In your opinion, and please provide details, what makes John McCain well-qualified to be the next President of the United States?
The biggest reason is that he's not a socialist like Obama.
Are you calling the founding fathers socialists when thet wrote into the constitution -
The 52-word Preamble helps in the interpretation of the Constitution. It explains why these rules were written. 'We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
It DIDN'T SAY...You can invade another country who doesn't pose an imminent threat under false pretenses to get their oil and make oil investors and pentagon contractor rich...while at the same time NOT BALANCING the needs of the US citizens to promote the general welfare...like, access to a good education, access to affordable healthcare job opportunities...a sound infrastructure...all the while gutting the constitution that preserves justice...oh...and then there's that unitary executive theory that says the executive branch doesn't have to answer to congress.
ETA...And then pass on the costs of the debt you build up fighting an unessecary war on to your children and grandchildren's tax burdens.
Joined: 11 Mar 2007
Posts: 8838
Location: Nirvana
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:13 am
Obama’s Ayers problem deepens
The Chicago bully tactics aren’t going to work. While Obama sics his lawyers and Kossack minions on TV stations that dare to air an independent ad about his close relationship with Weather Underground terrorist-turned-academic Bill Ayers, the truth is seeping out. Thanks to the efforts of NRO’s Stanley Kurtz, blogger Steve Diamond, and intense pressure from Internet readers and talk radio listeners, the University of Illinois - Chicago was forced to release a trove of papers that a former official attempted to shield from public view. There are some 140 boxes and 1,000 files to sift through — and MSM outlets have barely scratched the surface. Kurtz is in Chicago to review the documents and will report tonight on his findings for two hours on Chicago station WGN’s Milt Rosenberg Show.
Despite only partial review of the papers, some outlets are pooh-poohing the disclosures. The Chicago Tribune writes: “A partial examination of the documents did not reveal anything startling about the link between Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, a Vietnam-era anti-war group that claimed responsibility for several bombings.”
And yet:
The UIC records show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the education program got under way. The two continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 operation of the program, records show.
At a Democratic debate this year when the association between Obama and Ayers was raised, Obama said: “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Obama called Ayers’ past radical acts detestable.
But critics note that Obama visited Ayers’ home for a meeting at the start of his first state Senate bid in the mid-’90s.
The UIC records showed that Ayers was instrumental in securing the $50 million education grant to reform Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg. . After Chicago was awarded the money, Obama served as president of the Challenge’s board of directors, the fiscal arm that disbursed the grants to schools and raised private matching funds. Ayers participated in a second entity known as the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, the operational arm that worked with the grant recipients.
William Ayers, who was a founder of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground, told FOX News correspondent James Rosen in a candid 2004 interview that he still believed he was “on the side of justice” years after the group’s wave of attacks.
In the interview, conducted three years after the September 11 attacks, Ayers argued the U.S. government had carried out “many other acts of terror … even recently, that are comparable,” and claimed he and his bomb-planting comrades were “restrained” in their actions.
Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, served with Barack Obama on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago for three years and helped launch Obama’s political career in Illinois by hosting in his Hyde Park home an informal campaign event for the future state senator in 1995.
Ayers claimed the Weathermen were driven by “hope and love,” not despair, and said he did not think the group’s violent acts, targeting federal officials and local law enforcement officers, were “a big deal.”
…Interviewed in May 2004 in connection with Rosen’s book “The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate,” published recently by Doubleday, Ayers affirmed that 9/11 was “an act of pure terror,” one that had caused him to weep, and that terrorism is “always wrong, always evil.” But Ayers also condemned the Bush administration for using the attacks “to advance a right-wing agenda on every front: every uterus must be examined, every tree chopped down, every oil well dug. I mean, it’s absolute madness.”
“I mean, the only group of people that I know who weren’t weeping for the next several weeks [after 9/11] were the people who were busy typing legislation into their computers,” Ayers continued.
When asked about some Palestinians who had been captured on videotape dancing in the streets after the attacks, Ayers said coverage of those individuals had been “overwrought” in the U.S. media, and added: “[E]verybody in the world knows that Americans are geographically challenged and historically challenged. We don’t have a sense of who we are or where we are. So I think every American that I know was weeping over the next several weeks, and devastated and shocked. Was that an act of pure terror? It absolutely was.
“And there are many other acts of terror carried out by our government, even recently, that, that are comparable.
Obama can wrap himself in the flag and attempt to gag his critics, but his false portrayal of Ayers as just a guy in the neighborhood is not going to fly. Obama’s friend is America’s enemy.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 9:28 am
Annenberg documents show extensive contacts between Obama and Ayers
As we wait for the press and others to go through the thousands of documents related to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Barack Obama served as President of the Board and terrorist William Ayers headed up the operations arm, we can say for certain that Obama is a liar of the first magnitude.
Barack Obama made it appear in public statements that he barely knew Ayers. Here is what he said at the Philadelphia debate in April about his relationship with the terrorist:
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.
And here's what the Annenberg docs show so far:
The UIC records show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the education program got under way. The two continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 operation of the program, records show.
"Not someone I exchange ideas with on a regular basis?" Assuming he had private meetings with Ayers in addition to the public ones, one could easily conclude that Obama did indeed "exchange ideas with Ayers on a regular basis."
I'd like to know when the last time he talked to Ayers, the last time he saw him. Does he have a role - even an unofficial one - in the campaign?
Obama is going to have a lot of explaining to do - if he ever has a press conference.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
Need2KnowPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 9:33 am
VERY very interesting to say the very least.
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 11344
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:03 am
Need2Know wrote:
VERY very interesting to say the very least.
It's absolutely amazing that the MSM can find time to search for the minutiae of Sarah Palin and family details, but they can't find the time to look at the Obama/Ayers connection.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
Need2KnowPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:04 am
Phantom wrote:
It's absolutely amazing that the MSM can find time to search for the minutiae of Sarah Palin and family details, but they can't find the time to look at the Obama/Ayers connection.
It paints a very interesting picture of where the motivation lies.
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 11344
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:07 am
Need2Know wrote:
It paints a very interesting picture of where the motivation lies.
Indeed it does, since you could bet your bottom dollar that if was McCain/Ayers there would be 24/7 coverage by the MSM.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:40 am
Some background on Bill Ayers' SDS comrade, Michael Klonsky (Chicago Annenberg Challenge-related)
"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 [not to be confused with Communist Party USA. CPML no longer exists, CPUSA formed decades earlier and is still around-ETL], 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 [Michael Klonsky] 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."
