart are not in this fight.
FP: Fred Siegel, Jeff Herf and Thomas Cushman, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium. _______________________
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
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Writing The Wrongs The Obama Report by Steve Baldwin,
I will show you in the attached report how the media is purposely misinforming Americans about Obama. Indeed, just recently, 6,000 journalists gathered together at a journalist convention and announced they were going to do whatever they had to do to get Obama elected. Professional integrity has been thrown out the window. If you’ve formed a favorable opinion of Obama based on something you read or heard in the media, then you need to read this report.
Much of the information is based upon my own research and my observations of Obama and the policies he has pursued, but I’ve also added websites for further reading on the issues I bring up. The vast majority of this information has NOT been covered in the mainstream media or by the big networks. However, please be aware that as the campaign becomes tighter, Obama will change his tune on many issues for strategic reasons. Don’t be fooled. The most accurate portrayal of his philosophy are the statements he made while he was in the lead and during the Democrat primary; after all, if he wins, his party will likely increase their control of both houses and therefore nothing will restrain him from pursuing his radical agenda. Any last minute position changes are purely a strategy meant to attract independents but will not reflect any true change of heart.
This report is long but, this could be the most important vote you ever cast. If you are stunned by this report, I would urge you to forward this to any and all friends who are undecided or thinking about supporting Obama.
Steve Baldwin, Executive Director of the Council for National Policy
Doesn’t Obama Stand for Change?
While repeating the words "Hope" and "Change" in campaign speeches might be an nice rhetorical trick, one needs to examine what it really means. Hitler and Lenin where both dynamic speakers and spoke of change in their speeches, but the 60 million people who died due to their utopistic dreams probably would not agree that "change" was a good thing. World history is replete with utopians who promised "change" and instead brought us great misery. Using words like Change and Hope and being a good orator has nothing to do with a person’s actual track record; all voters need to put aside their emotions and find out what a candidate’s actual track record is.
The arrogance shown by Obama should give one pause. Anytime one believes they’re the "anointed one" and indeed, "God-like," be forewarned. All the great despots in history shared this arrogance. When talk show host Chris Matthews referred to the Obama effort as something that should be part of the "New Testament," and that he was "delivered to us," and Jesse Jackson Jr. says "another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance," its time to become alarmed. Obama himself clearly believes he is something divine-like. Here’s one such statement:
"We are the ones we’ve been waiting for; We are the change that we seek."
Or how about this incredibly arrogant statement:
"A light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama."
This is the "2nd coming of the Messiah" attitude which has led so many leaders throughout history to think they know what’s best for the unwashed masses and which encouraged them to embark on authoritarianism. It is this Messiah complex that will lead a President Obama to radically transform our culture and government in order to fulfill some preconceived utopian "vision" that will no doubt lead to a trampling of our constitutional rights.
His campaign even had the audacity to alter the great seal one sees on our currency and transform it into a campaign seal, minus the American flag, AS IF HE IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT. Indeed, a whole website has been created to catalog the Messiah-like statements of the Obama campaign.
But isn’t Obama a reformer like he says he is?
It’s a nice rhetorical trick, but his legislative record really doesn’t reflect the record of a "reformer." Far from it. He was a standard hard-left Democrat both as a State Senator and a US Senator. He spent all his time on legislation that would create massive new programs, raise taxes, and create new "rights" for criminals, illegal aliens, and union leaders, always at the expense of ordinary Americans. He was a solid vote for every hard-left special interest group and followed the same old big government agenda that leftists have always followed. There’s nothing new here.
Until the media elevated him to Messiah status, he was regarding by his colleagues as a far-left, fairly isolated extremist that believed in wild-eyed racial conspiracy theories and advocated looney things like racial reparations. No one took him seriously.
Capitol Hill’s leading non-partisan vote tracking publication, National Journal, has rated Obama the most Liberal member of the United States Senate, even more liberal than self-declared socialist Senator Bernie Saunders.
To be a reformer, one needs to be someone who works both sides of the aisles; far-left extremists are never reformers. Indeed, the Washington Times has studied the legislative record of both candidates and found that Obama’s bills had Republican co-sponsors only 13% of the time while McCain had Democrat co-sponsors 55% of the time. In other words, McCain crossed the aisle more then four times more often than did Obama. Contrary to his rhetoric, Obama is an isolated, far-left member of the US Senate.
Even the platform the Democrats passed at their recent convention – crafted by Obama operatives – called for government takeover of all health care, tons of new programs replicating existing government programs (For example, there are over 150 federal job training programs but Obama is calling for more), attacks the idea that we need to drill for oil (get your bikes out), and promotes all the usual big government solutions – but there’s nothing new or "reform" minded in the platform.
Hardly. He was part of the Chicago democratic machine, one of the most corrupt political machines in the country. The big media will tell you every detail about Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter but they won’t tell you anything about this part of his career. After reviewing Obama’s State Senate career, US News and World Report writer Michael Barone asked, "What basis is there in his career to see Obama as a reformer?" Author David Freddoso spent a great deal of time analyzing Obama’s State Senate career and reported this:
The main lesson is that Barack Obama’s record, throughout his career, demonstrates conclusively that he has never been a reformer, That this image of ‘change and hope’ that he projects is really a great lie. In fact there’s never been a single time in Senator Obama’s political Career where he did something that was difficult and would cost him politically for the sake of needed reforms and change….reformers don’t vote for the bridge to nowhere…they don’t consistently support corrupt systemic arrangement in every public office they’ve ever held. . .The "political machine" is all about using the apparatus of the government treasury, using the taxpayer’s money to keep yourself in power permanently. You put your political cronies on the payroll to help yourself get elected and re-elected and then when you’re in power you get to do things like steer pension funds and investment to benefit your pals. All of this stuff was going on.
Liberals and conservatives had come together and had the Cook County, Illinois machine on the ropes but Sen. Obama did not help them. In fact, he ended up endorsing the machine candidate that year in the competitive general election and called him a good progressive Democrat. In this case he didn’t support the reformer, because to support the reformer in that election, he would have upset all the allies of the machine politician. That would have been against the interests of now-convicted developer Tony Rezko, who was tied closely to the Stroger family. He would have upset Mayor Daley, he would have to upset Emil Jones.
So he played along like a good machine politician.
All of this has been documented for years in the Chicago newspapers which is why Chicago natives are shocked that anyone would consider Obama a reformer.
Not only that, but his focus was on the bizarre. He spent a great amount of time trying to prove that all police were racists because a disproportionate number of people arrested were minorities. But in neighborhoods with heavy minorities, what would you expect? Duh. He voted against anti-crime bills because he thought they disproportionately affected minorities and were therefore racist. He voted for massive welfare programs because he believed we owed it to minorities (never mind how such programs created more dependency). He supported racial quotas whenever possible.
Indeed, Illinois ended up with a fiscal crisis on its hands "precisely because of his [Obama] penchant for spending" according to Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The Journal of Black Studies actually studied all of Obama’s legislation and found that outside of welfare bills, "Obama devoted very little time to other policy areas."
If the issue didn’t concern race or welfare, he often would just vote "Present" which means he’s sitting in his chair but won’t vote yes or no. He did this 130 times. On 36 occasions, he was the only legislator to vote "present." Many of these bills he refused to vote on concerned important issues such as abortion, gun control, sexual abuse, etc. This is leadership?
But Isn’t His Running Mate Joe Biden a Reformer?
Not at all. Biden is part of the "old boys" Senate network and has been in office for over three decades. He has a history of plagiarizing – which forced him out of one presidential campaign – and fabricating anecdotes. When grilling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for his Senate confirmation hearings, he fabricated a quote he attributed to Thomas in an effort to sabotage his confirmation. National Journal rated Biden the 3rd most liberal member of the Senate. Biden’s son is a lobbyist who has used his father to get pork money out of Obama. Here’s the Washington Post: Sen. Barack Obama sought more than $3.4 million in Congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbyist son of his Democratic running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. of Delaware, records show. Obama succeeded in getting $192,000 for one of the clients, St. Xavier University in suburban Chicago.
Biden has never been identified with reform but rather he has carried the water for decades for all the special interest groups. He is one of the biggest spending liberals in DC. As the nation’s leading fiscal conservative watchdog group, Club for Growth, writes:
"Over his thirty-five years in Washington, Senator Biden has been a reflexive liberal on every single economic issue," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, "Whether the issue is taxes, spending, regulation, or school choice, Senator Biden has voted consistently for more taxes, more spending, more government, and less freedom and choice. Taxpayers can expect more of the same from the Obama-Biden ticket—more government, less prosperity."
But Doesn’t Obama Refuse Money from Special Interest Groups?
This is just not the case. Obama has taken more money than McCain has from just about every special interest group: unions, trial lawyers, homosexual groups, big oil, you name it.
The Center for Responsive Politics – an ethics watchdog group – is reporting that Obama has received more money from Exxon, Chevron, and BP than McCain has and yet Obama is hypocritically running radio spots accusing McCain of being "in the pocket of big oil."
In order to avoid the appearance of taking PAC money, Obama had industry leaders "bundle" money, which means these individuals go out and collect large donations from other industry leaders. $63 million has been raised by Obama this way. The largest sector raising money for Obama is the trial lawyers, which means that no serious health care reform will occur in an Obama administration. Moreover, Federal campaign records show that he took PAC money for his House and Senate races and only stopped taking money in PAC form when he launched his presidential campaign.
Unfortunately, you can’t run a presidential campaign today without raising money from all sources, but for Obama to now act like he doesn’t take money from special interest groups is just hypocritical.
But Wasn’t Obama a Community Organizer Who Fought for Reform?
Obama constantly reminds everyone that he was a community organizer. Really? That’s a big stretch since what he’s referring to is his work for a group called ACORN [Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now: which has been tainted by massive voter fraud accusations all across America]. It would be more accurate to describe ACORN as an underground anti-democratic guerilla group than a "community" group. Let me make clear here that ACORN is a nut job group. The reality is that ACORN has been involved with illegal activities for decades.
They have been investigated repeatedly by the authorities for their efforts to illegally effect elections. They’ve engaged in illegal efforts to register illegal aliens and felons and have been involved in bogus voter registration schemes in key states. They have forged thousand of signatures in order to quality initiatives.
ACORN even opposes all voter ID laws, because, obviously, any requirement that one must show an ID at the polling booth would block illegal voters from voting. ACORN calls such laws "racist" but ballot integrity is critical to a free society and is one of the things that separates us from third world countries.
When I was a California legislator, ACORN was deeply involved in shady activities in that state. The California Republican Party sued them after they invaded its offices and defaced and destroyed property. ACORN is been implicated in voter fraud schemes in at least 12 states. And who served as an organizer and performed legal work for them? Barack Obama. His association with this law-breaking group should alone disqualify him from being a candidate for president.
ACORN is also a socialist group that rants and raves about "Capitalism" and "free enterprise," and even opposes all efforts to secure our borders. It was founded by Saul Alinsky, a well known Marxist organizer who detested everything about America but also happens to be one of Obama’s heroes.
Even liberal writers have attacked ACORN’s wacky agenda, but the scary thing is, Obama’s agenda reflects ACORN’s agenda. To read more about this nutty group including some explosive reports by the Consumer.
If John McCain ever worked for a group that constantly sought ways to rig elections, don’t you think that would be on the front page of every newspaper over and over? Of course it would.
Obama’s Disturbing Relationships
The media has told us every detail of Sarah Palin’s life but refuses to investigate Obama’s life. And there’s good reason for this. Obama’s friends and mentors from boyhood through college, and even through adulthood, tell us something about Obama that the media would rather us not know. Obama has surrounded himself with so many extremists, socialists, communists, radical Islamic wackos, anti-American hate mongers, bombers, liberation theologians, and just flat out thugs that, if he were applying for a government job today, he would NOT make it through the security clearance.
The Obama campaign has tried to play these relationships down and has even lied about some of them, but even the scantiest of research reveal Obama’s long-standing ties with these characters. These associations tell us a lot about the man and his ideology. If McCain hung out with white supremacists, KKK groups, and Nazi Party leaders all through-out his life, do you think the media would cover it? Of course, it would be in the news everyday. And everyone would rightfully assume that McCain held racist or anti-Semitic views.
Let’s review this Rogues’ Gallery the media is desperately trying to keep under wraps:
Bill Ayers & Bernadine Dohrn
In the 70’s Bill Ayers and wife Bernadine Dohrn were members of a Marxist terrorist group called the Weather Underground which bombed 40 targets within the USA between 1969 and 1975 -- including the U.S. Capital, the State Department, military bases, the Pentagon, and the NYPD -- as part of their "revolution" against the US Government. Ayers called himself a "revolutionary Communist."
