Obama and Associates, P.U.

Note:  You might want to start at the Barack Obama Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine. Barack Obama seems to have associated himself with a number of people and organizations that are, to say the least, out of step with most Americans. On this page: Overviews. ACORN. Michelle Obama. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.       What evidence lurks at the University of Illinois? Frank Marshall Davis. Chicago. The Center for American Progress. Other questionable associates and endorsements. Tony Rezko. ... and don't forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his Black Liberation Theology. Overviews Our Marxist Wizard of Oz.  His mother was an unabashed hippie from 1960s central casting.  His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya.  While his father wasn't around much, his devoutly progressive grandparents arranged for him to be mentored during his adolescent years by a dues paying member of the U.S. Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis.  When he went to college, he was attracted to the Marxist professors and student activists, according to his own published memoirs.  When he graduated, he moved to Chicago and became an instructor for the left-wing extremist organization ACORN in the social manipulation methods of radical Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky. The curse of Saul Alinsky.  "Rules for Radicals" is dedicated to Lucifer, who is praised by Alinsky, both for being "the first radical" and for winning himself a kingdom.  In it, Alinsky condemns the state of the modern world, blames capitalism, boasts about his past rabble-rousing successes, then explains in detail several ways to turn citizens against each other to achieve political goals.  The substance is mostly amoral, often immoral, advice on how to change public sentiment.  It is essentially an instruction guide on how to foment strife, turning neighbor against neighbor until the innately civilized desire to compromise forces a political opponent to acquiesce. Muslim-leftist radical in the White House.  Barack Hussein Obama is the most successful enemy penetration of the US Government in American history.  During his lifetime, he was nurtured, mentored and supported by radical leftist and fundamentalist Islamic elements both of which hate the United States and seek its demise by whatever means necessary.  Obama's immediate family were close to the Communist Party or sympathetic to its aims.  His mother Stanley Ann Dunham has been described by former classmates as a "fellow traveler."  His grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham arranged Obama's mentorship by Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, originally from Chicago and the former editor of the Chicago Communist paper, the Star. Meeting Young Obama.  [Scroll down]  Whatever impact our encounter might have had on him, I know something about what Barack Obama believed in 1980.  At that time, the future president was a doctrinaire Marxist revolutionary, although perhaps — for the first time — considering conventional politics as a more practical road to socialism.  Knowing this, I think I have a responsibility to place on the public record my account of this incident from our president's past. Even Republicans Rejected Info About Obama's Past.  What would you do if you knew that the top Democrat running for president was lying about his past?  That is the question I was faced with in 2008.  I had met the young Barack Obama while he was a sophomore at Occidental College, and I knew that his commitment to socialism was deep, genuine, and longstanding. How Nixon Created Obama.  Obama's idol Malcolm X was Mr. Racial Revenge.  Jerry Wright hammered that message home for twenty years.  But then, Obama's mentor "Frank" was one enraged black guy for the CPUSA in Hawaii.  Little Barry never heard anything different in his life.  He was brainwashed by nearly every significant adult in his life path.  No wonder he looks so out of place.  He's never known a normal person in his life. The Un-American American President.  Obama's teen years were spent living with his maternal grandparents on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  There he met a family friend, communist, purported pedophile, and his eventual mentor, the radical poet Frank Marshall Davis.  Obama's connections to radical leftists are numerous and well-known.  He's admitted to attending socialist meetings and participated in a rally organized by the Democratic Socialists of America.  In 1996, he sought and received the endorsement of the far left group The New Party.  He has worked with, supported, and attempted to shield from investigation the group ACORN which was recently convicted of massive voter fraud.  Obama's White House is chock-full of radical leftist, anti-American advisors.  As a 20-year attendee at Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama was steeped in Black Liberation Theology which is rooted in the collectivist philosophy of Karl Marx. Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and Obama:  Tracing the president's behavior and opinions back to the source. Obama Might Be a Socialist.  [Recently], Howard Dean gave a speech where he insinuated that anyone who says "Obama is a Socialist" is crazy, ignorant, racist, or extreme.  Funny, a recent national poll shows that a majority (55%) of Americans believe "Socialist" best describes Obama.  Another poll shows the Democrat Party is filled with people who identify with Socialism.  I say, it's time for them to come out of the closet.  I ought to know.  I was Obama's college classmate at Columbia University Class of '83.  Our college was dominated by Socialists and Marxists who hated capitalism and America. Obama and Me.  [Scroll down]  I had finally amassed enough documentation to determine that he was not the centrist he affected to be but a far-left ideologue, that he was a gyrating opportunist who could reverse his proclamations on a dime to suit the occasion, that he had neither knowledge of nor competence in the complexities of foreign affairs, that he was an unabashed plagiarist in his stump speeches, that there was no chance of him becoming a "post racial" president but rather a demagogue who would sharpen racial tensions, that his grasp of real-world economics was shaky to non-existent, that he was an unnervingly ignorant man (e.g. the Austrian language) as well as a showboat (e.g., the fake classical pillars), that he was associated with some of the most dubious people in the political, academic, and religious communities, and that he would waste little time putting the screws on Israel while flattering and appeasing the Islamic world. Obama's Radical Past.  On the afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan's Cooper Union to attend a "Socialist Scholars Conference."  There Obama discovered his vocation as a community organizer, as well as a political program to guide him throughout his life. ... In the early 1980s, America's socialists discovered what Saul Alinsky had always known:  "Community organizing" is a euphemism behind which advocates of a radical vision of America could advance their cause without the bothersome label "socialist" drawing adverse attention to their efforts. The Manchurian President.  American journalist, author and radio host, Aaron Klein, along with historian and researcher, Brenda J. Elliott, blow the lid off the dome of silence surrounding the Obama administration as they boldly unmask the nation's 44th president in their latest chilling monograph, "The Manchurian President:  Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists."  Providing close to 900 footnotes and countless pages of documentation, they reveal surreptitious ties to radical leftists of all stripes. A Stranger in Our Midst.  [Scroll down slowly]  This disquiet was a slow realization.  Awareness began with Obama's odd pre-presidency associations, decades of being oblivious to Rev. Wright's anti-American ranting, his enduring friendship with the terrorist guy-in-the-neighborhood Bill Ayers, and the Saul Alinsky-flavored anti-capitalist community activism.  Further add a hazy personal background — an Indonesian childhood, shifting official names, and a paperless-trail climb through elite educational institutions.  None of this disqualified Obama from the presidency; rather, this background just doesn't fit with the conventional political résumé. Does Obama Employ the Marxist Doctrine of Creative Destruction?  [Scroll down slowly]  Barack Obama has experienced an almost total lifelong immersion in socialism.  He has had a nearly complete dependence upon leftist and even communist contacts and friends during his childhood, education and rise to power.  Therefore, wouldn't it be exceedingly odd if Barack weren't at least a little bit communist at heart? Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.  Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors — Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others.  David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.  Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. Finally!  Somebody Remembers Obama at Occidental.  Colossal efforts have been made to conceal Obama's school records along with the enigmatic birth certificate.  The president has elucidated little about his days at Occidental or Columbia other than to affirm his affection for radical, anti-American Marxists. ... There is nothing in Obama's background to suggest he is anything but a socialist in the Marxist tradition.  His father was a socialist economist, his mother unabashedly sympathetic to socialist causes.  His parents met in a Russian class when Russia was still the Soviet Union.  His most important childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was an unapologetic communist and member of the Communist Party USA.  His friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are socialists who advocate the violent overthrow of the United States government.  The "best education of his life" came from Saul Alinsky, yet another socialist. From Red, White and Blue to Just Plain Red.  [Scroll down]  Even lunkheads who managed to sleep all the way through 2008 should be able to figure out that, as president, Obama hasn't changed his colors, but only his address.  His circle of acquaintances has certainly widened, but it hasn't improved.  All you have to do is look at the thugs in ACORN and the SEIU, at people like self-proclaimed Communist Van Jones, who serves as one of Obama's czars, and Jeff Jones, another close advisor, who joined with Bill Ayers in creating the terrorist group known as the Weathermen. It's Not Socialism, It's Communism.  We know that he [Barack Obama] was greatly influenced by Marxists or people who viewed Communism sympathetically, not the least of which were his grandparents who introduced him to a mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA.  Obama wrote that he was drawn to Marxists among his teachers in college.  He began his political career in the home of former Weatherman Bill Ayers.  These days he is praised by Communists in Cuba and Venezuela.  He sided with a Leftist former president of Honduras who tried to illegally alter its constitution. Obama's never found guilty by association.  Suppose it was revealed that the pastor who had married George and Laura Bush, baptized their two daughters and ministered to their spiritual needs for 20 years was a raving white supremacist who, from the pulpit, preached the separation of the races, claimed that the promiscuity of African-Americans had quickened the spread of AIDS and mused about how America might be improved if black people were sent back to Africa. ... Now what if on top of all this, it was revealed that George Bush had once done work for an organization that then stuffed ballot boxes to get him elected and routinely counselled clients on how to cheat on their taxes? The Communists Behind Obama's Health Care Goals.  Barack Obama did not conceive of socialized medicine on his own.  His acceptance of such a system was cultivated and nurtured by the same types of Marxist revolutionaries with whom he has surrounded himself throughout his entire adult life — and who are now shaping the major policy agendas of his administration. A U.S. President, Raised on KGB Propaganda.  From his communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis to the unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Barack Obama has always gravitated towards people holding radical leftist views akin to those of [Manuel] Zelaya.  He eagerly promoted leftist ideology as an ACORN activist and later when he taught and developed theories that opposed the American system of individual liberties in favor of unsustainable group entitlements at the expense of producers — theories that advocated placing the people under the controlling "care" of the state. Malkin Exposes Obama's Government by Cronyism.  