Most of my friends are supporting Obama, often said, because my good friends are against the Iraq war, which is currently succeeding well enough that both candidates agree that we will pull out. The difference is how and why we will pull out of Iraq.
Obama sites the economic savings that would result from pulling out of Iraq At the same time Obama advocates transferring the troops to Afghanistan as part of his foreign affairs policy. Additionally Obama has declared that if Pakistan does not deliver Bin Laden. Obama will pursue Bin Laden into Pakistan. Obama first made this announcement during the democratic primaries, causing concern among Democrats, including Senator Biden. Still. Obama held firm and during the last debate again announced his plans to invade Pakistan in pursuit of Bin Laden. In order to capture Bin Laden, Obama will violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. Pakistan is a country with a large Muslim population and many nuclear warheads. Any candidate, who announces his willingness to invade Pakistan, should be ready to engage a discussion of how he will deal with the potential aftermath of such an action. It is alarming that Obama comes across as believing that our sole mission in fighting the war on terrorism is to get Bin Laden. Does Obama seriously believe that once we capture one leader that terrorism will end? I believe it is more likely that we will see a temporary surge in global terrorism when Bin Laden is captured or killed. To defeat an enemy, you must defeat the ideology, capturing a single man, just doesn’t do it.
As I write this blog, it is news that a researcher named Stanley Kurtz, has uncovered new information about Barack Obama’s early political history, unless one reads Kurtz’s articles, one will likely be unaware of the content of Kurtz’s research. The Obama campaign is portraying any discussion about his relationship to Bill Ayers, the co-founder of the 60’s domestic terrorist group, the weathermen, as a “smear” campaign, but a smear, as defined, in the Miriam Webster online dictionary, is “a usually unsubstantiated charge or accusation against a person or organization”. Stanely Kurtz’s research is substantiated by means of the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and newspaper archives that record Obama’s early political past as an Afro-American activist
Until recently I considered Andersen Cooper of CNN to be a left-leaning pundit who is reasonably fair and balanced in his election coverage. Then came Stanley Kurtz’s in-depth research of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and Obama’s relationship to the founder, Bill Ayers. co-founder of 1960’s domestic terrorist group, the weathermen. The Kurtz report confirmed that Obama’ and Ayers "worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda," which "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.”
Sarah Palin was the first to make the Ayers-Obama relationship as a campaign talking point. Andersen Cooper responded to Palin with his “keeping them honest” report on the Ayers -Obama relationship and used Obama’s often-repeated version of the truth to substantiate that the discussion about Ayers was a desperate move by the McCain campaign. Are we to believe that Andersen Cooper was unaware of the Stanley Kurtz’s research? Or is it more likely that. Cooper believes that most of his viewers are exposed only to the mainstream media where Kurtz’s discoveries have received virtually no attention.
When the New York Times came out with its version of the Ayers story, it became more difficult for Anderson Cooper to ignore the fact of Kurtz’s investigation. When McCain framed the issue in terms of Obama’s dishonesty in his dealings with the public and subsequent questions raised as to who Obama really is, Cooper responded, using trademark Andersen Cooper ‘apparent sincerity’, by asking, “Do you think McCain really believes this”. The intent was clearly to portray McCain as a desperate and lunatic man and to bypass the legitimate issues raised by McCain and others. Cooper then went on to report that the Obama campaign was not worried and was convinced that the shoot the messenger strategy was working well. The polls were not yet responding to the vetting of Barack Obama, which the Obama campaign portrayed as “smearing”, unintentionally acknowledging that there are elements in Barack Obama’s past that need to avoid the light of day
The media tells us that the republicans (not the democrats) should have vetted Obama earlier in the campaign. They tell us that Obama’s early political activities are too complex a subject for us ordinary folk to understand The media is not yet reporting the facts in order that we can judge for ourselves, instead the media tells us that there is not enough time to explain this story in the short time before the election, as though the story can wait to be told later, when, if we believe the polls, it will be too late if we have a problem with Obama’s political history, once we know the details of his activities a “community organizer”. and an “educational reformer”.
Thus we have only Kurtz’s interpretation about information in the CAC archives. Kurtz’s articles are well researched.
Since, Barack Obama rose rapidly from national obscurity to national prominence, the usual vetting process, which most political candidates undergo, hasn’t happened. Instead we are served up Barack Obama, the “rock star”. His pictures adorn so many magazines; it starts to feel that we are living in a one-party system. Missing has been an investigation that digs beneath the well-crafted surface description of Obama’s political past – a past packaged in terms such as “community organizer”, “educational. reform” and now a “board member” with other “respectable mainstream” citizens including William Ayers, former domestic terrorist and son of wealthy established Chicago family, who in recent years has been honored by the Chicago political elite as an “educator”.
