A Couple of Bad Egg(heads): Obama and Ayers

by Janet Crain:
Barack Obama and William Ayers, unrepentant 60's radical Weatherman, were together in April 2002 on a panel. This was 7 months after Ayers publicly declared he wished he had bombed more. Obama's staffers indicate the two were in touch at least through 2005. When asked about their relationship, Obama dismissed Ayers as "Just a guy in my neighborhood". Neglecting to state they shared an office for three years in the 90's,served on numerous boards together and that his political introduction in Chicago was launched in Ayers' living room.

A public gathering sponsored by

The Center for Public Intellectuals& the University of Illinois-Chicago

April 19th-20th, 2002

Chicago Illini Union

828 S. Wolcott

2:15-3:45 p.m.IV. Intellectuals in Times of CrisisExperiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations.

William Ayers, UIC, College of Education; author of Fugitive Days

Douglass Cassel, Northwestern University, Center for International Human Rights

Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago, Political Science

Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune; In These Times

Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator

http://www.uic.edu/classes/las/las400/conferencealt.htm

"Just a guy in my neighborhood, a harmless weatherman.
Maybe I'll invite him to dinner at the Whitehouse." BHO

“Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”–Bill Ayers, Weather Underground, 1970“America is not a just and fair and decent place,” Ayers said in 2001. “It makes me want to puke.”

View All Recent Meet the Real Sarah Palin Blog Posts:

Chicago Planning a Chilly Reception for Obama Election Night!!!!!

Oct 15, 2008 5:20 pm US/Central
Obama Election Night Party Likely In Grant Park
ReportingJay Levine

CHICAGO (CBS) ― It's not a done deal yet, but all indications are that campaign officials are leaning toward Hutchinson Field on the south end of Grant Park as the site of their election night party. The field is home to softball diamonds, the popular summer Lollapalooza music festival and was the site of the mass Pope John Paul held in Chicago nearly 30 years ago. If Grant Park is chosen as the venue, it would not be the first big outdoor event for Obama. He announced his presidential run outside the old state capitol in Springfield on a very cold day last February and gave his nomination acceptance speech at Denver's Mile High Stadium. CBS 2 first reported last month that Grant Park was on Obama campaign officials' shortlist. They tentatively decided on it late last week. The negotiations with the city and park district have begun. Security arrangements are reportedly starting to take shape, and Mayor Richard M. Daley reportedly said it was a great idea. The record low for Nov. 4 in Chicago is 15 degrees. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine asked Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper what he anticipated for the night. "Weather's never a problem Chicago. We know how to handle it," Roper said. "And there'll be a lot of warmth that night, if indeed it does take place in Grant Park." Roper added that the event would be a "huge economic boost for our city." "People have been following Barack Obama around the world, and the world will have their eyes on Chicago that evening," Roper said. "With the Pope's visit from 30 years ago, to Lollapalooza, this city knows how to handle big events. … We're prepared."

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/obama.election.night.2.841341.html

The Chicago Blizzard of 1967
Winter in Chicago has never been easy, but this one was a record-setter.
By Allan Johnson Chicago Tribune



At least some enjoyed the snow of the 1967 blizzard. Twenty-three inches of snow, the largest single snowfall in Chicago history, covered the city and suburbs. Children frolic among buried cars in the Edgewater neighborhood, on Chicago's North Side. (Tribune archive photo)


View All Recent Blog Posts:

Chicago Style Politics in Ohio

If Ohio polling looks like Chicago, 'thank' Brunner

"Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we've got Democrats in charge of the machines," Barack Obama said on Sept. 3.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans.

But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon as Brunner was elected in 2006, she tried to remove several Republican county elections officials, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett. They accused her of "storm trooper tactics" to silence critics.

Then Brunner spread an alarm that Ohio's electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering - a favorite claim of the paranoid left. Elections officials who participated in Brunner's study called her conclusions over-hyped "leaps in logic" and said, "The report itself could be viewed as an attack on the elections system ... (that) planted seeds in the mind of the public to mistrust those who oversee elections."

Brunner also demanded an overhaul of voting methods just before the March primaries, causing meltdowns in some precincts.

And now she's hassling Republicans who want to vote for John McCain.

Two Hamilton County voters have sued, accusing her of "the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters."

The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had a line at the top next to a box: "I am a qualified elector."

Brunner sent a memo telling county election officials to reject those applications for absentee ballots if the box was not checked. "Failure to check the box leaves both the applicant and the board of elections without verification that the applicant is a 'qualified elector'," she wrote.

But that's contrary to state law and Brunner doesn't have the authority, according to the lawsuit and an opinion from Hamilton County's Republican Prosecutor Joe Deters.

Ohio law allows voters to request an absentee ballot on the back of a grocery sack if they want to, as long as they include their name, address, date of birth, signature and either a driver's license number, last four Social Security numbers or a valid picture I.D.

