Obama and Palin: A Match Made(Almost) Made in Heaven
By
Leslie Sacks
Barack Obama is perfectly suited in the running for president. He has the ability to both energize and grow the grassroots base, to motivate voters with his superb eloquence and confidence. As a result, he has broken for all time the racial glass ceiling on viable presidential candidates, an accomplishment for which America should be grateful. He will, based on many current polls, quite likely succeed in his quest for the presidency.
On the other hand, Obama, according to a good portion of the country, is not yet experienced enough, and does not yet have the depth of judgment, to be president. Either way, perhaps the best argument for a McCain presidency is the (consummately American) end of divided government. Given the Democrats' control of both houses of Congress, a Republican president will provide a semblance of proportional representation and help ensure the checks and balances that are so central to our vigorous democracy.
Interestingly, Sarah Palin--the focus of much of Obama's current defensive attention--is an unusual case for America's feminists. Ms. Palin has singlehandedly, in a matter of weeks, made the feminist movement largely defunct. Before then, much of the feminist movement was rooted in the left-wing: pro-abortion and anti-Republican, often animated by an anti-male, anti-religious fervor.
Palin is the opposite: simple, patriotic, both gun-toting and feminine (horrors!). She is from a small town, an outdoorswoman, with a union-card holding husband. She is committed to religion, family values and independence. She is certainly not the Dolce Gabbana-pants wearing, urbane intellectual from Greenwich Village or San Francisco, steeped in all-is-relative Harvard political correctness.
And yet, she has captured the media's imagination and broken the (other) glass ceiling more effectively than any other woman to date. She has done so from primitive Alaska, small town Wasilla, with a family of five, happily married with conservative values - in short, she is an anathema to traditional feminists. That is why they hate and despise her. She stands for everything they are not and yet she has achieved everything they could not. And they will never forgive her for making them irrelevant, passé, an odd historical footnote.
Women have arrived - they are equal, they can and may indeed be Vice-President, lipstick and all. And who knows, maybe one day (God willing!) even president.
Sincerely,
Mr. Leslie J. Sacks
Los Angeles, California 90049
Leslie@LeslieSacks.com
LESLIE'S BLOG: http://LeslieSacks.Blogspot.com
======================================================================
Israelis have a right to criticize and comment concerning the American political scene. Surely, I have heard enough
Americans commenting over the years about Israel in both a good and a bad context to allow me to ask the question, "Why not the other way?"
Today's American Jewish liberal cares no more for the Israelis than did the Jews, sunning
themselves on Miami Beach, give a hoot for the passengers on the SS St. Louis. The
average liberal American Jew still worships Roosevelt; yet, has no concept of this president's contempt
for the Jewish people and how complacent he was in allowing the Holocaust to reach its
ultimate conclusion.
Most Jewish Americans--certainly the ones one the left--do not have a concept of history and have not learned a thing from what
little they have heard in passing. Sure, there are exceptions and some extraordinary ones at that--for example, National
Review's Yonah Goldberg; but as a people, we are living a scenario taken right out of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. In it there is a creature that is so dumb, if it doesn't see you, it thinks that you do not see it!
In my opinion, the American Evangelicals--regardless of their motives--have shown much more interest and serious concern
over the future of the Jewish State than the average Jewish American. And the interesting thing is that this has been
the case with them since the founding of the American Restoration Movement in the early part of the Nineteenth-Century.
Israel to the average liberal Jewish American is a nice place to visit for a whirlwind 10 day tour sponsored by B'nai Brith. It's nice to come
back to the USA and to say to your bridge club that you picked oranges on some kibbutz; or to say that you went on a special
"fact finding tour" with members from your super liberal Reform Synagogue.
Israel is a special source of Jewish pride and the American Jewish Left does not deserve to share in the benefits of this feeling. They are thieves.
Michael Hyman
San Diego, California
=================================================================
Yes, Naomi, this is the attitude of American Jews who "care about Israel", yet cannot differentiate between sending postcards and sending a son, husband, father, brother, friend off to fight yet another war OR being targets for another Jew hating maniac.
Fortunately for me, most of my relatives understand this. But we are mostly first generation Americans. I avoid situations where discussions about "abortions and lives" might occur, because my blood boils.
New York is full of Liberal Jews who have not observed or understood that most things have changed during their lifetimes. Even my late father who was a "verbrente Labor Zionist" understood the reality of the USSR and abandonned the idealism of his youth. I of course lived in Israel. My attitudes have surely been shaped by all the years I spent there. You have no idea how deeply embedded liberal politics and cultural relativism are in Jews here.
Yesterday, I went to the anti Ahmadinejad rally. It saddened me to notice that most of the crowd was orthodox, with very few secular NY Jews. I am not orthodox, but I think that the modern orthodox community is the only thing that stands between Jews and our demise both in the Golah and in Israel.
Not very pleasant thoughts erev Rosh Hashana. Still best wishes to you and your family for peace and health.
Sylvia Navon, NYC
==============================================================================
Dear Naomi:
I am not Jewish but I read with concern all your articles. I have a different perspective. I do not look at the "crisis" in the middle east as a purely "Jewish" calamity. This is something I think that you have being trying to make everyone, Jew and non-Jew alike realize.
I forward all your articles to my friends. Their response has been the same as mine. An outcry to our government representatives. Although we live in Canada, and the American Elections would not seem to concern us, we are in fact concerned, as should all of North America, and anyone who declares themselves allies of the U.S.A, or anyone who values freedom. Freedom of rights, freedom to live.
You are doing a wonderful job. There should be more people like you who are willing to suffer the barbs and criticism of their world and people, in order to bring to light the atrocities occuring on a daily basis in both Israel and the Middle East and the significance it has to the whole world.
Never let anyone forget the "Holocaust". Relate every action taken by the Muslim countries against Israel and the Jews to it. Remind them of how they vowed "Never again"! Point out the significance of the number of Jews now living in Israel (6 million) to number exterminated by Hitler.
Keep up the good work. I will keep forwarding your articles to everyone that I know, as they forward them to everyone that they know. From such small sparks great conflagrations can occur.
Sincerely,
Angella O'Hanlon
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Naomi,
You have my permission to write my response to the lady who objected to your politics.
I am a son of a German born Jew, who narrowly escaped Europe's inferno, and emigrated to the United States in 1940.Most of the Zinner family, relatives I would never know were murdered in concentration camps during the inferno that the free world allowed the Nazis to perpetrate.
My father was so grateful to America that, the moment the US entered the war, he enlisted.
When my Mother, who was expecting her first child asked him, "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?YOU ARE AN IMMIGRANT WHO ONLY JUST ARRIVED.YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GO.", he replied, WHAT WILL I SAY TO MY CHILDREN WHEN THEY ASK ME WHAT DID I DO WHEN MILLIONS OF OUR PEOPLE WERE BEING MURDERED BY THE GERMANS?
My father was inducted, trained as an officer to interrogate German prisoners, shipped overseas and fought his way across Europe over 4 long years. He was highly decorated with a bronze star medallion for bravery in action. After the war he was offered military commissions that attested to his leadership and talents as an officer. He refused and quietly returned to his family and civilian life in America.
Please ask this lady to explain what she plans to say to her children when they ask what she did when Iran announced to the world, as Hitler did before him, that he would destroy the State of Israel and every Jew within it.
Thank you for sounding the bell. It is 1938 and America is sleeping.
Respectfully,
Bob Zinner.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hmmm. Don't know why you sent this, as the comment from the "American" doesn't say much...
Like you, I would never vote for a "a pro-Islamic, soft on terror, ultra peace-now liberal to head the free world." Barack Obama is none of those things. I think you must be reading only anti-Obama false propaganda. I am excited to vote for Obama, and believe he'll be a good president (how did you feel about Bill Clinton? Most of us American Jews liked and voted for him, too.)
McCain, unfortunately, frequently lies and misleads, despite billing his campaign as the "straight talk" express. For example, McCain has repeated over and over that Obama supported "comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners." Well, yeah... the curriculum teaches them to not go with strangers, and other things to try to protect them from being molested by sexual predators... exactly what I do teach my own kindergartener. Yes, you can call that "sex education," but McCain intentionally misleads people into thinking Obama supported teaching them about sexual intercourse, or condoms... completely a lie! If Obama is so scary, you'd think the McCain campaign would find true things to scare us with, instead of having to resort to grossly misleading accusations.
Obama, on the other hand, does not lie about McCain.
I hope you will read Obama's two books, or his website, to get a better picture. I'm sure the sig. majority of American Jews will vote for him, as we have always voted Democratic by at least 60%, usually more, and it's not because we are ignorant! We vote in ways we consider consistent with Jewish values, and in our own best interests, including the safety of Israel.
-Rabbi Janice Garfunkel
Springfield, OH
PS - I do enjoy getting your emails.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naomi,
I have great respect for you as an author and have enjoyed being enlightened by many of your emails but you have been a citizen of Israel for many years and really don’t know the politics of the US. I am a liberal Jewish democrat who attends every rally, including yesterday’s, against the UN, against Jew bashing, in support of Israel and on and on. I am beginning to resent much of what you have to say about who I should vote for if I love Israel. My love for Israel can be questioned by no one. However, I believe strongly in woman’s choice, the right of women to work and be paid like men, the preservation of animals so that the endangered species don’t die off (wolves for example). I am not crazy about Obama but there is no way I can vote for another 4 years of the Bush agenda and that is what McCain represents. You seem to base much of your characterizations of Obama on blog myths. No one who is elected president of the US is going to abandon support of Israel. If you think the Bush government has been good for Israel and for the US you are really mistaken. He sent Condoleezza to Israel to work on divisions between Jews and Palestians including the division of Jerusalem. He has sent our economy into the gutter and that affects Israel and the world. McCain will be more of the same. Plus he is an older man (I myself am 71) who has not got a good health history and the thought of Sarah Palin heading the government of my country sends chills up and down my spine. She is ignorant of the world around her. Any speech she makes is written very carefully by the neo-cons and she is a quick study so she presents the words as if they were her own. They aren’t.
Please keep writing about Israel, you are one of the sources among many who keep me up to date. But at the same time, please don’t make generalizations about the US political scene. In one of your recent emails you said that there wouldn’t be any “liberal democrats” at the rally. I was there and I am one of those dreaded liberals.
Ethel Schwartz Bock
New York City
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Secret to His Success
The Secret to His Success
Naomi Ragen
I got a ton of responses to my short e-mail “exchange with a reader.” Since then, I have been pondering long and hard what the reason could be for the enthusiastic, nay, evangelistic Jewish cheerleaders for Barack Hussein Obama, despite the many, many red flags that have gone up ever since he decided to run for President of the United States of America. One e-mail, in particular, opened my eyes to what could be the underlying reason. He wrote:
“You may think you are right but if McCain and Palin get elected, the U.S. will continue to go down hill, and if this country gets in worse shape financially this country will eventually blame the Jews …..”
Hmm. I never considered that. Could it be that the Jews of America are really not as comfortable there as they pretend to be? Could it be that the Reverend Wright, that home-grown anti-Semite who went to Libya to meet terrorist Qaddafi, and who gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for “leadership, ” being a heartbeat away from the Democratic nominee for President has scared the Jews of America out of their wits?
Could it be that these Jews are so incredibly grateful to Barack Obama for disassociating himself after 20 years with this anti-Semitic message and so terrified of losing his support, pushing him and his golden oratory back into the arms of people like Wright, that they are hell-bent on currying his favor and showing they are “good Jews?” (Caveat: it Obama’s throwing Wright under the bus is clearly a blatant attempt to improve his chances at gaining the Jewish vote --Farrakhan himself said on Nightline that he “admired“ Obama and understood if he needed to disassociate himself temporarily in order to win the Presidency).