In 1977, the October League was reorganized as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [again, not Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -ETL] and former SDS activist Michael Klonsky became party chairman. Also in 1977, Klonsky traveled to China and the CPML was recognized by the Chinese Communist Party as its official sister party in America.
(snip)
In January 1981, Michael Klonsky resigned as party chairman, and the CPML disbanded that same year.
The previous Red Encyclopedia description of the CPML was incorrectly combined with that of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).
Chicago Annenberg Challenge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) (also referred to as the Annenberg Challenge to Chicago) was a public-private partnership founded in 1995 that existed from intended to improve school performance by what it called "on the ground" investments in the form of professional development and technical assistance. Sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, the CAC received a charter grant of $49.2 million in 1995.[1] The CAC's operations were closed in 2001, and subsumed into those of the Annenberg Institute for Social Reform.
The CAC's successful grant application was written in 1993 by William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.[2][3] After extensive community-based discussions also involving Anne Hallett of the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, and Warren Chapman of the Joyce Foundation.
At its founding, the Annenberg Challenge was made up of three constituent parts:
* The Chicago School Reform Collaborative, co-chaired by William C. Ayers;
* a Board of Directors initially recruited by the Collaborative, which was chaired from 1995 to 2000 by Barack Obama[4: Doroty Shipps, Karin Sconzert, Holly Swyers "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years", Consortion on Chicago School Research, March 1999], at the time a practicing attorney.
* The Chicago Schools Research Consortium, a research arm of the Challenge.
The Collaborative was the operative on the ground body of the Challenge. It was made up of representatives of various constituencies in the Chicago school reform movement. That reform movement had begun in 1987 in the wake of an unpopular strike by Chicago teachers. Bill Ayers was active in that reform effort through a group called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs. ABCs was an alliance of various activists and reform groups that included the Developing Communities Project which Barack Obama headed up at the time as well as Chicago United, a business sector group, that was headed up by Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers.
A key accomplishment of the reform movement was the passage in 1988 of a new state law that established local school councils in every school in Chicago as a competing center of power relative to the teachers union and the Chicago school administration.
The Collaborative's responsibility was to help identify potential grant recipients, prepare requests for proposals and develop other means for the Challenge to intervene in supporting the local school council-led reform process in Chicago. In 1995 the mayor of Chicago succeeded in the first of several efforts to undermine the power of these councils. But the Challenge fought back by funneling millions of dollars into the councils and associated reform groups, including $175,000 to the Small Schools Workshop.
The Workshop had been established in the early 1990s by William Ayers who hired Mike Klonsky, a Chicago cab driver who had earned a Ph.D. in education from the University of South Florida, and former activist with Ayers in Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. Klonsky had achieved limited notoriety in 1977 when he traveled to Beijing to seek the endorsement of Communist China for a political party he had helped establish in the United States, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [again, not Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -ETL].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge
"Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator and political activist, a leader of the New Communist Movement.
Klonsky's father, Robert Klonsky, had been arrested as a communist in the 1950s and convicted of violating the Smith Act.[1] In the late 1960s Michael Klonsky was the national secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society,[2] which he joined as a student at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge).[3] He was one of five S.D.S. members arrested on May 12, 1969, when prank phone calls sent police and firefighters to the S.D.S. offices in Chicago.[2] In the 1970s he headed the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [again, not Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -ETL],[4] in which role he was one of the first westerners allowed to visit the People's Republic of China.[4][5]
More recently Klonsky has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago;[6] his academic work focused on small school size as a solution to the problems of inner city schools. He is now the director of the Small Schools Workshop, a school outreach program associated with UIC.[7][8]..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Klonsky
New Communist Movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The New Communist Movement (NCM) was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban Revolution, but wanted to do so independently of already-existing U.S. communist parties.
[Obama] 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.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:08 am
Obama's Acorn Problem
There is a new story out in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about some questionable Obama campaign spending reports and Obama’s troubling ties to ACORN. Obama may well have used the Chicago Annenberg-Challenge to channel money to ACORN (and other radical groups of "community organizers"), few or none of whom had particular expertise in improving public education. This, I fear, may be one of the main reasons why the Chicago Annenberg Challenge failed to make any measurable improvement in Chicago’s public school system. Of course, I’ve already written about Obama’s ties to ACORN in "Inside Obama’s Acorn," and I’ve got much more on Obama’s questionable role in funneling money to ACORN in "Senator Stealth," my new piece in the print edition of NR. Obama’s early work for ACORN, his later Woods Fund help for ACORN, and his Annenberg role as a funder of local community organizers (who did a very poor job of improving education, the actual purpose of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge), and the role of all this in Obama’s political ambitions is one key thread connecting all these stories. So this is one key reason why I want to see those library records.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:42 am
Inside Obama’s Acorn
By their fruits ye shall know them
What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.
This is a story we’ve largely missed. While Obama’s Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill. In fact, Obama’s Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama’s role as an Acorn “leadership trainer” is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama’s ties to Acorn.
An Anti-Capitalism Agenda
To understand the nature and extent of Acorn’s radicalism, an excellent place to begin is Sol Stern’s 2003 City Journal article, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities.” (For a shorter but helpful piece, try Steven Malanga’s “Acorn Squash.”)
Sol Stern explains that Acorn is the key modern successor of the radical 1960’s “New Left,” with a “1960’s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism” to match. Acorn, says Stern, grew out of “one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.” In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide.
While Acorn holds to NWRO’s radical economic framework and its confrontational 1960’s-style tactics, the targets and strategy have changed. Acorn prefers to fly under the national radar, organizing locally in liberal urban areas — where, Stern observes, local legislators and reporters are often “slow to grasp how radical Acorn’s positions really are.” Acorn’s new goals are municipal “living wage” laws targeting “big-box” stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks — efforts styled as combating “predatory lending.” Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, Acorn’s living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. Acorn’s opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown. Perhaps most mischievously, says Stern, Acorn uses banking regulations to pressure financial institutions into massive “donations” that it uses to finance supposedly non-partisan voter turn-out drives.
According to Stern, Acorn’s radical agenda sometimes shifts toward “undisguised authoritarian socialism.” Fully aware of its living-wage campaign’s tendency to drive businesses out of cities, Acorn hopes to force companies that want to move to obtain “exit visas.” “How much longer before Acorn calls for exit visas for wealthy or middle-class individuals before they can leave a city?” asks Stern, adding, “This is the road to serfdom indeed.”