Merriam-Webster defines a crony as a longtime friend or companion.  But the word when used in a political context is a pejorative.  Culture of Corruption reminds readers that people should be judged by the company they keep and that "no one, not even Barack Obama, can drain a swamp by flooding it."  A must read for conservatives and all those now suffering from Obama-buyers' remorse. Send Obama packing via the 14th Amendment.  I find myself ambivalent concerning Barack Hussein Obama's birth record and since so many columnists and bloggers have dedicated reams of text about that subject, I felt it better to look at another side of the issue of Presidential legitimacy.  With regard to what Obama has done as both a private citizen and as an elected official of this country, has he by his own actions made himself ineligible for high elected office? Obama:  The Hollow Man.  Another downside of Obama as chameleon is that he has made poor choices of political allies and friends.  That is a weakness that his critics on the Right have hit hard.  They repeat the names Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright, and William Ayers like spells.  They portray the men behind the names as dangerous villains, but the men are not.  Alinsky and Ayers are (or were — Alinsky is dead) pathetic radical poseurs driven by middle-class self-loathing.  Wright is a media whore who will say outrageous things as if on command, whenever cameras roll.  Their significance comes merely from the fact that Obama didn't have the sense to distance himself from them.  He claims that he didn't know about Ayers' criminal fugitive past when he first met him.  Well, maybe the president is really that stupid.  More likely, the other people in the room accepted Ayers, so Obama did too.  No integrity. Saul Alinksy's American Dream.  I recently found a tattered old copy of Saul Alinsky's Reveille for Radicals in a used bookstore.  It's underlined and marked up, and it appears to have been passed among several different owners since it was printed in 1969.  (The book itself was first published in 1946).  It is, of course, the classic handbook for "community organizers," or those seeking to instruct grassroots democracy on how to get what it wants — or at least the right kinds of people.  There were tricks and secret levers and all kinds of hidden methods by which a group of protesters, united into one mind, can achieve their goals, whatever those goals might be.  "The system," "the establishment," "the oppressors" — these were, if nothing, stagnant and half-asleep; once roused, they would be more willing to respond with brute force.  But like all heavy punches, such force could be avoided and manipulated.  Such was the goal of Alinsky's book. Chicago, Obama, and Health Care Reform:  There has been no lack of writing about the influence of Marxist Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama's political ideology.  But what appears to have escaped notice is the influence of the political culture of Chicago on Barack Obama.  These influences, of course, are not the same.  Alinsky was a formidable opponent of the Chicago Democratic Machine.  Obama was, when necessary, a consummate machine insider. Radical Son?  Obama at Columbia.  I don't think anyone can seriously make the argument at this point that Barack Obama did not dabble in radical leftist politics in his youth.  It is also difficult to ignore the fact that throughout his adult life, the president has been attracted to left-wing radicals and, for whatever reason, kept them close as advisors and mentors. Obama's Revenge:  While his community-organizing job paid a paltry $12,000 or so per year, Obama somehow managed to pay his way through one of the priciest graduate schools in the world, Harvard Law School.  (I say somehow managed because we have no record of his tuition payments).  Even more amazing, he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review without ever producing a written paper — or at least a paper that the public has ever read.  There is a good deal of evidence that Obama's acceptance at Harvard Law — and his tuition — were facilitated by friends who had a vested interest in the community organizer.  Among them was Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and ardent leftist, who was also Malcolm X's lawyer. Obama Friends Call Character Into Question.  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. Barack Obama's Lost Years:  The pages of the Hyde Park Herald and the Chicago Defender thus offer entrée into Obama's heretofore hidden world.  What they portray is a Barack Obama sharply at variance with the image of the post-racial, post-ideological, bipartisan, culture-war-shunning politician familiar from current media coverage and purveyed by the Obama campaign.  As details of Obama's early political career emerge into the light, his associations with such radical figures as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend James Meeks, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn look less like peculiar instances of personal misjudgment and more like intentional political partnerships.  At his core, in other words, the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious, exceedingly liberal, free-spending even in the face of looming state budget deficits, and partisan. Ayers Isn't The HALF Of It!  More information about Obama's connections to Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi, Ingrid Mattson, Frank Marshall Davis, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger. What We Know About Obama:  Obama's troubling associations are more than isolated friendships or instances of bad judgment.  His ties to Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Michael Pfleger, James Meeks, ACORN, the New Party, and the Gamaliel Foundation all reflect Obama's sympathy with radical-left ideas and causes — wealth redistribution prominent among them.  At both the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, for example, Obama and Ayers channeled money into ACORN's coffers. Are Obama's Friends Fair Game?  It's not every presidential election that American voters are introduced to characters like former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers or Middle East historian Rashid Khalidi — both of whom, we have learned, Barack Obama worked and socialized with in Chicago. Not Over Yet.  There are simply too many ACORNs, Ayers, Khalidis, Pflegers, Wrights, et al. not to suggest a pattern unbecoming of a future President of the United States.  Obama's past statements about his relationship with Ayers (and others) simply cannot be reconciled with the factual circumstances of their long association.  McCain must focus on Ayers between 2001-2005.  Then in the climate of national worry following 9/11, Ayers was on recent record as lamenting that he had not set off enough bombs, and yet until 2005 still in contact with Obama — about what and why, voters might wish to know. [Emphasis in original] Who Vetted Obama?  We are living witnesses to an incredible media double standard, whereby a Republican vice-presidential candidate's personal life is being torn apart, while the Democratic presidential candidate continues to get a free ride.  Obama has a 30-year history of associating with unsavory characters, beginning with communist Frank Marshall Davis and continuing with Jeremiah Wright and communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, which should disqualify him from getting a security clearance in the government that he wants to run. The Obama Fan-Dance Must End.  As someone who has written critically of John McCain on a host of issues, including the Keating Five, none of it compares to the life that Barack Obama has led and his belief system.  Obama is not merely associated with domestic terrorists, Palestinian radicals, Marxists, and black liberation ideologues — he was their favorite candidate.  They groomed him.  They befriended him.  He befriended them.  He socialized with them.  In other words, these people saw Obama as representing their views and aspirations and he saw them the same way. The Real Obama:  Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama.  They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.  Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama's election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers' money to some of them.  That is a familiar political alliance — but an alliance is not just an "association" from being at the same place at the same time. Six Degrees of Barack Obama:  As a legislator, he accomplished nothing.  As an attorney, he has never tried a case to a verdict.  If we were able to identify the six persons in closest proximity to the candidate in order to better understand Obama, who would they be?  Possibly, William Ayers, Rod Blagojevich, Emil Jones, Tony Rezko, Todd Stroger and Jeremiah Wright.  If you are seeking genuine political change and desired reform, why on earth would you look to the Cook County Democratic Machine to deliver a knight in shining armor? Obama's Three Strikes.  With the news that he belonged to the far-left New Party during the 90s, public revelations of his involvement with fringe left-wing politics have hit three, the other two being William Ayers and ACORN.  (What about Jeremiah Wright and the shadowy figure of Rashid Khalidi, you ask?  The problem with these is that neither is fully political.  Both are deeply intertwined with religion and race.  Obama has shown a distinct talent for manipulating both.) The real Obama: Part IV.  Barack Obama's supporters often try to sidestep questions about his character and judgment by saying that we should stick to what they arbitrarily define as "the real issues."  But Mr. Obama's record on specific issues is as bad as his record of repeatedly allying himself over the years with people who make no attempt to hide their hatred of America. When guilt by association is fair game:  Guilt by association?  Not when the associations have such deep roots or raise such troubling questions about Obama's character and judgment.  It was only in the heat of a presidential campaign that Obama finally repudiated his alliances with Ayers, Wright, and Rezko.  It isn't irresponsible to ask what those associations tell us about a man poised to be the next president of the United States.  It would be irresponsible not to. Dark Red Roots:  Why Ayers Matters.  If the truth becomes better known — and it will if the Ayers issue is doggedly pursued — it will be clear that Obama was not only deeply immersed the fetid swamp of Chicago's far-left political scene, but was from the very beginning of his career carefully groomed by the city's socialist left to follow the path he's on now in his quest for the presidency of the United States. It's a question of judgment, not patriotism.  In the final analysis, it's a fact that the Illinois Senator has some sinister characters in his past and they have played a major role in his political ascendancy.  Investigating his relationship with them is not an attempt to smear him, or to call him unpatriotic; it's an effort to understand his capacity for sound decision-making.  We'd be irresponsible indeed to pretend that a candidate with questionable judgment should be spared serious scrutiny on his way to the White House. Who Did You Know, Sen. Obama, and When Did You Know Them?  There has been much talk, both pro and con, about whether Sen. Barack Obama's "associations" matter with regard to his qualifications to hold the office of President of the United States.  This argument, this avenue of political discourse, misses the point.  Whether or not Sen. Obama has associations with criminals, terrorists and other nefarious and infamous individuals pales in comparison as to whether he has been influenced by them. Terrorists, Terrorism and Obama:  [Scroll down]  While the Obama campaign has been very successful in defending against all of it by claiming "racism" or "right-wing" blogging rumors, the facts remain very clear.  There is a definite pattern to Obama's life.  A Pattern of long-term associations with numerous radical figures and organizations.  A pattern of being less than truthful in answering any questions concerning his past.  A pattern of changing his story repeatedly to stay one step ahead of investigators while trying to run the election clock out.  A pattern of connections to known terrorists here and abroad, as well as an apologist policy position towards terrorism itself. Obama would never qualify to be McCain's bodyguard. Why Doesn't McCain Fight Back?  [Scroll down]  As a candidate, Obama doesn't have to undergo a background security check.  As president, however, he will have instant access to our most closely guarded and classified state secrets.  If the truth comes out then, it will be too late.  Many current and former officials have expressed alarm about Obama avoiding a background investigation.  