Blog Burst: Nobama08
An informed voter is not only a wise voter, he or she is probably also a good American. In this regard, the press has always been the cornerstone in the foundation of American democracy … that is, until the press became such an advocate of socialism and liberal politics that it can no longer be relied upon to convey “fair and balanced” information.
For this reason, geeeeeZ! joins with several others in a Nobama08 blog burst each Tuesday of the week until Election Day. If we cannot obtain the truth about our politicians from an unencumbered press, then we’ll form a cooperative to distribute information independently.
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: [BEGIN QUOTE]
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. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," 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 a statement 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 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.
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.
[END QUOTE]
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.
If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States, and when he has finished his work, none of us will recognize what he has left behind: The People’s Socialist Republic of the United States.
Cross posted at: Always on Watch And Rightly So Big Girl Pants Confessions of a Closet Republican Farmer’s Letters GeeeeeZ Has Everyone Gone Nuts? Pappa Frank Paleocon Command Center Political Yin and Yang Pondering Penguin Social Sense The Amboy Times
The Crank Files The Jungle Hut The Merry Widow
An informed voter is not only a wise voter, he or she is probably also a good American. In this regard, the press has always been the cornerstone in the foundation of American democracy … that is, until the press became such an advocate of socialism and liberal politics that it can no longer be relied upon to convey “fair and balanced” information.
For this reason, geeeeeZ! joins with several others in a Nobama08 blog burst each Tuesday of the week until Election Day. If we cannot obtain the truth about our politicians from an unencumbered press, then we’ll form a cooperative to distribute information independently.
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: [BEGIN QUOTE]
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. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," 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 a statement 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 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.
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.
[END QUOTE]
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.
If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States, and when he has finished his work, none of us will recognize what he has left behind: The People’s Socialist Republic of the United States.
Cross posted at: Always on Watch And Rightly So Big Girl Pants Confessions of a Closet Republican Farmer’s Letters GeeeeeZ Has Everyone Gone Nuts? Pappa Frank Paleocon Command Center Political Yin and Yang Pondering Penguin Social Sense The Amboy Times
The Crank Files The Jungle Hut The Merry Widow
22 comments:
Good on ya Z, good luck with the blog burst. With much of the media against you folks, i fear you'll need it.
Hey, MK! I heard you done good on your interview.
Do you smell "gulag"? And did you hear that those Missouri dhimmicrats backed off of the thug tactics, after they got called on it?
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!
tmw
Great idea,z. True Obama is as bad as they get, but how to convince the wide-eyed moonbats? Sometimes I wish we could take what we've gained from blogging and hit the streets. Shout it from the street corners. The mainstream media certainly isn't going to.
thanks, Guys.
SEND THIS AROUND..CUT/PASTE, or LINK OUR BLOGS.....
WE HAVE TO GET THIS OUT!! Coincidentally, a dear friend emailed last night asking if the Ayers info she'd seen was "true/false/dubious"? And SHE is curious and well INFORMED! But, she didn't know this information. The media's doing their darndest to keep it from people.
Please...send this around!
It's hard to believe everyone doesn't know about Ayers by now, Z. Dang!
If people think this economy crisis is bad, they are going to find out it's minor compaired to what will happen if Obama wins the presidency! Good grief!
I have to wonder if this is the "October surprise" Hillary was yacking about. Everyone knows that the incumbent party has never been re-elected during an economy crisis. Oh no! I sound like a conspiracy nut! LOL!
Good job. The more exposure, the better. I can't believe how uninformed some folks are.
Gayle, the media's been ON BOARD for this economic crisis for about a year.
I should blog on this; ALL year, I'd hear news snippets on the radio about how good the economic numbers were, how unemployement wasn't high, and EVERY TIME, they'd add "BUT..." And finally I started asking myself "what's with the BUT? Why are they constantly finding any negative things they can think of after GOOD numbers!? I understand that we need all the news, but this is a quick-shot ABC news snippet before the commercial, why throw that in NOW?!!!"
