Ed Koch, JWR.com

 

Sarah Palin is a phenomenon. She is plucky and, in a winsome way, in your face. Referring to middle class America as Joe-Six-Pack and to herself as a hockey mom, she debated last week with veteran Senator Joe Biden, who has served in the Senate for 36 years and knows his way around Washington. I have never met Governor Palin. I have known Joe Biden for many years. I really like Joe and share his positions on most issues.

 

I admire Sarah Pain's spunkiness and feel she has not been treated fairly by the media, which has tried to make her look foolish and provincial. When she was interviewed by Charles Gibson and asked the question, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?" I thought it unfair. Why? I consider myself to be knowledgeable on foreign affairs and I did not know what the Bush Doctrine referred to until later when it was described as support for preemptive military action. However, that term — Bush Doctrine — has also been applied to other policies of the administration. I certainly do believe in the right to take preemptive action to thwart an enemy's attack upon us. Sarah Palin later explained when she learned what the Bush Doctrine stood for, that she did too. Read article.

Salena Zito, PittsburghLive.com

 

In Pittsburgh for a fundraiser Friday night, Sarah Palin defended her firing of an Alaska official shortly before a report was released alleging her action was an abuse of power and a violation of state ethics law.

 

The Republican vice presidential candidate spoke to the Tribune-Review after the fundraiser, but before the Alaska Legislature released an investigator's report into whether the governor acted improperly in the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan. Critics said Palin fired Monegan because Monegan would not fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law Michael Wooten, a state trooper.

 

"It is important for a governor to take on the responsibility of making sure that everybody in her cabinet is in the right place at the right time to best serve the public," Palin said. "I dismissed a cabinet member because he wasn't the right person at the right time in his position -- dismissed him having nothing to do with telling him to hire or fire anybody else." Read article.

Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media.com

 

So far we know that the meltdown of Frannie and Freddie, abetted by Wall Street greed, caused the larger financial panic. Yet, there is little outrage that a Franklin Raines or Jim Johnson gave money to oversight members of Congress, hid behind a mantle of political-correctness in boasting about home ownership for everyone, and then cooked the books and borrowed to the hilt to justify mega-bonuses for themselves and their friends.

 

This was no different from Enron, but Freddie and Fannie miscreants had far more politically-correct cover than did Ken Lay. I don’t think a special prosecutor will ever look into the maze of conflict of interest problems of a Barney Frank, or the political associations of a Franklin Raines, or Congressional members who took cash or discounted loans and then signed off on these massive frauds.

 

While Obama is right that we need more Wall Street oversight, he cannot or will not explain the relationship of a Raines (informal?) or Johnson (once official) with his campaign, or his past support for resisting regulation of these entities, or his own receipt of funds from them. Read article.

Victor Davis Hanson

 

Of course, this is a Democratic year. The public is tired of George Bush and eight years of an incumbent administration. War, Wall Street, and the absence of a conservative Reagan-like charismatic figure should make it easy for a Democrat to win the presidency. After a nearly miraculous McCain surge in September, following the Republican Convention and Palin nomination, the Republicans are once again floundering — and a sense of utter despair has now set in among conservatives.

 

Wall Street melted down. The New York–Washington media elite went ballistic over vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Alaskan mom of five in near suicidal fashion was ordered by the campaign to put her head in the Charlie Gibson-Katie Couric guillotine. A trailing McCain — while sober and workmanlike in the first two debates — failed to close the ring and hammer the agile Obama as a charismatic charlatan.

 

The public tires of all the media slant, the celebrity rants, and the shills in popular culture, that in concert hourly berate, beg, threaten, and ridicule voters on behalf of Obama. We are supposed to accept Obama’s apotheosis, replete with Latinate seal, Greek columns, biblical injunctions about the seas and atmosphere, and prophesies that he is The One whom we have been waiting for. The creepy effect of ordering us to accept our own salvation becomes cumulative. So there is a quiet unease among the voters, as there always is in America, when someone finger-points and lectures them what they must do — or else! Read article.

P.J. Gladnick, NewsBusters.org

 

The mainstream media thought that the membership of Todd Palin, who is not a candidate for any office, in the Alaska Independence Party important enough to report in such outlets as the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and the New York Times, among others. So now that Barack Obama's membership in the far left New Party has been unearthed, will they report his membership in that Socialist organization?

 

Proof of Obama's membership in the New Party was discovered by the Politically Drunk On Power blog:

 

In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards.

 

After allegations surfaced in early summer over the 'New Party's' endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was never a member of either organization. The DSA and 'New Party' then systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA's New Party. Read article.       ***Also GO HERE.