One said, "I used to have top secret clearance, and if I had the contacts that Obama had, I would not have gotten that clearance." Obama Couldn't Be Cleared.  Considering Barack Obama as a candidate for a top secret security clearance status with a full array of compartmented clearances, one has to be cognizant of the fact that there is considerable evidence of associations and even assistance from individuals with past criminal records or who have expressed anti-American beliefs. ... There is no possibility that a Top Secret clearance would be awarded to a member of the Armed Forces whose background included such associations.  An intelligence service clearance for the handling of highly classified material would be totally out of the question. Obama Would Fail Security Clearance.  Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees.  Islamic aggression represents America's strategic enemy; Obama's many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America's commander-in-chief. To The Undecided Voter:  By "Obama's Friends" we mean the likes of Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko and other assorted miscreants.  I could spend a lot of time here detailing the crimes of Obama's friends --- and make no mistake, they were his friends.  At this point I don't think that any votes are going to be changed one way or another by detailing the corruption of Rezko, the America-hating of Wright or the unrepentant terrorism of Ayers. Suffice it to say that Obama was close to all of these people ... and these were associations born of mutual interests and philosophies. Closer look at Obama reveals he's wrong choice.  Obama has associated with the most radical people of our lifetime.  Can you imagine the outcry if it were discovered that Sarah Palin attended a church with a racist pastor?  There would be no end to the calls for her to stand down and return to Alaska in disgrace.  Obama's list of radical friends doesn't end with Jeremiah Wright.  He has chosen the most inflammatory people for his closest confidants so repeatedly that you have to call his judgment into question. Obama, Con.  Money talks — and what it says is more important than a politician's rhetoric in an election year.  Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions.  They are reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort — and both are recipients of money from Obama.  Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views.  He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools — an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed. Who Will Protect America?  [Scroll down]  More disturbing is that Obama has not been honest about the radical figures he has associated with. ... Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger put him in company with angry anti-American fringe figures, who, were they on the far right, would have ended Obama's political career long ago. ... I actually know a good bit about people such as Ayers, Pfleger, Wright, and now Khalidi.  They are the kind of anti-Americans who thrive on the outer fringes of the left. Community Organizer In Chief.  Barack Obama claims he worked for a "small group of churches" as a community organizer.  In fact, he was hired by a radical Alinskyite group, and Saul Alinsky's own son has outed him. Finding Friends On Far, Far Left.  The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships.  In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation. Obama, Ayers and the Knowledge 'Too Big' To Handle.  For mentors, Obama chose men like Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the fraudulent Palestinian wannabe Edward Said, and the radical PLO groupie Rashid Khalidi.  These are the men he turned to for wisdom.  In 2003, for instance, Obama publicly thanked Khalidi for providing "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Video: Obama's Radical Circle of Friends. The second tier of influence goes under the bus at midnight.  [Scroll down]  The really big question the mainstream media won't ask therefore is how Van Jones could have been appointed in the first place.  For his significance lies not just in the fact that he is a 'truther' or blabbermouth.  It is that he has a long history of extreme, anti-western radicalism and membership of a network of such radicals — a history not only known to the Obama administration but of which networks Obama himself was part.  The prize for Van Jones's scalp should go not to the US talk show hosts but to the sleuth who first dug out the facts about Van Jones and his radical circles. There is much more about Van Jones, if you're interested. Revolution Anyone?  How many Marxists, Communists, Domestic Terrorists and raving racialists does the President get to associate with before reasonable people can assume that the president on some level shares their particular vision of America?  While perusing the manifesto of this now defunct STORM, several things struck me as particularly interesting.  There was of course the passionate commitment to Marxist ideals, radical feminism, gay lesbian and transgender liberation and the ardent support of the unrepentant murderer Mumia Abu Jamal.  And there was this rather innocuous looking paragraph... Why Obama Could Not Stage a Coup:  Obama rose in politics through the thoroughly corrupt one-party government of Chicago.  His spiritual advisor sounds like a rabble-rousing storm trooper.  His intellectual mentor, Saul Alinksy, like the Bolsheviks and Nazis, believed in state terrorism.  If Obama wanted to follow their leads, could he?  I believe not. Media Corruption and the Two Party System.  What drives President Barack Obama to want to seize control of the health care and energy sectors of the U.S. economy?  Obama was trained as a Marxist from his days as a young boy in Hawaii when his grandfather picked Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis as his mentor.  In college, as Obama tells the story, he picked his "friends" carefully, in order to avoid being perceived as a sell-out, and those friends included the "Marxist professors."  Later, in Chicago, he would become a political associate of another Marxist professor, Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois.  Does anybody see a pattern here? A little weekend reading: They still spell it 'Amerika'.  For those of us who grew up in the era when Weather Undergrounders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn were familiar names in the news, it is always discomforting to be reminded of Barack Obama's many associations with people of the radical left — Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, etc.  Such folks' political thought never progressed beyond the 1960s because the revolutionary New Left didn't disapear, it simply went on to graduate school and then careers, mostly in the mainstream media, academia, the non-profits, the bureaucracy of state and local social work, and Blue State politics. It Used to Be A Wonderful Life.  People used to say they wouldn't buy a used car from Richard Nixon.  Well, I wouldn't buy a used hubcap from the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Alan Grayson, Christopher Dodd, Barbara Boxer, Charles Rangel, Rahm Emanuel, Cass Sunstein or David Axelrod.  Furthermore, I've seen guys selling "genuine mink coats" out of the trunk of a '94 Buick I'd trust more than Robert Gibbs. Obama's Hackneyed Hypocrisy.  Barack Obama has spent his whole adult life doing the bidding of powerful interests.  At Harvard, that bastion of the powerful elite, he kissed up to enough factions to become president of the law review while actually writing next to nothing.  In Chicago, he settled in tony Hyde Park with the help of a highly suspect sweetheart deal on his property, got an adjunct gig at the powerful University of Chicago, cultivated leftist elitists like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn who sat on wealthy nonprofit boards, and chose the church of the wild and hateful Rev. Jeremiah Wright because it gave him a powerful entrée into the poor black community that he otherwise would lack if he spent all his time in Hyde Park.  He himself noted that he didn't really join a church until he appreciated "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change."  This all was of a piece with his training as an acolyte of Saul Alinsky, who taught that power is its own justification. Liberalism Is Dead.  [Scroll down]  Barack Obama is not a liberal; he is a third-world Socialist of the really angry kind.  Obama has been surrounded by enraged Leftists from childhood on, including those crucial four years of living in Indonesia right after the whole Communist Party was wiped out by the Indonesian military under General Sukarno.  That's Obama's real experience of the world outside of Hawaii.  Ever since then, Obama has chosen to be surrounded by anti-Western, anti-liberal Leftists.  Jeremiah Wright is perfectly typical of Obama's crowd. Did someone mention Jeremiah Wright? Obama's radical associations matter, but go ignored by press.  From Obama's participation in the socialist New Party in the mid-1990s, to his connections to communist-terrorist Bill Ayers, it's all relevant today.  How?  For example, some of the same anti-American, anti-capitalist revolutionaries from those bad old days now help craft republic-changing legislation. Obama Battles Reagan.  Amid all the exuberance about electing a man because of his skin color was a deliberate refusal to understand that this particular man was a hard-core radical leftist.  For some, the knowledge of just what then-Senator Obama intended to do if elected president was apparently hard to discern.  For others, electing a man who had sat in the pews of Jeremiah Wright's church for twenty years and launched his first campaign from the living room of Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers was an appallingly dangerous mistake.  What else, they now ask, could America possibly have expected? ACORN Note:  More information about ACORN (and various allegations of fraud) can be found here. The Rebranding of ACORN.  Barack Obama served as a former employee of Project Vote and has said publicly that he's "been fighting alongside" ACORN his entire career.  Despite clear evidence of corrupt and criminal behavior by ACORN and its employees, the Obama Justice Department has thus far failed to take any serious steps to hold the ACORN organizations to account. Justice Has Never Been High on Eric Holder's Docket.  Obama considered ACORN to be an arm of his campaign.  That's why his campaign paid ACORN affiliate Citizens Services Inc. to do partisan political work.  The Obama campaign disguised its $832,598 payment to Citizens Services Inc., falsely describing it in campaign finance filings as "polling, advance work and staging major events."  In reality, CSI performed get-out-the-vote services.  After the subterfuge was uncovered, the Obama campaign claimed it had simply goofed up and filed an amended report with the Federal Election Commission.  Whoops.  This could be a violation of election laws but Attorney General Holder couldn't care less. Obama didn't tell the truth about his relationship to ACORN.  At CPAC, Rep. Daryl Issa, R-Cal., released [a] video that shows the President didn't tell the truth about the extent of his relationship with ACORN. ACORN cookies at White House holiday party.  At the White House Holiday Party last night, an oddly shaped cookie grabbed my attention.  Who knew that acorns were part of the traditional holiday fare?  Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, noticed these earlier, as reported by Yeas and Nays, but it seems like they've made these in bulk. ACORN at the White House.  The newly released list of visitors to the Obama White House makes the president's claim he's clueless about his former employer ACORN — and its election fraud trials and tribulations — especially difficult to believe.  Of particular significance is the visit by ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson who met with White House political director Patrick Gaspard in March.  The purpose of the meeting with Gaspard, a former ACORN employee himself, was not disclosed. ACORN's Big Spender.  More proof has emerged of White House political director Patrick Gaspard's ties to the radical advocacy group ACORN.  Gaspard, a longtime operative for ACORN and one of its partisan arms, New York's Working Families Party, currently holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.  Internal ACORN documents show that Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 over the past two years. ACORN's Man in the White House.  Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.  This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard.  He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.  Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political director in New York. Ship of Fools:  Obama's Intimates and Advisors.  [Scroll down]  The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him.  