An FBI agent who infiltrated the group reported that Dohrn herself was responsible for bombing a San Francisco police station that killed one officer and injured two others. He also said Ayers was personally involved in constructing bombs and wanted to kill as many people as possible. When Dohrn was told about the Manson family killing of Sharon Tate, she responded, "Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!"
The Weather Underground even cheered on the Vietnamese communists when they killed American boys and both Ayers and Dohrn received rings from the Vietnamese made of metal from downed American aircraft. After being on the run from the authorities for many years, Ayers and Dohrn surfaced in 1980 and got all charges against them dropped on a technicality. He is unrepentant, however, and told the NY Times in 2001, "I don’t regret setting bombs….I feel we didn’t do enough."
The media has actually mentioned Ayers but keeps repeated Obama’s statement that Ayers was just "a guy in my neighborhood…He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." In fact, this is a lie as Obama was very close to Ayers for many years and served with him on various boards up until 2001. Ayers founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and named Obama as its first chairman. The CAC gave funds to extremist groups such as the Arab American Action Network, a group headed by Rashid Khalidi, an anti-Israel professor and former PLO spokesman. For four years, Obama and Ayers doled out money to radical nutcase groups. The two also served together on the board of a foundation called the Woods Charitable Fund, another group that funded "progressive" or leftist causes.
But the two go back even further as Ayers and Dohrn actually hosted at their home the initial organizing meeting for Obama’s first State Senate campaign in 1995. Clearly, Ayers was not just a "neighbor" but rather a ideological soul mate. Hard-core extremists such as Ayers and Dohrn do NOT back mainstream candidates for office.
An independent group that tried to get this info to the public about the Ayers connection is now being harassed by Obama’s attorneys. And no, Ayers and Dohrn have never "moderated" like some in the media claim. At a 2007 reunion of radicals, Ayers called America a place of authoritarianism and Dohrn called America a "beast" and said that "America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
Rashid Khalidi
Khalidi is a Palestinian-American and former spokesman for the PLO’s press agency, WAFA, from 1976-1982. At the time, the PLO was designated a terrorist group by the US Government and they were, and still are, dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Not surprisingly, he is a professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. The Los Angeles Times has reported that Obama is a "friend and frequent dinner companion" of Khalidi.
Indeed, Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama’s ill-fated congressional bid in 2000 where Obama made statements in support of the Palestinian cause. As a board member of the radical Woods Foundation, Obama also gave funding to the Khalidi’s organization, the Arab American Action Network, an allegedly "community service" group that holds extremist views on Israel. We also know that Obama, along with Ayers and Dohrn, attending a good bye party for Khalidi and that Khalidi told the mostly Palestinian-American crowd, "You will not have a better senator under any circumstance."
Mazen Asbahi
Mr. Asbahi was the Muslim outreach coordinator for the Obama campaign. However, he resigned after only two weeks due to revelations that he was associated with extremist individuals and groups.
He was involved with a fund called the "Allied Assets Advisor Fund," whose board included nut cases such as Jamal Said, an Imam at an extremist Islamic Mosque in Illinois. Allied Assets is a subsidiary of the "North American Islamic Trust" (NAIT), founded by Muslim Brotherhood members, the group that many AL Qaeda members came out of. A 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document lists NAIT as among the groups who are working together to "eliminating and destroying the Western Civilization from within…." Imam Said is also a Muslim Brotherhood member. But the Obama campaign knew all about this beforehand – they just don’t view radicalism in the same way normal Americans do.
David Axelrod
Axelrod is one of Obama’s "image makers" who has done much to make Obama look like someone he isn’t, but that’s par for course for Axelrod who has a history of representing far-left clients. Ironically, while Axelrod’s strategy is to ignore any Media inquiries into Obama’s radical associations (and if the media does, by a miracle, do a story on this topic, then Obama denounces the person), he himself came out of the same radical environment that spawned Obama. His Mother was a writer for PM, a newspaper whose staff was full of communists and had at least one writer on the payroll of the Soviet intelligence agency. Axelrod is also an advisor to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the head of the notoriously corrupt Chicago Democrat machine.
Alice Palmer
Obama was selected by State Senator Alice Palmer to replace her when she ran for a congressional seat.
Apparently Palmer introduced Obama to the Chicago hard left, so one can say that Palmer launched Obama’s political career. As for Palmer, she was a pro-Soviet apologist at the peak of the Cold War. She actually served on the board of the US Peace Council, a group identified by the FBI as a Communist Party front group, and she attended the 1983 World Peace Council meeting in Prague that was organized by Soviet intelligence in order to launch the infamous "nuclear freeze" movement in America. Of course, this nuclear freeze would have only affected American weapons and thus would have guaranteed Soviet nuclear superiority. She even wrote an article for the Communist Party newspaper and boasted about the "Soviet plan to provide people with higher wages and better education." And this Soviet propagandist selected Obama to be her successor!
Mike Klonsky
Klonski was a Communist comrade of Ayers and Dohrn but while the later two became violent Marxists, Klonsky became a Maoist (as if Mao didn’t kill millions!). Klonsky was hired by one of the radical groups Ayers operated and then he surfaces as the official blogger for the Obama campaign. As soon as it got out to the media that Klonsky was yet another Communist wacko friend of Obamas, the campaign shut down the blog.
Frank Marshall Davis
Davis was Obama’s mentor when he was a teenager living in Hawaii. In fact, Obama refers to him in his book, "Dreams From My Father", as simply "Frank." Apparently, he had hoped no one would figure out who "Frank" was; well, fortunately, Communist intellectuals familiar with Obama’s career have filled in the blanks for us and identified the mentor as Frank Marshall Davis, a hard-core Soviet apologist and legendary Communist Party activist in Hawaii. Davis was a complete nut who even wrote poetry praising the Soviet military (like this line:"Smash on, victory-eating Red Army").
Davis was investigated by both the FBI and Congress for his pro-Soviet activities and even appeared before Senate Internal Security Subcommittee where he refused to deny his Communist Party membership. Davis attacked Christianity, America, Capitalism, the free enterprise system, and basically everything America stands for. Davis was NOT a casual acquaintance but rather someone who spent considerable time with Obama. Obama’s grandfather considered Davis "a strong black male figure" and a "positive" influence so he introduced Davis to Obama in order to encourage a role model relationship. And a Marxist mentor he was. I’m sure Obama got to hear all about the glories of the Bolshevik revolution.
Saul Alinsky
Saul Alinsky was a Marxist who taught advance organizing techniques to far-left activists. He founded a foundation called Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940 and its graduates in turn trained Obama to be a "community organizer," a term most Americans think has to do with charity, such as feeding the poor, but in the Alinsky world, it means using agitation to harass community schools, banks, and institutions which, in the mind of Alinsky followers, are all part of the evil free enterprise system. Obama also worked for ACORN, another group founded upon Alinsky principles. Alinsky is regarded by Obama as one of his heroes. To understand Obama’s socialist worldview, one needs to understand Alinsky’s hostility to corporations, as when he stated, ‘America’s corporations are a spiritual slum….and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.’ Alinsky, an atheist, dedicated his book, "Rules for Radicals", to ‘the very first radical…who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.’
Tony Rezko
A charter member of the Chicago Democrat political machine, Tony Rezko is a Syrian by birth who was convicted last June of 16 counts of corruption for trading on his clout as a top advisor and fundraiser to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. He also happens to be one of Obama’s closest friends and a fundraiser for his campaigns. Indeed, Obama purchased a $1.95 million dollar house for $300,000 less than its asking price because Rezko purchased the adjoining lot for $625,000. Rezko then turned around and sold part of the adjoining lot to Obama for $104,500. All and all, Obama saved probably around $400,000. While no laws were broken with this real estate deal, it was clear this was payback for all the favors Obama had done for Rezko.
For example, Obama helped Rezko get $14 million in government funds for his housing projects inside Obama’s district. Using a government position to engage in such quid pro quo activity is illegal and Obama should have been investigated. This is a perfect example of everything that is wrong in government today but Obama is certainly NOT the one to clean it up. Obama then lied and said "I’ve never done any favors for him" but the letters Obama wrote to government officials on behalf of Rezko have been found and the Sun Times link below exposes this lie. Aside from the sweetheart real estate deal, Obama also received $168,000 in campaign contributions from Rezko. Adding to that what he save from the real estate deal, Obama has received almost $600,000 dollars from Rezko. This is a reformer?
Saul Mendelson
Obama was so surrounded by Communists and Socialists much of his life that it appears that he didn’t really think such people were that controversial, even though they advocated abolishment of capitalism, private property rights, and even in some cases, Democracy. It says a lot about Obama’s worldview. In 1998, Obama openly spoke at the funeral service for Saul Mendelson, a leader of the Chicago Socialist community. Mendelson was a member of various Trotskyite groups before settling on a slightly less radical socialist party. In 1958 Mendelson founded an event called the Debs Dinner, which was the high point of the Chicago Socialist calendar. He became a leader of the main Chicago Socialist group, the Democratic Socialists of America, whose newsletters constantly wrote favorable things about Obama, even telling its socialist readers that Obama’s views were "well within the mainstream of European social democracy." No wonder Obama was cheered when he delivered the speech in Germany.
Dr. Khalid al-Mansour
Dr. al-Mansour is an African-American Muslim who serves as an advisor to a Saudi billionaire and who mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers. In a recent article, it was revealed that al-Mansour had asked the Manhattan borough president to write a letter of support to Harvard in order to get Obama admitted. Dr. al-Mansour is a radical black nationalist and an outspoken enemy of Israel. His books and articles are full on anti-American and anti-Semitic rhetoric and he even posits wild conspiracy theories such as how America is plotting genocide against black Americans. He says the Jews stole Israel "the same way the Christians stole the land from the Indians in America."
Dr. al-Mansour has represented Saudi interests in the US for decades and is close to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, even sitting on the board of Talal’s investment vehicle, Kingdom Holdings. Alwaleed is the nephew of King Abdallah, the King of Saudi Arabia, and is ranked by Forbes as the 19th wealthiest person on the planet. The Prince’s Kingdom Foundation has contributed money to Muslim "charities" who are led by individuals who have been indicted on terrorism-related charges.
What is interesting about this relationship is that al-Mansour was also raising funds to underwrite Obama’s education, according to a friend who has confided this to a reporter (see video below) What’s more, is that at the time al-Mansour was raising money for Obama, he was representing top members of the Saudi Royal family seeking to do business in the US. Why would a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia be raising money for Obama? Did the Saudis have an interest in advancing Obama’s career? We don’t know the answer. Obama won’t talk about it.
Rob Malley
Rob Malley was a foreign policy advisor to the Obama campaign until he was fired after revelations that he had meetings with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. (if you’re a Jewish supporter of Obama, you need to know the extent of this con job). But the Obama camp must of know of his views long before this; they just hoped no one would notice. Malley has a long history of anti-Israel writings and he heads a Middle East think-tank funded in part by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros. Moreover, he comes from a family of extremists. His father, Simon Malley, was a founder of the Egyptian Communist party, was a close friend PLO leader Yasser Arafat and clearly a supporter of the terrorist group, PLO, at the peak of it terrorism directed toward the West. He was even kicked out of France for his pro-terrorist activities.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright
This is one of the few shady individuals the media has talked about and then only did so because clips of Wright spewing out his hatred started to appear on YouTube. Obama distanced himself from Wright but understand that he attended Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years – 1000 Sundays – and thus had to have heard virulent anti-white and anti-American sermons long before his phony denials that he never heard Wright say such things.
Surely, this move was only a public relations move since Wright married Obama and his wife, baptized his children, and according to Obama, "strengthened my faith." But in what way?
It is questionable as to whether or not the United Church of Christ can even be considered a Christian denomination today. After all, there are certain tenets Christian theologians agree on that are basic to the Christian faith but the United Church of Christ has thrown some of those tenets out the window. The traditional family unit, for example, is considered a sacred arrangement given to us by God and yet this denomination supports homosexual marriages, trans-genderism, gay clergy, you name it. It even supports partial birth abortion.
On economic issues, the church mirrors the Socialist party in its positions, and during the Cold War, they supported the "Nuclear Freeze" movement initiated by Soviet intelligence to stop Reagan’s arms build-up, which of course led to the end of the Cold War.