There is no reason given as to why we should take the other members of the board to be respectable and mainstream citizens, other than their listed positions, which in this day and age is pretty remarkable. If you go the Cultural Logic, the online Marxist publication, you will find a similar list of respectable citizens, all with positions at 45 nationwide universities. It is possible that Marxism is mainstream within our university system but hardly so in the general populous. From years of participation in online discussions, I have witnessed that university graduates are far more familiar with the writings of Karl Marx, than they are with The Federalist Papers. It is presumptuous to assume that because someone is a member of the university system that they represent mainstream America.
There is a pattern in Obama's background, that pattern is in the politicization of institutions that are not usually political. The church Obama attended for twenty years furthered a racist anti-American political agenda, which Obama professes to have known nothing about, but simultaneously Obama was involved in funding “educational” programs that can be more accurately described as programs of political indoctrination. (Ayers, who inspired those educational programs has described himself as a “soft communist), Proposals for education in science and math were turned down, while radical groups promoting Ayers political ideas were funded.
The story of Obama’s early political past as an Afro-American activist and Obama’s role in funding projects for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is the story that needs to be told. America needs to understand the history of the man who would be president. Obama studied the work of Saul Alinsky and used educational funds to promote radical activism in education, and attended a church with a far left political activist agenda. Projecting that pattern forward, the next phase could manifest as appointments of radical activists to his cabinet or nominating an activists judge to the Supreme Court. When activist judges occupy the Supreme Court, they have the power to change our constitution from the bench.
The media is strongly advocating that our public dialogue stay focused on the economy. Racism is an acceptable second focus. Even a discussion about speculations that Obama is Muslim is given air time, although such speculations have little verifiable basis. However when it comes to reporting on Ayers, the media avoids straight reporting that would allow Americans to judge for themselves.
Although we are dealing with economic problems that will clearly have a long-range effect, it is a mistake to take our eye off of other issues, especially constitutional issues. In comparison to the effects of altering our constitution, the effects of our economic crisis are short term and temporary. In a country that struggles to balance national security and privacy, there is no reason to sacrifice constitutional concerns because we are facing an economic challenge.
Lets talk about racism! If Ayers, a domestic terrorist, were a black man from a poor neighborhood, instead of the offspring of a wealthy and established Chicago family, would Ayers today be a respectable citizen, honored by the Chicago elite?
When Obama justifies his relationship with Ayers by pointing to Ayers contemporary respected position among the Chicago elite, he acknowledges his own compliant fit with the standards of Chicago style politics as usual
It would take too much space to cover all the issues and so I will now close with one final point regarding a statement Obama made during the last debate, which said something to the effect that if we do not increase taxes on the wealthy, it is money out of the “system”. The system that Obama speaks of is clearly the economic system and so Obama has identified that he conceives the economic system to be one and the same as the government, an idea that fits comfortably into the heart of Marxist ideology. In Obama’s thought process, private enterprise, non-profit organizations, and private philanthropy are not a part of “the (economic) system”. If private enterprise, and the others, are to be included in “the system” then Obama’s statement is clearly false.
The Obama campaign has coined a new word to replace the phrase “redistribution of wealth” and that word is to be “fairness”. I am waiting for the Obama campaign to coin a new word for ‘wealth creation” and I expect it to be “taxation. which is the way “the (economic) system” that Obama identified, creates it’s operating funds. And Obama has a very large spending agenda, which follows the pattern of his Afro-American activist past. Quoting Stanley Kurtz, from Barack Obama, The Lost Years: “the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious, exceedingly liberal, free-spending even in the face of looming state budget deficits, and partisan.”
Published in the Journal of Black Studies, the results are striking. Burnside and Whitehurst produced two bar graphs, one representing bills of which Obama was the main sponsor, arranged by subject, and a second displaying bills Obama joined as a cosponsor. In the chart depicting bills of which Obama was the main sponsor, the bar for "social welfare" legislation towers over every other category. In the chart of Obama's cosponsored bills, social welfare legislation continues to far exceed all other categories, although now crime-related bills are visibly present in second place, with regulation and tax bills close behind. According to Burnside and Whitehurst, other than social welfare and a bit of government regulation, "Obama devoted very little time to most policy areas quoted from Barack Obama, The Lost Years by Stanley Kurtz
This article has been sent as a letter to the editor to my local newspaper
Oct 27 2008 Since I wrote this article a new tape from Obama's past has emerged in which he discusses redistribution of wealth and changing the constitution:
Quoting Obama from his days as an Illinois State Senator in 2001:
The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society, and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical," Obama said in the interview, a recording of which surfaced on the Internet over the weekend.
"It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted.
"And the Warren court interpreted it generally in the same way -- that the Constitution is a document of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted.
"And I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that," Obama said.