Joseph Rosenberger, American Thinker.com

 

Facilitative behavior is exactly what Candidate Obama did in his first debate with Candidate McCain, when he quickly agreed with the his winner-take-all opponent, Candidate McCain, some eight times. The executive, Candidate McCain looked and focused on us -- behind the camera, and gave his opponent no quarter. Because the McCain campaign made a TV ad mocking Obama's repeated statements that he agreed with McCain, the second debate saw no such statements.

 

One does not facilitate peace with an enemy; one contains the enemy by threatening its survival, by all means necessary, until they stay cooped up, unconditionally surrender or get replaced. One does not facilitate a pointless diplomacy with those who mean to bury us; one chooses the best terrain to fight and destroy them.

 

If you want executive leadership, look for someone who has experience running things, like mayors, governors, and entrepreneurs. They direct. They demand completed staff work. They surround themselves with people who have a proven record of getting things done. This is precisely why Governor Palin has sparked our excitement -- a true executive voice, adored by her state.

 

Sadly, Candidate Obama is categorically unqualified by this measure, and Candidate McCain can't make up his mind about it. Read article.

 

David Limbaugh, WND.com

 

Democrats assume Republicans are raising Obama's many questionable relationships in a desperation effort to salvage the election. You might think this is splitting hairs, but I believe the reason is that these relationships scare the daylights out of us.

 

Conservatives were very much opposed to Bill Clinton for myriad reasons, but with decades in elective office in Arkansas, at least he wasn't a stealth candidate. Though rumors and mysteries abounded, Clinton was hardly a blank slate who emerged out of nowhere.

 

Obama is different. He burst onto the political scene and has risen with such alacrity that even many of his supporters don't have a clue what he's about or where he would take America.

 

It's no wonder the conspiracy types are whispering that he's the Manchurian candidate. It's not as if he's embracing his past; it's more as if he's concealing it, and for good reason. People have a right to know just how radical this man is, because America's destiny is in the balance. Read article.

 

Did Bill Ayres Write "Dreams from My Father?"

Jack Cashill.com

 

Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write Dreams From My Father, he had written very close to nothing.

 

As an undergraduate at Occidental College, Obama had composed what he calls some “very bad poetry,” and he does not sell himself short.

 

Then somehow, those few years later, this 33 year-old amateur with no paper trail beyond a hack legal note and a poem about fig-stomping apes produced what Time Magazine has called--with a straight face-- “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

 

The public is asked to believe that Obama did this on his own, almost as though he were some sort of literary idiot savant. I don’t buy this canard for a minute.

 

In one particular reference in Dreams I believe Ayers shows his hand and makes my argument very nearly conclusive. Here “Obama” describes the black nationalist message:

 

“A steady attack on the white race . . . served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair.”

 

As a writer, especially in the pre-Google era of Dreams, I would never have used an image as specific as “ballast” unless I knew exactly what I was talking about.

 

Ayers knew. Obama did not. Read article.

 

Stanley Kurtz, NRO.com

 

Barack Obama is now apparently denying his ties with Acorn. Here’s what he’s posted on the subject at his "Fight the Smears" website. These claims are contradicted by several sources, a number of which I linked to in my piece, "Inside Obama’s Acorn." In that piece, you’ll find a link to a Los Angeles Times piece in which Chicago Acorn leader Madeline Talbott is described as so impressed with Obama that "she invited him to help train her staff." You’ll also see a link to a statement by Obama himself, made in pursuit of Acorn’s endorsement.

 

Obama says: "I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." In my piece, "No Liberation," you’ll find a link to a 1995 profile of Obama which says: "Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side." My articles provide background, but the quotes and links I’ve presented here, and in the past, pretty conclusively contradict Obama’s current claims at "Fight the Smears." Read article.

 

Charles Krauthammer, JWR.com

 

Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.

 

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

 

McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate. Read article.

 

Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

 

What about those "real issues" that Barack Obama's supporters in the media say we should get back to, whenever some new unsavory fact about his past comes out?

 

The education situation in Obama's home base of Chicago is one of the worst in the nation for the children-- and one of the best for the unionized teachers.

 

Fewer than one-third of Chicago's high-school juniors meet the statewide standards on tests. Only 6 percent of the youngsters who enter Chicago high schools become college graduates by the time they are 25 years old.

 

Chicago teachers are doing well. A beginning teacher, fresh out of college, earns more than the city's median income and that can rise to more than $100,000 over the years.

 

That's for teaching 6 hours a day, 9 months of the year.

 

In his book "Dreams from My Father," Obama said candidly that black teachers and administrators "defend the status quo with the same skill and vigor as their white counterparts of two decades before."

 

It is not a question of Obama's not knowing. He has demonstrated conclusively that he knows what is going on. But, for all his eloquent words, he has voted consistently for the teachers' unions and the status quo. "I owe those unions," he has said frankly. "When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't consider this corrupting in any way."

 

Only other politicians' special interests are called "special interests" by Barack Obama, whose world-class ability to rationalize is his most frightening skill. Read article.