This denomination can more accurately be described as embracing a humanist or secular faith than a Christian faith. But as radical as the United Church of Christ is, Obama’s particular church in Chicago is even further to the left. It is a believer in "Black Liberation Theology" a bizarre heretical belief system that has little in common with Christianity.
Most people saw footage of Rev. Wright on television saying "Not God bless America, but God damn America," but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Wright also teaches that "Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people." He refers to America as the "US of KKKA" and says that "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world." He even preaches that the AIDS virus was manufactured by the US Government – on purpose – in order to kill black people. He’s anti-Semitic and says the America was attacked on 9/11 because of its "racist" policies.
Trinity’s website—before it was sanitized – stated that "the vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book ‘Black Power and Black Theology’." Dr. Cone is one of America’s leading Liberation theology pastors and an out and out racist. Cone says that "Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community." This theology also challenges the basic Christian doctrine that Jesus died on the cross to redeem humankind from sin. This doctrine is so basic to the Christian faith that churches who embrace this cannot be defined as a Christian church.
Here’s a nugget of Cone’s theology: "If God is not for us, and against White people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him." Or this one: "The goal of Black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods."
To hear Rev. Wright defend Cone and Black Liberation Theology, listen to the clip below. It is clear that Wright and Cone are hate mongers and racists who long ago abandoned real Christian theology. And Wright is the crackpot who "strengthened" Obama’s faith? The only thing he could have strengthened is Obama’s obsession with race that seems to have dominated his political career. One thing is for sure, If John Mccain attended a White Supremacist Church for twenty years, would he even be able to run for office? I doubt it.
Even Wright knows that Obama has to pretend like he’s distancing himself from him; indeed, with surprising candor, Wright stated recently that once Obama’s enemies find out about his trip to Libya with racist black leader Louis Farrakhan, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell." Wright even admitted that Obama told him that he needs to keep out of public for awhile.
Jodie Evans
Evans is a leader of Code Pink, a far-left anti-war woman’s group and a "bundler" for Obama which means she raises money for him. At last report, she raised $50,000 for Obama.
She has visited Venezuela where she met with Socialist leader Hugo Chavez to show her support for his dictatorial regime. Code Pink is most famous for harassing wounded US soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center with signs outside the hospital that said things like: "Maimed for a Lie."
Far from being normal housewives, as the media portrays them, Code Pink is full of long time committed Marxists and Socialists. Most of the leaders of Code Pink earned their Marxist spurs working for groups in the 1980’s that were supporting the oppressive Nicaraguan Communist regime.
Code Pink’s founder is Medea Benjamin, who told the San Francisco Chronicle about how she felt on her first pilgrimage to Cuba in the early 1980s: "[compared to the USA) it seemed like I died and went to heaven."
What Do We Make Of This Rogue’s Gallery?
This list of 14 people is only a small sampling of Obama’s extremist friends and supporters. It could easily be three times longer because Obama surrounded himself with extremists. Why? Well, he is one of them. The media – even Fox News – keeps portraying these associations as isolated and random relationships and then when Obama issues his perfunctory statement distancing himself from them, the story is dropped. But these are not random people; these are Obama’s mentors, supporters, campaign workers, enablers, funders; these are the people who advanced Obama’s political career. Obama spoke at extremist functions, attended their dinners, worked with extremist groups, gave funds to extremist groups—this is HIS NETWORK.
It should be disturbing to most Americans that a person running for the presidency comes from a militant segment of the American political spectrum that detests everything we stand for: private property rights, America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, the free enterprise system, etc.
But, we shouldn’t be surprised – Obama was raised to be a radical. His father was an unrepentant Socialist who tried to push the Kenyan government far to the left:
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. advised the pro-Western Kenyan Government there to ‘redistribute’ income through higher taxes. He also demonized corporations and called for massive government ‘investment’ in social programs…."theoretically," he wrote, "there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." mother, Ann Dunham, was a leftist as well and an atheist. Obama claims his mother came from a conservative Methodist or Baptist family in Kansas but, this appears to be yet another attempt by Obama to show some connection to ordinary Americans. The reality is that the church his mother was raised in was a leftist Unitarian church in Bellevue, WA that was nicknamed "the little red church" due to its Marxist leanings. Even Dunham’s friends described her as a "fellow traveler," meaning that while she wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, she identified with their views.
Dunham first husband’s, Barack Obama, Sr. was a Muslim, as was her second husband, but her God was the God of Socialists: Big government.
Of course, we can’t forget that Ann’s father was close to Hawaiian Communist leader Frank Marshall Davis and he introduced Davis to his grandson as he felt Obama needed a mentor.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
LET’S LOOK AT OBAMA’S RECORD ON THE KEY ISSUES OF THE DAY: PORK BARRELING & EARMARKS
Obama keeps saying he’s for change and claims "McCain wants more of the same," but the record tells a different story when it comes to spending federal dollars in a way many constitutional scholars regard as illegal.
Earmarking is when a legislator takes federal funds for a project in his district that the federal government has no interest in and which should be funded by the local government or the private sector. The act of earmarking is simply marking off a section of the federal budget for your pet project. Over the years, this abuse of federal money has cost taxpayers billions of dollars. McCain doesn’t do earmarking at all, period.
Obama, on the other hand, is one of the worst offenders of this practice. Moreover, Obama has procured federal funding for people who have in turn contributed to his campaigns. This is illegal but some strange reason, the media refuses to cover this story. This is what sent Congressman Randy Cunningham to prison.
One example of this abuse is the Adler Planetarium whose chairman is Frank Clark, a major Obama supporter who has raised in excess of $200,000 for Obama’s campaign. A short time later Obama earmarked $3,000,000 for the Planetarium. Furthermore, two other Planetarium board members, Brian Cressey and Peter Thompson were also Obama donors. What makes this even more troubling is that Mr. Cressey had never given to Sen. 0bama before the Adler Planetarium received federal funds. This is an illegal ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement.
Another example is when Obama earmarked a million dollars for the hospital where his wife works. Around this same time period, this hospital gave Michele Obama a massive raise – they more than doubled her salary.
In another example, Obama earmarked $8 million for a defense contractor linked to General Dynamics, upon whose board of directors sits Jim Crown, Obama’s Illinois finance chairman.
Even after all the public controversies about earmarks, Obama arrogantly announced on his own website the 108 earmarks for 2008 which total over 300 million dollars. His earmark request the previous year topped $100 million. Joe Biden’s earmarks totaled $90 million this year. Obama and Biden are spending OUR hard earned tax dollars for pork projects, as if they’re entitled to it. Indeed, both even voted for the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, a pork project that despite what the media says, was killed by Gov. Sarah Palin.
Anti-pork reformers introduced 15 different amendments this year in Congress to limit pork and earmarks. Obama managed to conveniently ditch out on 9 of these votes. On the six anti-pork votes he was present for, he voted correctly on only two of them. The Club for Growth has released a report card on anti-pork votes.
Obama’s rating was 33%. McCain rating was a perfect 100%. You can’t be considered a reformer when you are grossly abusing the trust and the money of the American taxpayer.
Spending Issues
Citizens against Government Waste is a leading taxpayer group that monitors wasteful spending and in its most recent ratings Obama was rated at 10% while McCain was rated 100%.
Another fiscal watchdog group, The Club for Growth, said this about Obama’s spending record: As Senators, it often seemed like Edwards, Clinton and Obama were congenitally incapable of saying no to government spending…Clinton and Obama voted to keep the $223 million boon- doggle known as the ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ for the expansive 2005 highway bill, and for corporate welfare."
Once again, there is no comparison between the two candidates. In addition to all the pork spending, Obama has voted for every wild-eyed federal spending program that came before him, all increasing federal government involvement in areas that our founding fathers never envisioned. They are too numerous to list here.
This reckless spending is also evident in his campaign proposals. The best way to summarize these proposals is to turn to Investors Business Daily in an article titled, Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism:
"It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor. Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old."
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means. Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third
World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who kow-tow to unions, and sticks for "non-patriotic" companies that don't. That's just for starters, first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-micro-engineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
These proposals alone will bankrupt the nation. Lastly, we need not forget about one of the most irresponsible spending bills ever introduced in American history. It’s Obama’s utopian foreign aid proposal called the Global Poverty Act. It has already passed the house and a key Senate committee and will surely be implemented if Obama becomes president.
It calls for the US to turn over $845 Billion of our tax dollars to some UN agency to distribute to third world countries to end poverty. I’m not kidding. Yes, these are the same Third World countries which currently receive $300 billion in aid from America and basically waste it thanks to corruption and Socialism.
The Obama campaign is refusing to comment on many of the details of the plan, but it will cost every American taxpayer around $2,500 each. Furthermore, the agency set up by the UN to implement the anti-poverty effort would have the power to tax nations, so Obama’s bill will unconstitutionally give the power to tax American taxpayers to a foreign entity. American taxes are bad enough but Obama apparently now wants "global taxes."
There is really no other way to describe Obama’s philosophy of government than Socialism. Is this what he means by "reform?"
Yes, you’ve probably heard Obama claim he will cut taxes for the middle class, but it turns out his proposal is really a clever campaign trick. Here’s what the Investor’s Business Daily says:
But what’s touted as tax-cutting hides tax increases for the middle class. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s Alex Brill and Alan Viard, Senator Obama’s proposed tax cuts for the middle class are actually marginal rate hikes in disguise. The reason: Obama’s plan rescinds tax breaks as some taxpayers’ incomes rise, reducing their incentives to earn more….the increase happens because Obama phases out the child and dependent-care credit for one-child families in the $30,000 to $58,000 range.
The Wall Street Journal also attacked Obama’s tax plan:
He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities. Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes….such credits are not tax cuts. Indeed, they should be called The New Tax Welfare. In effect, Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand a slew of government spending programs that are disguised as tax credits.
And his record as a US Senator confirms his pro-tax record. The Club for Growth published a paper analyzing Obama’s tax record in the U.S. Senate: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards have very similar voting records and policy proposals on the issue of taxes, sharing a strident antagonism toward lower tax rates and economic freedom… Barack Obama joined Clinton in opposing the extension of the Bush tax cuts; in opposing the extension of decreased tax rates for capital gains and dividends.
And the ratings published this year by the taxpayers watchdog group, Americans for Tax Reform, also confirm Obama’s recklessness. He received a rating of 15% (100 being the best) while McCain received an 80%. Another taxpayer group, National Taxpayers Union, rated McCain as an 88% or an "A" and Obama as 16% or "F".
Obama’s record in the Illinois State Senate is also horrific. Here’s CBS News:
"Obama occasionally supported higher taxes, joining other Democrats in pushing to raise more than 300 taxes and fees on businesses in 2004 to help solve a budget deficit."
I guess CBS considers 300 tax hikes as "occasional," but you gotta hand it to them; they’re putting the most positive spin than can on Obama’s anti-business history. Unbelievable.
Obama’s tax proposals are a recipe for disaster but they illustrate something alarming: this is a man who doesn’t seem to understand the impact escalating taxes have upon ordinary Americans, particularly small businesses. His desire for new taxes is driven by his utopian desire to remake society with all his new programs that need funding. This elitist attitude will not "reform" government, it will make it more onerous and more under the control of various special interest groups.
Over and over again, Obama has lied to Americans about how "the rich" don’t pay enough taxes; indeed, he is so steeped in his hard left ideology he has never bothered to check the stats produced each year by the IRS.
Here they are:
Who Pays Income Taxes?
For Tax Year 2006 Percentiles Ranked by AGI AGI Threshold on Percentiles
Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid [NOW]
Top 1% $388,806 39.89%
Top 5% $153,542 60.14%
Top 10% $108,904 70.79%
Top 25% $64,702 86.27%
Top 50% $31,987 97.01%
Bottom 50% $31,987 2.99%
As one can see, the top 10% of all taxpayers – the "rich" – is paying over 70%; in other words the "rich" pay disproportionately more than their share. Any more taxes on this class – as Obama proposes – will only stifle job creation and chase jobs overseas. The bottom 50% pay only 2.99% of all taxes.
Education Reform & Sex Education for Five Year Olds
Obama often speaks of reforming schools by massively increasing Federal spending on education and has proposed dozens of new Federal education programs; yet there is no evidence increased federal involvement will improve academic performance. Indeed, the federal role in education began only in 1979 and ever since then, the performance of our public schools has declined. Indeed, the TMSS international test compares American students to the rest of the industrialized world, and we are near the bottom.