Are Jews now beginning to feel the solid ground of the American haven that has sheltered them shaking beneath their feet? Is that the reason that they have listened to the golden-voiced Obama, who is really nothing more than an evangelical preacher, saying: “ Who are you going to believe, your eyes or me?” and dismissed their own vision? Are they truly so enraptured that they are willing to place all their hopes in this unknown with a very hazy past, to protect them from the Ahmadinejads, to “negotiate” for them their way out of the hellhole being dug out for them by the Muslims, and the European Union, and the U.N. and homegrown Black Antisemitism, and anti-Zionist Peace-Nowers-J-Streeters- let’s-blame-Israel-for-daring-to-existers, the Israel- should- give- up -and -give in-ers? Can it be that some American Jews are ashamed to be Israel supporters, and feel they will be safer if they side against their own people and by supporting a clearly, blatantly anti-Israel candidate they are fulfilling that need? Or is it that Obama is not so much a mesmerizing speaker, as he is a person with a message that is music to Jewish American ears; the foolish idea that they don’t have to take sides in this election. That they can be pro-Israel and elect a candidate that says his is also pro-Israel, despite so much evidence to the contrary, including a belief in “diplomacy” i.e. pushing Israel into suicidal concessions to placate enemies like Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, and Hamas? He represents a way out of ancient Jew-hatred, a way thousands of generations of Jews hadn’t thought of? Is that the secret to his success among Jews in America?
Who are you going to believe? Your eyes, or Barack Hussein Obama?
Naomi Ragen
I got a ton of responses to my short e-mail “exchange with a reader.” Since then, I have been pondering long and hard what the reason could be for the enthusiastic, nay, evangelistic Jewish cheerleaders for Barack Hussein Obama, despite the many, many red flags that have gone up ever since he decided to run for President of the United States of America. One e-mail, in particular, opened my eyes to what could be the underlying reason. He wrote:
“You may think you are right but if McCain and Palin get elected, the U.S. will continue to go down hill, and if this country gets in worse shape financially this country will eventually blame the Jews …..”
Hmm. I never considered that. Could it be that the Jews of America are really not as comfortable there as they pretend to be? Could it be that the Reverend Wright, that home-grown anti-Semite who went to Libya to meet terrorist Qaddafi, and who gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for “leadership, ” being a heartbeat away from the Democratic nominee for President has scared the Jews of America out of their wits?
Could it be that these Jews are so incredibly grateful to Barack Obama for disassociating himself after 20 years with this anti-Semitic message and so terrified of losing his support, pushing him and his golden oratory back into the arms of people like Wright, that they are hell-bent on currying his favor and showing they are “good Jews?” (Caveat: it Obama’s throwing Wright under the bus is clearly a blatant attempt to improve his chances at gaining the Jewish vote --Farrakhan himself said on Nightline that he “admired“ Obama and understood if he needed to disassociate himself temporarily in order to win the Presidency).
Are Jews now beginning to feel the solid ground of the American haven that has sheltered them shaking beneath their feet? Is that the reason that they have listened to the golden-voiced Obama, who is really nothing more than an evangelical preacher, saying: “ Who are you going to believe, your eyes or me?” and dismissed their own vision? Are they truly so enraptured that they are willing to place all their hopes in this unknown with a very hazy past, to protect them from the Ahmadinejads, to “negotiate” for them their way out of the hellhole being dug out for them by the Muslims, and the European Union, and the U.N. and homegrown Black Antisemitism, and anti-Zionist Peace-Nowers-J-Streeters- let’s-blame-Israel-for-daring-to-existers, the Israel- should- give- up -and -give in-ers? Can it be that some American Jews are ashamed to be Israel supporters, and feel they will be safer if they side against their own people and by supporting a clearly, blatantly anti-Israel candidate they are fulfilling that need? Or is it that Obama is not so much a mesmerizing speaker, as he is a person with a message that is music to Jewish American ears; the foolish idea that they don’t have to take sides in this election. That they can be pro-Israel and elect a candidate that says his is also pro-Israel, despite so much evidence to the contrary, including a belief in “diplomacy” i.e. pushing Israel into suicidal concessions to placate enemies like Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, and Hamas? He represents a way out of ancient Jew-hatred, a way thousands of generations of Jews hadn’t thought of? Is that the secret to his success among Jews in America?
Who are you going to believe? Your eyes, or Barack Hussein Obama?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Millions for Radicalizing Kids: The Real Obama
From the Wall Street Journal.opinion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
* SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
Obama and Ayers
Pushed Radicalism
On Schools
By STANLEY KURTZ
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.
[Obama and Ayers] AP
Bill Ayers.
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.
Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
* SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
Obama and Ayers
Pushed Radicalism
On Schools
By STANLEY KURTZ
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.
[Obama and Ayers] AP
Bill Ayers.
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.
Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Your Abortion or Your Life
Friends,
Just a word of reason: I also don't want the U.S. to go back to the bad old days of backroom abortions. But even if Roe vs. Wade could be overturned by the Supreme Court, that would not stop individual states from allowing abortions. There is no way a woman won't be able to get an abortion in New York or California. So I don't think this is a real campaign issue, or fear. Nuclear Iran is. Please keep things in perspective, as Caroline Glick points out in her well-written article which follows.
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Our World: Your abortions or your lives!
Sep. 22, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.
On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.
The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.
Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US.
And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran - and anyone else who was listening - that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.
After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people - not just Israelis and Americans - but by all people who value human freedom.
PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply Republican - resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.
The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.
By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.
From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people.
She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women.
Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.
Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.
IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.
It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.
The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to be.
The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats - and Democrats in general - that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.
THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the message loud and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors - the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.
The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations.
Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.
Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.
In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.
But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations' tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish community.
Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN and Iran's stated intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.
But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party's presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.
LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.
Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.
The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.
They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.
caroline@carolineglick.com
Just a word of reason: I also don't want the U.S. to go back to the bad old days of backroom abortions. But even if Roe vs. Wade could be overturned by the Supreme Court, that would not stop individual states from allowing abortions. There is no way a woman won't be able to get an abortion in New York or California. So I don't think this is a real campaign issue, or fear. Nuclear Iran is. Please keep things in perspective, as Caroline Glick points out in her well-written article which follows.
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Our World: Your abortions or your lives!
Sep. 22, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.
On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.
The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.
Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US.
And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran - and anyone else who was listening - that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.
After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people - not just Israelis and Americans - but by all people who value human freedom.
PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply Republican - resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.
The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.
By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.
From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people.
She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women.
Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.
Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.
IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.
It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.
The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to be.
The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats - and Democrats in general - that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.
THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the message loud and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors - the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.
The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations.
Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.
Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.
In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.
But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations' tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish community.
Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN and Iran's stated intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.
But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party's presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.
LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.
Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.
The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.
They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.
caroline@carolineglick.com
Obama: What Do You Really Know About Him?
From http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/the_man_who_never_was.html
September 24, 2008
The Man Who Never Was
By Tony Blankley
The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.
While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)
And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.
Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."
I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real-life World War II British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as "Major William Martin, R.M.," which was put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a briefcase containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.
To make the operation credible, British intelligence concocted a fictional life for the corpse, creating a letter from a lover and tickets to a London theater -- all the details of a life, but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media have presented to the nation as Obama is not the real man.
The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.
More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov. Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.
But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.
Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great -- and unflattering -- details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.
The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.
Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."
That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.
The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/the_man_who_never_was.html at September 24, 2008 - 12:56:30 AM PDT
September 24, 2008
The Man Who Never Was
By Tony Blankley
The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.
While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)
And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.
Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."
I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real-life World War II British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as "Major William Martin, R.M.," which was put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a briefcase containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.
To make the operation credible, British intelligence concocted a fictional life for the corpse, creating a letter from a lover and tickets to a London theater -- all the details of a life, but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media have presented to the nation as Obama is not the real man.
The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.
More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov. Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.
But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.
Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great -- and unflattering -- details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.
The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.
Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."
That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.
The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/the_man_who_never_was.html at September 24, 2008 - 12:56:30 AM PDT
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Obama and Harvard
Why Obama is mum about Harvard
Exclusive: Jack Cashill offers reason Barack, Michelle don't talk about editor post
Posted: September 11, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
By Jack Cashill
On the surface, at least, Barack Obama's single most impressive accomplishment has been his 1990 election to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.
This position also provided Obama his only real executive experience as he supervised the law review's staff of 80 editors.
One has to wonder, then, why neither he nor wife Michelle emphasized this singular honor during the up-by-the-bootstraps biographical sections of their respective speeches in Denver.
In fact, neither of them so much as mentioned Obama's time at Harvard, this despite his vulnerability on the executive experience charge.
Their silence likely derives from one verifiable fact: Obama's record at Harvard was no more authentic than John Kerry's record in Vietnam.
Kerry was justifiably swift-boated because he fraudulently positioned himself as a war hero. Obama seems to have learned from Kerry.
In the age of the Internet, the less said about a dubious credential the better, and Obama's law presidency credential is dubious on any number of levels.
(Column continues below)
For starters, Obama did not do nearly well enough at his previous stop, Columbia University, to justify admission to Harvard Law.
According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors.
In the age of affirmative action and grade inflation, a minority in a relatively easy major like political science had to under-perform dramatically to avoid minimal honors. Obama apparently did just that.
The specifics we may never know. As the New York Times concedes, Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Would that Bristol Palin could get off so easily!
There are any number of possible reasons for Obama's reticence about Columbia: his grades, the courses he took, his writing samples and, of course, his associations.
At that time, for instance, both Bill Ayers and Obama fell within the orbit of left-wing Columbia superstar Edward Said. Just recently out of hiding, Ayers was attending the Bank Street College of Education, which adjoins the Columbia campus.
Five years after leaving Columbia, Obama decided on law school. His lack of resources did not deter him from thinking big. Nor did his B-minus effort at his Hawaii prep school or his equally indifferent grades at Columbia.
As Obama relates in "Dreams From My Father," he limited his choices to only three law schools – "Harvard, Yale, Stanford." (It must be nice to be Obama.) He does not mention his connections.
Harvard Law School is notoriously difficult to get into. Annually, some 7,000 applications apply for some 500 seats. Applicant LSAT scores generally chart in the 98 to 99 percentile range, and GPAs average between 3.80 and 3.95.
If Obama's LSAT scores merited admission, we would know about them. We don't. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets.
We know enough about Obama's Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard.
As far back as 1988, however, Obama had serious pull. He would need it. As previously reported, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf.
An orthodox Muslim, al-Mansour has not met the crackpot anti-Semitic theory he could not embrace. As for bin Talal, in October 2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent his $10 million relief check back un-cashed after the Saudi billionaire blamed 9/11 on America.
For an insight into the Khalid al-Mansour connection, see see this video.
These are not connections that Obama would like to see broadcast, which further explains his shyness about the Harvard experience.
There is more. Obama did not make the Harvard Law Review (HLR) the old-fashioned way, the way HLR's first black editor, Charles Houston, did 70 years prior.
To Obama's good fortune, the HLR had replaced a meritocracy in which editors were elected based on grades – the president being the student with the highest academic rank – with one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition.
This competition, the New York Times reported in 1990, was "meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review."
It did just that. At the end of his first year, Obama was named, along with 40 or so of his classmates, an editor of the HLR.
Unlike most editors, and likely all its presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.
In this note for the third volume of the 1990 HLR, he argued against any limits on abortion, citing the government's interest in "preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair."
Obama's timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring 1990 term that he would stand for the presidency of the HLR, the Harvard Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.
Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.
This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.
Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African-American president. Obama had an advantage. Spared the legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.
"Obama cast himself as an eager listener," the New York Times reported, "sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once."
In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all-day affair, Obama's fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates. As it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR's small conservative faction threw him its support.
Curiously, once elected, Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other law journal. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
One more thing: The 1990 Times article about Obama's election notes that the president of the HLR usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a Supreme Court justice.
Not the Mansourian Candidate. Here, oddly, his ambition deserted him. He told the Times that he planned "to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing."
In this unlikely surrender to Chicago politics, the realist sees insecurity at best and, at worst, the quid for al-Mansour's quo.