TexasFred.net

 

Everything on the Post Below is Hyperlinked to a site within the Chicago Democratic party archives, there is no conjecture, no guessing, The fact is that as recently as 1996 Senator Obama was an active member of the Chicago Democratic Socialist Party:

 

On their website the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) has a description of their political perspective called Where We Stand. It says, in part,

 

We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.

 

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.

 

At least according to its newsletter called the New Ground ,Senator Barack Obama attended at least a few meetings of the Chicago Chapter of this group in 1996. And from the way he was described in the newsletter he “talked the talk” and “walked the walk” Read article.

Bob Owens, Pajamas Media.com

 

As everyone concentrates on Bill Ayers, a bigger story may be Obama's link to Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

 

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has consistently tried to discount the depth of his relationship with Bill Ayers, one of the founding members of the Weather Underground, a radical left-wing terrorist group that formed in 1969 and was most famous for a string of bombings in the 1970s.

 

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin hammered Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn over the weekend, stating that the Democratic presidential candidate “palled around with terrorists.”

 

Obama campaign manager David Axelrod and other campaign surrogates are now furtively trying to claim today that Obama “didn’t know the history” of Ayers and Dohrn as the leaders of America’s most infamous left-wing terrorist group when Obama met at their home for a political “coming out” in 1995, but their attempt to make pretend that Barack Obama didn’t know of their terrorist past is laughable.

 

By 1995, Barack Obama had known Bill Ayers at least eight years since their shared involvement in the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, if not longer. Bernardine Dohrn, once labeled “the most dangerous woman in America” by none other than J. Edgar Hoover, was also well known as the inspiration for the 1988 movie Running on Empty. Subtle terrorists they were not. As noted in the New York Times, Obama has tried to minimize his relationship with Ayers, dismissing him as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”

 

Axelrod also tried to excuse the extent of Obama’s involvement with Ayers, stating, “Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school. … They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

 

It’s an obvious fiction pitched by Axelrod, since the Obama children are presently in elementary school, while Ayers’ children are all grown adults, but the Ayers-Obama family connection doesn’t stop at the imaginary connections between the children.

 

Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife, has largely escaped recent scrutiny, but that lack of attention doesn’t reduce her role as either a leader — and some may argue, the leader — of the Weathermen. Nor can it mask her ties to both Barack and Michelle Obama. It’s now a family affair.

 

According to a reputable Pajamas Media source that wishes to remain anonymous and knew the Dohrn family, Bernardine Dohrn “always believes the ends justify the means” and is the head of the Ayers-Dohrn household. Dohrn was the violent, arguably pathological Leninist core of the Revolutionary Youth Movement, which led her and allied militants to fight for control of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The SDS split as a result of the Dohrn-led revolt and the Revolutionary Youth Movement split again, with Dohrn’s faction becoming the Weather Underground. Read article.

Dick Morris, Vote.com

 

In the best tradition of Bill Clinton's famous declaration that the answer to the question of whether or not he was having an affair with Monica depended on "what the definition of 'is' is," Barack Obama was clearly splitting hairs and concealing the truth when he said that William Ayers was "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

 

The records of the administration of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), released last week by the University of Illinois, show that the Ayers-Obama connection was, in fact, an intimate collaboration and that it led to the only executive or administrative experience in Obama's life.

 

After Walter Annenberg's foundation offered several hundred million dollars to American public schools in the mid-'90s, William Ayers applied for $50 million for Chicago. The purpose of his application was to secure funds to "raise political consciousness" in Chicago's public schools. After he won the grant, Ayers's group chose Barack Obama to distribute the money. Between 1995 and 1999, Obama distributed the $50 million and raised another $60 million from other civic groups to augment it. In doing so, he was following Ayers's admonition to grant the funds to "external" organizations, like American Community Organizations for Reform

 

Now (ACORN) was able to pair with schools and conduct programs to radicalize the students and politicize them. Reading, math and science achievement tests counted for little in the CAC grants, but the school's success in preaching a radical political agenda determined how much money they got. Read article.

 

Maggie Gallagher, NY Post.com

 

When John Murtagh was 9 years old, Bill Ayers' friends tried to kill him.

 

"I remember my mother's pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside," wrote Murtagh recently in City Journal.

 

It wasn't personal. John's dad was a judge presiding over a trial of some Black Panthers. John still remembers the red graffiti on the sidewalk the next morning: "Free the Panther 21; The Viet Cong Have Won; Kill the Pigs."

 

As best he recalls, Bernardine Dohrn, who's now Ayers' wife, first claimed credit for bombing John's home in 1970.

 

John Murtagh is a now lawyer and Yonkers city councilman running for the state Senate on the GOP ticket. I reached him this week through his campaign. It wasn't hard. Has Barack Obama ever tried?

 

Has Barack Obama ever tried? Read article.

 

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