Obama has received support, endorsements and funding from the teacher unions and as a result he will never vote contrary to their wishes. Indeed, in the eight years he served as a state senator and the two years as a US senator, there is no record of him ever breaking ranks with the teachers union. Even his hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, called Obama "a staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly."
How can the world’s wealthiest country fail to adequately educate our children? Simple. In nearly all of Europe, the money appropriated for education follows the student regardless if the student attends a public or private school, thereby sitting up a healthy competition between the two systems. Called "vouchers" here in America, we have initiated this only in very small experiments such as in Milwaukee and Cleveland but nowhere have we done this statewide, due to the money, power and influence of the teacher’s unions. Private schools do not require its teachers to join a union, so the union views any proposal that directs students away from public schools as a threat to their flow of union dues.
In a strange twist, Obama says he opposes vouchers because "what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." Huh? That’s where the kids are now. While the status quo leaves poor kids trapped in failing schools because they can’t afford to go elsewhere, Obama’s kids don’t have to worry about this. His daughters attend the very expensive private University of Chicago laboratory schools where tuition is at least $15,000 a year. So Obama defends the public school monopoly but he himself won’t place his kids there. This is hypocritical and reflects the hoax of his "change and hope" rhetoric. McCain is the only one advocating educational choice; he says that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."
Obama’s refusal to break from the tired old approaches to education is why the union will be mobilizing thousands of teachers to work on his campaign. As long as the current education monopoly exists there will never be any serious reform of our public schools. Like anything else in the market place; if there’s no competition, there’s no incentive to improve the service.
Regarding sex education for Kindergartners, despite the media denials that Obama supports this, he voted for a bill as a State Senator that would extend sex education to five year olds.
Today, Obama is trying to claim the bill was all about teaching kids how to prevent being sexually molested, but this is only one small part of the bill; it is mostly about teaching about how to prevent sexual diseases like HIV! That would mean teaching five year olds about condoms! Our kids can’t read but they’ll learn all about condoms! Obama claims the curriculum would be "age appropriate" but liberals have used this term all over the country to sneak highly offensive sex ed curriculum into our schools. It means whatever they want it to mean. That term is NOT defined in the law or in Obama’s bill.
But we do know how Obama defines "age appropriate." In the Democrat primary, Obama was asked if he would be comfortable having the book, King & King, read to 2nd graders. This animated book is about two homosexual kings who fall in love with each other, complete with a picture of them kissing.
Here’s Obama:
Moderator Tim Russert asked John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton whether they’d be comfortable having the story — called "King & King" — read to their children in school. Edwards gave the first and most definitive answer — a resounding and instant "yes, absolutely" — although he added that it "might be a little tough" for second-graders. Obama agreed with Edwards and revealed that his wife has already spoken to his 6- and 9-year-old daughters about same-sex marriage.
This is sick, as any normal child psychologist will testify, exposing young children to such behavior can create confusion and emotional issues down the road. But Obama seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that such a book would violate the values many families have. This is all about the government trampling on the rights of parents. This is NOT reform.
Energy Issues
The real issue regarding our soaring gas prices is the coalition formed between the Democrats and radical environmentalists to prevent oil drilling and to stop the construction of oil refineries and nuclear energy plants. This is gone on for decades and now the Democrats are blaming the Republicans for the energy crises?
What am I missing here?
Instead of calling for drilling, Obama wants a "windfall profit" tax on the oil companies. That term implies that oil companies don’t pay enough taxes as it is. In fact, the average profit margin for oil companies this year was 8.3%, which is a lower profit margin than many industries. Furthermore, it’s not some fat cats sitting on this profit; its millions of stockholders who benefit. Indeed, many Americans are invested in oil companies by virtue of their pension funds investing in oil. The reality is that the oil companies pay three times more in taxes than they’ve made in profits. Mobile alone paid $61.7 billion in taxes this year, which is more than all the taxes paid by the bottom 50% of all taxpayers. Any new taxes would simply be passed on to the consumer. Doesn’t Obama understand this? How does adding more taxes increase our energy supply?
In 2005, when the Senate filibustered on a measure that would open up drilling in Alaska, Obama voted to continue the filibuster (keep drilling banned) and McCain voted to end it. In other words, we are now missing out on 10 Billion barrels of oil in the marketplace. Indeed, the US Geological Survey issued a report estimating 90 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic, but without the law being changed oil companies will not invest money to drill.
When house speaker Nancy Pelosi blocked all efforts to allow drilling this summer, she guaranteed that the oil crises would continue for years. If the law was changed and drilling allowed, even this announcement would send oil prices tumbling as markets respond to new investments, but instead Obama seems to think this is an energy plan:
"Making sure your tires are inflated…. And getting regular tune ups."
This alone should disqualify Obama for president
From an environmental perspective, drilling is very safe; the latest technology has made it safer, which is why the oil derricks off the coast of Louisiana took a direct hit from Katrina and didn’t leak a drop. The vast majority of oil spills come from ships so the more oil we import, the more oil spills we will have. But Obama dismissively referred to drilling as "the latest scheme."
It will be decades before alternative energy – wind, solar, etc. – will provide us enough energy to meet our needs, as the technology is simply not where it needs to be yet. In the meantime, we can dramatically expand our oil supply within three years if drilling is allowed.
Nuclear energy is also a clean, abundant source of energy and indeed, most of Europe derives a large amount of their energy from nuclear energy. France, for example, gets over a third of their energy from nuclear plants. But we must remember that Obama has deep connections to 60’s style wacky anti-nuke groups, so logic does not come into play here. Here’s what he says on nuclear energy: I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal. I am not a nuclear energy proponent.
In conclusion, Obama opposes oil drilling, opposes nuclear energy, and wants us to fill our tires up. What a plan. Since alternative energy will not even come close to meeting our needs for decades, his energy plan—or lack thereof -- will have disastrous effects on our economy. This is not leadership; this is plain stupidity. Once again, he is making his extreme environmentalists friends happy at the expense of America.
Abortion
While there are divisions among Americans on this hot-button social issue, Obama’s position on abortion is so far off the charts, that I can’t find anyone who agrees with him.
Obama supports abortion at any time during the pregnancy, for any reason at all, and wants to make taxpayers pay for it. You can’t get any more extreme than that. Whoops, you actually can. You can support the killing of the baby AFTER birth.
In 2001, a bill was brought up in the Illinois state senate that basically said if a baby is born alive after a botched abortion, another doctor must be called in to try to save it. The bill was introduced because of a number of cases where it was discovered that babies were being born alive during late term abortions and then placed in a bucket of blood off to the side where they would cry until they slowly died.
Called the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act, Obama voted against it in committee twice and indeed, was the only legislator to argue against it claiming, unbelievably, that:
"Adding an additional doctor – who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments – is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman…"
This is shocking. It’s too burdensome to save the baby, so let the baby die. Hitler used a similar argument when he justified the Holocaust on grounds that Jews were a burden on German society.
This is the most inhumane thing I think I‘ve ever heard a politician utter but its part of a pattern here. An identical Federal version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with even Clinton and Kennedy supporting it.
But that’s not all. As an Illinois State Senator, Obama voted to keep partial birth abortion legal. This is the procedure by which a third-term, fully formed, fully alive baby is pulled halfway out of the uterus, has his brain crushed, and then extracted and disposed of. Michelle Obama is likewise so extreme on this issue that she denounced the federal ban on partial birth abortion claiming, "this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional." Well, so much for Michelle’s knowledge of the constitution; the Supreme Court later upheld the constitutionality of the law.
Obama even voted in the US Senate against the "Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act", a bill designed to prevent minors from being taken across state line to have an abortion without the consent of parents. This bill was motivated in large part by those committing incest or molestation of minors but wanted to terminate the pregnancy somewhere out of their area. But Obama doesn’t care about that.
Finally, Obama announced on his website that he "will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as President." This is federal legislation that will nullify any and all state restrictions on abortion, such as bans on third trimester abortion, parental consent laws, etc. Once again, Obama sides with a special interest group – the abortion industry – over the right of the people to place reasonable restrictions on abortion.
Homosexual Rights
As always, Obama’s positions on these issues are way to the left of the average American and this poses a problem for his campaign as they know the vast majority of Americans are opposed to gay marriage. As such, Obama has started to claimed only recently on the campaign trail that he, "Believes marriage is between a man and a woman."
But, once again, Obama is being deceptive in order to win over the independent voters. To find his real views, we need to go to a transcript of a letter he sent to his radical homosexual activist supporters:
"I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law. That is why I support repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' Policy…..And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U. S. Constitution or those of other sates."
But repealing DOMA and opposing all state measures to preserve traditional marriage has the same effect as legalizing marriage nationwide. The DOMA law means that if one state legalized homosexual marriage, other states would NOT be obligated to recognize the gay couples. Repealing DOMA means all states will be forced to recognize gay couples married, for example, in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is already legal.
Just how stupid does he think the voters are? He says one thing on the campaign trail but in reality he will work behind the backs of the people to make sure that every state in America will be forced, if need be, to recognize gay marriage. Once again, the special interests win and the American people lose.
Obama’s views are so radical on this issue that even his Harvard Law education takes a back seat to his extremist ideology. He told Pastor Rick Warren he opposed amending the US Constitution to preserve male/female marriage, "Because historically, we have not defined marriage in our Constitution."
That’s his argument? Well, slavery wasn’t defined in our Constitution either but we banned it with the 13th Amendment. Under Obama’s logic, we shouldn’t have passed the 13th amendment because historically, the Constitution did not mention slavery. How stupid does Obama think we are?
However, please notice that the homosexual groups aren’t attacking Obama for his pro-traditional marriage statement. They know the game and they know what he has to say to get elected. The gay newspaper, The Advocate even mentions this deceptive strategy:
"Why Now? Why is Obama now saying marriage is between a man and a woman]. Welcome to the general election say the pundits. One Democrat strategist and TV pundit who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity said the language is intended to send a signal to swing state voters that Sen. Obama isn’t the crazy liberal they’ve been told he is. ‘that’s language that’s required,’ he said."
So the con is on; Obama will portray himself to be a "moderate" on the hot button issues to the average Joe six pack but once elected, he will do the bidding of this very powerful special interest group.
Obama has also promised the homosexual groups he will use the White House as a bully pulpit to "urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws" despite reams of social science research showing that this is not emotionally healthy for the children.
He even had the audacity to cite Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to support gay marriage even though the Bible in 19 locations – both Old and New Testaments - make explicitly clear that this is not normal behavior.
While Obama tries to convince Americans how mainstream his views are, he uses his wife to assure the hard left special interest groups to ignore the public statements and that Obama is still one of "them." For example, right after speaking to the Democratic convention where she was portrayed as the All-American woman, she quietly spoke to a gathering of nearly 300 homosexual Democrat delegates (the Democrat party uses homosexual quotas for delegate selection) and told them that her husband’s administration will: "not stand in the way of states that want to decide for themselves how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples – whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union or a civil marriage."
This statement is not consistent with Obama’s statement above but this is his pattern; say one thing to the left-wing activists and tell ordinary Americans something else. Obama is also hoping no one in the media pays attending to his other radical stances on homosexual rights such as forcing states to enact laws allowing homosexuals to adopt children, promoting pro-homosexual literature in the schools to children as young as six and supporting laws that would make it illegal for:
A private Christian school to refuse to hire a homosexual teacher A private adoption agency to only work with traditional couples A private university to allow only traditional couples to live in its married couple facilities A private doctor to refuse to engage in "transgendered" surgery A private photographer to decline to shoot a gay marriage ceremony A private church to refuse to rent its facility for use for a gay marriage ceremony
These are all REAL situations in the courts TODAY but Obama’s proposed legislation will make it even easier for homosexual legal groups to win these cases, much to the detriment of our freedom of religion rights supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, liberal judges are now interpreting our freedom of religion rights to mean something other than what our founding fathers wrote. They’re ruling now that religious freedom rights should be "trumped" by the "rights" of homosexual activists. Our founder fathers are rolling in their graves. Once again, Obama is siding with the interests of the well-funded homosexual lobby over the interests of ordinary Americans.
Health Care
One of Obama’s main campaign issues is what he calls "universal health care," but what this means is he wants the government to take over all health care. He is more candid when he says, "I’m going to give health insurance to 47 million Americans who are now without coverage." But what he doesn’t say, is that this number includes at least 12 million illegal aliens.