Exclusive: Jack Cashill offers reason Barack, Michelle don't talk about editor post
Posted: September 11, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
By Jack Cashill
On the surface, at least, Barack Obama's single most impressive accomplishment has been his 1990 election to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.
This position also provided Obama his only real executive experience as he supervised the law review's staff of 80 editors.
One has to wonder, then, why neither he nor wife Michelle emphasized this singular honor during the up-by-the-bootstraps biographical sections of their respective speeches in Denver.
In fact, neither of them so much as mentioned Obama's time at Harvard, this despite his vulnerability on the executive experience charge.
Their silence likely derives from one verifiable fact: Obama's record at Harvard was no more authentic than John Kerry's record in Vietnam.
Kerry was justifiably swift-boated because he fraudulently positioned himself as a war hero. Obama seems to have learned from Kerry.
In the age of the Internet, the less said about a dubious credential the better, and Obama's law presidency credential is dubious on any number of levels.
(Column continues below)
For starters, Obama did not do nearly well enough at his previous stop, Columbia University, to justify admission to Harvard Law.
According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors.
In the age of affirmative action and grade inflation, a minority in a relatively easy major like political science had to under-perform dramatically to avoid minimal honors. Obama apparently did just that.
The specifics we may never know. As the New York Times concedes, Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Would that Bristol Palin could get off so easily!
There are any number of possible reasons for Obama's reticence about Columbia: his grades, the courses he took, his writing samples and, of course, his associations.
At that time, for instance, both Bill Ayers and Obama fell within the orbit of left-wing Columbia superstar Edward Said. Just recently out of hiding, Ayers was attending the Bank Street College of Education, which adjoins the Columbia campus.
Five years after leaving Columbia, Obama decided on law school. His lack of resources did not deter him from thinking big. Nor did his B-minus effort at his Hawaii prep school or his equally indifferent grades at Columbia.
As Obama relates in "Dreams From My Father," he limited his choices to only three law schools – "Harvard, Yale, Stanford." (It must be nice to be Obama.) He does not mention his connections.
Harvard Law School is notoriously difficult to get into. Annually, some 7,000 applications apply for some 500 seats. Applicant LSAT scores generally chart in the 98 to 99 percentile range, and GPAs average between 3.80 and 3.95.
If Obama's LSAT scores merited admission, we would know about them. We don't. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets.
We know enough about Obama's Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard.
As far back as 1988, however, Obama had serious pull. He would need it. As previously reported, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf.
An orthodox Muslim, al-Mansour has not met the crackpot anti-Semitic theory he could not embrace. As for bin Talal, in October 2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent his $10 million relief check back un-cashed after the Saudi billionaire blamed 9/11 on America.
For an insight into the Khalid al-Mansour connection, see see this video.
These are not connections that Obama would like to see broadcast, which further explains his shyness about the Harvard experience.
There is more. Obama did not make the Harvard Law Review (HLR) the old-fashioned way, the way HLR's first black editor, Charles Houston, did 70 years prior.
To Obama's good fortune, the HLR had replaced a meritocracy in which editors were elected based on grades – the president being the student with the highest academic rank – with one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition.
This competition, the New York Times reported in 1990, was "meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review."
It did just that. At the end of his first year, Obama was named, along with 40 or so of his classmates, an editor of the HLR.
Unlike most editors, and likely all its presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.
In this note for the third volume of the 1990 HLR, he argued against any limits on abortion, citing the government's interest in "preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair."
Obama's timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring 1990 term that he would stand for the presidency of the HLR, the Harvard Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.
Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.
This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.
Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African-American president. Obama had an advantage. Spared the legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.
"Obama cast himself as an eager listener," the New York Times reported, "sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once."
In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all-day affair, Obama's fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates. As it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR's small conservative faction threw him its support.
Curiously, once elected, Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other law journal. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
One more thing: The 1990 Times article about Obama's election notes that the president of the HLR usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a Supreme Court justice.
Not the Mansourian Candidate. Here, oddly, his ambition deserted him. He told the Times that he planned "to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing."
In this unlikely surrender to Chicago politics, the realist sees insecurity at best and, at worst, the quid for al-Mansour's quo.
Jews: The Democratic Party is not Your Religion
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/09/21/open-letter-to-my-fellow-jews-the-democratic-party-is-not-your-religion-or-anybodys/
- Roger L. Simon - http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon -
Open Letter to My Fellow Jews: The Democratic Party is not your religion (or anybody’s)
September 21, 2008 - by Roger L Simon
From the days of FDR, the vast majority of American Jews have identified with the Democratic Party almost if it were their religion. This included most especially secular Jews like me whose blasé attitude toward their faith and toward religious observance in general made such a replacement all the more important emotionally. This same Jewish majority also identified with the cause of social justice and, as Barack Obama among many others has noted, were some of the most active participants in the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties. That was all how it should have been and was a perfectly logical and praiseworthy epoch in the development of our country.
Hello – those days are over! The events leading up to Monday’s anti-Ahmadinejad demonstration by Jewish organizations at the UN put the final nail in an already long-moldering coffin. Jews should no longer align themselves with the Democratic Party any more than they should align with the Republicans. They should act and think for themselves, devoid of ideological or partisan bias. They should first be Americans, not Democratic Party Americans.
The reasons for this are many, but paramount among them is that being hostage to one political party is tantamount to giving up your freedom and relinquishing your ability to confront reality and act in your own interest, not to mention the interest of others. Many Jewish Americans still do this for reasons that are at best sentimental and nostalgic, and at worst self-destructive. But a tipping point may be approaching. The virtual night of the long knives played out between the Democratic Party and various Jewish organizations surrounding the Iran demonstration, including allegations that party operatives were threatening the loss of tax exempt status over Sarah Palin’s appearance, with more unpleasant revelations undoubtedly to come, is obviously causing people to reconsider this allegiance to the Democratic Party that approaches fealty.
I urge my fellow Jews to keep thinking about this and not to retreat into the cocoon-like safety of an outmoded tradition. Change is difficult. But remember that Hillary Clinton – that paragon of the Democratic Party, a woman who calls herself a “progressive” (oh, desecration of the English language!) – was willing to forego the protest of the man who is arguably the most significant enemy of the Jews since Hitler for partisan and (most likely) personal pique reasons. How morally repellent is that!
And then Joseph Biden told us he was busy–too busy to protest a nuclear-armed madman who fervently believes that his mysterious Twelfth Imam (Mahdi) is destined to unite a chaotic globe under Allah. (And don’t tell me that evangelicals believe similar things. If you think there is an equation between evangelicals and Khomeinist Islamists, you need a cold bath.)
No, those Democrats thought of themselves and their party first, the citizens of this country and the world later. When Republicans behave in a similar reprehensible manner, we should condemn them with all ferocity. But fellow Jews, stop being slaves to the Democratic Party. End this illicit love affair – not just for your own good, but for the good of humanity.
________________________________________
Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/09/21/open-letter-to-my-fellow-jews-the-democratic-party-is-not-your-religion-or-anybodys/
Click here to print.
Copyright © 2008 Roger L. Simon. All rights reserved.
________________________________________
Looking for simple solutions to your real-life fin
- Roger L. Simon - http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon -
Open Letter to My Fellow Jews: The Democratic Party is not your religion (or anybody’s)
September 21, 2008 - by Roger L Simon
From the days of FDR, the vast majority of American Jews have identified with the Democratic Party almost if it were their religion. This included most especially secular Jews like me whose blasé attitude toward their faith and toward religious observance in general made such a replacement all the more important emotionally. This same Jewish majority also identified with the cause of social justice and, as Barack Obama among many others has noted, were some of the most active participants in the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties. That was all how it should have been and was a perfectly logical and praiseworthy epoch in the development of our country.
Hello – those days are over! The events leading up to Monday’s anti-Ahmadinejad demonstration by Jewish organizations at the UN put the final nail in an already long-moldering coffin. Jews should no longer align themselves with the Democratic Party any more than they should align with the Republicans. They should act and think for themselves, devoid of ideological or partisan bias. They should first be Americans, not Democratic Party Americans.
The reasons for this are many, but paramount among them is that being hostage to one political party is tantamount to giving up your freedom and relinquishing your ability to confront reality and act in your own interest, not to mention the interest of others. Many Jewish Americans still do this for reasons that are at best sentimental and nostalgic, and at worst self-destructive. But a tipping point may be approaching. The virtual night of the long knives played out between the Democratic Party and various Jewish organizations surrounding the Iran demonstration, including allegations that party operatives were threatening the loss of tax exempt status over Sarah Palin’s appearance, with more unpleasant revelations undoubtedly to come, is obviously causing people to reconsider this allegiance to the Democratic Party that approaches fealty.
I urge my fellow Jews to keep thinking about this and not to retreat into the cocoon-like safety of an outmoded tradition. Change is difficult. But remember that Hillary Clinton – that paragon of the Democratic Party, a woman who calls herself a “progressive” (oh, desecration of the English language!) – was willing to forego the protest of the man who is arguably the most significant enemy of the Jews since Hitler for partisan and (most likely) personal pique reasons. How morally repellent is that!
And then Joseph Biden told us he was busy–too busy to protest a nuclear-armed madman who fervently believes that his mysterious Twelfth Imam (Mahdi) is destined to unite a chaotic globe under Allah. (And don’t tell me that evangelicals believe similar things. If you think there is an equation between evangelicals and Khomeinist Islamists, you need a cold bath.)
No, those Democrats thought of themselves and their party first, the citizens of this country and the world later. When Republicans behave in a similar reprehensible manner, we should condemn them with all ferocity. But fellow Jews, stop being slaves to the Democratic Party. End this illicit love affair – not just for your own good, but for the good of humanity.
________________________________________
Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/09/21/open-letter-to-my-fellow-jews-the-democratic-party-is-not-your-religion-or-anybodys/
Click here to print.
Copyright © 2008 Roger L. Simon. All rights reserved.
________________________________________
Looking for simple solutions to your real-life fin
Obama send grandkids to convince grandparents to vote for him
Friends,
I'd appreciate hearing from my many readers in Florida about this. Note the condescending tone of the grandchild sent to
talk his doddering old grandmother into voting for Obama.
________________________________________
Off on the Great Schlep
Jewish grandkids get an earful in Florida as they try to woo relatives toward Obama. Joel Stein/Opinion/ Los Angeles Times
September 19, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE , FLA. ˜ If you need proof that this is the most important election in a generation, get this: Jewish grandkids are flying to Florida to visit their grandparents -- without being guilted into it - without being guilted into it -- to talk their elders out of voting for John McCain.
The Jewish Council for Education and Research -- a new pro-Obama political action committee -- is organizing "The Great Schlep," in which hundreds of Jews will make the Southern exodus on Columbus Day weekend, Oct. 10-13. They will travel to the Fort Lauderdale area, where they will visit their grandparents, organize political salons in their condos and eat incredibly bad food. The grandkids also will meet up at a bar one night, which -- if the psychological impact of spending a few days with frail, elderly, widowed relatives is taken fully into account -- may do more to repopulate the world's Jews than the creation of Israel.
More than hockey moms or gun-toting God lovers, old Floridian Jews are the most important demographic in this election. They make up about 5% of the voters in a swing state with 27 electoral college votes. They never miss so much as a condo board vote and are normally reliable Democrats.
Barack Obama's trouble winning over older Jewish voters has been difficult for pollsters to explain, so I came here this week to visit my grandmother, Mama Ann, and find out what the hang-up is. After a long discussion about policy, I asked her if the reason she was leaning toward voting for McCain was because Obama is black. She assured me that it was not. Though during dinner, she did casually mention that her grandfather used to express a superstition that if you ate marrow, you'd date a black man. I had no idea that for so many generations, Jews have hated marrow.
Mama Ann thought the three days of the Great Schlep would be very effective. "Oh boy, the grandparents will start cooking three days ahead," she said, making me worry that many Schleppers won't last through three days of canned pineapple and dry chicken. "If they see their grandchildren, they'll go along. They just need more assurance on Israel ." Israel , Mama Ann explained, is the key issue her condo friends vote on. When McCain sings about bombing Iran , he is singing a sweet serenade to Florida 's elec toral collegians.