He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago's Woods Fund at the time it funneled $200,000 to an ACORN affiliate.  Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over $800,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) — to "get out the vote." Patrick Gaspard, ACORN, and Obama.  During the 2008 election, Obama's close links to the far-left New Party were revealed and explored (although not by the mainstream press).  Yet many seem to have forgotten that the New Party, particularly in Chicago, was dominated by ACORN (and by an ACORN-controlled SEIU union local). Obama and ACORN:  Barack Obama gave five interviews last Sunday [9/20/2009], and only one interviewer bothered to ask him about the ACORN scandal.  ACORN is the leftist activist organization that lost its federal funds last week in a Congressional vote that was not even close.  Obama's answer to his lone ACORN question was amazing.  He brazened it out:  "Frankly," said the President, "it's not something I've followed closely.  This is not the biggest issue facing the country.  It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to." ... This is the same Barack Obama who said, in an address to ACORN in 2007, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." Obama and Acorn:  In August 2008, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Obama campaign paid more than $800,000 to an Acorn "offshoot" for "get out the vote" projects.  Obama worked for Acorn and Acorn worked for Obama.  That doesn't mean the president is implicated in any wrongdoing, but it suggests at least that the worse things get for Acorn, the more embarrassing it is for him.  If the Justice Department fails to prosecute, it invariably would raise suspicions of political favoritism. And what of ACORN, President Obama?  [Scroll down]  Obama is proud to say his relationship with ACORN goes back decades as a "community organizer" and a legal adviser.  A month before the election he told members:  "You will have input into the agenda of the next president of the United States of America."  The input ACORN is having has shown up like a stain.  It starts with charges of voter-registration fraud in 14 states, and includes video of ACORN employees giving unethical tax advice and suggesting ways to hide 13-year-old girls smuggled into the country to become hookers. Obama's Direct and Lucrative Ties to ACORN.  Is it any wonder that the Obama presidency is shaping up to be the most corrupt and most oppressive anti-American administration in USA history?  Thus far, any and all attempts to investigate ACORN have been blocked by ObamaThugs and the Democrat-run Congress.  The reason?  They have benefited greatly from ACORN's voter fraud and many might not have been elected or reelected without it. Obama Campaign Gave ACORN Current Fundraising List.  Human Events reported earlier today about testimony yesterday [10/29/2008] in the lawsuit brought by the Pennsylvania GOP against Project Vote, a sister organization of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. More Connections Between Obama and ACORN?  A former staffer for Project Vote, a sister organization of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, testified at a hearing in Pennsylvania on Wednesday [10/29/2008] that the Obama campaign provided the group with a campaign donor list in late 2007 for their fundraising efforts. Obama's Ties to Socialism:  ACORN, founded by a former member of the "SDS", Wade Rathke, is a leftist community organization with close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America.  In the 1990s, ACORN heavily involved itself in the housing market by using the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 as a tool to extort banks and pressure them into making risky loans.  In the 90s, ACORN's militant tactics caught national attention on several occasions when they broke into private offices, harassed bankers at their homes, and used the CRA to delay bank mergers. The Price of Political Correctness.  [Scroll down]  What deserves greater scrutiny is Barack Obama's history with ACORN.  He was the attorney representing ACORN when they pushed the Clinton Administration to expand the CRA.  He served on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers when it gave ACORN funding grants.  Obama's hands are dirty with ACORN, and his involvement needs to be accounted for.  Of course, his silence on his past associations while running for president plays us all for fools. Obama Finds An ACORN.  The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags. ACORN:  A Clear and Present Danger.  What I have not been able to figure out is why the leaders of the group have not been indicted under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) for taking part in an ongoing criminal organization.  The only logical reason that the feds have backed off is because of ACORN's close ties to organized labor.  Tragically, in 2008 America, it's not only individuals who are easily intimidated, but the government itself. Obama and "The Left":  Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far left individuals over the years, that is only half the story.  There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the left.  But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with — allied, not merely "associated" with.  ACORN is not just an organization on the left.  In addition to the voter frauds that ACORN has been involved in over the years, it is an organization with a history of thuggery, including going to bankers' homes to harass them and their families, in order to force banks to lend to people with low credit ratings. ACORN Corruption Runs Deep.  Unfortunately for America, the media has been filtering news for years and this practice has allowed some of the main figures in the Teamstergate scandal to assume top spots in the Democrat party.  Part 1 of this series reviewed the history of the scandal and its strong ties to ACORN and President Obama. Obama partnerships with voter fraud unit and terrorists run wide and deep.  •  In a number of crucial cases, Obama was the Attorney for the Chicago ACORN chapter and he used them to assist him in his run for the Illinois State Senate in 1996.  •  In 1992, prior to his working as ACORN's attorney, Obama was Executive Director of ACORN subsidiary Project Vote.  •  Obama trained ACORN workers.  •  While sitting on the board of the Woods Foundation, Obama and domestic terrorist William Ayers — who is also a major Obama fundraiser — arranged for grants for ACORN.  •  While both on the board of Chicago's Annenberg Challenge — Ayers and Obama with Obama as Chairman — funds were funneled to ACORN. Success Is Built On Work Ethic, Not Grievances.  Like everyone else, I have also been hearing a lot lately about Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of the church that Barack Obama has belonged to for 20 years.  Both men, in their different ways, have for decades been promoting the far left vision of victimization and grievances — Wright from his pulpit and Obama as a community organizer for the radical group ACORN, as a collaborator with former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, and as the member of the U.S. Senate with the farthest left voting record. ACORN's Senator.  Obama, who once represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, was hired by the group to train its community organizers and staff in the methods and tactics of the late Saul Alinsky.  ACORN would stage in-your-face protests in bank lobbies, drive-through lanes and even at bank managers' homes to get them to issue risky loans in the inner city or face charges of racism.  In the early 1990s, reports Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center, Obama was personally recruited by Chicago's ACORN to run training sessions in "direct action." Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths.  A psychopath is a person without conscience; someone who constantly breaks the moral rules of the community.  Saul Alinsky was a "community organizer" who found a career that fit that personality disorder.  In the Orwellian upside-down world of the Left, community organizers disorganize communities.  That is the meaning of revolution, to overturn whatever exists today in the raw pursuit of one's own power. ... Alinsky's disciples — including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — have a warlike political style.  They learned politics as war from the Master.  Obama is so well-trained in Alinsky tactics that he used to teach workshops on it. Obama seeks distance from ACORN.  [ACORN] claims to have registered 1.3 million young people, minorities, and working-class voters.  But some of those registration cards have listed dead or nonexistent people and are being investigated in at least eight states. The Nuts at ACORN Could Cause Obama Fall.  ACORN, the radical community group, is becoming an embarrassment for Obama.  It is not as if its shenanigans are likely to tip the result, with the Democrats so far ahead.  But as it is raided by the FBI in state after state (11 so far), it is becoming identified as the electoral equivalent of Greenpeace, extremists who will stop at nothing to get their way. McCain's Prospects Depend on Telling Truth About Obama.  As the old saying goes, it's not over until the fat lady sings, and it's high time for the fat lady to sing about Obama's scary agenda and the many reasons why it is too risky to elect him president.  We need to hear more about ACORN, the special-interest group that would like to steal this election by registering people who are not eligible to vote, such as registering ghost voters in Nevada under the names of the Dallas Cowboys.  Obama's years of close association with ACORN need to be known to the public. Obama Distances Himself From ACORN, Calls Controversy a 'Distraction'.  He [Obama] said his relationship with the group [ACORN] is "pretty straightforward," referring to legal work he and two other lawyers did for the group in 1995.  "That was my relationship and is my relationship to ACORN," he said.  Obama's campaign also paid more than $800,000 to a group called Citizens Services Inc., an ACORN subsidiary, to "augment" Obama's grassroots organizing efforts in the Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania primaries. Obama Distorts ACORN Ties.  Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign has been forced to revise statements about their Obama's get-out-the vote work for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a non-profit roiled in allegations of voter registration fraud.  Obama's website "Fight the Smears," designed to counteract misinformation about the candidate's record, contained false information about Obama's connections to ACORN. Through a glass darkly.  Fortunately, some newspapers are making valiant efforts to excavate the truth about Obama and resist the intellectual intimidation being used to suppress it.  The Cleveland Leader, which as I reported here confirmed Obama's close association with ACORN in documents which it discovered had been removed from the web, has now discovered that the denials of that involvement on Obama's fightthesmears.com website have been altered in order to make it look like he has been telling the truth about his ACORN associations all along. Obamacorn.  Obama's Web site proclaims, "Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity."  Then how is it that Chicago ACORN leader Toni Foulkes sang Obama's praises for his work for ACORN in his article, "Case Study: Chicago -- The Barack Obama Campaign," which appeared in Social Policy magazine in 2004? ... Foulkes wrote:  "When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois' refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act ... Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar ... and we won." Community-Organizer-in-Chief.  Nearly all of the concern over voter fraud has focused on one group, the Association Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), which is under investigation or facing serious allegations of fraud in 13 states over how it has conducted voter-registration drives.  ACORN insists, incredibly, that its voter-registration drives are nonpartisan activities.  However, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has endorsed the group's activities in the past and taught at their seminars. GOP Turning Up the Heat on Obama and ACORN.  [Danny] Diaz also encourages Obama to fully disclose his relationship with ACORN, which has been distorted by his own campaign officials and his "Fight the Smears" website.  Obama has not been upfront about his promises to give ACORN influence in his admnistration, his decision to seek a political endorsement from their PAC or his payments to one of their subsidiaries for get out the vote efforts.  Obama's campaign also previously stated that Obama never worked for ACORN when in fact Obama led training sessions for them in 1992 and represted the group in court in 1995. McCain Camp Drives Obama-ACORN Connection.  