I'm not in any way suggesting that what's happened is ALL the media's fault!!: Fanny and Freddie were bad for years, Bush warned, McCain warned..BUT!!.. Maxine Waters answered "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and Obama made $124K and the national reputation he'd been hoping to get with the National Black Caucus (something Daniel Mudd,Fanny Mae's pres at the time, called "the CONSCIENCE of Congress!!")...so we can see what happened and exactly whom the media's covering for.
We need to cut/paste these blog bursts and SEND THEM TO EMAIL LISTS, FOLKS!!
LET'S ROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!
Also, Gayle?
We have to hope the Republicans have a REAL GOOD OCTOBER SURPRISE!
YOu and I and ALL these good bloggers could write THAT list, right? But, undecideds won't see them here on our blogs.
OCTOBER SURPRISES which WOULD work if the media wasn't in Obama's BAG:
-Ayers ( the TRUTH)
=Fanny Mae $124K
=Rev Wright looked at rationally
=Farrakhan support
=Hamas Support
=The quotes in HIS OWN BOOK!!
=His lie that a publisher approached HIM for MEMOIRS at 24 yrs OLD??
=Michelle Obama's thesis and other writings
=Family in Kenya TRUTH
=Citizenship questioned, with fair examination of birth certificate, etc.
=Rezko
=Alinski
=Marxism explained to America (the European press refers to him as a Marxist, did YOU know that?)
=The truth about him and how he'd like to disarm US (to set a good example!)
etc etc
I'm hearing Pelosi's voice on the radio.....Blaming BUSH when HE and McCAIN warned a few YEARS AGO! "The PARTY IS OVER!", she says......WHAT? CNN has NEVER mentioned the Bush and McCain attempts at looking at Fanny Mae and Freddie...CLINTON did..HE said the Republicans (and he, ya, right) had tried to better control these institutions back in his admin., but CNN won't cover HIM about that, either!! Imagine?
If the media would expose THOSE TRUTHS, we'd WIN . but no.....
nope
Z, This is a great idea. All of this must get out there. I've already e-mailed Mr. Kurtz' article to everyone on my list and am assured those folks did as well.
The more the better. You're right that this has to be a grassroots effort. True journalism and responsible press coverage is dead. It has become a caricature of it's former self.
The tough get going when the going get's tough.
Thanks Z
Pris
The list of Obama's 'surprises' is bottomless!
How can he be a Marxist and a follower of Alinsky at the same time?
You folks are very confused.
Thank you, Barry. We do so appreciate the hard work and dedication of you and your other community organizer comrades.
The Hermit was here.
Ducky! WE are 'confused'? WE aren't the Marxists who were trained by Alinsky...Obama is.
Thanks z, Q.E.D.
Alinsky was an anarchist. I have friends who are party members, they hate Alinsky.
Don't be ridiculous, Ducky.
As I said..it's Obama who's confused if he trained under Alinsky (which he did) and is a Marxist now. Not me.
QED
What do I care, anyway?
I will tell you that anyone who is considering Obama is beneath contempt and utterly wrong not to read THE CASE AGAINST OBAMA before election day. I know you won't, but I pity this country if Americans don't wake up.
LOL ...
Ducky thinks we're confused.
If the MSM would dedicate 1/10 the resources to finding the skeletons in Obama's closet that they are spending going through dumpsters in Alaska and Arizona you wouldn't have to do this.
Good read, Z. I'll be forwarding this to my liberal Dem friend. She might get mad, but....
"Alinsky was an anarchist. I have friends who are party members, they hate Alinsky."
A little dissention in the ranks there Ducky?
You know, you are judged by the company you keep.
You must come here for a dose of sanity. All that hate has to wear you out.
Pris
Geeeez Z, I thought I'd pop over for a few minutes and----I'm still here! There's a LOT of stuff hitting the fan right now, about time. I'm e-mailing a bunch of stuff to my list, hope they don't get too pissed at me, but they need to know!
P.S. I stole your great pic of the empty suit. Love it!
Joe
Wow. Hefty post and responses. I will send this around. Love it. Your the best. It seems we are going to have a long fight on our hands (4 weeks fight rather).
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