To persuade Mama Ann to vote for Obama, I used many of the talking points suggested to me by Great Schlep organizer Mik Moore. These included the fact that Obama went to Columbia and Harvard, and McCain got bad grades in college; that Obama has been criticized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and that Obama ran the business side of his campaign better than any other candidate. I did not know that I could be so racially offended by my own people.
After convincing Mama Ann not to vote for McCain, I then had to persuade her not to write in Hillary Clinton, who the old Jews here love for her feisty, scrappy Estelle Getty-ness.
Feeling confident, I headed down to the condo Hadassah meeting, where I asked some people who they were voting for. A few had Obama buttons in Hebrew. One wanted to tell me how Lyndon Johnson helped the Jews more than people know. Seven wanted to set me up wit h their granddaughters despite the fact that I was wearing my wedding ring.
But many more were sure Obama was Muslim and that extremist Arabs "had his ear." I strongly urge Obama to take one day off campaigning and go to a courthouse to legally change his middle name from "Hussein" to "Seriously, People, I'm Not a Muslim."
Having tackled the Hadassah meeting, I drove over to Palm Beach with Mama Ann to talk to her first cousin, Rochelle Bramsen. When Rochelle's daughter and son-in-law, whom she lives with, argued for Obama, she bristled. I joined in, and asked -- as suggested by the talking points -- if she inaccurately thought Obama was a Muslim. Both Aunt Rochelle and Mama Ann said yes, they thought he was. When we all tired of arguing about that, I asked if it would be such a big deal if Obama were a Muslim. This was, I quickly realized, not on the list of recommended talking points for good reason.
"For me, personally, that would be an issue," said Rochelle. Thinking we'd trapped her in a rhetorical corner, her kids and I asked why Muslims in office would be worse than Christians. To which Rochelle deftly responded, "Who says I'm OK with Christians?"
Rochelle was also upset that Obama didn't wear an American flag lapel pin at first. I asked Rochelle if she wore a flag pin. "No, but I expect more from our leaders," she said. I am pretty sure Rochelle just doesn't trust anyone who doesn't wear at least some jewelry.
Still, by the end of our discussion, Rochelle seemed to have joined Mama Ann as an Obama supporter. But there's a fair chance that by Columbus Day, both Mama Ann and Aunt Rochelle will have forgotten that.
So it's important that other grandchildren -- hopefully some who are vaguely my age and shape -- fly down here for the Great Schlep salons. Ev en if they fail, they won't be sorry: I saw a movie for $3.50, had dinner for $10 and was treated like whatever the Jewish equivalent of a saint is by everyone in the condo complex just for stopping by. I say we do this every Columbus Day. Next year, hopefully, we'll be hanging poolside with retiree John McCain.
Jerry Balash
I'd appreciate hearing from my many readers in Florida about this. Note the condescending tone of the grandchild sent to
talk his doddering old grandmother into voting for Obama.
________________________________________
Off on the Great Schlep
Jewish grandkids get an earful in Florida as they try to woo relatives toward Obama. Joel Stein/Opinion/ Los Angeles Times
September 19, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE , FLA. ˜ If you need proof that this is the most important election in a generation, get this: Jewish grandkids are flying to Florida to visit their grandparents -- without being guilted into it - without being guilted into it -- to talk their elders out of voting for John McCain.
The Jewish Council for Education and Research -- a new pro-Obama political action committee -- is organizing "The Great Schlep," in which hundreds of Jews will make the Southern exodus on Columbus Day weekend, Oct. 10-13. They will travel to the Fort Lauderdale area, where they will visit their grandparents, organize political salons in their condos and eat incredibly bad food. The grandkids also will meet up at a bar one night, which -- if the psychological impact of spending a few days with frail, elderly, widowed relatives is taken fully into account -- may do more to repopulate the world's Jews than the creation of Israel.
More than hockey moms or gun-toting God lovers, old Floridian Jews are the most important demographic in this election. They make up about 5% of the voters in a swing state with 27 electoral college votes. They never miss so much as a condo board vote and are normally reliable Democrats.
Barack Obama's trouble winning over older Jewish voters has been difficult for pollsters to explain, so I came here this week to visit my grandmother, Mama Ann, and find out what the hang-up is. After a long discussion about policy, I asked her if the reason she was leaning toward voting for McCain was because Obama is black. She assured me that it was not. Though during dinner, she did casually mention that her grandfather used to express a superstition that if you ate marrow, you'd date a black man. I had no idea that for so many generations, Jews have hated marrow.
Mama Ann thought the three days of the Great Schlep would be very effective. "Oh boy, the grandparents will start cooking three days ahead," she said, making me worry that many Schleppers won't last through three days of canned pineapple and dry chicken. "If they see their grandchildren, they'll go along. They just need more assurance on Israel ." Israel , Mama Ann explained, is the key issue her condo friends vote on. When McCain sings about bombing Iran , he is singing a sweet serenade to Florida 's elec toral collegians.
To persuade Mama Ann to vote for Obama, I used many of the talking points suggested to me by Great Schlep organizer Mik Moore. These included the fact that Obama went to Columbia and Harvard, and McCain got bad grades in college; that Obama has been criticized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and that Obama ran the business side of his campaign better than any other candidate. I did not know that I could be so racially offended by my own people.
After convincing Mama Ann not to vote for McCain, I then had to persuade her not to write in Hillary Clinton, who the old Jews here love for her feisty, scrappy Estelle Getty-ness.
Feeling confident, I headed down to the condo Hadassah meeting, where I asked some people who they were voting for. A few had Obama buttons in Hebrew. One wanted to tell me how Lyndon Johnson helped the Jews more than people know. Seven wanted to set me up wit h their granddaughters despite the fact that I was wearing my wedding ring.
But many more were sure Obama was Muslim and that extremist Arabs "had his ear." I strongly urge Obama to take one day off campaigning and go to a courthouse to legally change his middle name from "Hussein" to "Seriously, People, I'm Not a Muslim."
Having tackled the Hadassah meeting, I drove over to Palm Beach with Mama Ann to talk to her first cousin, Rochelle Bramsen. When Rochelle's daughter and son-in-law, whom she lives with, argued for Obama, she bristled. I joined in, and asked -- as suggested by the talking points -- if she inaccurately thought Obama was a Muslim. Both Aunt Rochelle and Mama Ann said yes, they thought he was. When we all tired of arguing about that, I asked if it would be such a big deal if Obama were a Muslim. This was, I quickly realized, not on the list of recommended talking points for good reason.
"For me, personally, that would be an issue," said Rochelle. Thinking we'd trapped her in a rhetorical corner, her kids and I asked why Muslims in office would be worse than Christians. To which Rochelle deftly responded, "Who says I'm OK with Christians?"
Rochelle was also upset that Obama didn't wear an American flag lapel pin at first. I asked Rochelle if she wore a flag pin. "No, but I expect more from our leaders," she said. I am pretty sure Rochelle just doesn't trust anyone who doesn't wear at least some jewelry.
Still, by the end of our discussion, Rochelle seemed to have joined Mama Ann as an Obama supporter. But there's a fair chance that by Columbus Day, both Mama Ann and Aunt Rochelle will have forgotten that.
So it's important that other grandchildren -- hopefully some who are vaguely my age and shape -- fly down here for the Great Schlep salons. Ev en if they fail, they won't be sorry: I saw a movie for $3.50, had dinner for $10 and was treated like whatever the Jewish equivalent of a saint is by everyone in the condo complex just for stopping by. I say we do this every Columbus Day. Next year, hopefully, we'll be hanging poolside with retiree John McCain.
Jerry Balash
Monday, September 22, 2008
History of the Buchanan Smear
Friends,
I'm getting so many e-mails repeating the Democratic party smear that Gov. PALIN
was a supporter of Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan. This was started by Moveon.org, the organization founded by notorious anti-Israel, JEWISH self-hater George Soros, who has used his gazillions to destroy the Jewish state and to support anti-Israel candidates. Below, some facts.
The statement
MoveOn.org
"(Palin) supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000."
MoveOn.org on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 in an e-mail.
Palin wasn't in Buchanan's Brigade
False
Gov. Sarah Palin's conservative credentials have excited the GOP base, and perhaps in equal fashion have ignited the passions of liberals.
Palin remained Topic A during the Republican National Convention and her resume has been picked over by friends and foes alike. In the foe category would be MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group, which on Sept. 2 sent an e-mail to an estimated 3.2-million supporters, offering their views of Palin's flaws as a public official.
One item caught our attention. The e-mail said Palin, Alaska's governor since 2006, "supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000."
“This is information the American people need to see," the email said. "Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family."
In making its allegation, Move.on picked up on a charge made by others, most notably Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., a longtime Barack Obama supporter. The charge relies on a single Associated Press story from July 1999 about Buchanan's campaign stop in tiny Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor at the time. The article described Palin as "among those sporting Buchanan buttons."
We won't delve into the question of whether Buchanan really is a "right-wing extremist." Those are the kinds of judgments voters can make for themselves. But the allegation that Palin was a Buchanan supporter might carry some weight, especially among Jewish voters, many of whom consider him to be anti-Israel. Wexler, in his charge, said Buchanan had "a uniquely atrocious record on Israel," and the Anti-Defamation League calls Buchanan a "racist, anti-Semite."
So the question is this: Did Palin support Buchanan in 2000?
No. Shortly after Buchanan's visit to Wasilla, and after the AP story, Palin wrote a letter to her local newspaper making clear that her appearance at the Buchanan event wasn't an endorsement of his candidacy. Published July 26, 1999, the letter said:
"As mayor of Wasilla, I am proud to welcome all presidential candidates to our city. This is true regardless of their party, or the latest odds of their winning. When presidential candidates visit our community, I am always happy to meet them. I'll even put on their button when handed one as a polite gesture of respect.
"Though no reporter interviewed me for the Associated Press article on the recent visit by a presidential candidate (Metro, July 17), the article may have left your readers with the perception that I am endorsing this candidate, as opposed to welcoming his visit to Wasilla. As mayor, I will welcome all the candidates in Wasilla."
Not long after, Wasilla endorsed Steve Forbes' unsuccessful bid for the 2000 GOP nomination.
The one complication is that Buchanan appeared on CNBC's Hardball on Aug. 30 and claimed that Palin and her husband had been supporters during is '96 campaign. "She was a brigadier for me in '96, as was her husband,'' Buchanan said. "She's a terrific gal. She's a rebel reformer." Buchanan called his supporters the Buchanan Brigades.
But on Sept. 3, Buchanan told PolitiFact in St. Paul, Minn., that while he knew Palin attended his rally in Wasilla because of press accounts, he did not know if she actually supported him as a candidate in 2000 or previous campaigns. "I can't confirm anything,'' he said.
Campaign finance reports on CQ Moneyline show she never donated money to Buchanan or Forbes. The McCain campaign is emphatic in refuting the charge.
"Governor Palin has never supported Pat Buchanan," the McCain campaign said on its "Stop the Smears'' Web site, and called on Wexler to retract his comments.
But Wexler spokesman Josh Rogin said that won't happen.
"Buchanan says she was a supporter,'' Rogin said.
Buchanan doesn't say that anymore. We may never be sure of Palin's position in 1996, but if she says she wasn't a Buchanan supporter and Buchanan says he can't prove that she was, we don't have much to go on.
But for our purposes, the question of 2000 is more important because that's what Moveon.org alleges in a widespread e-mail. The letter to the editor that Palin wrote back in 1999 seems pretty clear to us. Even back then she wanted to make it clear that Buchanan wasn't her choice for president in the 2000 race, which leaves us with nowhere to go but False.
I'm getting so many e-mails repeating the Democratic party smear that Gov. PALIN
was a supporter of Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan. This was started by Moveon.org, the organization founded by notorious anti-Israel, JEWISH self-hater George Soros, who has used his gazillions to destroy the Jewish state and to support anti-Israel candidates. Below, some facts.