There is nothing in the law about checking a box to verify a qualified voter. The voter's signature is enough, because that's what is checked to send ballots, said Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Greg Hartmann, who ran against Brunner in 2006 and is now county chairman for the McCain-Palin campaign. "It's just bald partisanship," he said. "She's trying to disqualify likely McCain voters."

The Deters opinion said "it is equally reasonable that the squares are intended simply as bullet points in an inartfully designed application."

Brunner said, "While state law does not require a check box, the McCain-Palin campaign designed its form to require that voters check a box to affirmatively state they are qualified electors."

Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester didn't buy it. "This is not a time to give people the appearance that voters are being suppressed," he said.

Majority Floor Leader Sen. Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, said, "Take the politics out and you'd think the state's chief elections official would err on the side of allowing people to vote."

State law requires local officials to notify voters if their applications are rejected. That will cause confusion, especially for elderly absentee voters, Hartmann said. It's also costly and time consuming in an election year.

Since the Florida debacle in 2000, most states have made voting easier. Ohio now lets anyone get an absentee ballot. This year, Ohio could again decide a close election - and Brunner is inviting the kind of lawsuits and suspicions that destroy public trust.

She said Hamilton County "may face other lawsuits or even challenges to the rights of those whose applications they would process" if her memo is ignored.

Brunner's web site says she "wants to ensure that Ohio elections are free, fair, open and honest; and to encourage the highest level of participation in our democracy." So why reject 1,500 voters in Hamilton County and thousands more in Ohio?

An honest mistake? With Brunner's partisan record, not likely.

Laying litigation landmines to lawyer the outcome if Democrats don't win? That fits like a tinfoil hat with her irresponsible attack on Ohio's voting machines.

Raw partisanship? Ring the jackpot bell.

"Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we've got Democrats in charge of the machines," Barack Obama said on Sept. 3.

I think he was talking about Brunner - the partisan secretary of state who is doing her best to bring Chicago elections to Ohio.

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080923/COL05/809230318/1055/news

View All Recent Blog Posts:

BREAKING NEWS: RICO Investigation of ACORN

BREAKING: Word in Chicago: Patrick Fitzgerald heading RICO investigation of ACORN and BHO campaign

No way of knowing if the following is true or merely wishful thinking. :-) But
rumor has it.....

Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2008 1:40:53 AM

Tonight we talked to someone who works in the federal courts here in Chicago.
The buzz in those corridors is that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been leading a team of FBI investigators in 10 states working on a RICO case.
Today, it was announced that ACORN is being investigated in 10 states.

That’s one Hell of a coincidence.

We asked why Fitzgerald would be involved in this, because he’s the prosecutor on the Tony Rezko case and we aren’t aware of ACORN being investigated in Illinois.

We were told that ACORN was investigated in Illinois years ago, and it was a Fitzgerald case then. This means ACORN’s activities today, involving a conspiracy to commit multi-state voter fraud on SoetorObama’s behalf, are an extension of that previous ACORN case.

Our source in federal courts said, “Any crime that involves more than two people and is carried out across state lines qualifies as a corrupt organization. The fact that those “Goodwill” donations were made in Texas and received at Obama headquarters in Chicago or Washington means it qualifies for RICO.”
The “Goodwill donations” referred to above are the $228 million in undocumented, unverified campaign contributions the SoetorObama camp has received — which the McCain campaigned filed a complaint to the FEC on this past Monday.

We’ve also heard that the Clinton campaign filed complaints to the FBI and other federal agencies over SoetorObama’s fraud in the Iowa, Texas and other caucuses: voter intimidation, registration fraud, and other illegal activities.
The last thing we were told tonight in regards to all of this was that “the meme here is a tying together of all these various threads. That’s what you will see in the last weeks of the campaign: all things being tied together”.

If everything rumored here is true, it looks like David Axelrod, Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, SoetorObama himself, and possibly even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were all involved, together, in massive RICO violations, and thus federal fraud, if the DNC and party leadership knew what the SoetorObama campaign and ACORN were up to and allowed it to proceed. Knowledge of federal crimes being committed makes all parties accessories to those crimes — and part of the conspiracy to defraud the public.

THAT would certainly be one Hell of a shock tomorrow morning.

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/2101148/posts


View All Recent Blog Posts:

The Obama-Ayers Education Story: Funding Left-Wing Radicalism In Education

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.

The Obama-Ayers Education Story: Funding Left-Wing Radicalism In Education

Read It All; This Matters

Posted by: Dan McLaughlin
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 11:39AM
20 Comments

Today's must-read: after months of investigation, in which he had to weather all manner of stonewalling and intimidation by the Obama camp, Stanley Kurtz finally has the story, in today's Wall Street Journal, of Barack Obama's involvement in unrepentant former terrorist Bill Ayers' project to spread left-wing politics under the guise of 'education' in Chicago schools. Here's a flavor of Ayers' project:

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 disbursed money 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 than traditional 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.