In others words, Americans would be required to pay for the health care of those here illegally. Another 15 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid but they haven’t signed up. Another chunk of this number are people simply in between jobs and temporally without health insurance. Lastly, of the remaining uninsured, all their children are covered by the State Children Health Insurance Program.
So for a few million uninsured people, Obama wants to abolish all private health care and have the government take over 20% of the US economy! This is what Europe and Canada have done but bear in mind that America creates more jobs in one year than all the European countries combined. Obama’s plan is a huge step toward becoming a socialist country. Under of government controlled system, the quality of health care will decline, which is why our Northern hospitals are full of Canadians who have fled south for surgery as opposed to waiting in line in Canada for six months.
A Government takeover over also scares doctors away from the profession, crowds out private investment in new hospitals and drains investment away from new drug research. The reason why America is by far the world leader in the creation of new drugs is due to our private system. There is hardly any medical innovation going on elsewhere.
The biggest reform needed is the limiting of the relentless lawsuits directed at doctor, providers, and hospitals, but the trial lawyers have blocked all efforts to reform this and they are lining up full force behind Obama. Indeed, Obama is the TOP recipient of funds from lawyers, having raised over $20 million from them. There are also plenty of free market reforms that will make our health care system better and cheaper, but Obama seems oblivious to such solutions. See the link below.
But once again, what Obama says publicly does not match what his family does privately. When his wife was an executive with the University of Chicago Medical Center, she developed a program called the Urban Health Initiative, which was an effort to refer patients without private insurance to other health-care facilities in the area. These people were typically poor minorities. Ironically, Michelle Obama hired out David Axelrod – Obama’s campaign advisor –to sell the program. With his plan, Obama doesn’t mind overwhelming our hospitals with millions of illegal aliens but he wife certainly won’t stand for that!
Once again, the deal has been cut. Obama has created a crisis which then needs a government solution. When the Democrats and Obama in particular refuse to support tort reform, the cost of health care rises, leading the Democrats to then call for a government takeover. This is a very clever tactic but it is not is the best interest of America, its taxpayers, or our health care system. And it is certainly NOT reform.
Unions
The number issue for organized labor is legislation referred to as "Card Check." This legislation is supported by Obama and would abolish the secret ballot, which is fundamental to any and all democratic systems. Then means that when employees vote on whether on not to allow a union to unionize a workplace, they have to indicate their support or opposition to the issue in front of union organizers. Obviously, the unions will be able to use this to intimate dissenters. This is an outrageous assault on democratic principles. If would be like if you were a Democrat and your boss was a Republican but he got to watch how you voted.
Even former liberal U.S. Senator George McGovern has denounced this legislation as "a disturbing and undemocratic overreach" and that it "runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the Labor movement."
Experts predict this intrusive legislation will allow the unions to organize many work places that didn’t previously want to be unionized, and thus it will deliver millions of dollars in new union dues, which, of course, will flood into the coffers of the Democrat Party.
Once again, this is NOT reform. Obama is supporting the interests of special interest groups over what’s best for the average American. Now you know why the unions are spending $300 million dollars to get people out to vote for Obama.
Fairness Doctrine
Most people do not know what this is, but the "Fairness Doctrine" is legislation that would require all radio and TV stations to present all political viewpoints equally. The problem with this – aside from what I believe is unconstitutional intrusion into the marketplace – is that many radio stations, for example, have found a market for conservative talk shows and once they’re required to air an equal number of liberal talk shows, they will have financial problems since the market for liberal talk shows is far smaller. In order to survive financially, the radio stations will have to abolish all talk shows and focus on music, humor and other non-political formats.
This is not a joke and in fact this was the law until it was abolished by Ronald Reagan’s FCC for being an infringement on the First Amendment. The Democrats want to bring it back because it shuts up opposition to their plans to grow government, raise taxes, and implement new regulations. Indeed, House leader Nancy Pelosi has already announced she will support this. When questioned about his position on the Fairness Doctrine, Obama’s campaign refused to answer clearly:
"Obama considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible…that is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increased minority ownership of broadcast and print outlets."
I’m not sure what is more disturbing, his evasive answer or the shocking new government intrusions into the communication marketplace that he is calling for. However, it is clear that his reference to "opening up the airwaves…to as many diverse views as possible" is mumble jumble for supporting the Fairness Doctrine.
As always, Obama’s agenda is about MORE POWER to big government (with his party in charge) and shutting down any public criticism of this agenda. He will not let freedom of speech get in the way. Needless to say, silencing free speech is NOT reform; it’s fascism.
Publications and Leaders
"This is a history-making process….and we will be missing it if we don’t do all we can to elect Barack Obama president." Pepe Lozana, People’s Weekly World (official newspaper, US Communist Party)
"Obama’s transformative candidacy …. would advance progressive politics for the long term." People’s Weekly World Editorial (Official newspaper, US Communist Party)
"Obama comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives – each of us – (to) get involved. Don’t stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don’t let history pass you by." Political Affairs editor Terri Albano (U.S. Communist Party Publication). "Obama is the most progressive candidate for the U.S. Presidency" Fidel Castro Communist Dictator of Cuba
"Obama is an attractive, articulate and talented politician [whose] campaign has sparked a powerful surge." Mark Soloman, National co-Chair, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
"Obama is the choice for change and renewal. He gives hope to millions of Americans and Europeans for a fairer world….Progressive Europeans are united in hope that Barack Obama will be the new president following the U.S. election." Poul Nyrup, President, Party of European Socialists. "A broad multiclass, multiracial movement is converging around Obama’s ‘Hope, Change and Unity’ campaign because they see in it the thrilling opportunity to end 30 years of ultra-right rule and move the nation forward with a progressive movement…." People’s Weekly World Editorial.
"Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move…it was a dialectical leap ushering in a new era of struggle. Marx once compared (the) revolutionary new era of struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves not race of his movement on the surface." Frank Chapman, Executive Committee, US Peace Council (US Communist Party Front group).
"This young man is the hope of the entire world that American will change and be made better." Rev. Louis Farrakhan.
"Obama’s campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change." Statement by the U. S. Communist Party
Conclusion
The evidence is overwhelming. It is clear Obama is:
Not a reformer; he’s indebted to all the liberal special interest groups – the homosexual lobby, the union bosses, the trial lawyers, etc.
He’s has little history of working with the other party to address important issues. His policy stances are not conducive to reforming anything. There are all the same old big government solutions. Indeed, his record is been considered one of the worst by every fiscal conservative watchdog group.
His radical background and connections have deeply affected his worldview, making it almost impossible for him to find middle ground on any issue. Socialism is so much a part of his ideology that he is incapable of finding free market solutions to any of our problems. Private sector solutions don’t even enter his thinking.
The policy areas that we need reforms the most: heath care, education, energy, and the financial markets, Obama is either an obstacle or he is proposing more government; it is certainly not a reform agenda.
Obama is intent at shutting down all dissent. Whether its Card Check or radio talk show, he clearly is NOT tolerant of dissenting viewpoints.
However, due to a lazy or biased media, voters have been led to form opinions of the candidates based on situations which have little to do with reality. For example, most voters do not realize the Democrats have been in control of both houses of Congress since 2006. They control the purse and the policies. President Bush has essentially been a lame duck with little power to control anything.
And yet, the media has given voters the impression the Republicans are in charge because Bush occupies the White House. They have diverted everyone’s attention away from the Democrat-Congress and what they did or didn’t do. Indeed, since the Democrats took control two years ago, every economic indicator declined – unemployment, inflation, job creation, etc. The last time Bush was in charge, the economy was fairly solid. Here are the most common myths perpetrated by the media and echoed by the Democrats.
The oil crises was caused by the Republicans. Actually, it has been the Republicans who for decades have tried to increase the supply of oil and free up the nuclear power industry. For over twenty years the Democrats blocked these efforts. This is Obama’s position as well. If a person is voting for Obama due to high gas prices, then he’s voting for the same party which created this crisis.
The Republicans are responsible for the mortgage crises. Again, the Democrats have blocked every effort by Republicans to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2005 there were concerted efforts by Bush, Treasury Dept officials and Republican congressmen to reform these two agencies but such efforts were killed by the Democrats every time. The main target of these reform efforts was Fannie and Freddie’s risky investment portfolios. The Democrats were rewarded for not cooperating with the Republicans: the three top three recipients of PAC funds from these two agencies are Democrats, with Obama being the 2nd top recipient.
In May of 2006, Sen. McCain actually warned that "if Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole." McCain predicted the crises but could not get any Democrats to listen.
The Democrats, however, for nearly a decade, have pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee more "affordable" mortgages, thus, as the Wall Street Journal notes, "abetting their disastrous plunge into subprime and Alt-A loans." In particular, Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed former head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, made it his top priority to make mortgages easier to get for people with poor credit, few assets and too small of a down payment. Raines is now an advisor to Obama’s campaign. Using the Community Reinvestment Act, the Democrats politicized lending practices by forcing banks to make loans to people they wouldn’t have normally made loans to.
The Democrats, race conscious as always, felt that existing lending practices discriminated against Minorities but the fact is that lenders are color blind. They make decisions based on a person's credit. When the Democrats interfered with this process and started forcing lenders to make risky loans, this was the beginning of the crises. After a decade of risky loans, we are now paying the price. But again, this was the doing of the Democrats, not the Republicans.
The Republicans are responsible for the abuse of earmarks. Both parties have allowed this issue to simmer for years but the most serious effort to eliminate this abuse occurred in the last two years. Once again, the Democrats blocked the reforms.
GS Don Morris Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel-divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups
Rules for Radicals
The book that shaped the president's philosophy.
By Barbara Curtis
"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical; from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom."
Lucifer
Thus Saul Alinsky begins Rules for Radicals, his impassioned 1971 missive to the political counterculture which had been galvanized into protest mode during the Vietnam War. I was one of the radicals for whom the book was written, though now I am a conservative mom and grateful American. I began blogging of the Obama-Alinsky connection during the 2008 presidential campaign, and given Obama’s history and his surrounding himself with characters from that Chicago/community organizing/dirty politics nexus, it was difficult for someone with my roots to think anything but the worst about the subtext of his message and his methodology.
And yet, the morning after the election, like someone waking from a bad dream, I took a good stretch and advised my readers to join with me in giving our new president the benefit of the doubt. Look on the bright side, I said! We could be proud of our country for electing a black man to the highest office in the land — and wouldn’t it be fun to have a young family with children in the White House?
My optimism didn’t last long. The moment Obama announced Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, every radical and former radical in the country knew where we were headed — though few could imagine how quickly we could get there.
Then again, if you know your Alinsky and are beginning to fathom the extremism of Obama’s czarist empire, it should seem no surprise at all.
Saul Alinsky was the founding father of community organizing. And Obama’s team of Alinskyite cronies are doing what they’ve been doing for years — only now they are community organizing at a national level. This involves “empowering” the poor by crushing the middle class (though as we will see, Obama-style empowerment is an illusion). It involves obliterating traditions and symbols with which patriotic Americans identify (see Obama and iconography). It involves fomenting fear, uncertainty, and racial division. It means — because in an Alinsky world, the end justifies the means — that moral constraints like truth and honesty are off the table.
The American middle class has been way too trusting, way too slow to respond to the warning signs. And way too busy earning the money to keep their families secure while paying taxes to fund the very organizations bent on the destruction of traditional America.
But the tea parties, the Mommy Patriots, the growing number of Americans identifying themselves as conservatives, and the bucking of the two-party game to support conservative candidates rather than RINOs — these are hopeful signs. The sleeping giant may well be waking, shaking, and ready to roll.
Many are playing catch-up and may have only heard bits and pieces from Rules for Radicals. But the more we know of the philosophical underpinnings of O & Co., the better our position to expose the man behind the curtain. And the sooner we understand, the better. So let’s read and discuss — now!
For an introduction to Alinsky, please read “The Democratic Process: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy.”
________________
Barbara Curtis is a wife, mother of 12, and author of nine books, including Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking About Social Issues with People Who Don't Think Like You. Visit her at www.barbaracurtis.com or at her blog www.MommyLife.net. Her fourth son will begin Marines OCS in January.
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: Prologue
Alinsky begins with his nihilist, self-absorbed picture of society. (Read part one of this series below.)
Just a couple lines into Rules for Radicals, I heard the voice of Rahm Emanuel:
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by this is it’s an opportunity for you to do things you could not do before."