The statement
MoveOn.org
"(Palin) supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000."
MoveOn.org on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 in an e-mail.
Palin wasn't in Buchanan's Brigade
False
Gov. Sarah Palin's conservative credentials have excited the GOP base, and perhaps in equal fashion have ignited the passions of liberals.
Palin remained Topic A during the Republican National Convention and her resume has been picked over by friends and foes alike. In the foe category would be MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group, which on Sept. 2 sent an e-mail to an estimated 3.2-million supporters, offering their views of Palin's flaws as a public official.
One item caught our attention. The e-mail said Palin, Alaska's governor since 2006, "supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000."
“This is information the American people need to see," the email said. "Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family."
In making its allegation, Move.on picked up on a charge made by others, most notably Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., a longtime Barack Obama supporter. The charge relies on a single Associated Press story from July 1999 about Buchanan's campaign stop in tiny Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor at the time. The article described Palin as "among those sporting Buchanan buttons."
We won't delve into the question of whether Buchanan really is a "right-wing extremist." Those are the kinds of judgments voters can make for themselves. But the allegation that Palin was a Buchanan supporter might carry some weight, especially among Jewish voters, many of whom consider him to be anti-Israel. Wexler, in his charge, said Buchanan had "a uniquely atrocious record on Israel," and the Anti-Defamation League calls Buchanan a "racist, anti-Semite."
So the question is this: Did Palin support Buchanan in 2000?
No. Shortly after Buchanan's visit to Wasilla, and after the AP story, Palin wrote a letter to her local newspaper making clear that her appearance at the Buchanan event wasn't an endorsement of his candidacy. Published July 26, 1999, the letter said:
"As mayor of Wasilla, I am proud to welcome all presidential candidates to our city. This is true regardless of their party, or the latest odds of their winning. When presidential candidates visit our community, I am always happy to meet them. I'll even put on their button when handed one as a polite gesture of respect.
"Though no reporter interviewed me for the Associated Press article on the recent visit by a presidential candidate (Metro, July 17), the article may have left your readers with the perception that I am endorsing this candidate, as opposed to welcoming his visit to Wasilla. As mayor, I will welcome all the candidates in Wasilla."
Not long after, Wasilla endorsed Steve Forbes' unsuccessful bid for the 2000 GOP nomination.
The one complication is that Buchanan appeared on CNBC's Hardball on Aug. 30 and claimed that Palin and her husband had been supporters during is '96 campaign. "She was a brigadier for me in '96, as was her husband,'' Buchanan said. "She's a terrific gal. She's a rebel reformer." Buchanan called his supporters the Buchanan Brigades.
But on Sept. 3, Buchanan told PolitiFact in St. Paul, Minn., that while he knew Palin attended his rally in Wasilla because of press accounts, he did not know if she actually supported him as a candidate in 2000 or previous campaigns. "I can't confirm anything,'' he said.
Campaign finance reports on CQ Moneyline show she never donated money to Buchanan or Forbes. The McCain campaign is emphatic in refuting the charge.
"Governor Palin has never supported Pat Buchanan," the McCain campaign said on its "Stop the Smears'' Web site, and called on Wexler to retract his comments.
But Wexler spokesman Josh Rogin said that won't happen.
"Buchanan says she was a supporter,'' Rogin said.
Buchanan doesn't say that anymore. We may never be sure of Palin's position in 1996, but if she says she wasn't a Buchanan supporter and Buchanan says he can't prove that she was, we don't have much to go on.
But for our purposes, the question of 2000 is more important because that's what Moveon.org alleges in a widespread e-mail. The letter to the editor that Palin wrote back in 1999 seems pretty clear to us. Even back then she wanted to make it clear that Buchanan wasn't her choice for president in the 2000 race, which leaves us with nowhere to go but False.
The Obama Voter-Not This Jew
No matter what your religion is this lady sums up all the points that are relevant to this election.
http://www.rightsidenews.com/200809201991/editorial/the-obama-voter-not-this-jew.html
The Obama Voter - Not This Jew
September 20, 2008
by Joan Swirsky
For the most part, American Jews are politically liberal. For decades they have supported leftwing politicians who are antagonists if not outright enemies of Israel. Why does this matter? It matters to me because the Holocaust in which the Nazis wantonly murdered six million Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s has been the defining event of my life - the event against which I measure the political philosophies and actions of both individuals and nations.
I was a baby when that blight on human history took place, but I fully appreciate that if my twin brother and I had been born in Germany during the ghastly Nazi reign, we would have been victims of the unspeakable "experiments" of Dr. Mengele.
It matters to me because the wretched survivors of the Holocaust, against all odds - including ships of refugees that were turned back from our own shores by FDR, only to be returned to the death camps - somehow managed to arrive in their ancient homeland and create one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, whose advanced scientific institutions contribute to research and development of medicines, therapies, technology and cures for the world's devastating horrors
It matters because Israel, the locus of Jewish prayer and survival, is but a sliver of land, not much larger than 8,000 square miles, which is comparable to New Jersey, our 5th-smallest state. This tiny country is populated by six million Jews and one-million Arabs and surrounded by 22 Arab Muslim states with a population of over 300-million - most of them dedicated to Israel's annihilation, the rest sly participants in the charade of a "peace process."
While Israel's Arab minority is accorded full citizenship and education, freedom of speech, congregation, religious autonomy and even participation in Israel's parliament, the Arab nations that surround it - including Jordan and Egypt, which are ostensibly at peace with Israel - afford Jews absolutely no rights and no protection.
Again, why does this matter? It matters to me because, for millennia, "wandering" Jews were deprived of living in their homeland and destined to travel the earth looking for safety and freedom, only to be subjected to - where to begin? - the Crusades, the Inquisition, European pogroms, and the Holocaust. Only America, from its inception a mere 232 years ago, welcomed the Jews, until the State of Israel was born in 1948, becoming the last best hope of a people whose manifest destiny was spelled out to them in the Bible.
Today, there is a worldwide renaissance of anti-Semitism, including on the campuses of our own country, in the ranting of various "religious" leaders, in the literature of some of America's so-called intelligentsia, and, yes, even in the Congress of the United States.
Yet again, why does this matter? It matters to me because unlike the purveyors of Islamic jihad and their brothers and sisters in suicide-bombing, death-adoring ideology, I love life and don't want to see our country succumb to the encroaching horrors of Sharia law (including "honor killings "), Sharia finance (in which money must be donated to Islamic charities, including those that promote Jihad and suicide bombing), or any of the other Islamic-dictated demands that are utterly anathema to and in egregious violation of both U.S. law and the freedoms cherished by all Americans.
It matters to me because while Obama makes the perfunctory and requisite statements of support for America and Israel, his policies - and those who formulate them - would do irreparable harm to both nations.
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS
It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he is the most liberal politician in the U.S. Congress, as judged by the non-partisan National Journal and based on the cold hard facts of his far-left voting record.
It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he has zero experience in foreign policy and has never managed or run anything of substance that requires executive experience - not a company, not an agency, not even a senate committee!
It would have been enough to know that Obama makes John Kerry's acrobatic flip-flopping look like child's play.
* He'll pull the troops out of Iraq in 16 months, now he'll "refine" that policy.
* He'll filibuster the FISA bill, but he voted for it.
* He'll campaign with public financing, but he rejected that option.
* He'll renegotiate Nafta, but now he won't.
* He's against gun rights but supported the Supreme Court's Heller decision for gun rights.
* He'll debate Sen. John McCain anywhere, anytime, but he has refused to.
* Iran poses no serious threat, but oops, Iran poses a grave threat.
* He supports an undivided Jerusalem, but 24-hours later said he "misspoke."
It would have been enough to appreciate Obama's sponsorship of the "global poverty" act, which lays the groundwork for the United Nation's draconian tax on America, and also that he fervently supports that cesspool on 2nd Avenue, which for decades has been a consistent purveyor of virulent anti-Semitic bias.
It would have been enough for me to consider Obama's oft-repeated promises to raise taxes to unprecedented heights, open our borders further to the flood of illegal aliens, appoint his socialist cronies to the Supreme Court, reinforce his death-wish for America's unborn babies, institutionalize socialized medicine, and support the anti-free-speech return of the so-called > Fairness Doctrine.
In what Investor's Business Daily calls Obama's "stealth socialism," the Democrat candidate also promises:
* Free college tuition.
* Universal" 401 ks.
* Free job training (even for criminals).
* Wage insurance (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
* Free childcare and universal preschool.
* More subsidized public housing.
* A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
* And [again] the Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
It would have been enough for me to witness - with revulsion, I might add - Obama apologizing to a throng of Germans for America's "mistakes."
It would have been enough to learn that Obama's recent, $500,000 overhaul of his 757 included the removal of the American flag and its replacement with a symbol of his own campaign .
All of this, and much more, would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama. But it is not only his florid narcissism and Marxist policies that offend me.
It is his judgment, particularly when it comes to the people he admires, associates with, looks to for mentoring, and especially listens to.
I happen not to inhabit the politically correct world of liberals who believe that a person cannot be judged by his associations. It is precisely Barack Obama's longtime, continuing, and newfound associations that strike fear into my heart - as they should in the hearts of all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.
LIE DOWN WITH DOGS, WAKE UP WITH FLEAS
But who are those associations that, as an American and especially as a Jew, I am so worried about? Obama's 300-plus foreign policy advisors include high-ranking people who are known for their undisguised contempt of Jews , in general, and their loathing of Israel, in particular:
General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who Sen. Obama once considered a potential V.P., was his campaign co-chairman and top military adviser. When asked by The Oregonian to name the problem preventing peace in the Middle East, McPeak said: "New York City. Miami" - code-names for Jews. Obama refused to remove him from his campaign, but he slunk out anyway.
Samantha Power, a former senior policy advisor to Obama (before she resigned for insulting Hillary Clinton) has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel. She has written of her willingness to "alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [American Jews]...it may more crucially mean sacrificing...billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine."
Robert Malley, a top foreign policy advisor to Obama, left the Obama campaign when it was revealed that he'd been conducting meetings with Hamas. Two years ago, after the terror group won a majority in the Palestinian parliament, Malley advocated international aid to their newly formed government. He stated that the election of Hamas expressed Palestinian "anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat's imprisonment, [and] Israel's incursions..."
Rashid Khalidi, a longtime friend of and fundraiser for Obama, is a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. According to WorldNetDaily, at a 2003 farewell party for Mr. Khalidi, Obama sat in attendance as a young Palestinian-American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism...and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. Obama has credited Mr. Khalidi with uncovering "my own blind spots and my own biases" regarding the plight of the Palestinians. Obama funneled $75,000 in grants to the Arab American Action Network (run by Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona), a group that calls Israel's independence Al-Nakba (the catastrophe).
Anthony "Tony" Lake, Obama's top foreign policy advisor, served in the Carter ("Israel practices apartheid") administration, notorious for its animus toward Israel. As national security advisor to President Clinton, Lake shaped the policy that treated Islamic terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, which paved the way for the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole, and the disaster of September 11, 2001.
Susan Rice, another of Obama's senior foreign policy advisors, was John Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. Kerry's idea for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint not one but two diehard enemies of Israel - James Baker and Jimmy Carter - as negotiators. Faced with a firestorm of criticism, Kerry backed down and blamed his staff, which consisted of Susan Rice.
Madeleine K. Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, lobbied Congress for increased foreign aid to the terrorist Arafat and arranged for him to become the White House's most frequent guest. She consistently touted negotiations, rather than confrontation, with terror regimes.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor, has been one of Israel's most consistently hostile critics and Hamas's most ardent supporters, as well as a staunch admirer (both in writing and verbally) of Stephen Walt's and John Mearsheimer's virulently anti-Israel book, "The Israel Lobby," which, among other things, contends that Jewish pressure, and not shared values, binds America and Israel together. Brzezinski's son, Mark, is also among Obama's foreign policy advisors.