In Your Face
Acorn’s tactics are famously “in your face.” Just think of Code Pink’s well-known operations (threatening to occupy congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David Petraeus) and you’ll get the idea. Acorn protesters have disrupted Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and Acorn has burst into a closed city council meeting there. Acorn protestors in Baltimore disrupted a bankers’ dinner and sent four busloads of profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor’s home, terrifying his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally supports Acorn said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line.
Acorn, however, defiantly touts its confrontational tactics. While Stern himself notes this, the point is driven home sharper still in an Acorn-friendly reply to Stern entitled “Enraging the Right.” Written by academic/activists John Atlas and Peter Dreier, the reply’s avowed intent is to convince Acorn-friendly politicians, journalists, and funders not to desert the organization in the wake of Stern’s powerful critique. The stunning thing about this supposed rebuttal is that it confirms nearly everything Stern says. Do Atlas and Dreier object to Stern’s characterizations of Acorn’s radical plans — even his slippery-slope warnings about Acorn’s designs on basic freedom of movement? Nope. “Stern accurately outlines Acorn’s agenda,” they say.
Do Atlas and Dreier dismiss Stern’s catalogue of Acorn’s disruptive and intentionally intimidating tactics as a set of regrettable exceptions to Acorn’s rule of civility? Not a chance. Atlas and Dreier are at pains to point out that intimidation works. They proudly reel off the increased memberships that follow in the wake of high-profile disruptions, and clearly imply that the same public officials who object most vociferously to intimidation are the ones most likely to cave as a result. What really upsets Atlas and Dreier is that Stern misses the subtle national hand directing Acorn’s various local campaigns. This is radicalism unashamed.
But don’t let the disruptive tactics fool you. Acorn is a savvy and exceedingly effective political player. Stern says that Acorn’s key post–New Left innovation is its determination to take over the system from within, rather than futilely try to overthrow it from without. Stern calls this strategy a political version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Take Atlas and Dreier at their word: Acorn has an openly aggressive and intimidating side, but a sophisticated inside game, as well. Chicago’s Acorn leader, for example, won a seat on the Board of Aldermen as the candidate of a leftist “New Party.”
Obama Meets Acorn
What has Barack Obama got to do with all this? Plenty. Let’s begin with Obama’s pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago. Few people have a clear idea of just what a “community organizer” does. A Los Angeles Times piece on Obama’s early Chicago days opens with the touching story of his efforts to build a partnership with Chicago’s “Friends of the Parks,” so that parents in a blighted neighborhood could have an inviting spot for their kids to play. This is the image of Obama’s organizing we’re supposed to hold. It’s far from the whole story, however. As the L. A. Times puts it, “Obama’s task was to help far South Side residents press for improvement” in their communities. Part of Obama’s work, it would appear, was to organize demonstrations, much in the mold of radical groups like Acorn.
Although the L. A. Times piece is generally positive, it does press Obama’s organizing tales on certain points. Some claim that Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, exaggerates his accomplishments in spearheading an asbestos cleanup at a low-income housing project. Obama, these critics say, denies due credit to Hazel Johnson, an activist who claims she was the one who actually discovered the asbestos problem and led the efforts to resolve it. Read carefully, the L. A. Times story leans toward confirming this complaint against Obama, yet the story’s emphasis is to affirm Obama’s important role in the battle. Speaking up in defense of Obama on the asbestos issue is Madeleine Talbot, who at the time was a leader at Chicago Acorn. Talbot, we learn, was so impressed by Obama’s organizing skills that she invited him to help train her own staff.
And what exactly was Talbot’s work with Acorn? Talbot turns out to have been a key leader of that attempt by Acorn to storm the Chicago City Council (during a living-wage debate). While Sol Stern mentions this story in passing, the details are worth a look: On July 31, 1997, six people were arrested as 200 Acorn protesters tried to storm the Chicago City Council session. According to the Chicago Daily Herald, Acorn demonstrators pushed over the metal detector and table used to screen visitors, backed police against the doors to the council chamber, and blocked late-arriving aldermen and city staff from entering the session.
Reading the Herald article, you might think Acorn’s demonstrators had simply lost patience after being denied entry to the gallery at a packed meeting. Yet the full story points in a different direction. This was not an overreaction by frustrated followers who couldn’t get into a meeting (there were plenty of protestors already in the gallery), but almost certainly a deliberate bit of what radicals call “direct action,” orchestrated by Acorn’s Madeleine Talbot. As Talbot was led away handcuffed, charged with mob action and disorderly conduct, she explicitly justified her actions in storming the meeting. This was the woman who first drew Obama into his alliance with Acorn, and whose staff Obama helped train.
Surprise Visit
Does that mean Obama himself schooled Acorn volunteers in disruptive “direct action?” Not necessarily. The City Council storming took place in 1997, years after Obama’s early organizing days. And in general, Obama seems to have been part of Acorn’s “inside baseball” strategy. As a national star from his law school days, Obama knew he had a political future, and would surely have been reluctant to violate the law. In his early organizing days, Obama used to tell the residents he organized that they’d be more effective in their protests if they controlled their anger. On the other hand, as he established and deepened his association with Acorn through the years, Obama had to know what the organization was all about. Moreover, in his early days, Obama was not exactly a stranger to the “direct action” side of community organizing.
Consider the second charge against Obama raised by the L.A. Times backgrounder. On the stump today, Obama often says he helped prevent South Side Chicago blacks, Latinos, and whites from turning on each other after losing their jobs, but many of the community organizers interviewed by the L. A. Times say that Obama worked overwhelmingly with blacks.
To rebut this charge, Obama’s organizer friends tell the story of how he helped plan “actions” that included mixed white, black, and Latino groups. For example, following Obama’s plan, one such group paid a “surprise visit” to a meeting between local officials considering a landfill expansion. The protestors surrounded the meeting table while one activist made a statement chiding the officials, after which the protestors filed out. Presto! Obama is immunized from charges of having worked exclusively with blacks — but at the cost of granting us a peek at the not-so-warm-and-fuzzy side of his community organizing. Intimidation tactics are revealed, and Obama’s alliance with radical Acorn activists like Madeleine Talbot begins to make sense.
