Say No To Obama Blogburst 9-30-08

Informed voters are not only wise voters, they are probably also good Americans. 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, Big Dog’s Weblog joins with several others in a Noobama08 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:

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.

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 share with us our time-honored values.

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 | ForeLeft | GeeeeeZ | Has Everyone Gone Nuts? | Papa Frank | Paleocon Command Center Political Yin and Yang | Pondering Penguin | Social Sense | The Amboy Times | The Crank Files | The Jungle Hut | The Logic Lifeline | The Merry Widow | Flightpundit

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15 Responses to “Say No To Obama Blogburst 9-30-08”

  1. […] [Discuss This Topic with BigDog] […]

  2. Adam says:

    “If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States…”

    This coming from a guy who voted for Bush not once, but twice? Don’t make me laugh. Your judgment on this matter is in question…

  3. DRU says:

    Can you say Racist?

  4. David Kirk says:

    Adam you need to get a grip. Obama has done nothing on the national stage and in Illinois he embedded himself in the Chicago political machine. He is dirty and if elected will be expected to pay those people back. Maybe an ambassadorial post for Ayers, the man who once bombed draft boards?

    And DRU, just because Obama is unqualified, unscrupulous and probably un-American doesn’t make me a racist for saying so. Every neagative comment about him is not driven by race.

  5. Big Dog says:

    Were you in the voting booth with me? Then you can only assume who I voted for if I voted for anyone at the top of the ticket. I am in Maryland. The tragedy is Republicans have no say the nice thing is we can vote for anyone because it will not matter.

    However, whether a person’s judgment is in question is a matter of opinion. You voted for Hillary and she is corrupt. Many people voted for Carter and he was a disaster. We vote based upon what we believe a candidate’s positions and values are and how they line up with our own. Even if Obama really were the messiah I could not vote for him. He believes children born after an unsuccessful abortion should be left to die. That is morally wrong.

    He is friends with domestic terrorists who bombed things in our country and killed police officers. He spent 20 years in harmony with a racist pastor who hates whites and Jews.

    If those are the qualities of a candidate that you feel comfortable with then it is not hard to see whose judgment is in question.

    And DRU, Just because you say it is racist does not make it so. Quit screaming racism every time someone says something you don’t like about the messiah.

  6. David Kirk says:

    Adam you need to get a grip. Obama has done nothing on the national stage and in Illinois he embedded himself in the Chicago political machine. He is dirty and if elected will be expected to pay those people back. Maybe an ambassadorial post for Ayers, the man who once bombed draft boards?

    And DRU, just because Obama is unqualified, unscrupulous and probably un-American doesn’t make me a racist for saying so. Every negative comment about him is not driven by race.

  7. Adam says:

    I voted for Kerry in AR, Pelosi in CA, and Hillary in DE. I make my way from state to state voting against everything you guys stand for and I’ve landed in your back yard…

  8. kim spinney says:

    i am sickened by todays events. left wing ultra liberal, america-hating citizens, able to kill babies whenever they desire and to make it worse, the press, dumb college students, hollywood liberals and the main street media group are hyjacking this election to put in this piece of garbage of a person.

    america is ready for a black president, but not ready for a [redacted] (ignorant) president.

  9. Big Dog says:

    Adam, you have admitted the failings of our school system but it takes a big man to admit his personal failings.

    Funny, last time I looked in my backyard there was only the stuff the dog leaves there…

    I guess you are right, besides, who am I to argue with you?

    I served 24 years in the Army fighting people, like you, who stand for things that will ruin this country. One day there will be another revolution and we can clean up the mess of liberalism.

  10. Adam says:

    kim:

    This country is ready for a black president despite the existence of people in this country that are racist (ignorant) slime buckets like yourself. Do us all a favor and kill yourself before election day.

    Big Dog:

    Fortunately the majority of conservatives and liberals disagree on what to do but most of us still care about our country either way. I’m sorry you spent 24 years fighting people like me and that you hope we’ll perish in a revolution. That’s kind of sad…

  11. kim spinney says:

    Adam,

    I am from Chicago and know about it (not worthy of a name) and its associations, lies and tactics.

    If it was properly investigated by the press (impossible today for the mainstream media to do anything ethically), we would have Hillary Clinton as the candidate. This piece of garbage errors on the side of socialism, death, evil and everything else that is bad with this country. It is well known by everyone except the mainstream press, elitists, that you are a person equal to the people you associate. This piece of garbage associations with Ayers, Wright, etc., etc., etc., are DEEP and serious. The hatred in this country will be great if the press gets its’ way. It will make the Bill Clinton years look calm. It is a liar, a cheat (unethical way he stole his home) and nasty.

  12. Adam says:

    kim:

    Obama is a liar, a cheat? And your excuse for being racist is?

  13. Big Dog says:

    Kim,
    You must understand that when you use the word, whether you discriminate or not, whether you feel blacks are inferior or not, and whether or not you treat them the same as all others, you will be called a racist.

    The only way for you to not be racist is for you to be black and use that word. If you are Pastor Wright you may call whites all kinds of names and you may say what you like and people will think you are cool because someone ELSE was oppressed 150 years ago.

    Look at all the blacks who have made racist comments that were excused because of their color. You get issued a race card when you are black so you can throw it whenever you want.

    Adam will be sure to keep you straight on this.

  14. kim spinney says:

    Adam,

    I respect much or all of what you comment. I am a Vietnam Vet who went to war because this country asked me to. I did not volunteer and in fact had a deferment if I chose so. But I said no, I will do what my country wants and was in Vietnam during the TET offensive.

    I came back from Vietnam only to be called names. And this piece of crap candidate is buddies, business and political associates of terrorists, socialists and main stream media. He didn’t even purchase his home without the assistance of another crook friend. He got his place in politics and even his open house financed by terrorists and radical politicians.

    I believe it might be given the highest office in the land by corrupt people, the media, illegal voters, illegal immigrants, hollywood freaks and the like.

    This party is responsible for killing over 4,000 babies a day and we can’t let them take over our wonderful country and turn it over to world beliefs.

    Very frustrating!!!!!!!!!

  15. Big Dog says:

    Kim, let me first thank you for your service and say “welcome home.”

    I can’t disagree with what you say. Obama used underhanded tactics to gain his state seats and he is using them to try and win this election. There are already reports of fraud in early swing state voting. The Chicago political machine is in full swing and it is corrupt.

    We will make it through no matter who wins. If Obama makes it America will wait a very long time before it considers a black candidate again. Not that it is right but he will mess it up for others who will fail to see it is his liberalism that will ruin us.