Powerlineblog.com

 

Last April, Obama dismissed the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." But in fact, Ayers and Obama were partners in the Chicago Annenburg Challenge (CAC), an organization whose mandate was the reformation of Chicago's public schools.

 

Obama was CAC's first board chairman, serving in that capacity for four years and remaining on the board for two more. Ayers was the founder of CAC and, according to Kurtz, its guiding spirit. Moreover, the archive documents Kurtz reviewed show that Ayers was part of a working group of five that assembled the initial board. Ayers then sat as an ex-officio member of the board Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Obama. The two worked together to craft CAC bylaws.

 

These findings demolish the Obama campaign claim that Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board.

 

Obama's personal attempt to write Ayers off as some guy in his neighborhood fares no better. Ayers helped put Obama in the top position of an organization that distributed more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical activists. Moreover, Kurtz shows that Ayers did not bow out of the process after helping to install Obama. To the contrary Ayers collaborated with Obama n determining how to distribute this money. During this period, Ayers co-chaired something called the "Collaborative," which worked with Obama's group to shape education policy. In essence Ayers formulated the policy that would inform the distribution of funds; Obama headed the body that distributed the money accordingly. Read article.

IBD Editorials.com

 

Election '08: At an education forum in Venezuela, Bill Ayers showed the real issue is not his terrorist past. It's the socialist revolutionary agenda that he and Barack Obama want to impose on the nation's schools.

 

Still more evidence of how the media are in the tank for Obama was evident in Tom Brokaw's description of Ayers on Sunday's "Meet The Press."

 

"School reformer" is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s.

 

Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal's Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.

 

An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America's schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.

 

With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane." Read article.

Lisa Schiffren, NRO.com

 

At this point, the McCain campaign’s goal should be to raise doubts about Obama’s trustworthiness, and thus ability to lead. This will require a strategy and a tactic.

 

The campaign’s strategy should be to attack from all directions: character, past associations, political practice in Chicago, “present” votes, lack of a record of accomplishment. It should question what it means for a law professor to leave no academic paper trail, yet produce two well-written autobiographies.

 

Tactically, it should have Sarah Palin and surrogates — Giuliani, Gingrich, Romney, Pawlenty, Crist, and Sanford — blast away from a few different angles a day. Have the articulate ones make complete, coherent cases on each issue.

 

Make Barack Obama defend himself, fill in the mysterious gaps, and list concrete outcomes from his work. We shall see how much grace he brings to that situation. Attack hard enough to make the American people pay attention. Any wavering voter should know the reasons that a vote for Obama is a risk, and they should know what it guarantees.

 

McCain must rise to this moment and be crystal clear about his future economic policy. And it has to be good. Let people know he understand the pain we are all facing together. Because making voters wary of Obama, which they have resisted pretty strenuously heretofore, doesn’t get them to the polls for the Republican candidate.

 

Here are ten suggestions for the campaign: Read article.

 

Yuval Levin, NRO.com

 

Very soon after she was picked to be McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin was attacked by Obama campaign spokesmen and a Democratic member of Congress for once being seen wearing a Pat Buchanan button. She had an answer and the campaign offered it. Yet now we are asked to believe that it’s somehow inappropriate to inquire why Barack Obama’s political career began in the home of an admitted and unrepentant domestic terrorist of the radical left? “Who is Barack Obama?” is not an irrelevant question given the job Obama is seeking, and it’s a question he has sought mightily to avoid answering.

 

The veil of secrecy he has thrown over his past (journalists have been denied access to his state legislative office records, documents about state earmarks he distributed in Illinois, a list of his legal clients, his state bar application, billing records related to Tony Rezko, medical records, academic records — all of which are the sort of documents candidates routinely make public) forces the question all the more. Read article.

 

IBD Editorials.com

 

Sarah takes the gloves off and talks about Obama "palling around with terrorists." The New York Times says their "paths have crossed sporadically." But William Ayers isn't the only terrorist supporting Obama.

 

In the infamous interview with Katie Couric that sent conservatives panicking, one of the patronizing questions Palin was asked was what newspapers and magazines did she read. One of them, she told supporters Saturday, is the New York Times.

 

While campaigning Saturday before an audience of at least 15,000 in Southern California, the Alaska governor mentioned an article in that day's Times. It dealt with a matter some consider irrelevant — Barack Obama's association with Weather Underground founder William Ayers.

 

The piece was no expose. The title, "Obama And '60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths," suggests their relationship was trivial, old news. As Obama's defenders remind us, Ayers bombed buildings like the Pentagon when Obama was 8 years old.

 

With Obama/Ayers, we have ample documentation their association was not just casual, but in fact meaningful.

 

"If you're in public life, you ought to say, 'I don't want to be associated with this guy,' " observes columnist Steve Chapman. "If John McCain had a long association with a guy who'd bombed abortion clinics, I don't think people would say, 'That's ancient history.' " Read article.

 

Editors, NRO.com

 

There is nothing dishonorable about drawing attention to Barack Obama’s ties to Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, or Bill Ayers. In each relationship, Obama displayed a willingness to tolerate corruption or radicalism if it helped him get ahead in politics. The mainstream media is usually quick to detect this kind of pattern in ambitious pols, but they’ve been too preoccupied painting halos around Obama’s head to notice it in him. 

 

Let’s take them one by one. Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in the late 1980s, during his community-organizer days. National Review’s Byron York has reported that Obama was having a hard time getting black churches involved in his community-organizing efforts, and that other black pastors had told him he wouldn’t have much luck until he joined a church.