“Non-Partisan”
The extent of Obama’s ties to Acorn has not been recognized. We find some important details in an article in the journal Social Policy entitled, “Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign,” by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board. The odd thing about this article is that Foulkes is forced to protect the technically “non-partisan” status of Acorn’s get-out-the-vote campaigns, even as he does everything in his power to give Acorn credit for helping its favorite son win the critical 2004 primary that secured Obama the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate.
Before giving us a tour of Acorn’s pro-Obama but somehow “non-partisan” election activities, Foulks treats us to a brief history of Obama’s ties to Acorn. While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.
At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.
So along with the reservoir of political support that came to Obama through his close ties with Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, and other Chicago black churches, Chicago Acorn appears to have played a major role in Obama’s political advance. Sure enough, a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”
Foundation Money
Although it’s been noted in an important story by John Fund, and in a long Obama background piece in the New York Times, more attention needs to be paid to possible links between Obama and Acorn during the period of Obama’s service on the boards of two charitable foundations, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.
According to the New York Times, Obama’s memberships on those foundation boards, “allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants” to various liberal organizations, including Chicago Acorn, “whose endorsement Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.” As best as I can tell (and this needs to be checked out more fully), Acorn maintains both political and “non-partisan” arms. Obama not only sought and received the endorsement of Acorn’s political arm in his local campaigns, he recently accepted Acorn’s endorsement for the presidency, in pursuit of which he reminded Acorn officials of his long-standing ties to the group.
Supposedly, Acorn’s political arm is segregated from its “non-partisan” registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, but after reading Foulkes’ case study, this non-partisanship is exceedingly difficult to discern. As I understand, it would be illegal for Obama to sit on a foundation board and direct money to an organization that openly served as his key get-out-the-vote volunteers on Election Day. I’m not saying Obama crossed a legal line here: Based on Foulkes’ account, Acorn’s get-out-the-vote drive most likely observed the technicalities of “non-partisanship.”
Nevertheless, the possibilities suggested by a combined reading of the New York Times piece and the Foulkes article are disturbing. While keeping within the technicalities of the law, Obama may have been able to direct substantial foundation money to his organized political supporters. I offer no settled conclusion, but the matter certainly warrants further investigation and discussion. Obama is supposed to be the man who transcends partisanship. Has he instead used his post at an allegedly non-partisan foundation to direct money to a supposedly non-partisan group, in pursuit of what are in fact nakedly partisan and personal ends? I have no final answer, but the question needs to be pursued further.
In fact, the broader set of practices by which activist groups pursue intensely partisan ends under the guise of non-partisanship merits further scrutiny. Consider the 2006 report by Jonathan Bechtle, “Voter Turnout or Voter Fraud?” which includes a discussion of the nexus between Project Vote and Acorn, a nexus where Obama himself once resided. According to Bechtle, “It’s clear that groups that claimed to be nonpartisan wanted a partisan outcome,” and reading Foulkes’s case study of Acorn’s role in Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, one can’t help but agree.
Radical Obama
Important as these questions of funding and partisanship are, the larger point is that Obama’s ties to Acorn — arguably the most politically radical large-scale activist group in the country — are wide, deep, and longstanding. If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself. This is hardly a coincidence: Obama helped train Acorn’s leaders in how to play this game. For the most part, Obama seems to have favored the political-insider strategy, yet it’s clear that he knew how to play the in-your-face “direct action” game as well. And surely during his many years of close association with Acorn, Obama had to know what the group was all about.
The shame of it is that when the L. A. Times returned to Obama’s stomping grounds, it found the park he’d helped renovate reclaimed by drug dealers and thugs. The community organizer strategy may generate feel-good moments and best-selling books, but I suspect a Wal-Mart as the seed-bed of a larger shopping complex would have done far more to save the neighborhood where Obama worked to organize in the “progressive” fashion. Unfortunately, Obama’s Acorn cronies have blocked that solution.
In any case, if you’re looking for the piece of the puzzle that confirms and explains Obama’s network of radical ties, gather your Acorns this spring. Or next winter, you may just be left watching the “President from Acorn” at his feast.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 12:32 pm
Obama's Radical-Left Ties Broad And Deep
Senator Approves Of The Political-Theological Outlooks Of Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright
Having now left Trinity United Church of Christ, can Barack Obama escape responsibility for his decades-long ties to Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright? No, he cannot. Obama’s connections to the radical-left politics espoused by Pfleger and Wright are broad and deep. The real reason Obama bound himself to Wright and Pfleger in the first place is that he largely approved of their political-theological outlooks.
Obama shared Wright’s rejection of black “assimilation.” Obama also shared Wright’s suspicion of the traditional American ethos of individual self-improvement and the pursuit of “middle-classness.” In common with Wright, Obama had deep misgivings about America’s criminal justice system. And with the exception of their direct attacks on whites, Obama largely approved of his preacher-friends’ fiery rhetoric. Obama’s goal was not to repudiate religious radicalism but to channel its fervor into an effective and permanent activist organization. How do we know all this? We know it because Obama himself has told us.
A REVEALING PROFILE
Although it’s been discussed before (because it confirms that Obama attended Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March), a 1995 background piece on Obama from the Chicago Reader has received far too little attention. Careful consideration of this important profile makes it clear that Obama’s long-standing ties to Chicago’s most rabidly radical preachers call into question far more than Obama’s judgment and character (although they certainly do that, as well). Obama’s two-decades at Trinity open a critically important window onto his radical-left political leanings. No mere change of church membership can erase that truth.
By providing us with an in-depth picture of Obama’s political worldview on the eve of his elective career, Hank De Zutter’s, “What Makes Obama Run?” lives up to its title. The first thing to note here is that Obama presents his political hopes for the black community as a third way between two inadequate alternatives. First, Obama rejects, “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation - which helps a few upwardly mobile blacks to ‘move up, get rich, and move out. . . . ’ ” This statement might surprise many Obama supporters, who seem to think of him as the epitome of integrationism. Yet Obama’s repudiation of integrationist upward mobility is fully consistent with his career as a community organizer, his general sympathy for leftist critics of the American “system,” and of course his membership at Trinity. Obama, we are told, “quickly learned that integration was a one-way street, with blacks expected to assimilate into a white world that never gave ground.” Compare these statements by Obama with some of the remarks in Jeremiah Wright’s Trumpet, and the resemblance is clear.