Just as Obama, Emanuel, and their compatriots are doing, so too did radical Alinsky decades before. In 1971, he observed the counterculture (”the revolutionary force”), saw a rudderless movement, and set out to to chart a course for the next generation of radicals to follow:
"These words are written in desperation, partly because it is what they do and will do that will give meaning to what I and the radicals of my generation have done with our lives (p. xiii)."
Alinsky bemoans the vanguard of young radicals having to start “almost from scratch,” because of the McCarthy “holocaust” of the early 1950s. Holocaust? Six million deaths in Nazi Germany vs. the McCarthy hearings and the trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for espionage?
Alinsky’s description of life in America is suffocatingly dark and nihilistic. Looking through his charcoal-colored glasses, there is no joy among the adult middle class. These people are materialistic, mindless sellouts with superficial values whose relationships and lives end in destruction and decay (xiv).
The disaffected youth spawned of these miserable creatures see their parents clearly and also are preternaturally wise enough to see the “almost unbelievable idiocy of our political leadership” at every level.
We are all — well, except for Alinsky and his “happy few” youthful radicals — hypocrites and failures.
The world is “utter bedlam,” and American youth have no sense of meaning or purpose. Alinsky notes that:
"Men have always yearned for and sought direction by setting up religions, inventing political philosophies, creating scientific systems like Newton’s, or formulating ideologies of various kinds, but life is as random as 'the changing pattern in a kaleidoscope' (xv)."
As discussion fodder, this statement is loaded. There’s the sense of ideologue Alinsky somehow not seeing his own ideology as part of the kaleidoscope. There’s the glaring fact that the purposelessness of which he speaks is not a collective sin — that the responsibility of finding meaning and purpose is an individual problem, not something to blame on society. Finding meaning and purpose has always been as simple and available as volunteering at a soup kitchen, reading to a hospitalized child, or tutoring an inner city student.
What stands out: The emptiness of atheism. The solipsistic response of the human heart where there is no God. Alinsky — just as I and other former radical comrades — supposes that if you aren’t living the philosophically nihilistic life of a radical then you are a mindless automaton with no human vitality, creativity, or value.
Self-absorbed, he seems completely unaware that during the social upheaval of the 60s and 70s, millions of people were leading quietly ordinary — and often sacrificial — lives: getting married, working, raising families. They thought themselves happy, productive, and satisfied.
But what did they know?
When I came out of my political radicalism and finally began to relate up close and personally with conservatives, this was indeed a startling revelation. Until then, I believed my entire generation was counterculture — well, except for a few pathetic purposeless souls as defined by Alinsky. As a conservative, I was gratified to find I had been in the minority — as I found at my 40th high school reunion in 2005, where it seemed that most of my classmates had had their heads on straight while I was living large the Rules for Radicals life.
Regrettably, I know that had I gone to my 10th, 15th, or 20th reunion, I would have scoffed at my former classmates leading empty and shallow lives — a la Alinsky, whose sophisticated focus is on:
"The absurdity of human affairs and the forlornness and emptiness, the fearful loneliness that comes from not knowing if there is any meaning to our lives (p. xvii)."
My guess is that the poor schlemiels Alinsky judges are absurd enough to believe their lives have meaning. And when you get right down to it, who the hell is he to judge? Isn’t this, as my husband would tell our 12 children, cutting off others’ heads to make yourself taller? Is Alinsky’s — along with those who claim his blessing — the only life worth living?
Credit where it’s due:
•Alinsky does not mince words about his contempt for the Weather Underground (personified today as Obama buddy William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn) (xvii). He takes 60s radicals to task for trashing the American flag (xviii) and for setting up any barriers to communication through attachment to counterculture symbols like long hair. Alinsky’s pragmatism means that if long hair means fewer converts to radicalism, the radical should cut his hair (xix).
•Alinsky does not worship leftist icons like Mao, Che, and Castro, “which are as germane to our highly technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclear-powered, mass media society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.” He appreciates the freedoms we share as Americans, scolding young radicals, “Let’s keep some perspective” (xxi). Alinsky radicals like Anita Dunn seem to have missed this memo.
•While he is about fomenting discontent to accomplish his ends, he warns: “Parts of the far left have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right.” (Wonder what he would make of O & Co. and their repressive tactics with FOX News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.)
Alinsky strongly believes in working inside the system, instructing young radicals that their task is to change the attitude of the masses:
"They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go the past and chance the future (xix)."
When he speaks of cozying up to the “blue collar” or “hard hat” class (and I need to point out here that in the 60s these occupational class distinctions were much starker than they are today, when you do find college graduates working as contractors), at first I was impressed with Alinsky’s egalitarianism (xx).
But just one sentence later, it is clear that the intent was not recognition of fellow human beings in their diversity, but exploitation of another class which might otherwise be lost to the radical agenda. Almost 40 years later, we’ve seen solidarity between the radicals and working class — delivered by union bosses — become an almost impenetrable political fortress. Think SEIU.
Alinsky’s naked contempt for his fellow man begs the question: Is it the American way of life that dehumanizes man? Or is it the radical/elitist view of Alinsky and his followers? (As well as Nazi Germany, Russia, and China?) In 2009, one certainly sees this naked contempt from the highest White House echelons to the teensiest trolls who prowl conservative blogs with vicious personal attacks and little substantive discussion.
Alinsky wraps up his prologue with such inspirational lines as:
•The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual (xxiv).
•There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man’s faith in himself and in his power to direct his future (xxvi).
Alinsky — insofar as he’s revealed himself in the prologue — shows no respect for the individuality of man and thinks of them only in terms of masses waiting for the direction of enlightened radicals.
Thirty-eight years later, we are confronting the legacy of this elitist and empty philosophy.
_______________
Barbara Curtis is a wife, mother of 12, and author of nine books, including Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking About Social Issues with People Who Don't Think Like You. Visit her at www.barbaracurtis.com or at her blog www.MommyLife.net. Her fourth son will begin Marines OCS in January.
WATCH THIS...
Obama and the Woods Fund of Chicago By Richard Henry Lee
Barack Obama served on the board of directors of Woods Fund of Chicago from 1993 to 2001. During that time, the tax exempt foundation made some interesting grants, including one to Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, headed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the time. Grants were also made to ACORN, a left wing voter registration group and to a partnership for constructing low income housing. The fund also used Northern Trust for financial services, which is the same company that provided Obama his 2005 mortgage.
In 2001 the board of directors included Obama, William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical terrorist, and serving as chairman was Howard J. Stanback who headed New Kenwood LLC, a limited liability company founded by now-convicted felon Tony Rezko and Allison Davis, Obama's former boss at the law firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland.
Grant to Obama's Church
The Woods Fund in 2001 awarded a $6,000 grant to Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, headed by his now ex-pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The grant was probably awarded since Obama did not receive his $6,000 director's pay in 2001. He had received $6,000 in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Even though the grant may have been made in lieu of Obama's pay, the Fund's own web page in 2001 states that religious organiztions are not eligible for grant consideration.
The reason for the grant to Obama's church may have been because Obama might have felt bad for not having donated much previously. According to the Obamas' tax returns, they deducted $2350 in charitable donations in the year 2000 and a lesser amount of $1470 in 2001. Their adjusted gross income was $240,000 in 2000 and $270,000 in 2001. According to a Chicago Tribune story, the Trinity United Church of Christ encourages its members to donate 10% of their income, yet the Obamas gave only $400 in 1998 to TUCC. The $6,000 grant may possibly have been made to keep Obama in the good graces of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The tax code apparently allows such contributions.
The grant is especially interesting in view of Obama's sudden conversion to the faith based initiative started by President Bush.
Northern Trust Connection
As reported previously, the Obamas' financed their upscale Hyde Park home in 2005 through a mortgage with Northern Trust and obtained a better than average mortgage rate. Coincidentally, Woods Fund had started using Northern Trust investment services a couple of years earlier. The 2005 Woods Fund 990-PF tax filing shows that the fund paid $105,583 in fees and also participated in a Northern Trust private equity fund. Ayers and Stanback were still on the board of directors at that time so it is possible that one of them was somehow involved in helping Obama choose Northern Trust.
Funding for ACORN
ACORN is well known to readers of AT as a left wing voter registration group which seems to skirt the rules. Woods Fund made annual grants of around $70,000 annually to ACORN from 2001 to 2005 for a total of $355,000. There appears to be no grant to ACORN in 2006.
Investment in Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners
The Boston Globe has a recent article about Chicago's housing problems including Woods Fund's investment in Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners (NRP). The Chicago Sun Times has an earlier story about this investment with much more detail. Allison Davis (Obama's former boss) asked Woods Fund to invest $1,000,000 in NRP. Obama voted in favor and Stanback abstained since he worked for Davis as noted above. The Sun Times reports:
City records show Davis used some of the money to build a 72-unit apartment building for senior citizens at 87th and Ashland. The $10 million project -- built with a $5.7 million loan from the city -- netted Davis nearly $700,000 in development fees, city records show. His son Cullen Davis is paid to manage the building, which opened three years ago with a ceremony featuring Mayor Daley.
Davis, who's now business partners with Daley's nephew Robert Vanecko, has known Obama for years. Obama began serving on the Woods Fund board in 1993, the same year he was hired as an associate lawyer with Davis' small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill. Obama kept working there until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Obama voted for the investment, but Stanback abstained because he worked for Davis. Davis has donated $25,000 to Obama's various political campaigns according to the Sun Times.
Obama fact check page is wrong
Obama's fact check web page concerning the Boston Globe article claims that Woods Fund has not actually made any payments to Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners, yet the 2002 990-PF tax filing shows in fact that Woods Fund has an investment of $408,000. As of 2006, the investment was $908,000 out of $1,000,000 committed. Someone needs to fact check the fact checkers.
Investments
One interesting investment Woods Fund made was to purchase shares of Countrywide Financial Corporation stock in 2005. As of 2006, the investment was worth $382,000. At the end of 2006, the stock was selling at $42.50. Today it is $4.25 after the sub prime mortgage fiasco.
Another is Wal-Mart, the company every liberal likes to hate. In 2005, Woods Fund had $327,000 invested in Wal-Mart stock. The investment seems to coincide with the approval for the first Wal-Mart store in Chicago in 2004. It is still remarkable that someone like Ayers would be on the board of a fund investing in the bête noire of liberals.
Obama's long association with the Woods Fund is another chapter in his involvement in left wing ideology and it is one which deserves additional scrutiny. Certainly the many associations of Obama with members of the Chicago political machine are noteworthy. Also Obama's term on the board overlapped three years with Bill Ayers. Since the board met quarterly, Ayers and Obama could have been together at least 12 times.
If someone wants to research more about Woods Fund, their non-profit tax forms from 2001 to 2006 are available onlne here.
Richard Henry Lee is the pseudonym of a retired Illinois state employee.
Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers by Michael Barone
In my U.S. News column this week, I make a brief reference to the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers and his connections to Barack Obama. They were closer than Obama implied when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Ayers in the April 16 debate—the last debate Obama allowed during the primary season. To get an idea of how close they were, check out Tom Maguire's Just One Minute blog and Steve Diamond's Global Labor and Politics. The Obama-Ayers relationship is also mentioned in David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate.
Ayers was one of the original grantees of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform organization in the 1990s, and was cochairman of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one the two operational arms of the CAC. Obama, then not yet a state senator, became chairman of the CAC in 1995. Later in that year, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state Senate campaign was held in Ayers's apartment. Ayers later wrote a memoir, and an article about him appeared in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001. "I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers is quoted as saying. "I feel we didn't do enough."
Ayers was a terrorist in the late 1960s and 1970s whose radical group set bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.
You might wonder what Obama was doing working with a character like this. And you might wonder how an unrepentant terrorist got a huge grant and cooperation from the Chicago public school system. You might wonder—if you don't know Chicago. For this is a city with a civic culture in which politicians, in the words of a story often told by former congressman, federal judge, and Clinton White House counsel Abner Mikva, "don't want nobody nobody sent." That's what Mikva remembers being told when he went to a Democratic ward headquarters to volunteer for Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, and it rings true. And it's a civic culture in which there's nobody better to send you than your parents.
That's how William Ayers got where he was. When he came out of hiding because the federal government was unable to prosecute him (because of government misconduct), he got a degree in education from Columbia and then moved to Chicago and got a job on the education faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. How did he get that job? Well, it can't have hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was chairman of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) and a charter member of the Chicago establishment. As Mayor Richard M. Daley said recently, in arguing that the Ayers association should not be held against Obama, "His father was a great friend of my father."
