Nobama 08

Blog Burst: Nobama08- The Ayers Connection

I'm stealing part of this post from an actress who writes a blog called "Confessions of a Closet Republican."

Please read the whole link above. Here's the money shot:

Stanley Kurtz is a journalist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Kurtz’ article in the Wall Street Journal explains why Barack Obama is untrustworthy for the office of the President of the United States . He lacks integrity … and if it is one thing we do not need in the White House, it is yet another dishonest politician.Mr. Kurtz writes:


Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. LastApril, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in myneighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago 's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued astatement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland 's ghetto.In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursedmoney through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity, and bilingualism thantraditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America 's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.To say Mr. Obama is not ready for the presidency is a gross understatement. It is not simply that he lacks experience … it is also that he repudiates traditional American values and culture by embracing Marxist ideology, has been an acolyte of black racist theology, cuddled up with the anarchist activism of Saul Alinski, and even worse … the man is simply and irrevocably dishonest. There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think he honors American tradition, or shares with us our time-honored values. Significantly, a man who works to undermine our education system through socialist engineering is a man who seeks to destroy America .


Lord Jiggy here: How much of this have your heard about in the Mainstream Media?

Problems, Bailouts, and etc.

Been busy lately...work, AdventureBoy, and we rescued a puppy from doom. Just weeks ago we took in a stray cat. Both nice animals, but the puppy needs to be housebroken. The miscreants known as my step-kids aren't, shall we say, motivated to do what needs to be done to train the puppy, so a lot of my time not at work and being Dadman or training for the Ironman is spent trying to give the puppy the idea. Of course, the idiots also known as my step-kids don't pay attention to what the puppy does, so he's not learning the lesson that Outside is the place to poop, and inside is the place to be nice.

Not learning the lesson. That kind of seques into my thoughts for today.

The Bailout.

Don't forget, the Democrats started us on this road. They had the best intentions...but that is where Liberals often screw the pooch. They look at "the way life ought to be," instead of accepting the way it really is, and going from there.

The Way Life Ought to Be is that everyone should have a house.

The Way Life Is, is that when you give people something they have not earned, they don't appreciate it. This was palably demonstrated with Welfare Housing, over and over. People didn't own it, and they didn't care, and public housing quickly sprawled into unlivable chaos.

We also see The Way Life Is in the no-interest loans that in many ways are at the root of the current problem. Again, the Democrats pushed these bills which forced banks to give loans to people who may not have been qualified. Now that people are defaulting on loans they never should have been given, financial dominos are falling.

And, strangely, the Democrats are looking to us to pay for their good intentions.

That's a very persistent trait of Liberals. They want to out-source their compassion. Conservatives give more to charity, putting their money where their own mouth is.

Liberals want everyone to contribute. They have their own ideas about what should be done, compassionately, and they want everyone to pay for those ideas.

Again, see the Bailout. They wanted everyone to have a house...and now you and I are paying for their compassion.

Seeing/Hearing Only What We Want to See/Hear

I don't know about you all, but I only had time for part of the debates. I tended to like John McCain's presentation/answers, and to not trust Barack Obama's.

But I'm already a McCain supporter. I'll take guts over glitz. John McCain has made choices and stood up for principles that cost him both personally (see how he can't raise his hands above his shoulders...beatings from his Viet Cong captors) and politically (he's voted against the party often enough that a lot of Republicans don't trust him). I don't know the details of the sacrifices Obama has made personally and politically, but I'm willing to bet a paycheck they don't come anywhere near McCain's.

I'll effectiveness over eloquence. McCain has been against spending my money for his political gain, as in the invideous practice of earmarks. Senator Obama has no such compunctions about spending my money if it will garner him some votes down the line.

It was interesting, however, to read responses to the debate on either side. The conservatives thought that McCain took it. Liberals felt Obama carried the day.

Both sides saw what they wanted to see.

The closer we get to the election, the harder it will be to see clearly.

But, speaking of seeing clearly, check out this unflattering video from Youtube (courtesy of The Anchoress). It shows, very clearly, that Democrats were lovin' their Fannie and Freddie a few years ago, when the e-vile Republicans were trying to get some oversight.