Lee Hamilton, a former congressman who served as the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, waxed adoringly of Arafat, calling him a "moderate" leader.
James {"F... the Jews") Baker, Reagan's former Chief of Staff and the first President Bush's Secretary of State (a department whose Arabist tilt is well-known), is among the harshest detractors of Israel, has often engaged in raw anti-Semitic remarks, is known for coddling Middle East dictators (including Syria's Assad), and has been heavily invested (through the Carlyle Group) in the Israel-hating country of Saudi Arabia. In fact, Baker's law firm defended the Saudi Defense Minister who was sued for alleged complicity by the families of the World Trade Center victims.
Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, was one of James Baker's "Jew Boys," which included, among others who militated against Israel, Dennis Ross (of the Clinton administration). Kurtzer recently said: "It will be impossible to make progress on serious peace talks without putting the future of Jerusalem on the table."
And this is the short list!
MORE DOGS, MORE FLEAS
I haven't even mentioned the terrorists William Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn, his indicted Chicago crony Tony Rezko, his first and most influential mentor, the Communist Frank Marshall Davis; or Father Michael Pfleger, the liberal Chicago priest and longtime friend of Obama, who delivered an explosive, racially charged sermon at Obama's church, which forced the Democrat candidate to - what else? - dispense with him! You can Google these enemies of America!
Nor have I mentioned the hearty endorsements Obama has received from America-reviling Hamas (from whom he receives money ), Hugo Chavez, Farrakhan, Michael Moore, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, and "Hanoi" Jane Fonda.
Among the other people Obama has chosen to affiliate himself with are:
George Soros, the multibillionaire, self-hating Jew who has devoted a good part of his life to vilifying Israel and funding groups that work unstintingly to destroy the tiny state. With his 527 groups, he has funded people - like Obama - to shatter the bonds between Israel and America.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for over 20 years, has shrieked his Black Theology anti-American and anti-Semitic "sermons," to which the current candidate for president had not a word of objection! Until, that is, Wright's venom came to light and Obama had to dispense with him in the same way he dispensed with the "typical white woman" - his grandmother - who raised him. Wright, remember, is an ardent supporter of Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a "gutter religion" and said Jews are "bloodsuckers".
These are only a smattering of people who, in Obama's "judgment," are worthy of being his mentors and political advisors.
As Ed Lasky of the American Thinker - to whom I am indebted for much of this material - has written: "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates." And, I would add, anti-American advocates!
I ask: Does Obama have any friends, associates, mentors or advisors who don't hate America and Israel? If so, e-mail me. I haven't found one yet!
Any voter - whether Democrat, Republican or Independent - should find Obama's far-left voting record and silly-putty changes-of mind on crucial policy issues reason enough not to vote for him in November.
Certainly, every American Jew should consider his ascension to the presidency a virtual death knell for Israel.
If the corrupt ACORN group he so heartily supported in the Chicago machine - where he "made his bones" - doesn't rig the election with the votes of millions of dead people and convicts, as they have so many times in the past. I trust the electorate will do the right thing.
The right thing, of course, would be vote against Obama, a candidate who has been infested with far more odious things than fleas, specifically the treacherous anti-American, anti-Israel advice that has clearly shaped his worldview.
Obama would make America less safe, and an unsafe America - which is the last, best hope for the survival of the Jews and Israel - would destroy the twin pillars of steadfast Judeo-Christian values. Destroying both nations is the goal of the Jihadists that Obama would sooner chat with than confront.
http://www.rightsidenews.com/200809201991/editorial/the-obama-voter-not-this-jew.html
The Obama Voter - Not This Jew
September 20, 2008
by Joan Swirsky
For the most part, American Jews are politically liberal. For decades they have supported leftwing politicians who are antagonists if not outright enemies of Israel. Why does this matter? It matters to me because the Holocaust in which the Nazis wantonly murdered six million Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s has been the defining event of my life - the event against which I measure the political philosophies and actions of both individuals and nations.
I was a baby when that blight on human history took place, but I fully appreciate that if my twin brother and I had been born in Germany during the ghastly Nazi reign, we would have been victims of the unspeakable "experiments" of Dr. Mengele.
It matters to me because the wretched survivors of the Holocaust, against all odds - including ships of refugees that were turned back from our own shores by FDR, only to be returned to the death camps - somehow managed to arrive in their ancient homeland and create one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, whose advanced scientific institutions contribute to research and development of medicines, therapies, technology and cures for the world's devastating horrors
It matters because Israel, the locus of Jewish prayer and survival, is but a sliver of land, not much larger than 8,000 square miles, which is comparable to New Jersey, our 5th-smallest state. This tiny country is populated by six million Jews and one-million Arabs and surrounded by 22 Arab Muslim states with a population of over 300-million - most of them dedicated to Israel's annihilation, the rest sly participants in the charade of a "peace process."
While Israel's Arab minority is accorded full citizenship and education, freedom of speech, congregation, religious autonomy and even participation in Israel's parliament, the Arab nations that surround it - including Jordan and Egypt, which are ostensibly at peace with Israel - afford Jews absolutely no rights and no protection.
Again, why does this matter? It matters to me because, for millennia, "wandering" Jews were deprived of living in their homeland and destined to travel the earth looking for safety and freedom, only to be subjected to - where to begin? - the Crusades, the Inquisition, European pogroms, and the Holocaust. Only America, from its inception a mere 232 years ago, welcomed the Jews, until the State of Israel was born in 1948, becoming the last best hope of a people whose manifest destiny was spelled out to them in the Bible.
Today, there is a worldwide renaissance of anti-Semitism, including on the campuses of our own country, in the ranting of various "religious" leaders, in the literature of some of America's so-called intelligentsia, and, yes, even in the Congress of the United States.
Yet again, why does this matter? It matters to me because unlike the purveyors of Islamic jihad and their brothers and sisters in suicide-bombing, death-adoring ideology, I love life and don't want to see our country succumb to the encroaching horrors of Sharia law (including "honor killings
It matters to me because while Obama makes the perfunctory and requisite statements of support for America and Israel, his policies - and those who formulate them - would do irreparable harm to both nations.
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS
It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he is the most liberal politician
It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he has zero experience in foreign policy and has never managed or run anything of substance that requires executive experience - not a company, not an agency, not even a senate committee!
It would have been enough to know that Obama makes John Kerry's acrobatic flip-flopping look like child's play.
* He'll pull the troops out of Iraq in 16 months, now he'll "refine" that policy.
* He'll filibuster the FISA bill, but he voted for it.
* He'll campaign with public financing, but he rejected that option.
* He'll renegotiate Nafta, but now he won't.
* He's against gun rights but supported the Supreme Court's Heller decision
* He'll debate Sen. John McCain anywhere, anytime, but he has refused to.
* Iran poses no serious threat, but oops, Iran poses a grave threat.
* He supports an undivided Jerusalem, but 24-hours later said he "misspoke."
It would have been enough to appreciate Obama's sponsorship of the "global poverty" act, which lays the groundwork for the United Nation's draconian tax on America, and also that he fervently supports that cesspool on 2nd Avenue, which for decades has been a consistent purveyor of virulent anti-Semitic bias.
It would have been enough for me to consider Obama's oft-repeated promises to raise taxes to unprecedented heights, open our borders further to the flood of illegal aliens, appoint his socialist cronies to the Supreme Court, reinforce his death-wish for America's unborn babies, institutionalize socialized medicine, and support the anti-free-speech return of the so-called
In what Investor's Business Daily calls Obama's "stealth socialism," the Democrat candidate also promises:
* Free college tuition.
* Universal" 401 ks.
* Free job training (even for criminals).
* Wage insurance (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
* Free childcare and universal preschool.
* More subsidized public housing.
* A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
* And [again] the Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
It would have been enough for me to witness - with revulsion, I might add - Obama apologizing to a throng of Germans for America's "mistakes."
It would have been enough to learn that Obama's recent, $500,000 overhaul of his 757 included the removal of the American flag and its replacement with a symbol of his own campaign
All of this, and much more, would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama. But it is not only his florid narcissism and Marxist policies that offend me.
It is his judgment, particularly when it comes to the people he admires, associates with, looks to for mentoring, and especially listens to.
I happen not to inhabit the politically correct world of liberals who believe that a person cannot be judged by his associations. It is precisely Barack Obama's longtime, continuing, and newfound associations that strike fear into my heart - as they should in the hearts of all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.
LIE DOWN WITH DOGS, WAKE UP WITH FLEAS
But who are those associations that, as an American and especially as a Jew, I am so worried about? Obama's 300-plus foreign policy advisors include high-ranking people who are known for their undisguised contempt of Jews
General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who Sen. Obama once considered a potential V.P., was his campaign co-chairman and top military adviser. When asked by The Oregonian to name the problem preventing peace in the Middle East, McPeak said: "New York City. Miami" - code-names for Jews. Obama refused to remove him from his campaign, but he slunk out anyway.
Samantha Power, a former senior policy advisor to Obama (before she resigned for insulting Hillary Clinton) has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel. She has written of her willingness to "alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [American Jews]...it may more crucially mean sacrificing...billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine."
Robert Malley, a top foreign policy advisor to Obama, left the Obama campaign when it was revealed that he'd been conducting meetings with Hamas. Two years ago, after the terror group won a majority in the Palestinian parliament, Malley advocated international aid to their newly formed government. He stated that the election of Hamas expressed Palestinian "anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat's imprisonment, [and] Israel's incursions..."
Rashid Khalidi, a longtime friend of and fundraiser for Obama, is a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. According to WorldNetDaily, at a 2003 farewell party for Mr. Khalidi, Obama sat in attendance as a young Palestinian-American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism...and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. Obama has credited Mr. Khalidi with uncovering "my own blind spots and my own biases" regarding the plight of the Palestinians. Obama funneled $75,000 in grants to the Arab American Action Network (run by Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona), a group that calls Israel's independence Al-Nakba (the catastrophe).
Anthony "Tony" Lake, Obama's top foreign policy advisor, served in the Carter ("Israel practices apartheid") administration, notorious for its animus toward Israel. As national security advisor to President Clinton, Lake shaped the policy that treated Islamic terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, which paved the way for the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole, and the disaster of September 11, 2001.
Susan Rice, another of Obama's senior foreign policy advisors, was John Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. Kerry's idea for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint not one but two diehard enemies of Israel - James Baker and Jimmy Carter - as negotiators. Faced with a firestorm of criticism, Kerry backed down and blamed his staff, which consisted of Susan Rice.
Madeleine K. Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, lobbied Congress for increased foreign aid to the terrorist Arafat and arranged for him to become the White House's most frequent guest. She consistently touted negotiations, rather than confrontation, with terror regimes.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor, has been one of Israel's most consistently hostile critics and Hamas's most ardent supporters, as well as a staunch admirer (both in writing and verbally) of Stephen Walt's and John Mearsheimer's virulently anti-Israel book, "The Israel Lobby," which, among other things, contends that Jewish pressure, and not shared values, binds America and Israel together. Brzezinski's son, Mark, is also among Obama's foreign policy advisors.
Lee Hamilton, a former congressman who served as the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, waxed adoringly of Arafat, calling him a "moderate" leader.
James {"F... the Jews") Baker, Reagan's former Chief of Staff and the first President Bush's Secretary of State (a department whose Arabist tilt is well-known), is among the harshest detractors of Israel, has often engaged in raw anti-Semitic remarks, is known for coddling Middle East dictators (including Syria's Assad), and has been heavily invested (through the Carlyle Group) in the Israel-hating country of Saudi Arabia. In fact, Baker's law firm defended the Saudi Defense Minister who was sued for alleged complicity by the families of the World Trade Center victims.
Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, was one of James Baker's "Jew Boys," which included, among others who militated against Israel, Dennis Ross (of the Clinton administration). Kurtzer recently said: "It will be impossible to make progress on serious peace talks without putting the future of Jerusalem on the table."
And this is the short list!