In none of our other major cities is genealogy so important. I remember a story that Bill Plante of CBS News has often told. Plante was working for WBBM, the Chicago CBS-owned and -operated affiliate, during the violence-plagued Democratic National Convention. At a press conference, he asked the late Mayor Richard J. Daley a question "da mare" thought was impertinent. Daley's answer was, "Sometimes even in the best of families there's a bad apple." It baffled the members of the national press, but not those from Chicago. Plante's father and brother were Democratic precinct committeemen in the 49th Ward. The late Mayor Daley had the whole city of Chicago in his head. It is only natural that his son should vouch for someone by saying that their fathers were great friends.
The voters of Chicago and Illinois respect family ties in a way that voters in no other state or city do. The current Mayor Daley is, of course, the son of the late Mayor Daley; the two Daleys have been mayors, and effective and competent mayors, of Chicago for 40 of the last 53 years. The attorney general of Illinois is the daughter of the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. The governor of Illinois is the son-in-law of the Democratic ward committeeman in the 33rd Ward. The congressman from the 2nd Congressional District is Jesse Jackson Jr. Jackson's predecessor-but-one in the district was Morgan Murphy Jr., whose father was chairman of (get this) Commonwealth Edison.
But my favorite example of the importance of family ties is 3rd District Rep. Dan Lipinski, who was first elected in 2004 to replace his father, Bill Lipinski, who was first elected in 1982. Bill Lipinski won the Democratic nomination in the March 2004 primary. But on August 13, he announced he would not seek re-election and would resign the Democratic nomination. The deadline for replacing him was August 26, and a meeting was set on August 17 for the 19th Ward and township Democratic committeemen to choose a new candidate. Lipinski announced his support for his son, who was then a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and had not lived in Chicago for many years. Among the committeemen making the decision were: 11th Ward committeeman and County Commissioner John Daley, son of the late mayor and brother of the current mayor; 13th Ward committeeman Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House and father of Attorney General Lisa Madigan; 14th Ward committeeman Edward Burke, who succeeded his father as a council member in his 20s and and was longtime chairman of the Finance Committee, and whose wife is a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court; 19th Ward committeeman Tom Hynes, former Cook County Assessor and father of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes; and 23rd Ward committeeman Bill Lipinski. An electorate more averse to an argument against nepotism cannot be imagined. Lipinski advanced his son's name and said, "I'm optimistic, but one never knows in politics until the votes are counted." It did not take long to count them: Dan Lipinski was nominated without opposition. To the charge that the nomination was rigged, one participant dryly noted that anyone could have run.
To which it should be added that Dan Lipinski has since won two seriously contested Democratic primaries to hold the seat (Republicans are not a factor in this district). One reason that Chicago and Illinois voters have acquiesced to the politics of nepotism is that its products—or many of them—are quite competent. Mayor Richie Daley, if I can call him that, has on the whole been an excellent mayor. Edward Burke is a cultured man of high intellect. Michael Madigan seems to be a solidly competent sort, and for all I know his daughter is, too. Dan Rostenkowski was a highly competent chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for 14 years, until he was laid low by a bit of cheap chiseling; at that point he and his father had been the 32nd Ward committeemen for just about 60 years. (The younger Rostenkowski got his seat in the House in 1958 because his father, Joe Rostenkowski, had supported the late Mayor Daley in the 1955 Democratic primary against fellow Polish-American Benjamin Adamowski.) There are exceptions. Many political observers would put Rod Blagojevich, the son-in-law of 33rd Ward committeeman Dick Mell, on the top of the list of the nation's dumbest governors. But then, for Chicago, it has always been more important who is mayor than who is governor (not to mention out-of-town jobs like U.S. senator).
Which leads us back to Barack Obama, who is now a U.S. senator and will shortly become the Democratic nominee for an office that even Chicago regards as more important than mayor. And the question presents itself: How did this outsider from Hawaii and Columbia and Harvard become somebody somebody sent? His wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, had some connections: Her father was (I believe) a Democratic precinct committeeman, she baby-sat for Jesse Jackson's children, and she worked as a staffer for the current Mayor Daley. Obama made connections on the all-black South Side by joining the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. But was Obama's critical connection to le tout Chicago William Ayers? That's the conclusion you are led to by Steve Diamond's blog. And by the fact that the National Review's Stanley Kurtz was suddenly denied access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. (Kurtz had already been given an index to the records.) Presumably the CAC records would show a closer collaboration between Ayers and Obama than was suggested by Obama's response to Stephanopoulos that Ayers was just a guy "in the neighborhood."
The increasingly sharp McCain campaign had the wit to ask the University of Illinois to open up the CAC records. But it doesn't seem likely the university will open them up; as John Kass puts it in a characteristically pungent column in the Chicago Tribune, "Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Kurtz."
Does it matter if William Ayers was the key somebody who made Barack Obama a somebody somebody sent? I think it does. Not that Obama shares all of Ayers's views, which surely he does not. Or that he endorses Ayers's criminal acts, which, as he has pointed out, were committed while he was a child in Hawaii and Indonesia. But his willingness to associate with an unrepentant terrorist is not the same as Daley's (expressed, as George W. Bush's thoughts are, in disjointed prose but the product of a considerable intellect and seasoned judgment):
"Bill Ayers, I've said this, his father was a great friend of my father. I'll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of our country. It really separated people. People didn't know one another. Since then, I'll be very frank, (Ayers) has been in the forefront on a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that.
People keep trying to align himself with Barack Obama. It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he's been making a strong contribution to our community."
For Daley, family is paramount, and Ayers is admitted into le tout Chicago because his father is one of its pillars. And electoral politics is also paramount: In a city that is roughly 40 percent (and falling) white ethnic and 40 percent black, with an increasing gentrified white population, the current Mayor Daley has maintained very strong support from lakefront liberals, including the Hyde Park/Kenwood leftists like Ayers who were the original movers behind Obama's 1996 state Senate candidacy. It's in Daley's interest to work with these people and against his interest to do anything that seems like disrespecting them. As Bill Daley told me when I asked him some years ago whether his father would have approved of Richie marching in the gay rights parade, "Our father always told us when a group was big enough to control a ward, we should pay attention to them." Staying mayor is real important to Daley, and Daley staying mayor is real important to le tout Chicago. An unrepentant terrorist? Hey, we know your dad. And you control the 5th Ward.
For Obama, the outsider who gained the trust of the insiders, the position is different. He was willing to use Ayers and ally with him despite his terrorist past and lack of repentance. An unrepentant terrorist, who bragged of bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, was a fit associate. Ayers evidently helped Obama gain insider status in Chicago civic life and politics—how much, we can't be sure unless the Richard J. Daley Library opens the CAC archive. But most American politicians would not have chosen to associate with a man with Ayers's past or of Ayers's beliefs. It's something voters might reasonably want to take into account.
Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications—including the Economist and the New York Times.
Obama Tries to Hide Ayers Tie By Larry Johnson
Ben Smith at Politico.com has the start of the story of Obama’s ties to an unrepentant former member of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group. It goes beyond Ayers just making a $200 dollar donation in 2001. Nope. Ayers helped raise funds for Obama. It all started in 1995:
In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. . . .
Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from the Hyde Park left to a man closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.
“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer healthcare, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified him as her successor.”
Except Ms. Palmer had a change of heart. She decided not to run for Congress. But Obama betrayed her. He would not relinquish running for her state senate seat. So much for loyalty. Obama led the effort to ensure she could not run against him. Betray your mentor. Yep. That’s the kind of politics we don’t see in Washington.
Obama tries to dismiss the tie to Ayers by claiming he was only eight years old when Ayers was planting bombs in the United States. That is true. But when Barack subsequently met Ayers he knew about Ayers’ past and Ayers’ belief he had nothing to apologize for. So here we have a guy who dreams of running for president and he does not understand the implications of letting an unrepentant terrorist raise money for him?
What is it about terrorism that a brilliant constitutional law professor does not understand? And Obama believes the Republicans won’t use this against him? Hell no. He understands. Hence the stonewall. Obama is trying to figure out whether Alzeheimers is a defense. And Ayers and Obama are trying to maintain the pretense that they barely know each other. Ayers is a tough customer. He’s not saying anything. He refuses to talk.
They may be able to deceive die hard Democrats enamored of the Obama myth. Cotton candy platitudes. Soaring (plagarized) rhetoric. But come the fall, the Republican machine will beat him senseless with this. They will hammer on the theme–Obama is in bed with a terrorist who insists he was right to bomb the Capitol. Ayers is too much of a committed ideologue to backdown. He told the New York Times in 2001:
"I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough."
Please Obamatrons. Explain to me why the Republicans will ignore this? And as they subsequently probe into every grant made by the Woods Fund when Obama and Ayers sat on the board and steered money to cronies of Obama I am sure the Republicans will say, “hell, there’s nothing there.” Right! And Karl Rove is a warm, wonderful human being who believes politics is softball.
Obama cannot beat this with happy talk. He will be forced to deal with it. Unfortunately, Joe and Jane Average American will be, shall we say, a tad uncomfortable electing a guy to protect America who had no problem taking money from a terrorist and working with him in giving money to a guy, Rashid Khalidi, who the Government of Israel will be more than happy to identify as someone who they believe helped fuel Palestinian terrorism.
If you find that an easy position to defend please get your resume soonest to the Obama campaign. They are going to need you.
The Obama-Ayers Top Ten: Highlights of the 20 year Obama-Ayers Connection By Steve Diamond
If you take the Obama campaign at its word, the contention that there is a relationship between Bill Ayers and Barack Obama is “phony,” “tenuous,” a “stretch.” In Obama’s own words, Ayers was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” certainly not a long time close political ally.
But a review of just the publicly known highlights of the Ayers-Obama relationship suggests a twenty year pattern of connections between the two.
At the heart of this “Top Ten” list is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers founded and Obama and Ayers co-chaired for five years, raising and spending at least $110 million in an effort to bolster a “radical” (Ayers’ word) reform program in the Chicago Public Schools from 1994 to 2001.
1) Out of the Woods:
The Woods Fund financed the hiring of Obama in 1985 by the Developing Communities Project.
According to The Nation: “The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political identity. In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project (aka the “DCP”), which hired Obama, at 24, as an organizer on Chicago’s economically depressed South Side.”
The Woods Fund was founded by the Woods family which owned the Illinois-based Sahara Coal Company, a major supplier of coal from its mines to major Illinois power companies. Commonwealth Edison, the giant Chicago-based electric power company was headed by Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers.
Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund from 1993 until 2002. Bill Ayers joined the board of the Fund in 1999 and continues to serve on the board today. He chaired the board for two yearsduring that time.
2) Know your ABCs:
Obama’s DCP supported radical school reform project together with Bill Ayers.
In 1987 in the wake of a controversial strike by the Chicago Teachers’ Union, the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs, was formed to lobby for a new Illinois law that would mandate the establishment of a new power center in Chicago public schools. Local school councils would be established to watchdog union teachers and their principals and they would have the power to fire principals at will.
Bill Ayers helped organize the ABCs group, was its contact person and later its chair. Barack Obama worked on school reform efforts for the DCP at that time and the DCP was a member of the ABCs. Chicago United, a business group established by Tom Ayers, Bill’s father, was also a member of the ABCs.
The Woods Fund also provided additional financial support to the DCP in 1988 to support its school reform efforts. A program officer of the Woods Fund at the time was Ken Rolling who would later be hired by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama as Executive Director of the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
3) Putting on the White Shoe:
Obama and Dohrn worked for elite law firm Sidley and Austin
After surfacing from the Weather Underground in 1980 Bernardine Dohrn, wife of Bill Ayers, pled guilty to criminal charges related to the violent Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969 and received three years probation. She later refused to testify in front of a grand jury convened to investigate a bank robbery carried out by former comrades of Dohrn’s from the Weather Underground. Currently a clinical faculty member at Northwestern University School of Law, she told the New York Times that she thought grand juries were “illegal” and “coercive.” She served seven months in jail.
Because of the criminal convictions Dohrn, who received a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967, was refused admission to the New York bar. Nonetheless, she was hired as a legal clerk by Sidley and Austin, a major Chicago law firm, in their New York office in 1984. Howard Trienens, then managing partner of the firm, recently told the Chicago Tribune that he arranged the hiring of Dohrn as a favor to his fellow Northwestern University trustee and classmate, Tom Ayers. Tom Ayers’ firm, Commonwealth Edison, has used Sidley as outside counsel for many years. She later worked in their Chicago office when she and Bill Ayers moved back to Chicago in 1987. She left Sidley in 1988.