And of Obama's involvement in the activities of a group whose board he chaired:

Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit....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.


Kurtz's conclusion:


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.

Kurtz makes some references in the article to the Obama camp's pushback, and discusses it (including reprinting the Obama campaign's full response) here, including completing the connection of the dots in Obama's involvement in setting up and funding Ayers' activities:

In the first year, 1995, Obama headed the board, which made fiscal decisions, and Ayers co-chaired the Collaborative, which set education policy. During that first year, Obama's formal responsibilities mandated close cooperation and coordination with the Collaborative. As board chair and president of the CAC corporation, Obama was authorized to "delegate to the Collaborative the development of collaborative projects and programs . . . to obtain assistance of the Collaborative in the development of requests for proposals . . . and to seek advice from the Collaborative regarding the programmatic aspects of grant proposals." All this clearly involves significant consultation between the board, headed by Obama, and the Collaborative, co-chaired by Ayers.

Bear in mind the timeline - this is precisely the time at which Obama was launching his political career (including a meeting at Ayers' home), signing a contract to support the platform of the Marxist New Party, representing ACORN as its lawyer, and receiving the support and active participation, in return, of ACORN and similar of left-wing groups as ground troops in his campaigns. Tom Maguire looks at how far back Obama's relationship with Ayers goes. I continue to be amazed that any civilized person could associate with this terrorist, much less allocate money to give him a role in educating children. But then, recall the words of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, writing in 2000:

Barak Obama is serving only his second term in the Illinois State Senate so he might be fairly charged with ambition, but the same might have be said of Bobby Rush when he ran against Congressman Charles Hayes. Obama also has put in time at the grass roots, working for five years as a community organizer in Harlem and in Chicago. When Obama participated in a 1996 UofC YDS Townhall Meeting on Economic Insecurity, much of what he had to say was well within the mainstream of European social democracy.

And of course, besides funding Ayers, Obama once in office was essentially letting groups like Planned Parenthood essentially write sex education bills* - not a group as overtly outside the mainstream as Ayers, but consistent with Obama's overall Illinois record as a hard-core left-wing culture warrior looking to empower the whole menagerie of left-wing interest groups (headed by other "community organizers" just like Obama himself) with funding and sway over government. Kurtz, who has followed similar stories for years, explains how all of this is symptomatic of the broader left-wing cultural and educational program:


*Those who have seen the blatantly explicit material now being presented by Planned Parenthood directed toward Jr.High kids on the Internet will realize they do not want their kindergarten children seeing this pornography. JC

Playing by the Rules: a Radical's Playbook

How Obama Applies Alinsky's Rules

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, September 22, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama's mocking of John McCain, while urging his followers to "get in their face," are tactics right out of his radical hero Saul Alinsky's playbook: ridicule and agitation.

At a recent Las Vegas rally, Obama poked fun at Sen. McCain for what he described as bragging about "how as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he had oversight of every part of the economy."

"Well, all I can say to Sen. McCain is, 'Nice job. Nice job,' " Obama said in a sarcastic tone. "Where is he getting these lines? It's like a 'Saturday Night Live' routine."

Then he belittled the 72-year-old McCain for vowing to take on the old boys network. "In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting," he sneered.

The late Alinsky, a trench-warfare socialist who despised American capitalism, advised community organizers like Obama to "laugh at the enemy" to provoke "irrational anger."

"Ridicule," he said, "is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

At another rally in Nevada, Obama called on the crowd of about 1,500 to join him in sharpening their elbows against McCain and his supporters. "I want you argue with them and get in their face," he said, in a naked attempt to "fan hostilities" in the tightening race, something Alinsky also advised from his bag of agitation tricks.

Obama doesn't look or talk like an angry radical. He speaks in measured tones and is rarely seen out of business attire. That, too, is borrowed from Alinsky's playbook. "Don't scare" the middle class, he guides urban revolutionaries in his 1970s manual, "Rules for Radicals" (which he dedicated to mankind's "first radical, Lucifer").

Instead, look like them, talk like them, act like them.

And work for radical change from the inside — "like a spy behind enemy lines," as Obama said in his first memoir. He wrote it before entering politics, while still working with hard-left Alinsky groups and training street agitators known as "community organizers."


Cont.here:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306977141583041


View All Recent Blog Posts:

Just What does a Community Organizer Do?

We've heard a lot about "community organizers" in the last few days with jokes from the right and outraged objections from the left. So I thought it might be helpful to find out just what Obama's activities as a community organizer entailed. Not so surprisingly, it is not such a harmless occupation as some have been led to think.

Michelle Malkin writes in her column:

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Full Article Here:

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/09/05/why_obamas_community_organizer_days_are_a_joke?page=full&comments=true