Having disposed of assimilation, Obama goes on to criticize “the politics of black rage and black nationalism” - although less on substance than on tactics. Obama upbraids the politics of black power for lacking a practical strategy. Instead of diffusing black rage by diverting it to the traditional American path of assimilation and middle-class achievement, Obama wants to capture the intensity of black anger and use it to power an effective political organization. Obama says, “he’s tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks whipped up - at the speaker’s rostrum and from the pulpit - and then allowed to dissipate because there’s no agenda, no concrete program for change.” The problem is not fiery rhetoric from the pulpit, but merely the wasted anger it so usefully stirs.
Obama’S NETWORK
De Zutter gives us a clear glimpse of Obama’s radicalism. Obama is called “progressive,” of course, and is said to yearn for “massive economic change.” That could simply mean an end to widespread poverty, rather than social restructuring. Yet Obama is also described as holding “a worldview well beyond” his mother’s “New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism.” De Zutter lays out Obama’s ties to radical groups like Chicago Acorn, as Acorn’s lead organizer, Madeleine Talbott, is quoted affirming that: “Barack has proven himself among our members . . . we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.” In “Inside Obama’s Acorn” I explore Obama’s links to this radical group, and to Talbott, who practices the sort of intimidating and often illegal “direct action” Acorn is famous for. (For more on Talbott’s affinity for “direct action,” see “Where Do We Begin?”)
De Zutter also touches on some other key elements of Obama’s network. Obama’s early organizing work for the Developing Communities Project was “funded by south-side Catholic churches.” Clearly, this early work cemented Obama’s close ties to Father Pfleger, whose support formed a critical component of Obama’s grassroots network. Precisely because of this early link, Pfleger threw his considerable support behind Obama’s failed 2000 bid for Congress. By the way, Pfleger’s political influence in Chicago is such that Mayor Richard Daley actually declared his 2002 candidacy for a fourth full term as mayor at Pfleger’s St. Sabina church. In “Inside Obama’s Acorn” I explore the possibility that Obama’s seat on the boards of a couple liberal Chicago foundations may have allowed him to direct funds to groups that served as his de facto political base. De Zutter quotes Woods Fund executive director, Jean Rudd, praising Obama for “being among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants to see our grants make change happen - not just pay salaries.” No doubt, Obama was sincerely supportive of the sort of leftist organizations favored by the Woods Fund. However, if Obama was in fact looking to some of the groups supported by the Woods Fund as a personal political base, his unusually active board service would make all the more sense.
BLACK CHURCHES
The threads of this political network are pulled tighter as Obama turns to a “favorite topic,” “the lack of collective action among black churches.” Obama is sharply critical of churches that try to help their communities merely through “food pantries and community service programs.” Today, Obama rationalizes his ties to Wright’s Trinity Church by citing its community service programs. Yet in 1995, Obama was highly critical of churches that focused exclusively on such services, while neglecting the sort of politically visionary sermons, local king-making, and political alliance-building favored by Pfleger and Wright. Obama rejects the strictly community-service approach of apolitical churches as part of America’s unfortunate “bias” toward “individual action.” Obama believes that what he derogates as “John Wayne” thinking and the old, “right wing...individualistic bootstrap myth” needs to be replaced: “We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”
Obama sees the black church as the key to his plan for collective social and political action: “Obama . . . spoke of the need to mobilize and organize the economic power and moral fervor of black churches. He also argued that as a state senator he might help bring this about faster than as a community organizer or civil rights lawyer.” Says Obama, “We have some wonderful preachers in town - preachers who continue to inspire me - preachers who are magnificent at articulating a vision of the world as it should be.” Obama continues, “But as soon as church lets out, the energy dissipates. We must find ways to channel all this energy into community building.” Obama seems to be holding up people like Wright, Pfleger, and James Meeks (who he has listed as his key religious allies) as positive models for the wider black church - in both their rhetoric, and in their willingness to play a direct political role. If anything, Obama would like to see the political visions of Wright and Pfleger given greater weight and substance by connecting them to secular leftist political networks like Acorn.
END RUN
By the end of De Zutter’s piece, Obama’s distinctive vision comes clear. While in his years as a Chicago organizer and attorney, Obama took care to maintain friendly ties to the Daley administration, in Obama’s campaign for state senate, he specifically avoided asking the mayor or the mayor’s closest allies for support. Obama’s plan was to make an end-run around Chicago’s governing Democratic political network, by building a coalition of left-leaning black churches and radical secular organizations like Acorn (perhaps with de facto help from liberal foundation money as well). This coalition would provide Obama with the flexibility to play out a political career some distance to the left of conventional Illinois democratic politics. And sure enough, Obama’s extremely liberal record in Illinois vindicated his strategy.
The De Zutter story sheds considerable light on the debate over the significance of Obama’s ties to Pfleger and Wright. For the most part, that debate plays out with a relatively apolitical notion of church membership in mind. Obama’s defenders say that he should not be held responsible for the occasional political excesses of his preacher. Critics point out that the extremism of Wright and Pfleger is long-standing and well known. At some point, this line of thinking goes, the radicalism of such preachers ought to become intolerable. And what does it say about Obama’s judgement that he actually built his own national reputation by pointing to his appreciation of Wright’s sermons? Obama’s critics also see his decision to join Wright’s church as an opportunistic move by a politically ambitious secular humanist in search of a respectable religious home.
I agree with all of these criticisms of Obama. Yet De Zutter’s article shows us that the full story of Obama’s ties to Pfleger and Wright is both more disturbing and more politically relevant than we’ve realized up to now. On Obama’s own account, the rhetoric and vision of Chicago’s most politically radical black churches are exactly what he wants to see more of. True, when discussing Louis Farrakhan with De Zutter, Obama makes a point of repudiating anti-white, anti-Semitic, and anti-Asian sermons. Yet having laid down that proviso, Obama seems to relish the radicalism of preachers like Pfleger and Wright. In 1995, Obama didn’t want Trinity’s political show to stop. His plan was to spread it to other black churches, and harness its power to an alliance of leftist groups and sympathetic elected officials.
So Obama’s political interest in Trinity went far beyond merely gaining a respectable public Christian identity. On his own account, Obama hoped to use the untapped power of the black church to supercharge hard-left politics in Chicago, creating a personal and institutional political base that would be free to part with conventional Democratic politics. By his own testimony, Obama would seem to have allied himself with Wright and Pfleger, not in spite of, but precisely because of their radical left-wing politics. It follows that Obama’s ties to Trinity reflect on far more than his judgment and character (although they certainly implicate that). Contrary to common wisdom, then, Obama’s religious history has everything to do with his political values and policy positions, since it confirms his affinity for leftist radicalism.