MORE DOGS, MORE FLEAS
I haven't even mentioned the terrorists William Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn, his indicted Chicago crony Tony Rezko, his first and most influential mentor, the Communist Frank Marshall Davis; or Father Michael Pfleger, the liberal Chicago priest and longtime friend of Obama, who delivered an explosive, racially charged sermon at Obama's church, which forced the Democrat candidate to - what else? - dispense with him! You can Google these enemies of America!
Nor have I mentioned the hearty endorsements Obama has received from America-reviling Hamas (from whom he receives money
Among the other people Obama has chosen to affiliate himself with are:
George Soros, the multibillionaire, self-hating Jew who has devoted a good part of his life to vilifying Israel and funding groups that work unstintingly to destroy the tiny state. With his 527 groups, he has funded people - like Obama - to shatter the bonds between Israel and America.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for over 20 years, has shrieked his Black Theology anti-American and anti-Semitic "sermons," to which the current candidate for president had not a word of objection! Until, that is, Wright's venom came to light and Obama had to dispense with him in the same way he dispensed with the "typical white woman" - his grandmother - who raised him. Wright, remember, is an ardent supporter of Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a "gutter religion" and said Jews are "bloodsuckers".
These are only a smattering of people who, in Obama's "judgment," are worthy of being his mentors and political advisors.
As Ed Lasky of the American Thinker - to whom I am indebted for much of this material - has written: "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates." And, I would add, anti-American advocates!
I ask: Does Obama have any friends, associates, mentors or advisors who don't hate America and Israel? If so, e-mail me. I haven't found one yet!
Any voter - whether Democrat, Republican or Independent - should find Obama's far-left voting record and silly-putty changes-of mind on crucial policy issues reason enough not to vote for him in November.
Certainly, every American Jew should consider his ascension to the presidency a virtual death knell for Israel.
If the corrupt ACORN group
The right thing, of course, would be vote against Obama, a candidate who has been infested with far more odious things than fleas, specifically the treacherous anti-American, anti-Israel advice that has clearly shaped his worldview.
Obama would make America less safe, and an unsafe America - which is the last, best hope for the survival of the Jews and Israel - would destroy the twin pillars of steadfast Judeo-Christian values. Destroying both nations is the goal of the Jihadists that Obama would sooner chat with than confront.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Who Invited Ahmadinejad to dinner?
ALLISON HOFFMAN, Jerusalem Post
The head of the Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement criticizing Mennonite and Quaker leaders for hosting a dinner reception for Iran’s president in New York later this month.
The dinner, scheduled for September 25, is touted as a dialogue by the pacifist religious groups, which advocate diplomatic engagement with Iran’s political leadership.
It follows a similar meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held at a chapel last year during his annual visit for the opening of the United Nations’ General Assembly.
“Ahmadinejad represents a rejection of everything these religious groups stand for,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said in a statement Wednesday.
“His speech at Columbia University a year ago showed the futility of attempting to dialogue with a dictator who makes crystal clear his antipathy toward the West, who denies the Holocaust, and who defends the Iranian regime’s willful neglect of basic human rights.”
Foxman said the dinner “tarnished” the reputations of the participating religious groups as peace-seekers.
A spokesman for the Akron, Pennsylvania-based Mennonite Central Committee, which is organizing the dinner, said no one was immediately available for comment.
Other groups involved in hosting the dinner - including the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee - either did not immediately return messages left seeking comment or referred questions to the Mennonite organization.
Representatives from a broad range of Christian ecumenical organizations, including the Episcopal Church, plan to attend the dinner.
“Meeting with people does not mean you agree with them,” said Maureen Shea, director of the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations in Washington. “The more there is inflammatory language going back and forth, the more we feel there needs to be a way for our two countries to communicate.”
Shea, whose group joined a delegation of Christian religious leaders to Iran in 2007, joined the head of the American Friends Service Committee and the international director of the Mennonite Central Committee in sending a letter last month to the Bush administration, encouraging the State Department to open a US office in Teheran, similar to the one in Havana, Cuba. She said she had not received a response.
She said Foxman did not speak for all of American Jewry on Iran, noting that other Jewish groups support diplomatic engagement.
Yet even the most pro-diplomacy Jewish groups aren’t planning to attend the dinner reception for Ahmedinejad.
“We are not going to sit with him, no,” said Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now. “Our position does not endorse unconditional contact and engagement.”
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at the UN on September 23.
UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, who sharply rebuked Iran’s UN ambassador for accusing Israel of making threats on Iran and Ahmedinejad’s safety, declined to comment on the dinner plan.
.
The event is touted as a dialogue by the Mennonite Central Committee, World Council of Churches, and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee. Representatives of the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations plan to attend the dinner.
Representatives of the churches previously visited Iran in February of 2007 and hosted a similar event for Ahmadinejad with the National Council of Churches in September of 2007 at the United Methodist Women's' Building in New York.
Also in attendance at this America haters soiree:
The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic priest from Nicaragua who publicly criticizes the United States's anti-terror war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Norway's prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, who also heads the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights.
Quakers and Mennonites feel a sense of mission to forge peace on a global stage whenever possible. That means being open to long-term dialogue, even with a figure who holds reprehensible views, according to Mark Graham, director of external affairs for the American Friends Service Committee.
"You can't just engage with people with whom you agree on all issues," Graham says. "That leads to a very myopic view of the world. And you miss a lot of opportunities with that approach."
At this point, some pacifists see Ahmadinejad more as an outcast -- at least when he visits the United States -- than a prestigious host or esteemed guest. That leaves them with only one option whenever he extends a dinner invitation.
"At this point in time, there are virtually no other places for the president of the Iran to have discussions with people in the U.S.," Klassen says. "There's an opportunity for discussion, and we don't believe we can just step out and say, `no.' God has given us an opportunity, and it's our responsibility to say `yes."'
July 24, 2008, Jakarta (ENI) Ecumenical News International. An Indonesian religious leader has told a visiting World Council of Churches delegation that Christians in his country are praying for the US Democratic Party presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
"We are praying for Obama because we feel he can help reduce the widespread stigma and misperception that Muslims in Indonesia are fundamentalists," said the Rev. Ishak Pule, chairperson of the Christian Church of Central Sulawesi synod.
Pule was speaking on 19 July as he met members of a WCC group known as a Living Letters team during its visit to communities in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, an eight-hour drive from the Central Sulawesi provincial capital of Palu.
"We in the synod actually communicate more easily with Muslims than with Christian fundamentalists," added Pule, who also invited three Muslim leaders to meet the Living Letters team at his Tentena office.
National Council of Churches -
Partial List of Denominational Membership
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
Alliance of Baptists
American Baptist Churches in the USA
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Church of the Brethren
The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America
The Episcopal Church
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Friends United Meeting
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Hungarian Reformed Church in America
International Council of Community Churches
Korean Presbyterian Church in America
Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
Mar Thoma Church
Moravian Church in America Northern Province
and Southern Province
National Baptist Convention of America
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.
National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
Orthodox Church in America
Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Polish National Catholic Church of America
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
Reformed Church in America
Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada
The Swedenborgian Church
Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America
United Church of Christ
The United Methodist Church
Their agenda: The NCC wants diplomatic relations with the terrorist-sponsored State of Iran, and, indeed, a delegation from the NCC visited Iran in February 2007. Does your tithe support this cause?
The NCC met with the President of the terrorist-sponsored State of Syria, President Bashar Assad in
The sanctuary of our borders are dismissed by the NCC: "...churches are implementing exciting ministries and are seeking additional support and ideas to enhance their support of neighbors who are sometimes dismissed as 'aliens.
Washington, June 29, 2006 --The National Council of Churches USA and other faith groups applauded remarks Wednesday by Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) testifying to his faith in Christ and calling upon progressive politicians to reach out to evangelical Christians.
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"Between 2001 and 2005, revenue from member denominations dropped 40%, from $2.9 million to $1.75 million. During the same period, non-denomination revenue rose from $800,000 to $2.9 million, a jump of 362%. And in June of 2005, for the first time, outside giving ($1.76) surpassed denominational giving ($1.75), officially making the National Council of Churches financed more from non-church sources than from the people in the pews they claim to represent. "Several of these [non-church] groups that the NCC has turned to for financial and other forms of support are so blatantly partisan that they can be accurately described as . . . the shadow Democratic Party," the report's main researcher, John Lomperis, told reporters.
http://nccinterfaith.blogspot.com/2007/02/iran-delegation-press-conference.html
U.S. Religious Delegation Finds Hope in Iran
February 25, 2007
As Christian leaders from the United States, we traveled to the Islamic Republic of Iran at this time of increased tension believing that it is possible to build bridges of understanding between our two countries. We believe military action is not the answer, and that God calls us to just and peaceful relationships within the global community.
We are a diverse group of Christian leaders from United Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite traditions. The Mennonites have 17 years of on the ground experience in Iran. We were warmly welcomed by the Iranian people, and our time in Iran convinced us that religious leaders from both countries can help pave the way for mutual respect and peaceful relations between our nations.
During our visit we met with Muslim and Christian leaders, government officials, and other Iranian people.
Our final day included a meeting with former President Khatami and current President Ahmadinejad. The meeting with President Ahmadinejad was the first time an American delegation had met in Iran with an Iranian president since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The meeting lasted two-and-a-half hours and covered a range of topics, including the role of religion in transforming conflict, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What the delegation found most encouraging from the meeting with President Ahmadinejad was a clear declaration from him that Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons, as well as a statement that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political, not military means. He said, “I have no reservation about conducting talks with American officials if we see some goodwill.”
We believe it is possible for further dialogue and that there can be a new day in U.S. – Iranian relations. The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran. We ask the U.S. government to welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the United States.
As additional steps in building bridges between our nations, we call upon both the U.S. and Iranian governments to:
* immediately engage in direct, face-to-face talks;
images; and* cease using language that defines the other using “enemy”
religious leaders, members of Parliament/Congress, and civil society.* promote more people-to-people exchanges including
As people of faith, we are committed to working toward these and other confidence building measures, which we hope will move our two nations from the precipice of war to a more just and peaceful relationship."
If you vote for Obama, you invited Ahmadinejad to dinner. If he wins, expect alot more invitations.
The head of the Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement criticizing Mennonite and Quaker leaders for hosting a dinner reception for Iran’s president in New York later this month.
The dinner, scheduled for September 25, is touted as a dialogue by the pacifist religious groups, which advocate diplomatic engagement with Iran’s political leadership.
It follows a similar meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held at a chapel last year during his annual visit for the opening of the United Nations’ General Assembly.
“Ahmadinejad represents a rejection of everything these religious groups stand for,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said in a statement Wednesday.
“His speech at Columbia University a year ago showed the futility of attempting to dialogue with a dictator who makes crystal clear his antipathy toward the West, who denies the Holocaust, and who defends the Iranian regime’s willful neglect of basic human rights.”
Foxman said the dinner “tarnished” the reputations of the participating religious groups as peace-seekers.
A spokesman for the Akron, Pennsylvania-based Mennonite Central Committee, which is organizing the dinner, said no one was immediately available for comment.
Other groups involved in hosting the dinner - including the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee - either did not immediately return messages left seeking comment or referred questions to the Mennonite organization.
Representatives from a broad range of Christian ecumenical organizations, including the Episcopal Church, plan to attend the dinner.
“Meeting with people does not mean you agree with them,” said Maureen Shea, director of the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations in Washington. “The more there is inflammatory language going back and forth, the more we feel there needs to be a way for our two countries to communicate.”
Shea, whose group joined a delegation of Christian religious leaders to Iran in 2007, joined the head of the American Friends Service Committee and the international director of the Mennonite Central Committee in sending a letter last month to the Bush administration, encouraging the State Department to open a US office in Teheran, similar to the one in Havana, Cuba. She said she had not received a response.
She said Foxman did not speak for all of American Jewry on Iran, noting that other Jewish groups support diplomatic engagement.
Yet even the most pro-diplomacy Jewish groups aren’t planning to attend the dinner reception for Ahmedinejad.