Barack Obama left Chicago in the fall of 1988 to attend Harvard Law School. In the summer after his first year at Harvard he became an associate in the Chicago office of Sidley and Austin.
4) A hard rock miner:
Chicago lefty lawyer and Dohrn classmate Judson Miner hires Barack Obama out of Harvard.
Barack Obama returned to Harvard after his summer at Sidley and Austin in the fall of 1989. That fall he was elected the president of the Harvard Law Review, the first black person to hold the position. Although Obama could have returned to Sidley or perhaps clerked for the United States Supreme Court, a natural step for Law Review officers, he chose instead to work for Judson Miner, a partner in a small civil rights law firm in Chicago. Miner had been counsel to Chicago’s late black mayor, Harold Washington. Miner was also classmates with Bernardine Dohrn at the University of Chicago law school in 1967 where they were both were involved in anti-war activity.
5) Rising to the Challenge:
Ayers is named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Bill Ayers
In late 1993, Bill Ayers, now an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, organized a team to put together a grant proposal to secure nearly $50 million from the Annenberg Challenge. The money was to be used by Ayers and co. to bolster the radical Local School Councils reform project that Ayers and Obama had championed back in 1988 through the ABCs.
The grant application was successful and in early 1995 Barack Obama was named chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers was named co-chair of the Challenge’s operative and strategic body, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. Ayers and Obama work together for the next five years on raising an additional $60 million in matching money from local foundations and corporations and using the money to intervene in the governance of the Chicago public schools.
The Challenge through a multi-million dollar Leadership Development Initiative intervened in the School Council elections in the middle of what was known as the Chicago School Wars. At the same time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was pushing, successfully, to gut the power of the Councils.
6) In the Palmer of his hand:
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn host Obama’s state senate kick-off in their Hyde Park home
In the fall of 1995 Barack Obama began his first electoral campaign to replace State Senator Alice Palmer who was attempting to run for Congress. Palmer accompanied Obama to the Hyde Park home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn for an introduction of Obama to the Hyde Park left. Unnamed Obama campaign aides told the New York Times that this was the first time that Obama met Ayers and Dohrn, part of the campaign’s effort to minimize the relationship between their candidate and the two authoritarian leftists. Of course that was wrong, as clearly Obama and Ayers had already met well before this “meet and greet.”
7) The “lost years”: Ayers and Obama to the rescue of troubled youth
In 1997 Bill Ayers published a book that criticized the treatment of juvenile defendants in the criminal justice system including the practice in some states of trying these individuals as adults. Barack Obama praised the book as a “searing and timely account” in the Chicago Tribune.
In late 1997 and 1998 a bill to impose “blended” sentencing on certain juvenile offenders was proposed in the Illinois legislature where Obama was now a state senator, representing the south side Chicago district that included Ayers and Dohrn’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The bill would have allowed parallel juvenile and adult sentences with the adult sentence held as a threat to be imposed if serious offenders violated terms of their juvenile conviction.
Obama, Dohrn and Ayers opposed the bill. Michelle Obama, now working at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, organized a panel discussion there in late 1997 as the new bill was gaining momentum, to discuss Ayers’ book. Barack Obama and Ayers were on the panel and Obama was described in the event’s press release as ”working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.”
The “R” word:
Obama advisor promotes a reparations approach to education reform; Ayers endorses it
In 2006 Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin, the then president of the American Education Research Association (AERA), the nation’s leading School of Education professional association, proposed a new policy to tackle the problems of America’s public schools: the repayment of centuries of “education debt” that allegedly is owed to people of color as a result of slavery and discrimination. She rooted the concept in the literature supporting reparations for slavery.
In 2007 Linda Darling-Hammond, a prominent and respected professor at the Stanford University School of Education, endorsed the same idea in an article in The Nation. In late 2007 Darling-Hammond was named an education advisor to the Obama campaign. In February 2008 Darling-Hammond issued a blueprint for education reform by the next President that set as its #1 priority the repayment of the “education debt,” as proposed originally by Ladson-Billings. Bill Ayers has endorsed the idea of repayment of the “education debt.” Ayers is now a Vice President-elect (Division B: Curriculum Studies) of the AERA.
A chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called A Light in Dark Times. A chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers’ book, To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row just published. Ladson-Billings contributed a chapter in a book edited by Bill Ayers, Rick Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Jesse L. Jackson called Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment published in 2001.
More fundamentally, Bill Ayers introduced the concept of “white supremacy” as America’s original sin within the new left group SDS as part of his effort, together with his future wife Bernardine Dohrn, to hijack the student-led antiwar movement for his still-to-come terrorist actions as a leader of the Weather Underground.
Ayers argues that the fundamental issue in American life is “white skin privilege” - that white Americans benefit from being white at the expense of blacks.
Ayers himself wrote on his website in a January 19, 2008 essay on school reform:
“The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. ‘Across the US,’ the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, ‘a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.’ This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood ‘racial achievement gap,’ and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy….Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up.”
Obama has several times during the campaign suggested that the kind of reparations he is for is increased spending on education.
9) A toast to the maoist:
Bill Ayers long time comrade Mike Klonsky blogs for Obama One of Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s comrades in the late 60s Students for a Democratic Society was Mike Klonsky. When Dohrn and Ayers moved in one direction toward the violent tactics of the Weather Underground, Klonsky, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, dropped the pro-Russian communist politics of his parents and became a committed Maoist. As leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977 he travelled to Beijing and was toasted by the senior Beijing leadership.
When the crazy left of the 70s died in the 80s, Klonsky went to graduate school in education in Florida and then moved to Chicago. While driving a cab there he was recruited by his old friend Bill Ayers to head up a new project called the Small Schools Workshop in 1991. It’s offices were in the Department of Education building at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus where Ayers taught. In 1995 the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge headed by Ayers and Obama gave the Workshop a grant of $175,000. The Annenberg Challenge also had its office space in the same building as Ayers Department and the Workshop, rent free courtesy of the University. In 2008 Klonsky ran a blog on the official Obama campaign website on education policy and “social justice” teaching. When discussion of the Klonsky blog emerged in the blogosphere, it was promptly shut down by the campaign and all of the posts made by Klonsky were removed from the site.
10) The Great Debate: George v. Barack
There is little publicly available information on the precise relationship between Obama and Ayers today. I have been told by Linda Darling-Hammond that Ayers does not have any role in the campaign, although I do wonder how Ayers’ buddy Mike Klonsky could blog on the Obama website unless Ayers had a hand in it. Obama himself did not exactly eliminate any doubts on this score when asked about his relationship with Ayers during a debate with Hilary Clinton by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.
Obama said that Ayers was a professor of English (not Education) and was just a guy who lives in his neighborhood. Well, clearly not “just,” as we now know. But then Obama said that he does not exchange ideas with Ayers “on a regular basis.” Whatever that is supposed to mean (they debate the future of the world on an “irregular basis”?) it certainly fails to put the issue to rest.
A Very Interesting — and Potentially Devastating — Story About Obama and Terrorist Bill Ayers Is Beginning To Percolate [Posted by WLS]
The subject of Obama’s connection to William Ayers through an educational foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Connection (CAC) has begun to enter the mainstream media.
As has been discussed over the last few days on several web sites, and as is now being covered in some mainstream media outlets, the University of Illinois at Chicago is withholding from Stanley Kurtz, a contributing editor at The National Review, and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the records of an enterprise called the “Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Kurtz’s published a long article on Monday explaining how he learned about the records, how he sought to review the records at UIC, how he was given permission to come review the records, how he was allowed to review a “finding aid” (akin to a table of contents), and then when he was about to board a plane to Chicago to conduct the review, the University suddenly changed its mind and denied him access.
Why is this important? Because Obama was the Chairman of one arm of the CAC from 1995 to 1999 — its “Board”. Ayers wrote the grant application for $50 million submitted to the Walter Annenberg Foundation which was used to create the CAC. But, more significantly, Ayers headed up a second arm of the CAC - the Chicago School Reform Collaborative.
The role of the “Board” was to handle all fiscal matters, i.e., the parceling out of grant monies to various applicants from the Chicago school system.
The role of the “Collaborative” was to serve as a “clearinghouse for ideas, for resources, for information — the place where strategies are created, successes and failures analyzed, and plans made and shared….”
Keep in mind that when Obama was made Chairman of the Board in 1995, he was three years out of Harvard, was an associate at a small Chicago civil rights law firm, and had no great political contacts to speak of. Nevertheless, he was appointed to the position of Chairman of a non-profit educational foundation with a $50 million grant — which came with the obligation to raise matching funds from gov’t or other charitable sources (the Board eventually raised another $60 million). Other members of the Board were such Chicago luminaries as former University Presidents and Presidents of other charitable foundations. Yet they were led by a 3rd year associate from a small Chicago law firm.
The unreported fact of this episode is that Obama as Board Chairman, and Ayers as Collaborative Co-Chair, worked hand-in-hand in the process of reviewing and approving grant proposals that came to the CAC. One of Ayers’ roles at the Collaborative was to write “Requests for Proposals”, and then to assist potential grantees in fashioning their Application Proposals to match. It is inconceivable that during the period from 1995 to 1999, Obama and Ayers did not have a close working relationship as they went about parceling out tens of millions of dollars to applicants for funds from the CAC.
Yet, in February of this year, the Washington Post blog “Fact Checker” by Michael Dobbs was dutifully reporting the Obama-Ayers connection in the following terms:
The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:
Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.
But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one…. Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and “passion for social justice.”
“This whole connection is a stretch,” Harrington told me. “Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns.”
This might have remained the accepted version had it not been for reporting done over the last few months by Steve Diamond at his blog Global Labor and Politics. He has seen some of the CAC documents that Kurtz is trying to obtain (some of which I quote here), and has them posted at his site.
It would take much more time than I have right now to go through all Diamond’s reporting on this subject, but I think it can be synthesized down to a few bullet points and some conclusions and suppositions about that which is not yet known.
First, Ayers remains a radical left Marxist/Maoist just as he was in his days in the Weather Underground, and before that the Students for Democratic Society.
Second, Ayers now preaches revolution through propaganda and indoctrination which is to be taught in the form of primary and secondary school education. That’s what the CAC was all about, and that’s what the Obama campaign is so desperate to hide.
The mission of the Collaborative was to save a pet project of Ayers in the Chicago school system called the “Local School Councils.” This was the battleground for a fight for control of the Chicago school system in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ayers favored decentralizing control of the school system through the creation of elected “Local School Councils” to oversee the bureaucracy of individual schools or groups of schools. These LSCs would have authority over both the school administration and the teaching staff.
The LSCs were created by a law passed by the Illinois legislature in 1988. Ayers was an advocate of the LSCs in the fight for the legislation. When the Illinois legislature later gave control over the Chicago school system to the office of the Chicago Mayor, that threatened the LSCs by re-centralizing the power over the schools in the local government rather than the LSCs. Ayers created the CAC as a foundation to empower the LSCs — to give the money and to help them pursue educational initiatives pushed at the grass roots level.
While this might seem noble, what Ayers was really after was a mechanism to control curriculum of individual schools. Ayers has praised the re-education programs of communists in places like Nicaragua and Venezuela, which have been imposed through the public education systems in those countries. Ayers went so far as to proclaim in a speech in Venezuela in 2007 that he and Chavez shared a belief that “education is the motor-force of revolution.”
Much of Diamond’s reporting on this topic is about the framework of the CAC, Ayers and Obama’s roles connected thereto, and how the CAC worked. What is missing — and what presumably Kurtz would find in the documents now being withheld from him — is the far left educational subject matter that Ayers proposed to push through the primary and secondary schools if he could gain control of the individual school curriculums through the LSCs — control which he sought to achieve by working with LSC’s through the Collaborative to help them gain such control. The fact that Obama, as Board Chairman, voted to fund grant proposals submitted in response to Requests of Proposals drafted by Ayers in his role as Collaborative co-chair, would be a DIRECT and SOLID link of Obama to the long-standing efforts by the far left to extend the reach of their Marxist/Maoist philosophy from the college level, down into the high schools and primary schools of this country.
This connection through the CAC casts great doubt on the well-rehearsed story that Obama first got to know Ayers only when he was introduced to him and his wife while contemplating his first run for the Illinois State Senate, and has since remained only a casual friend “from the neighborhood.” Frankly, if the records being withheld show what I suspect they show, as outlined above, they’ll represent the spark that caused the immolation of the Obama campaign.