SENSE OF MISSION
It could be argued that the new and supposedly moderate, “bipartisan” Obama of 2008 is the real Obama. Unfortunately, that argument is unconvincing. Again and again, De Zutter reports that Obama’s true passion, deepest calling, and most authentic sense of mission is to be found in his early community organizing work. Obama’s own vision for himself as a legislator is as a kind of super-organizer/activist, extending the “progressive” quest for “social justice” to society as a whole.
I see no reason to doubt Obama’s self-account, and many reasons to accept it. As De Zutter notes, Obama gave up a near-certain Supreme Court clerkship to come to Chicago and do community organizing. It’s also easy to imagine Obama joining one of the many other less radical black churches on the south side of Chicago, if that was all he needed to launch a political career. Clearly, given his good relations with the Daley administration, Obama could have asked for its support in his bid for the Illinois State Senate. Yet at every turn, Obama took a riskier path. That suggests he was operating from conviction. Trouble is, the conviction in question was apparently Obama’s belief in the sort of radical social and economic views held by groups like Acorn and preachers like Wright and Pfleger.
Obama was certainly more rhetorically smooth, and no doubt less personally embittered than some of his mentors. Yet what stands out after a consideration of Obama’s larger personal and political history is the general convergence of political orientation between Wright, Pfleger, Acorn, Chicago’s “progressive” foundations, and Obama himself. Obama in Chicago was a man of the Left, doing his level-best to assemble a coalition free from the constraints of conventional, middle-ground Democratic politics.
Obama SPEAKS
If there is any doubt about the accuracy of De Zutter’s detailed account, we get the same message from this too-little discussed but revealing and important piece by Obama himself. The chapter from a 1990 book called “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois” was originally published in 1988, just after Obama joined Trinity. The piece is called, “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City,” and it shows exactly what Obama hoped to make of his association with Pfleger and Wright.
Obama begins by rejecting the false dichotomy between radicalism and moderation:
The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward their lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T. Washington to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, this internal debate has raged between integration and nationalism, between accommodation and militancy, between sit-down strikes and boardroom negotiations. The lines between these strategies have never been simply drawn, and the most successful black leadership has recognized the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.
Of course, even James Cone, the radical founder of black-liberation theology, sees himself as synthesizing the moderation of Martin Luther King Jr. with the radicalism of Malcolm X. Obama here seems to be calling for an inside/outside strategy like the one he would have learned working with Chicago Acorn. Note Obama’s reference to the controversial tradition of “direct action” favored by Acorn (and earlier by Saul Alinsky, whose tradition of radicalism the book is meant to carry on). Obama offers radicalism with a moderate face.
Obama sketches out a vision in which a politically awakened black church would ally with “community organizers” (like Obama and his friends from Acorn), thereby radicalizing the politics of America’s cities:
Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and - most importantly - values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago.
After expressing disappointment with apolitical black churches focused only on traditional community services, Obama goes on to point in a more activist direction:
Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward-thinking pastors have begun to look at community organizations such as the Developing Communities Project in the far south side [where Obama himself worked, and first encountered Pfleger, SK]...as a powerful tool for living the social gospel, one which can educate and empower entire congregations and not just serve as a platform for a few prophetic leaders. Should a mere 50 prominent black churches, out of thousands that exist in cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate with a trained and organized staff, enormous positive changes could be wrought....
Give me 50 Pflegers or 50 Wrights, Obama is saying, tie them to a network of grassroots activists like my companions from Acorn, and we can revolutionize urban politics.
MYSTERY SOLVED
So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.
Lucky for Obama, this political background is unfamiliar to most Americans. There are others who share Obama’s approach, however. Take a look at this piece by Manhattan Institute scholar Steven Malanga on “The Rise Of The Religious Left” and you will see exactly where Obama is coming from. Malanga ends his account by noting that religious-left activists often partner with groups like MoveOn.org and attend gatherings featuring speakers like Michael Moore. After the 2004 election, there was some talk of the Democratic party “purging” MoveOn and Moore. Far from purging its radical Left, however, the Democratic party is now just inches away from placing it in the driver’s seat. That is the real meaning of the fiasco at Trinity Church.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:45 pm
A bit of Liberal Fascism from the Obama campaign
The Editors of National Review Online have a good editorial summarizing researcher and writer Stanley Kurtz's investigation of the ties between Barack Obama and radical terrorist William Ayers, and the reaction of Obama campaign and its supporters to their critics:
... WGN, has made a stream of the broadcast available online, here, and it has to be heard to be believed. Obama's robotic legions dutifully jammed the station's phone lines and inundated the program with emails, attacking Kurtz personally. Pressed by Rosenberg to specify what inaccuracies Kurtz was guilty of, caller after caller demurred, mulishly railing that "we just want it to stop," and that criticism of Obama was "just not what we want to hear as Americans." Remarkably, as Obama sympathizers raced through their script, they echoed the campaign’s insistence that it was Rosenberg who was "lowering the standards of political discourse" by having Kurtz on, rather than the campaign by shouting him down.
Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as "post-partisan." He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.
This aggressive thuggery by the Obama campaign really needs a lot more attention from the media. We won't hold our breath. Now there are two stories for the DeMSM to ignore, Obama's history of radical-left associations and activism, and the reaction of his campaign to investigations of that history. Stirring up mobs and threats of prosecution are not the way (small "D") democrats conduct politics in America.
Where are the ACLU and other supposed "civil liberties" groups? Where are all those people worried about (phony) alleged government stifling of dissent by the Evil Bu$hCo Regime? Are they afraid to speak out against real efforts to stop voices of opposition? Or is it just OK when a fellow "liberal" does it?
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:46 pm
More Milwaukee Voter Fraud... Name that Party?
Milwaukee has discovered some more voter fraud with 10 more voter registration workers are being investigated by Wisconsin authorities. Fittingly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered the story in its paper on August 29. Unfittingly, the Journal Sentinel forgot one, tiny aspect of the story... that the voter fraud was perpetrated by Democrats. In fact, one of the organizations, ACORN, is intimately linked with Barack Obama.
Milwaukee’s top election official said Thursday she plans to seek criminal investigations of 10 more voter registration workers, including two accused of offering gifts to sign up voters.
So, what we have here is an Old Media story about voter fraud where the salient fact that the fraud is being committed by Democrats and Democrat organizations is somehow absent from the story. What a surprise, eh?