John McCain's campaign is using Barack Obama's ties to a controversial low-income advocacy group to escalate his criticism of the Democratic nominee's character and judgment. Obama camp downplays payments to ACORN.  Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's campaign distanced itself Thursday [10/9/2008] from its $800,000 payment linked to the liberal ACORN organization, which is under investigation in several states where it is suspected of filing fraudulent voter registrations.  Federal Election Commission reports show ACORN-affiliated Citizens Services Inc. got $832,598 from the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote work during the primaries.  But those payments stopped in May and the Obama campaign says they should not be an election issue. The Editor grumbles to himself... ... and the Obama campaign says Jeremiah Wright should not be an election issue. ... and the Obama campaign says Bill Ayers should not be an election issue. ... and the Obama campaign says Frank Marshall Davis should not be an election issue. ... and the Obama campaign says abortion should not be an election issue. Obama Hired ACORN For GOTV.  Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is the first national candidate ever to hire ACORN, a controversial non-profit accused of voter fraud across the country, for get out the vote activities.  Obama's campaign paid $800,000 to a subsidiary of the liberally-leaning non-profit Association of Community Organizers for Reform called Citizens Services Incorporated campaign to increase voter turnout.  This information, however, was not properly disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. Huffington Post and ACORN Tag-Team Cover Up of Obama's ACORN Days.  Guess who's behind Social Policy magazine?  Something called The Institute for Social Justice.  The website indicates the address of the magazine is 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117. … Guess who else lives in Elysian Fields?  ACORN.  Go to Sweetness & Light blog and scroll down to the Form 990s (tax returns for nonprofits) and you will see that both ACORN and Project Vote report the same address, 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117.  There is also more evidence of the close relationship between Project Vote and ACORN in 1992. Obama, Voter Fraud & Mortgage Meltdown.  Which community activist/political organization in the United States is the largest, most radical left, and most untrustworthy?  The answer is ACORN, which bills itself as the nation's largest community organization for the rights of low- and moderate-income families.  Its hidden agenda, however, is to change the form of the U.S. government from a republic to a socialist oligarchy, using class warfare and the aid of radical liberals within the Democrat Party.  This hidden agenda explains why the liberal newsmedia go mute on Obama's ACORN ties. Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke.  As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN.  The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.  With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Inside Obama's Acorn:  If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself.  This is hardly a coincidence:  Obama helped train Acorn's leaders in how to play this game.  For the most part, Obama seems to have favored the political-insider strategy, yet it's clear that he knew how to play the in-your-face "direct action" game as well.  And surely during his many years of close association with Acorn, Obama had to know what the group was all about. Obama's Alliance with Marxists:  Erik Ericson of RedState.com has a very detailed article today on Barack Obama's connection to a neo-Marxist political party called the "New Party." ... Basically, Obama sought out the group as a result of his work with another far left organization ACORN -- a "non-partisan" acvitist group whose members have been convicted in several states of vote fraud.  And not only did Obama receive their endorsement, he used many of the party's members as campaign workers on his first state senate campaign. What Do Obama & I Have In Common?  Obama worked for ACORN as a community organizer for three-and-a-half years.  I lasted all of two weeks. … There was a considerable gap between rhetoric and reality.  There was a considerable disconnect between the black membership and the white organizers.  ACORN was all for a living wage as long as they didn't have to pay one to its employees.  ACORN was all for a better world but had no room for improvement.  Some lessons can only be learned the hard way. Spreading socialism on the taxpayer's dime... The ACORN Obama Knows:  If you don't know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up.  This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers — you and me — and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud.  A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League documents how Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects. ACORN's Hypocritical House of Cards:  The Consumers Rights League has published a collection of whistleblower documents that suggest "consumer advocacy" group ACORN has reaped substantial financial gains by misusing taxpayer dollars for political ends and attacking lending corporations for the same 'predatory' lending practices it regularly engages in.  These internal emails and policies suggest that ACORN has failed to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive political activities.  ACORN and its affiliates are then able to extract resources from financial lenders seeking abatement from its public relations assaults and force financial settlement agreements that benefit ACORN but are harmful for consumers. Edwards Touts Obama to ACORN Group.  Former Democratic senator and perpetual presidential candidate John Edwards was the keynote speaker at the annual gathering of the radical group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).  Touting Obama to the crowd was hardly necessary.  Barack Obama was closely allied with ACORN during his community organizing days in Chicago and even did some legal work for them in the early 1990's. Minimum Wage Hits $9.50 in Santa Fe.  This month, in the liberal bastion of Santa Fe, New Mexico, they are raising the minimum wage in the city to $9.50 per hour.  The measure applies to all businesses with 25 or more employees.  The driving force behind this decision was Acorn, the 'national community organization,' as Jon Gertner describes it in The New York Times Magazine for January 15, 2006.  Acorn has discovered that the way to win on the minimum wage issue is to cast it not as an economic issue but as a moral issue. Rotten ACORN:  In what is being called the "worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history," seven employees of the liberal advocacy group ACORN have been charged with filling out fake voter registration forms. … The defendants allegedly faked more than 1700 voter registration forms.  They, like all ACORN employees nationwide, are paid by for every name they sign up.  This has led to widespread charges of fraud in Missouri, Ohio, and 12 other states. Missing headlines:  leftwing voter fraud guilty plea.  Readers may recall that the state of Washington was in the news in 2004 for the closeness of the election for Governor (won by Christine Democrat Gregoire by all of 133 votes; her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi, has since announced plans to run again next year).  That race was subject to claims of voter fraud.  While the defendants who worked for ACORN did not plead guilty for acts that led to actual voting... where there is smoke there is usually fire. Obama's Ties To ACORN More Substantial than first believed.  You've heard of Moveon.org and Code Pink — two radical leftist groups seeking to elect out and out socialists to public office and who are fierce opponents of the capitalist sysetm.  But have you heard of ACORN? … Not surprisingly it turns out that Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger — two radical clergy closely associated with Obama — have extensive ties to ACORN.  Their views fit nicely within the ACORN anti-capitalist agenda that they have been pushing for years. Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending.  U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.  An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary. Obama's Liberal Shock Troops:  Mr. Obama has extensive connections with the granddaddy of activist groups, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which has gotten millions in government grants for its low-income housing programs.  In 1992, Acorn hired Mr. Obama to run a voter registration effort.  He later became a trainer for the group, as well as its lawyer in election law cases.  Acorn's political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama while its "voter education" arm has pledged to spend $35 million to register people this fall — despite a history of vote fraud scandals that have led to guilty pleas by many Acorn employees. O's Dangerous Pals:  The seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act — a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.  CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods.  That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers. Rotten Boroughs.  Ayers' Weather Underground grew out of "Students For A Democratic Society", as did ACORN.  Today, Ayers and his fellow "educators" are engaged with considerable success in radicalizing the next generation of Americans.  But, if that doesn't work, Acorn has a fallback strategy.  What does ACORN do?  It steals elections. Vote-Fraud-A-Go-Go.  Let every vote count, is the Democratic Party's mantra these days.  That slogan might better be:  Let every vote count as often as we need to win.  Such, at any rate, are the tactics of ACORN, Barack Obama's favorite "community organizers," and its Project Vote — of which, the Democratic presidential candidate has boasted, "I started working as the director … here in Chicago." The ACORN/Obama Voter Registration "Thug Thizzle".  Systemic corruption of our election process continues. … On Monday [10/6/2008], the two liberal groups announced the wrap-up of a 21-state voter registration drive targeting low-income people and minorities in battleground states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin.  What's wrong with that?  For starters, these two groups are militant partisan outfits purporting to engage in nonpartisan civic activity.  And their campaign comes amid an avalanche of fresh voter-fraud allegations involving ACORN in many of those same key states. Blunt links 'sordid' ACORN to Obama.  Gov. Matt Blunt sought yesterday to link Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama with accusations of fraudulent voter registration in Missouri and other states by an organization that advocates for poor people.  Blunt, a Republican, called ACORN an organization with a "sordid history" of voter fraud in Missouri.  In a telephone conference call, Blunt recounted a series of problems ACORN had caused with voter registration in the state. Obama and ACORN: Relationship May Be More Extensive Than Candidate Says.  Barack Obama says he only had limited ties to ACORN, and they began in 1995.  But other encounters with the group, plus a voter-registration drive he conducted called Project Vote three years earlier, calls his account into question. ACORN: Not the Face of Change.  Barack Obama has numerous ties to ACORN, the group under investigation for voter registration fraud in states across the nation.  Obama paid one of their subsidiaries, Citizen Services, Inc., $800,000 and misrepresented that payment on his campaign finance disclosures. Liberal group's fraud shows voter ID need.  What do Barack Obama, Cynthia Tucker and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have in common?  I'll tell you a few facts and you decide.  I'll try not to load my words, as Cynthia Tucker did in her Sunday column blasting voter ID laws as the product of "pseudo-facts" and "overhyped allegations of voter fraud."  Readers of my column will, I hope, be outraged by their own thinking, not feelings emanating from pejorative terms. The Rise And Fall Of The Obama Campaign:  Will Obama win, or will the whole truth about him become known in the nick of time? ... If you believe Obama's protestations of ignorance about Ayers' terrorist background, you've been brainwashed.  The Obamas are not oblivious. ... [ACORN is] the organization with which Obama has been associated throughout his adult life, as organizer, trainer, lawyer, funder and political beneficiary ... and Obama's Achilles heel. ACORN's big scam:  Obama has in the past represented ACORN in his home state of Illinois.  And during the primary season the Obama campaign gave ACORN some $830,000 to help with a get out the vote drive.  