“We are not going to sit with him, no,” said Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now. “Our position does not endorse unconditional contact and engagement.”
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at the UN on September 23.
UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, who sharply rebuked Iran’s UN ambassador for accusing Israel of making threats on Iran and Ahmedinejad’s safety, declined to comment on the dinner plan.
.
The event is touted as a dialogue by the Mennonite Central Committee, World Council of Churches, and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee. Representatives of the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations plan to attend the dinner.
Representatives of the churches previously visited Iran in February of 2007 and hosted a similar event for Ahmadinejad with the National Council of Churches in September of 2007 at the United Methodist Women's' Building in New York.
Also in attendance at this America haters soiree:
The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic priest from Nicaragua who publicly criticizes the United States's anti-terror war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Norway's prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, who also heads the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights.
Quakers and Mennonites feel a sense of mission to forge peace on a global stage whenever possible. That means being open to long-term dialogue, even with a figure who holds reprehensible views, according to Mark Graham, director of external affairs for the American Friends Service Committee.
"You can't just engage with people with whom you agree on all issues," Graham says. "That leads to a very myopic view of the world. And you miss a lot of opportunities with that approach."
At this point, some pacifists see Ahmadinejad more as an outcast -- at least when he visits the United States -- than a prestigious host or esteemed guest. That leaves them with only one option whenever he extends a dinner invitation.
"At this point in time, there are virtually no other places for the president of the Iran to have discussions with people in the U.S.," Klassen says. "There's an opportunity for discussion, and we don't believe we can just step out and say, `no.' God has given us an opportunity, and it's our responsibility to say `yes."'
July 24, 2008, Jakarta (ENI) Ecumenical News International. An Indonesian religious leader has told a visiting World Council of Churches delegation that Christians in his country are praying for the US Democratic Party presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
"We are praying for Obama because we feel he can help reduce the widespread stigma and misperception that Muslims in Indonesia are fundamentalists," said the Rev. Ishak Pule, chairperson of the Christian Church of Central Sulawesi synod.
Pule was speaking on 19 July as he met members of a WCC group known as a Living Letters team during its visit to communities in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, an eight-hour drive from the Central Sulawesi provincial capital of Palu.
"We in the synod actually communicate more easily with Muslims than with Christian fundamentalists," added Pule, who also invited three Muslim leaders to meet the Living Letters team at his Tentena office.
National Council of Churches -
Partial List of Denominational Membership
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
Alliance of Baptists
American Baptist Churches in the USA
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Church of the Brethren
The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America
The Episcopal Church
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Friends United Meeting
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Hungarian Reformed Church in America
International Council of Community Churches
Korean Presbyterian Church in America
Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
Mar Thoma Church
Moravian Church in America Northern Province
and Southern Province
National Baptist Convention of America
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.
National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
Orthodox Church in America
Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Polish National Catholic Church of America
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
Reformed Church in America
Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada
The Swedenborgian Church
Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America
United Church of Christ
The United Methodist Church
Their agenda: The NCC wants diplomatic relations with the terrorist-sponsored State of Iran, and, indeed, a delegation from the NCC visited Iran in February 2007. Does your tithe support this cause?
The NCC met with the President of the terrorist-sponsored State of Syria, President Bashar Assad in
The sanctuary of our borders are dismissed by the NCC: "...churches are implementing exciting ministries and are seeking additional support and ideas to enhance their support of neighbors who are sometimes dismissed as 'aliens.
Washington, June 29, 2006 --The National Council of Churches USA and other faith groups applauded remarks Wednesday by Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) testifying to his faith in Christ and calling upon progressive politicians to reach out to evangelical Christians.
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"Between 2001 and 2005, revenue from member denominations dropped 40%, from $2.9 million to $1.75 million. During the same period, non-denomination revenue rose from $800,000 to $2.9 million, a jump of 362%. And in June of 2005, for the first time, outside giving ($1.76) surpassed denominational giving ($1.75), officially making the National Council of Churches financed more from non-church sources than from the people in the pews they claim to represent. "Several of these [non-church] groups that the NCC has turned to for financial and other forms of support are so blatantly partisan that they can be accurately described as . . . the shadow Democratic Party," the report's main researcher, John Lomperis, told reporters.
http://nccinterfaith.blogspot.com/2007/02/iran-delegation-press-conference.html
U.S. Religious Delegation Finds Hope in Iran
February 25, 2007
As Christian leaders from the United States, we traveled to the Islamic Republic of Iran at this time of increased tension believing that it is possible to build bridges of understanding between our two countries. We believe military action is not the answer, and that God calls us to just and peaceful relationships within the global community.
We are a diverse group of Christian leaders from United Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite traditions. The Mennonites have 17 years of on the ground experience in Iran. We were warmly welcomed by the Iranian people, and our time in Iran convinced us that religious leaders from both countries can help pave the way for mutual respect and peaceful relations between our nations.
During our visit we met with Muslim and Christian leaders, government officials, and other Iranian people.
Our final day included a meeting with former President Khatami and current President Ahmadinejad. The meeting with President Ahmadinejad was the first time an American delegation had met in Iran with an Iranian president since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The meeting lasted two-and-a-half hours and covered a range of topics, including the role of religion in transforming conflict, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What the delegation found most encouraging from the meeting with President Ahmadinejad was a clear declaration from him that Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons, as well as a statement that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political, not military means. He said, “I have no reservation about conducting talks with American officials if we see some goodwill.”
We believe it is possible for further dialogue and that there can be a new day in U.S. – Iranian relations. The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran. We ask the U.S. government to welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the United States.
As additional steps in building bridges between our nations, we call upon both the U.S. and Iranian governments to:
* immediately engage in direct, face-to-face talks;
images; and* cease using language that defines the other using “enemy”
religious leaders, members of Parliament/Congress, and civil society.* promote more people-to-people exchanges including
As people of faith, we are committed to working toward these and other confidence building measures, which we hope will move our two nations from the precipice of war to a more just and peaceful relationship."
If you vote for Obama, you invited Ahmadinejad to dinner. If he wins, expect alot more invitations.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Sarah Palin:Cherishing Life
Friends,
I understand 400 Rabbis have signed a pro Obama petition. I also understand, by watching a heartbreaking video of a nurse who testified before Obama about signing into law a bill that would limit what is euphemistically called "late term" abortions (the babies are born, then carried to the morgue and allowed to die) that Senator Obama refused to vote in favor of that law. Jews love life. Even our enemies taunt us with that as a weakness. I believe that women should have a choice over their bodies. Jewish law allows abortion if a fetus endangers a woman's life or her well-being. But there is no question that Jewish law is completely pro-life and allowing a baby born alive to die is against Jewish law in every respect.
One of the 400 Rabbis is (surprise!) reform, from a temple called Sukkat Shalom which prides itself on being "freed from the confines of strict ideological definition of Judaism, open to diversity of members personal lives."
I'm taking a wild guess that this means they embrace intermarriage and gays, and probably abortions. Correct me if I'm wrong. Just the right kind of "Rabbi for Obama."
Sarah Palin, poor thing, doesn't have rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew Union College. But in having her Down's Syndrome baby, she showed her values are very similar to my own Jewish values. I guess I just can't embrace the "diversity" of automatically murdering a fetus which might not be perfect.
I applaud this personal integrity, courage and faith that allowed her to make this choice despite pressure to abort. Below, her words on this subject. They are heartwarming.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Gives Birth to Down Baby Despite Abortion Pressure
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Printer friendly page
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 22, 2008
Juneau, AK (LifeNews.com) -- As many as 80 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome become victims of abortion, but Alaska Gov, Sarah Palin didn't let her child become a statistic. Palin, who has deeply-felt pro-life views, gave birth to her fifth child this week and the baby was diagnosed with the condition.
On Tuesday, Palin confirmed her baby, named Trig Paxson, has Down syndrome.
"Trig is beautiful and already adored by us," Palin said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained.
"We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives," she said.
'We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed," the 44 year-old governor added.
Trig was born on Friday, one month before his due date, and he weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces.
Pro-life advocates heaped praise on Palin about the news and said she and her family made a courageous decision to keep the baby.
“I can't help but remember Governor Palin’s campaign slogan ‘Take a Stand,'" Debbie Joslin, the president of Eagle Forum Alaska told LifeNews.com.
"Her choice to value life in a very personal way speaks volumes and gives those of us in the pro-life community in Alaska cause to believe that we truly do have a pro-life leader in charge of our state," she said.
"When so many in our culture have chosen to devalue the lives of those who face special learning disabilities, Governor Palin shines as a great positive role model," Joslin added.
Billy Valentine, a pro-life student leader who worked on the presidential campaign of Sam Brownback, was equally excited.
"Thanks be to God that Gov. Palin is pro-life and the baby wasn't one of the 80% of Down syndrome lives that are aborted each year," he said.
"Say a prayer for Gov. Palin and her family and thank God that the baby is blessed with a pro-life family," Valentine added.
The Palins have four other children including Track, 18, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13 and Piper, 7.
I understand 400 Rabbis have signed a pro Obama petition. I also understand, by watching a heartbreaking video of a nurse who testified before Obama about signing into law a bill that would limit what is euphemistically called "late term" abortions (the babies are born, then carried to the morgue and allowed to die) that Senator Obama refused to vote in favor of that law. Jews love life. Even our enemies taunt us with that as a weakness. I believe that women should have a choice over their bodies. Jewish law allows abortion if a fetus endangers a woman's life or her well-being. But there is no question that Jewish law is completely pro-life and allowing a baby born alive to die is against Jewish law in every respect.
One of the 400 Rabbis is (surprise!) reform, from a temple called Sukkat Shalom which prides itself on being "freed from the confines of strict ideological definition of Judaism, open to diversity of members personal lives."
I'm taking a wild guess that this means they embrace intermarriage and gays, and probably abortions. Correct me if I'm wrong. Just the right kind of "Rabbi for Obama."
Sarah Palin, poor thing, doesn't have rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew Union College. But in having her Down's Syndrome baby, she showed her values are very similar to my own Jewish values. I guess I just can't embrace the "diversity" of automatically murdering a fetus which might not be perfect.
I applaud this personal integrity, courage and faith that allowed her to make this choice despite pressure to abort. Below, her words on this subject. They are heartwarming.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Gives Birth to Down Baby Despite Abortion Pressure
Email this article
Printer friendly page
RSS Newsfeed
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 22, 2008
Juneau, AK (LifeNews.com) -- As many as 80 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome become victims of abortion, but Alaska Gov, Sarah Palin didn't let her child become a statistic. Palin, who has deeply-felt pro-life views, gave birth to her fifth child this week and the baby was diagnosed with the condition.
On Tuesday, Palin confirmed her baby, named Trig Paxson, has Down syndrome.
"Trig is beautiful and already adored by us," Palin said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained.
"We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives," she said.
'We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed," the 44 year-old governor added.
Trig was born on Friday, one month before his due date, and he weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces.
Pro-life advocates heaped praise on Palin about the news and said she and her family made a courageous decision to keep the baby.
“I can't help but remember Governor Palin’s campaign slogan ‘Take a Stand,'" Debbie Joslin, the president of Eagle Forum Alaska told LifeNews.com.
"Her choice to value life in a very personal way speaks volumes and gives those of us in the pro-life community in Alaska cause to believe that we truly do have a pro-life leader in charge of our state," she said.
"When so many in our culture have chosen to devalue the lives of those who face special learning disabilities, Governor Palin shines as a great positive role model," Joslin added.
Billy Valentine, a pro-life student leader who worked on the presidential campaign of Sam Brownback, was equally excited.
"Thanks be to God that Gov. Palin is pro-life and the baby wasn't one of the 80% of Down syndrome lives that are aborted each year," he said.
"Say a prayer for Gov. Palin and her family and thank God that the baby is blessed with a pro-life family," Valentine added.
The Palins have four other children including Track, 18, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13 and Piper, 7.
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