Voter bribery, voter fraud, workers misrepresenting themselves with false driver's license numbers, fake Social Security numbers, there's lots of details in the story. Yet, the word Democrat never appears once in the story.
So, who was responsible for all this fraudulent registration?
All the workers were paid by two organizations running voter registration drives, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Community Voters Project. Overall, 37 of the suspect workers were on the ACORN payroll, 11 were paid by the voters project and it’s not clear who employed the other one.
For those of you unaware, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is a far left group that is intimately linked with Barack Obama since his early days in the corrupt Chicago, Daley Democrat political machine. ACORN has given Obama much financial support over the last two decades. ACORN is also big on furthering the unAmerican thuggery of unions all across the nation. And that means they are strictly a Democrat organization... not that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wants anyone to know that.
So, what are the charges here?
Among the latest group, two ACORN workers are accused of offering pre-paid gasoline cards or restaurant gift cards to people in exchange for signing up to vote.
Edman said she wants Landgraf to look into whether the workers violated a state law that forbids offering cash or gifts to sway voters.
Eight voter project workers are suspected of making up information on voter applications, Edman said.
Among the workers previously referred to Landgraf, two are accused of submitting cards for dead voters.
Others appear to have submitted cards for people who said they never filled out an application or who were already registered, signed cards themselves, or falsified driver’s license numbers.
That's quite a laundry list. And, realize, this sort of Democrat fraud is happening all across the country in every major city. And it's all perpetrated by Democrats. Someone should pass this info on to the Journal Sentinel.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:10 am
The Acorn Indictments
A union-backed outfit faces charges of election fraud.
So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?
We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The good news for anyone who cares about voter integrity is that the Justice Department finally seems poised to connect these dots instead of dismissing such revelations as the work of a few yahoos. After the federal indictments were handed up in Kansas City this week, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement that "This national investigation is very much ongoing."
Let's hope so. Acorn officials bill themselves as nonpartisan community organizers merely interested in giving a voice to minorities and the poor. In reality, Acorn is a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit that uses intimidation and other tactics to push for higher minimum wage mandates and to trash Wal-Mart and other non-union companies.
Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an "affordable housing trust fund" designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.
Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.
"You have to wonder what's the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls," says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. "These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system."
Given this history, it's not surprising that Acorn is so hostile to voter identification laws and other efforts to ensure fairness and accuracy at the polls. In Missouri last month, the state Supreme Court held that a photo ID requirement to vote was overly burdensome and a violation of the state constitution. Acorn was behind the original suit challenging the statute, and it has brought similar challenges in several other states, including Ohio.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that blacks today are almost twice as likely as they were in 2004 to say they have little or no confidence in the voting system. Such a finding would seem like a powerful argument for voter ID laws, which consistently poll well among people of all races and incomes and would increase confidence in the voting process. Of course, voter ID laws would also cut down on fraud, which, judging from the latest indictments, would put a real crimp in Acorn's style.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:17 pm
Ayers’s Soulmates Planned GOP Kidnappings: Police
The Pioneer Press reports that the Ramsey County, Minnesota, Sheriff’s office investigated an anarchist group that was considering kidnapping delegates to the Republican Party’s convention in St. Paul.
The would-be terrorists, who called themselves the “Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee,” planned to shut down the convention. The group bears a striking resemblance to the Weathermen, a violent terrorist group founded by Barack Obama’s unrepentant terrorist associate William Ayers.
According to the news report:
# The self-described anarchist group - whose main goal was to “crash” the Republican National Convention,” according to its Web site - traveled to or communicated with affinity groups in 67 cities to recruit members and raise money.
# Group members discussed the possibility of kidnapping delegates, blockading bridges, using liquid sprayers filled with urine or chemicals on police and throwing marbles to trip police and their horses.
# At an “action camp” held from July 31 to Aug. 3 in Lake Geneva, Minn., one member talked of concealing inside giant puppets “materials” that could be used on the street. Others discussed the need for Molotov cocktails, paint, caltrops (devices used to puncture tires), bricks and lockboxes for protesters to lock themselves together.
# Erik Oseland, one of the six group members arrested here, produced a video called “Video Map of the St. Paul Points of Interest.” It included such major companies as Travelers Insurance and Qwest, hotels such as the Embassy Suites and the Crowne Plaza. Also included: the Pioneer Press building.
Not surprisingly, the communist National Lawyers Guild is representing many of the accused.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 10:29 am
Weathermen ghosts continue to haunt Obama campaign
Accusations of a connection between Barack Obama and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers have recently been gathering steam in conservative journals thanks to Weekly Standard and National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz.
For the uninitiated, the Weather Underground was a domestic terrorist group that grew out of the New Left in the '60s and '70s. The group sought to transform America into a communist nation. Obviously, Obama does not seek such a transformation, but relationships with people like Ayers do raise other questions.
More to the point is that Mr. Kurtz, along with many other journalists and lawyers, is investigating files that were recently released by the University of Illinois at Chicago that could have information regarding the relationship between Ayers and the Democratic nominee. As of yet, nothing has been found, but this does not mean that new evidence of a serious connection won't come up in the near future.
So, a stalemate has formed, but the Obama camp seems unable to effectively repel the allegations. Yet, the mere inability to prove his association with Ayers was not substantive could seriously hurt Obama come November.
The biggest reason Ayers has proven himself such a burden is the total lack of remorse he has shown over his involvement with the Weather Underground. That qualifies Mr. Ayers as an unrepentant communist terrorist. No one wants to campaign for president with something like that hanging around their neck.
Unfortunately for Obama, there are indeed reasons for suspicion. Obama endorsed Ayers' radical 1997 book on the justice system entitled "A Kind and Just Parent." Obama also kicked off his 2004 senatorial campaign at Ayers' house. Furthermore, Kurtz has written about times when Obama may have closely worked with Ayers on committees in Chicago. Although none of that evidence does anything more than raise eyebrows, the controversy is serious enough that McCain really does have a moral obligation to at least raise the issue during the campaign.
The strategic consequences of such a move are obvious. Imagine the "mere" possibility of close associations between an unrepentant communist terrorist and Obama being made known to the electorate. Does anyone not see the result here?
When undecided voters stand at the booth and remember that Obama may have radical connections, they'll logically choose to be safe rather than sorry. They'll choose McCain rather than Obama. And don't be surprised by a similar reaction from those Obama supporters who are less certain of their political allegiances.