In Ohio, where the ACORN effort was particularly intense, about a third of some 660,000 new voter registrations don't match information on file in other government databases.  Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, didn't seem particularly concerned, so Republican Party officials took the issue into federal court. ACORN Magazine Article on Obama Magically Reappears.  It appears ACORN has decided there is no point in continuing to hide an article that links Senator Barack Obama to it in the early 1990s because it's out there in cyberspace already. Obama's Big Lie in the Last Debate:  One of Obama's first career jobs was with ACORN.  He was recognized early on as a talented organizer by ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, (think smooth talker) and she got him to coach ACORN leaders in community activism.  At the time, Talbott was focusing on ACORN's efforts to expand bank lending to low-income, high-risk customers — the activity that ultimately precipitated today's mortgage market failure — so it is likely Obama trained her leaders with a focus on that effort. Stealing the Presidency: An Obama/ACORN Primer.  For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush stole the White House," without a single proven shred of evidence, without a single indictment or conviction of Republicans on vote fraud, vote rigging or anything even close.  Meanwhile the only group indicated and convicted in actual vote fraud cases in the last two elections — ACORN — is fully mobilized still, claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters this year, and is tied historically and inextricably to our front-running candidate for President, Barack Obama. MSNBC Teams Up With ACORN, La Raza.  MSNBC has launched a news project with a variety of left-wing special interest groups to boost their Election Day coverage and help viewers experiencing problems at the polls.  One of the groups involved in MSNBC's "Election Protection" project is the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now.  ACORN has been involved in rampant voter registration fraud across the nation this election cycle and is actively supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for president. ACORN's White Horse:  ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is essentially a Marxist shakedown outfit.  One of its main rackets is election fraud — but it can also be very helpful if you happen to be a Leftist activist who finds himself needing, say, to foment a riot, vandalize public property, shut down legislative hearings or opposition conferences, harass the families of elected officials, extort leave-us-alone pay-offs from banks, promote illegal immigration, or the like.  Like ACORN, Obama is a community organizer in the Saul Alinsky radical mode, and he goes way back — two decades back — with the organization. Barack Obama's Involvement with ACORN Unearthed, Missing Article Recovered.  While Barack Obama's connection with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has not gone entirely unreported, it has not been fully explained.  Most media background pieces simply note Obama's involvement in a 1995 lawsuit on behalf of ACORN.  Obama's own website, as well as most major media, fail to reveal the full depth and extent of his relationship with the organization. Obama Campaign Involved in More Cover-Ups in ACORN Scandal.  On Thursday we revealed the connection between Barack Obama and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and uncovered a 2004 article that discussed his involvement with the organization which had recently been removed from the web.  Today [10/10/2008], the cover-ups continue and language on Obama's fightthesmears.com website has been altered in order to make it look like he has been telling the truth about his ACORN associations all along. The Case Against Barack Obama, Part 2.  Obama and [William] Ayers also served on the board of the Woods Fund, an organization that distributed grant money to ACORN, which pushes its leftist agenda — "tax justice," livable wages, anti-school choice, voter registration and affordable housing.  The nearly 400,000-person-strong organization is currently under investigation by state and federal authorities in several states for voter registration fraud.  The Obama campaign dismisses any connection to ACORN as tangential. FBI investigating ACORN voter fraud; Obama indisputably linked to ACORN.  The FBI has opened an investigation into ACORN's alleged voter registration fraud.  The Obama camp is desperately trying to distance itself from ACORN, but there's no question that Obama is linked to the group.  Obama is also seeking to distract attention from the fraud allegations by trying to paint the ACORN investigation as "politically motivated." Creating the illusion of unstoppability on Election Day.  Indiana's Marion County is where the Obama campaign has been sending ACORN/SEIU thug activists for the past ten months to create the illusion on Election Day that he is "unstoppable".  It's only a three hour drive from the gutters of Chicago to Indianapolis (in Marion County) and there are hundreds of ACORN/SEIU activist who have made the trip many times over the course of this election season.  Why?  Because the polls in Indiana close at 6PM Central.  There will still be polls open on the east coast when Indiana polls close, and the salivating Obama-supporting media can make their first projections. A Brighter and Righter Future.  Watching the ACORN organization come under investigation in more than a dozen states for voter fraud and illegality, it is sobering to imagine what Obama, a former ACORN trainer and community organizer, would do to give even more of our tax money to this hard-left, corrupt organization.  It is also unlikely an Obama Justice Department would prosecute any of the donor-fraud and voter-fraud allegations that are rapidly building up. Will ACORN Steal the Election?  [Scroll down]  Obama also gave more than $800,000 to Citizen Services Inc., an ACORN subsidiary, for "get out the vote" activities during the Democratic primary, a fact the candidate initially tried to conceal.  Obama's "Fight the Smears" website claims that "ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration Barack ran in 1992."  "Now ACORN says 'we only had him for two conferences, for one hour each,' but that's not what contemporary newspaper accounts at the time say," commented John Fund, author of Stealing Elections, at Heritage last Monday [10/27/2008 (?)].  He said that Project Vote and ACORN were affiliated at the time, a relationship which grew into a full partnership. O's Dangerous Pals.  What exactly does a "community organizer" do?  Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question.  Here's a big part of the answer:  Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.  In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes — and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers. New White House Counsel Was Defender of ACORN.  The incoming White House counsel will carry a reputation for hardball tactics into his new job.  As President Barack Obama's election attorney, Robert Bauer staunchly defended ACORN against political attacks, sought investigations of political opponents and pressed TV and radio stations to stop running ads critical of the Democratic nominee. White House's Acorn Cookies Surprises Republican Lawmaker.  The chocolate cookies shaped like an acorn were quite a hit with Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.  "I didn't expect to see such stark symbolism," King said in an e-mail. Note:  More information about ACORN (and vote fraud) can be found here. Mrs. Obama What is Obama Talking About?  [Recently a] little girl asked him why he decided to run for president and he gave this response.  "America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was.  And I say to myself, I don't want that future for my children." … This matches up with some of the things his wife has said.  His wife thinks that we are a "downright mean" country. … She says it's gotten worse over her lifetime and she's 44.  I'm still trying to figure out when in the past 44 years she thinks that it was better. Ayers Isn't The HALF Of It!  Mrs. Obama seems to hold radical separatist views consistent with a 20-year attendance and tutelage under Rev. Wright.  Her college thesis was on assimilation vs. "the black culture," and she was openly dismayed that so many blacks were choosing to assimilate into the American melting-pot culture. Michelle Obama:  Hillary 2.0?  The next Hillary in the White House won't be the second coming of the old one:  the next Hillary may be Michelle Obama.  She isn't sharing the ticket, but neither did Hillary (at least formally).  And so far, there hasn't been any of the Clinton's old "two for one" rhetoric.  But no one should underestimate the influence Michelle has on her husband. Obama's Leftism:  [Barack Obama] called himself "progressive," a term of art favored by veterans of the hard New Left, like Tom Hayden, as well as by old-time Communists.  Early this year his wife Michelle, lacking his tact, would kindle controversy by saying that his success in the presidential primaries made her feel proud of her country for the first time.  The comment, a faux pas that she was soon at pains to explain away, flowed logically from her view, expressed in her standard stump speech, that our country is a "downright mean" place, "guided by fear," where the "life ... that most people are living has gotten progressively worse." Hands off Michelle Obama you GOP Meanies!  I was wondering when this was going to happen.  It appears a major effort is underway to smear as "racist" or "sexist" (or perhaps both) anyone who criticizes Michaell Obama.  This is probably a prelude to innoculating the candidate himself eventually.  We are about to enter a new age in American politics, one where everything that even hints of criticism will be seen as an unfair attack. ABC Spikes Michelle Obama's Gaffe, Then Declares It Unimportant.  ABC's World News, which on Tuesday [2/19/2008] skipped Michelle Obama's comment that "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," on Wednesday finally got to it, but only minimally as George Stephanopoulos praised her "good damage control" and declared:  "I don't think it's going to be a huge deal."  Hard for it to become "a huge deal" when a broadcast network's most-watched news program doesn't bother to report it. Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide.  Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained exclusively from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery."  "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. First Lady Of Gaffes.  After revealing she had never been "really proud of my country," Michelle Obama damns business as "the money-making industry."  By contrast, she says, the Obamas are in "the helping industry."  Bad omen.  Visiting a day-care center in Zanesville, Ohio, America's would-be first lady advised the assembled women not to "go into corporate America." She's No Jackie O.  Is Barack Obama's wife as charismatic as he?  Though the mainstream media would have us believe so, anyone who's read her remarks over the past few months couldn't help be convinced that Michelle Obama may be as much of a help to her husband as Bill Clinton has been to his wife. America's Unhappiest Millionaire:  Michelle Obama's gospel of misery.  By her husband's logic, Michelle Obama must be a heavily armed xenophobic religious zealot, because boy is she bitter.  [A] C-SPAN video of a speech delivered by Mrs. Obama in North Carolina last Friday [5/2/2008] is characteristic of her peculiar recent performances on the stump.  It is an hour-long talk to supporters who just want something to cheer about, and who get some opportunities at the outset, but then find themselves treated to a profoundly and relentlessly negative vision of American life. The GOP's Secret Weapon:  She is the biggest loose cannon in either campaign. She's got a chip on her shoulder the size of a redwood and an overweening sense of entitlement that makes her one of the more unattractive advocates for Barack Obama — despite the fact that she's his wife.  Michelle Obama is a disaster waiting to happen. Michelle Obama's tales of woe:  [Mrs. Obama is] irritated at those people who have suggested that she and Sen. Obama are elitists.  And she appears to be still outraged — at this late date — by the fact that she had to take out loans to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School.  It took her years to pay them back, something she has kvetched about in numerous public appearances.  Imagine that!  First she had to borrow money to go to some of the world's most selective and expensive schools — schools whose graduates usually do pretty well in the world — and then they made her pay it back.  There "they" go again. What Does Michelle Obama Think About America?  