 

The New Republic has reported that Obama joined Trinity around this time because he “was taken with Wright’s worldview.” The reporting of NR’s Stanley Kurtz has revealed that in the late 1980s, Wright’s worldview entailed a burning hatred of Western capitalism and a belief that black assimilation into the middle class was a form of self-enslavement to an irredeemably racist system.

 

Obama claims he wasn’t in church when Wright delivered some of his most inflammatory sermons — including his infamous “God damn America” speech the Sunday after 9/11 — but it is impossible to believe that Obama belonged to Jeremiah Wright’s church for more than 20 years without realizing that the man was an anti-American black nationalist. Of course, when Wright’s radicalism became a liability to Obama’s presidential ambitions, he un-joined Trinity and cut Wright loose, just like that.

 

The public was treated to a different verse of the same song when Obama’s unbelievably corrupt friend Tony Rezko was convicted on 16 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, soliciting bribes, and money laundering. Read article.

 

Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO.com

 

Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned.

 

Why? I suspect it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.

 

You might think the Times would be more curious. After all, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has already lied to the Gray Lady about the origins of his relationship with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Back in May, in a cheery profile of Obama’s early Chicago days, the Times claimed (emphasis is mine):

 

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

 

Now look, anyone who gave five seconds of thought to that passage smelled a rat. Ayers and Dohrn are passionate radical activists who lived as fugitives for a decade. There’s no way they held a political coming-out party for someone who was unknown to them. Obviously, they already knew him well enough by then to feel very comfortable. They might have been sympathetic to a relative stranger, but sponsoring such a gathering in one’s living room is a strong endorsement.

 

In a a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”

 

Be clear on that much: Whether clothed as a terrorist or an academic, Ayers has made abundantly clear in his public statements, both before and after he established a working relationship and mutual admiration society with Obama, that he remains a revolutionary fueled by hatred of the United States. And while Obama now ludicrously pleads ignorance about Ayers’s terrorism — the terrorism that made the unabashed Ayers an icon of the Left — understand that this rabid anti-Americanism is the common denominator running through Obama’s orbit of influences.

 

And now, even the Times now knows it’s been had. Read article.

 

Mark Skousen, Human Events.com

 

“We’re ready to play offense for organized labor. It’s time we had a president who didn’t choke saying the word ‘union.’ A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best: organize our workers. . . . I will make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States. . . . ” ~ Barack Obama

 

"We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election." ~ George McGovern

 

If Obama is elected president, which is highly likely according to the latest political futures market Intrade (now a 65% chance of winning), get ready for a unionized America and the end of the worker's right to a secret ballot. Read article.

 

Karl Rove, Newsweek.com

 

Palin's ties to 'everyday Americans' aren't an argument for her candidacy. But let's treat her ability to inspire the public for what it is: an asset, not a liability.

 

Sarah Palin is a rising star who accentuates John McCain's maverick strengths and a "hockey mom" who has developed a powerful tie to ordinary voters.

 

That link isn't itself an argument for Palin. But being able to connect with, and inspire, the public is an asset —not a liability. As for Jon's argument against "everyday Americans" as political leaders, many great presidents have been more average than elitist. Ronald Reagan, from Eureka College, was a far better leader than Woodrow Wilson, a former president of Princeton. Wilson would have given you 100 Supreme Court opinions he disagreed with, whether you wanted to listen or not.

 

Barack Obama has also introduced Joe Biden as a Joe Six-Pack, saying, "His family didn't have much money … sometimes moving in with the in-laws or working weekends to make ends meet." Biden himself rarely misses a chance to say, "I was an Irish Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who, like many of yours in tough economic times, fell on hard times." Both veep candidates are trying to portray themselves as ordinary folks. Read article.

 

Israel Insider.com

 

A blogger's painstaking research into suspicious campaign contributions to the Obama campaign hit paydirt, as the mainstream media plagiarized her efforts and the Republican National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

 

The blogger, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, documented -- and Israel Insider reported -- numerous suspicious donations out of Gaza, which were later claimed to be for T-shirt purchases. The shirt explanation, however, didn't wash, and the Obama campaign has been left to explain why contributions that it said were returned apparently were not.

 

But the real story appears to be the sheer magnitude of such small and unaccounted for contributions, which may amount to tens of millions of dollars. There are indications that many of these contributions have come from the Arab world. Read article.

 

Donald Lambro, Washington Times.com

 

Obama thinks people at the top don't pay enough taxes and would raise the top rate to nearly 40 percent, even though the Internal Revenue Service notes the top 10 percent pay the most income taxes. His running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said it was unpatriotic for wealthier Americans to oppose Mr. Obama's proposed tax increases.

 

But the dirty little "income redistribution" secret in Mr. Obama's plan is that he would use that money to give refundable tax credits to lower-income workers who pay no income taxes.

 

Mr. McCain can regain the political offensive on the economy by tearing into Mr. Obama's plan to raise taxes on corporations and investors at a time when businesses are struggling to survive and desperately need capital to see them through hard times. Voters in fear of losing their jobs can identify with this. They know this is no time for the IRS to be sending business people higher tax bills when they can't pay the bills they face now. The lifeblood of our economy is capital - a word Mr. Obama never utters. But the core of his plan to fix the economy is to raise taxes on capital investment. John F. Kennedy would have opposed his plan. Read article.

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