So all McCain really has to do is make a point of the issue and keep close in the polls. Then, he can pull off an upset on election night. How did the Democrats get themselves into this situation?
Well, Andrew C. McCarthy had an article in the National Review last week that explained how the party selected a nominee like Obama, despite such suspicions. In his piece, he makes the point that all Hillary Clinton had to do was bring Ayers up, and the Obama candidacy would have been sunk. However, she could do no such thing, because her husband Bill had pardoned two Weathermen at the end of his administration.
Granted, maybe Bill just knew these guys. That sort of acquaintance is nothing compared to the close political relationship of which Obama has been accused of having. Yet, if Hillary brought Weathermen up, Obama would have done so in return, and horrific consequences would follow. So, according to McCarthy, she kept mum.
The Democrats are in a pickle. If they do lose this election over the Ayers issue, they should learn this: Don't fall too far in love with some fast-rising, planet-saving, faint-inducing, smooth-talking, inexperienced senator that hasn't been, as Senator Clinton put it, "vetted." What if he actually ends up representing your party due to circumstances beyond your control, like a far-too-quiet former first lady?
If the Democrats don't learn that simple lesson, then a saying on a popular cereal commercial might become applicable to politics. It'd go something like this:
Silly jackasses, the White House is for elephants!
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
PhantomPosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 11:10 am
Chicago Annenberg Challenge "Donor" Revealed
As Global Labor readers are well aware the University of Illinois at Chicago denied Stanley Kurtz of National Review access to the official records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the six year long $160 million education reform project led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.
The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal. It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the "donor" of the records. That "donor" wanted to examine the records prior to their release to the public.
This is highly unusual in light of the fact that the records had been deposited with UIC in 2002 and had been processed by UIC librarians and made ready for access by researchers. Only when Mr. Kurtz, a conservative, requested that he be allowed to see them was the "donor" contacted.
Thanks to the diligent efforts of a 3d year law student in Chicago who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with UIC, Global Labor can reveal tonight that the alleged "donor" who was contacted by UIC and who tried to block Dr. Kurtz' acces to the CAC records was Ken Rolling, former Executive Director of the CAC and a former staff member of the Woods Fund in the 1980s when the Woods Fund provided financial support to the Developing Communities Project which was then headed up by Barack Obama.
Thus, someone with a 20 year history with Senator Obama was tipped off in advance and in secret by a public University about the interest of a political opponent of the Senator in these public records. The CAC was a non profit corporation organized under the laws of the state of Illinois to serve the interests of the people of Illinois. Of course, Ken Rolling now has no legally cognizable interest that I am aware of in the long defunct CAC. Legally, the successor organization to the CAC is the Chicago Public Education Fund, on whose board sits Obama Campaign Finance Chair Penny Pritzker and Obama supporter Susan Crown.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
paxPosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:27 pm
Good job phantom. Keep bashing community organizers. I'd expect most folks understand the positive values of community organizing, teaching constitutional law, and public service.
You are making a fantastic case for voting democrat this year. Have you tried signing up with the Obama campaign?
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 20573
Location: No H8
apodixisPosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:29 pm
Republicans Trashing Community Service
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 5147
Location: State of Jefferson, Ecotopia
PhantomPosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:32 pm
pax wrote:
Good job phantom. Keep bashing community organizers. I'd expect most folks understand the positive values of community organizing, teaching constitutional law, and public service.
You are making a fantastic case for voting democrat this year. Have you tried signing up with the Obama campaign?
I'm trying my best pax.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
paxPosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:35 pm
Phantom wrote:
I'm trying my best pax.
I know you are. I love my PNN.
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 20573
Location: No H8
KatiePosted:
Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:39 pm
pax wrote:
Good job phantom. Keep bashing community organizers. I'd expect most folks understand the positive values of community organizing, teaching constitutional law, and public service.
You are making a fantastic case for voting democrat this year. Have you tried signing up with the Obama campaign?
I didn't like Obama three months ago but thanks to phantom and the crazy prayer email I know who to be scared off
Joined: 25 Mar 2006
Posts: 5946
PhantomPosted:
Mon Sep 08, 2008 5:01 pm
The ACORN Obama knows
If you don’t know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers — you and me — and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League documents how Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects.
Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn’t being spent on these radical activities?
Don’t bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a “community organizer” and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN’s political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. According to ACORN, Obama trained its Chicago members in leadership seminars; in turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his campaigns. Obama also sat on the boards of the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation, both of which poured money into ACORN’s coffers. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who “best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about” — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money.
Let’s take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.
Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including “Leon Spinks,” “Frekkie Magoal” and “Fruto Boy Crispila.” Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN’s criminal sabotage “an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls.”
The group’s vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: “In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.”
In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney’s office.
Under the guise of “consumer advocacy,” ACORN has lined its pockets. The Department of Housing and Urban Development funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing “anti-poverty” groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since taking office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza (”The Race”) scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.
As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new expose, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters “no lobby” agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment.
Republicans have largely looked the other way as ACORN has expanded its government-funded empire. But finally, a few conservative voices in Congress have called for investigation of the group’s apparent extortion schemes. This week, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney, Jeb Hensarling and Ed Royce called on Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to convene a hearing to probe potential illegalities and abuse of taxpayer funds by ACORN’s management and minions alike.
Where does the candidate of Hope and Change — the candidate of Reform and New Politics — stand on the issue? Barack Obama, ACORN’s senator, is for more of the same old, same old subsidizing of far-left politics in the name of fighting for the poor while enriching ideological cronies. It’s the Chicago way.
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end
woebedamnedPosted:
Mon Sep 08, 2008 5:05 pm
edit -- too negative
Last edited by woebedamned on Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:55 pm; edited 1 time in total
Damn it All!!!!
Joined: 15 Aug 2006
Posts: 9386
Location: Not one of the "Cool Kids" AKA "Nut Case"
Need2KnowPosted:
Mon Sep 08, 2008 7:40 pm
woebedamned wrote:
Im just the opposite. Three months ago I would have voted for Obama, now, in part thanks to Phantom and Dithers, I know I cannot vote for him, no matter who his opponet is.
I agree with you; I was not decided three months ago and I am actually a registered Democrat and am totally against Obama, not JUST because of what I have read here, but because of the research I have done on my own. It is a very deceptive campaign this man is running and many, many things I have learned would not even qualify him for my city council, much less POTUS. He leaves MUCH to be desired.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