Michelle Obama isn't running for the presidency, but she is at center stage of her husband's campaign, and her vision of America will obviously inform Barack Obama's vision of America if he becomes president.  And her vision isn't one that most Americans share. Barack's Bitter Half:  In one of her few (unintentionally) funny moments during a recent sit-down with comedian Stephen Colbert, Mrs. Obama claimed, "Barack and I tend to look at the positives."  That's a side-splitter.  As National Review's Yuval Levin put it, Michelle Obama is "America's unhappiest millionaire."  And she has the audacity to extrapolate her misery and her husband's alleged victimization to the "vast majority of Americans."  In South Carolina, she called America "just downright mean" and bemoaned "a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day." CBS Found Obama Rule:  'Whatever Michelle Says Is The Message'.  In all the fuss over Barack Obama going on ABC and telling his opponents to "lay off my wife," some might have assumed that Obama was implying that Michelle Obama wasn't a major player in the Obama campaign.  Read the transcript again, and you'll notice he never says that. Michelle Obama is fair game.  [Scroll down]  If Republicans "think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign," he [Barack Obama] added ominously, "they should be careful."  Ooh, very fierce. … [But] as long as he keeps sending her around the country to campaign on his behalf, everything she says is — and should be — fair game. Barack's Little Lady:  In [the liberals'] lexicon, anybody who has had a single misfortune — or who endures what liberated women see as the terrible ordeal of motherhood or housewifery — is a victim, and since Mrs. Obama must suffer the inconveniences of being a wife and a mother, she's qualified for victimhood and must be immune from criticism.  Having gained that immunity she, is free to make outrageous statements without having them reflect on her spouse. Michelle Obama encourages political activism.  "The way this campaign has been run is the way we need to be forever," Obama said.  "Don't trust bloggers or someone else's opinion, because people lie." The Editor responds... Yes, Michelle, people lie.  Especially liberal politicians.  Liberal democrats lie about gun control.  Liberal democrats lie about abortion.  Liberal democrats lie about same-sex marriage.  Liberal democrats are lying about global warming.  And liberal democrats routinely lie about all kinds of other things, too. That's No First Lady, That's My Wife!  I must confess I got a chuckle out of Barack Obama's warning us all to lay off his wife.  Sorry, pal, but it's too late in the game for that.  If you didn't want her to be a legitimate target, you should have told her to stay home with the kids and to keep her yap shut. Who Is The Real Michelle Obama?  [Scroll down]  Pro-life columnist Jill Stanek has revealed a chilling fundraising letter that Michelle Obama wrote for her husband when he was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004.  The letter claimed that the federal ban on partial-birth abortion was "clearly unconstitutional" and "a flawed law." Modern Liberals, Whine Connoisseurs.  Michelle Obama whines about the burdens of paying for piano lessons and summer camp for the kids, and the paying off the student loans for her two Ivy League degrees.  "The salaries don't keep up with the cost of paying off the debt," she complained when the Obamas cleared half a million a year … Barack Obama understands the language of victimhood and uses it effectively.  And victimhood has become a central tenant of modern liberalism. Obama's Gospel of Envy:  Anger, or envy, about trust funds seems to be a big thing with the Trinity crowd.  Michelle Obama, for instance, bellyached regularly during her stump speech in the primaries:  "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt.  See, because we went to those good schools and we didn't have trust funds.  I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund.  Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s'posed to be a relative or something.  Give us something here!" Michelle Obama speaks to gay Democrats.  Michelle Obama won a standing ovation on Thursday [6/26/2008] when she paid a campaign visit to gay and lesbian Democratic activists to promote her husband Barack Obama's presidential quest.  Obama, appearing at a dinner meeting of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee, cited her husband's efforts to fight discrimination and promote equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. Wedding Belle.  For reasons of raw politics, Democratic presidential nominees can't say they support gay marriage, though they obviously do.  So they send their wives out to say it for them. Remaking Michelle:  The problem with the Obama campaign's effort to remake Michelle Obama goes beyond her gaffes and attacks on America.  Another problem for the campaign is that Michelle Obama's life story runs counter to Barack Obama's effort to defuse race as an issue. … She does not see America as one nation or Americans as one people.  Race is the centerpiece of her self-identification. Michelle Obama, a target-rich environment.  If Mrs Michelle Obama, known to her detractors as the candidate's "bitter half", had only a routine image problem, the artful cosmeticians at Obama HQ would quickly be able to tidy it up.  The difficulty is that Michelle's gaffes appear not to be gaffes at all, but one long, sincere, consistent and rarely less than gale force blast of grievance. Michelle Obama's Inferiority Complex:  Now that Barack Obama has pretty much wrapped up the nomination, it's time to raise a question that lots of people have been talking about privately but not publicly.  Is it possible that Michelle Obama is the force behind Barack Obama's refusal to embrace traditional patriotic symbols?  Could Obama's wife be largely responsible for the candidate's damaging associations with crackpot race-baiters like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Reverend Michael Pfleger?  In sum, could Obama's wife be a large part of his political problem? Michelle Obama says $600 is the price of a pair of earrings.  Michelle Obama said in Pontiac, Mich., on Wednesday [7/9/2008] that if her husband is elected he will offer more than a "quick fix" on the economy.  "You're getting $600 — what can you do with that?  Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn't pay down every bill every month," she said.  "The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings." BO Stinks.  Now it turns out the campaign trail is a bit too much for him and his not-so-blushing bride.  Now he wants us to believe that by holding his wife accountable for her outrageous statements, we've crossed a line. ... Notice how Obama was thrilled to have his wife front and center as long as we liked what she was saying.  Now that she has shown her true colors and said some pretty offensive things, she's taken a back seat and we're supposed to "lay off". Michelle Obama:  Is First Ladies' club ready?  [Scroll down]  Some of Michelle's faux pas have been more serious.  Most notably, she told a rally that her husband's electoral success had "for the first time in my adult life" made her feel "really proud of my country".  This phrase struck a disquieting note:  what would she not have to be proud about? … She and her husband are living proof of the extraordinary opportunities that can be available to minorities in America:  it's almost impossible to imagine their careers working out quite so well anywhere else.  That's why that comment rankled. Call Me a Proud, Scared Conservative.  Michelle Obama did sit with her husband in Jeremiah Wright's church for many years, listening unperturbed to racist diatribes aimed at every white-skin person in America.  If I had sat listening to the rants of a David Duke for years on end and then gave my husband some form of the Nazi salute in public, I doubt seriously if it would be at all comforting to any decent American who witnessed it.  There may be only a tiny grain of truth to the black militant image of Michelle Obama on the New Yorker cover, but even a tiny grain may be too much for some. Obama called hypocrite for wife's Wal-Mart link.  [Michelle Obama] has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago to gain experience of the private sector.  And the biggest customer for the pickles and peppers produced by Treehouse Foods is the retail giant Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and the bête noire of American liberals, including Sen Obama, for its employment practices, most notably its refusal to recognise trade unions. Update: Mrs Obama quits controversial job.  Michelle Obama, the wife of the American Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, has resigned from the board of a food company whose biggest customer is Wal-Mart, the retail giant under fire from her husband.  The Sunday Telegraph reported two weeks ago that her position at Treehouse Foods could raise claims of hypocrisy as Senator Obama attacked Wal-Mart for its anti-union employment policies. Try a Little Tenderness.  So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. … And if you feel you're losing America, you really don't want a couple in the White House whose rope of affection to the country seems lightly held, casual, provisional. Obama's Wife Rips His Foes.  Michelle Obama has lashed out at her husband's 2008 rivals for peddling "baseless claims" against him — including charges that "he is not black enough, he is not white enough," according to a transcript of her surprising remarks to supporters.  Michelle, a Harvard-schooled lawyer, took on the role of campaign hatchet woman against Sen. Barack Obama's political opponents when she introduced her husband to 1,000 donors at a $1.5 million fund-raiser Sunday night [2/11/2007] in Chicago. The Brangelina-fication of the Obamas:  The spread in People, which earlier this year fawned over a photo of the bare-chested Obama in his swimsuit, was supposed to be an "exclusive" first and last look at life at home with the Obamas.  Knowing what we know about the Obama we know now, it probably won't be the last.  They've hawked the kids to TV gossip show "Access Hollywood," blabbed about their romance to Us Weekly magazine, and plopped Michelle O — the purported "civilian" whom the Obamessiah declares immune from public criticism — in front of the cameras to schmooze effortlessly for "The Colbert Report" and "The View" demographics. This is precisely why Michelle Obama is fair game for criticism: Hillary Clinton trumped by Michelle Obama.  The wives of Democratic nominees have traditionally addressed the convention but Ms Obama is the first to be given headline and prime-time status.  Her opening night address and Senator Obama's acceptance speech will bookend addresses by Senator Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton. Michelle, Anti-American Radicals, and U of C.  The Hyde Park Herald first reported that Michelle Obama would be hired for a newly created community relations position at the University of Chicago on June 5 of 1996.  Obama was to be Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University of Chicago Community Service Center, effective September 1, 1996.  So Michelle Obama was appointed to a job that had never existed before, shortly after Barack Obama had won the Democratic nomination in his first race for Illinois State Senate. Michelle Obama: Perpetual Victim.  Her husband has been lauded as the Messiah; benefited from the most fawning coverage bestowed on a presidential candidate, at least since JFK; is running in the most Democrat-favorable electoral environment, at least since Watergate; has raised more funds than any presidential candidate ever; has become a worldwide celebrity; and is spending an unprecedented amount of money running negative ads about his opponent. ... Yet in her world, they're still "underdogs." Throw the flag against: Michelle Obama.  [Scroll down]  She omitted the fact that she later went on to a high paying job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she worked in community and external affairs.  In March 2005, she was promoted to vice president for community and external affairs, and her salary jumped from $121,910 to $316,962, which included a one-time bonus.  In 2006, her salary was $273,618, according to the Chicago Tribune.  Her promotion came two months after her husband became a senator, but campaign aides said that she'd been offered the promotion and turned it down before that. The Editor says... Yeah, right.  I'd turn down a $316,962 do-nothing job, too.  Make 'em beg! Michelle's Boot Camps For Radicals.  Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993.  Obama plans to use the nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, "Universal Voluntary Public Service."  Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas.  