Many of those same Dems will try, hard, to pin this on President Bush, and, as Obama called it, "...eight years of failed policies."

Remember...Congress makes the laws. Those buffoons passed the laws...all the laws. The President can sign or veto them...but the buffoons have ways of putting poison pills into the laws (riders, earmarks, other squirrely crap) that put a President in the position of vetoing a good or useful act to keep sneaky junk from getting into the system.

The President can propose...but Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) legislate.

It's on them.

Remember that when Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama (a Senator, oddly enough) try to blame the President for the failure and the required Bailout.

Where is the Democrat's William Bennett?

Remember back in the 90's, when Bill Clinton was President?

There were a group of rightwing nutjobs who were putting out the story that "Bill Clinton Killed People in Arkansas!" The details are vague, since I never paid much attention to it. A quick Google search turns up the usual websites with insinuation and outright accusation.

When these nutty charges became more widely distributed, William Bennett, no friend of the Clintons or their administration, stepped up, and said, very publicly, "These accusations are beyond the pale."

Like somebody out of a Samuel Beckett play, I'm waiting (without much hope) for some brave and well-known Democrat to stand up and say "What's being done to Sarah Palin is beyond the pale. The attacks, the slurs, the slanders, the invasion of her privacy, the hacking of her personal emails...this is unacceptable and demeaning to our Party and our Country."

I'll let you know when that Donkey-riding Godot shows up.

Hollywood and W, and O

You might not have heard, but Oliver Stone is getting ready to release his film about President Bush, called “W.” I haven’t seen the film, but I have my suspicions.

This seems like the time to pitch my Obama opus called “The Hope of Audacity: America gets the Big O she deserves!”

It’s an American success story, with brave Barry overcoming the racists at every step of the way!

Starring:
Chris Tucker as “Barack Obama”
Tyler Perry as “Michelle Obama”
Gilbert Gottfried as “Joe Biden”
Tyler Perry as “Hillary Clinton”

Featuring:
Dennis Farina as “Anthony (Buckets o’ Cash) Rezko”
Nick Nolte as “Bill (The Bomber) Ayers”
Jim Varney and Polly Holliday as “Bitter Gun Clinger and Bitter Bible Clinger”

With special appearances by:
Barbara Streisand, Lindsey Lohan, Margaret Cho, and Sarah Bernhardt as “The Muses – Faith, Hope, Charity, and Tiffani.”


Since my script is based on those fine, balanced, and unpartisan books “Obama Nation” and “The Case Against Barack Obama,” you can be guaranteed my film will walk the fine balance between satire and slander with the grace of a ballerina on crystal meth.

I tell ya, it’ll kill.

New Days

Here's a thought:

When did you stop waking up in the morning, looking forward to whatever new thing life was going to bring you?

I was reading a memoir ("Sky of Stone," by Homer Hickam, writer of "October Sky" -- great book and movie, by the way), and he talked about being a boy and how every day was new.

I haven't felt that way in a while.

Is that true for you?

Assumptions

One thing we have to do, if we are to be conscious human beings, is to question our assumptions.

When Barack Obama said, "My grandmother was a typical white person...", a lot of heads were nodding in agreement. They knew what he meant. She was a typical white person, casually racist without realizing it.

Now if I were to say, "Barack Obama is a typical black man...", would the heads be nodding, or the fingers waving? The assumption then would be that I am a vile racist, that I'm impuning the character of that fine man by suggesting there is such a thing as a typical black man, and, further the assumption is that I'd have nothing good to say about a typical black man.

Assumptions. They're the filters that we use to view the world.

I mean, in my heart of hearts, I want to rip the n--- off Barack Obama. And I worry when I see a group of black teenagers walking toward me at night.

Some of my liberal friends would let their assumptions lead them to the conclusion I was a bit racist, eh?

But, wait. I didn't say either of those things. Jesse Jackson did.

And for Liberals, Jesse Jackson comes with an entirely different set of assumptions.

I guess it's okay, then.