They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of "social change." Five reasons to vote against Obama:  [#4.]  Michelle Obama.  Another pampered semi-literate Ivy Leaguer who still considers herself a victim, even with her $360,000-a-year job as diversity coordinator at a Chicago hospital.  Can you stand four years of this harridan lecturing you on your greed? Welcome To ACORN General Hospital.  Try to imagine health care in the world of Obama.  All of us will be enlisted in the Community Service army, where patient care is merely ancillary to your job.  Now we will leave work to go staff the after school program at the new community center.  Next weekend it's over to the mall where we will work the voter registration table.  It's all part of "enhancing the hospital service to the community."  Because in Barack and Michelle's world, there's no individual patient.  Only a vast, nebulous "community."  Welcome to ACORN General. Michelle Obama's Patient-Dumping Scheme:  The First Lady helped create a notorious program that dumped poor patients on community hospitals, yet the national media ignore the story.  Imagine if her husband were a Republican.  The University of Chicago Medical Center has received a good deal of justly opprobrious press over its policy of "redirecting" low-income patients to community hospitals while reserving its own beds for well-heeled patients requiring highly profitable procedures. General in a sleeveless dress.  Since July of 2008, the chattering classes of America have been uneasy about Barack Obama's proposal for a civilian national security force "as well-funded as the U.S. military".  The civilian national security force was already in place long before last July's public proposal.  Its general doesn't wear army fatigues but sleeveless dresses. Responding to My Critics.  [Scroll down]  This woman sat in Rev. Wright's church for 20 years, soaking up his racist rants, and then had him marry her and Barack, as well as baptize their children.  Furthermore, she had gotten into an Ivy League school, thanks to Affirmative Action, and then showed her gratitude by writing a racist screed for her college thesis.  For good measure, she used that degree to get a $125,000-a-year job in Chicago, which coincidentally jumped to over $300,000 once her husband went to the Illinois state senate.  And, finally, after all that, she announced to the world that America is a mean country and that the first time she was proud of this nation was when her husband deigned to run for president. Michelle Thinks She Was Elected Empress.  The Washington Post had an interesting article on June 25 headlined, "A First Lady Who Demands Substance."  I think it was meant to highlight that fact that Michelle Obama is more than a mere first lady but is a strong, substantive person — which is, by the way, without question.  Unfortunately, though, it ended up revealing a Michelle Obama that is an angry, arrogant, martinet that isn't aware that "first lady" is an honorary title that has no proper, Constitutional role and is not an elected position with legal, legitimate powers of its own. Queen Michelle the First?  Michelle Obama wants a bigger role in her husband's administration, according to The Washington Post.  Unlike Laura Bush, who focused on a few peripheral issues, Obama wants a seat at the table when key policies are made.  Obama's new chief of staff, Susan Sher, is part of the crucial 8:15 a.m. White House staff meeting.  The first lady's team of more than 20 has been told to think "strategically" about how to make her a player on policies she cares about.  This could be a very bad idea. Michelle Obama named in illegal "patient dumping" scheme.  Just minutes after President Obama's disastrous prime-time press conference touting his "health care" plan, FOX News host Sean Hannity aired a special segment about a so-called "patient-dumping" scandal in Obama's hometown, Chicago.  And the scandal may very well involve First Lady Michelle Obama herself. A Health Care Offer We Can't Refuse.  When Michelle Obama was promoted to Vice President of the University of Chicago Medical Center she ran something called Community and External Relations.  So a Senator's wife, with no medical background or health administration experience becomes a vice-president of a major American hospital.  Why does a hospital do this?  Obviously, the hospital needed Senator Obama's help, maybe with legislation, maybe with reimbursements, maybe with the unions.  So Mrs. Obama becomes a Vice President, her salary is tripled to over $300,000, and suddenly the hospital is sponsoring ridiculous community enterprises like Principal for a Day and Real Men Cook celebrations. Even Wide Awake, I'm Having Nightmares.  [President Obama] is appointing so many czars, you'd think his last name was Romanov.  In the meantime, Michelle has gathered a larger staff of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting than Madame Pompadour and Madonna put together.  There were, at last count, 22 people answering directing to the First Lady, costing the taxpayer roughly $1.6 million a year. No sacrifice too great for Michelle Obama.  The First Lady has once again uttered words that reveal her self-absorbed interior life.  Speaking in Copenhagen, she referred to her trip as a "sacrifice." ... There is a victim mentality at work here.  Life is unfair.  This is a woman who sees herself put-upon by life, the victim of forces beyond her control.  And she lives in the White House! Michelle Obama:  It's a 'sacrifice' to travel to Europe to pitch for the Olympics.  In her speech in Copenhagen today [9/30/2009], First Lady Michelle Obama said her trip to Denmark, along with the travel of her "dear friend" and "chit-chat buddy" Oprah Winfrey, as well as tomorrow's visit by President Obama, is a "sacrifice" on behalf of the children of Chicago and the United States. The Noble "Sacrifice" of Michelle Obama.  It's hard out there for a first lady of the United States.  Take it from travel-weary Michelle Obama.  On Tuesday night [9/29/2009], she boarded a luxury 757 for Copenhagen.  Think of the stairs she had to climb.  Oh, the agony of the feet!  Upon arrival, Mrs. O, her "chit-chat buddy," Chicago-based talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey, and Chicago powerbroker/interest-conflicted real estate mogul/senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett immediately embarked on a grueling, grip-and-grin campaign to secure the Olympics for their hometown.  Our smile muscles ache in sympathy. Michelle Obama is not immune to criticism because she does stuff like this: Michelle Obama turns Breast Cancer Awareness Month into attack on insurance companies.  First Lady Michelle Obama took part in a White House event this afternoon [10/23/2009] to mark National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  While such events have been mostly noncontroversial in the past, Mrs. Obama used the occasion to launch an extended attack on the insurance industry, the Obama administration's current target in the ongoing battle over national health care legislation. Michelle Obama Politicizes the Food Network.  I have a confession to make.  I hate politics.  That's why I write about it, because I enjoy making fun of it.  And one of the reasons I write for Big Hollywood is I am sick of other people's politics being jammed down my throat through alleged "entertainment." What's wrong with this picture?  The First Lady, a woman widely acclaimed for her fashion sense in the courtier media, has no common sense at all when it comes to respecting a solemn occasion.  Apparently, nobody among her score of personal aides in the White House had the gumption to tell her she was about to make a fool of herself at the Veterans Day memorial. Another reason Michelle Obama is fair game for criticism: Did AmeriCorps official lie about possible First Lady link to IG firing?  Congressional investigators looking into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin have discovered that the head of AmeriCorps met with a top aide to First Lady Michelle Obama the day before Walpin was removed. Walpin-gate may snag Mrs. Obama.  In the past 10 days, two major developments have occurred. ... Most explosively of all, dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play "a central role in the national service agenda." SEIU Fat Cats Behind First Lady's Anti-Obesity Campaign.  Behind every seemingly good deed in the Obama White House, there's a deep-pocketed, left-wing special interest.  Take first lady Michelle Obama's crusade against childhood obesity.  Who really benefits from the ostensible push for improved nutrition in the schools?  Think purple — as in the purple-shirted army of the Service Employees International Union. Michelle Obama, Liberal Government and Obesity:  First Lady, Michelle Obama, has decided to take a whack at solving the American obesity epidemic.  Splendid.  She should start by looking at one of the biggest roots of the problem:  liberal government and its most favorite project of the past 40 years, the welfare state. Paranoia Strikes Deep in Obama's America.  In Obama's brain, his father's womanizing and boozing wasn't due to low moral standards; white supremacy was to blame.  His grandmother was "a typical white person," not someone who had personal failings.  Obama married Michelle, a woman who sees everything through the lens of race.  Rather than feeling honored to attend Princeton, she regarded the place as a hotbed of racism.  Some of her pre-First Lady speeches reek of loathing for America. First Lady:  Government action on obesity unproven, but we'll do it anyway.  At what point do Americans demand limits on unnecessary government activities?  Right now, government seems to be getting more obese than anyone. Michelle Obama Nourishes Hillary's 'Village'.  Two years after appearing on Larry King Live Michelle Obama returned as First Lady to discuss inspiring FLOTUS initiatives. ... Michelle's King interview, lacked consistent sincerity, but had one ray of candor amidst prevarications and partial truths.  The First Lady readily agreed with Larry King's evaluation of her superior intelligence perking up saying, "I'm very smart but I like to limit my intake to things I can control." Lawfare, Voluntary Surrender, and Right-wing "Extremists".  [Scroll down slowly]  Michelle Obama "voluntarily surrendered" her license to practice law, three years after passing the bar.  Which is akin to a doctor going through years of education, and racking up huge student loans, and then, just as it all finally starts to pay off, saying "I think I'll just give up my license for no particular reason."  There's a darn good reason, we just don't know it. Michelle Obama's True Agenda:  Make no mistake, America; Michelle Obama is every bit as interested in following in her husband's footsteps as Hillary Clinton was of hers — even more.  Michelle Obama is making her first solo trip abroad to Mexico where she plans to begin organizing world support for her future political ambitions. Michelle Obama:  Food Profiteer Turned Food Cop.  Let me summarize first lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity agenda:  Shed as I say, not as I gain.  While she crusades for organic foods and puts government pressure on corporations to stop marketing fast food and junk food to children, Mrs. Obama herself profited from the very same processed food industry she now demonizes. Michelle Obama to women planning a pregnancy:  'No fatties'.  You might think you were doing a pretty good job of running your own life before you'd ever even heard of Michelle Obama, but she knows better than that.  Your kids are big fat pigs and so are you, says the First Lady of the United States. Ready for Feds in Your Kitchen?  On the one hand, I want genuinely to commend first lady Michelle Obama for her passion to launch her campaign against childhood obesity, "Let's Move." ... My concern, however, is that the first lady's nutritional quests, like Washington's health care crusade, ultimately will lead to more big-government and union-based solutions, as well as enact more faulty legislation like the 1966 Child Nutrition Act, which the Obama administration is seeking to update, or "overhaul."  (Of course, update and overhaul in government translates into upgrade and expand; you can bet your last tax dollar on it.) FLOTUS to Food Manufacturers:  Cut 1 Trillion Calories Annually by 2012.  With the goal to reduce 1 trillion calories in food sold annually by 2012, First Lady Michelle Obama announced a private-sector partnership for her Let's Move! Childhood obesity campaign. More about The Invasion of the Food Police. Michelle Obama's Global Graduates.  Rather than tossing a graduation cap into the air, Michelle Obama's commencement address at George Washington University was enough to make a graduate fall on the ground weeping in a heap of despair.  After accomplishing the goal of completing a college education, the last thing a collegian should be subjected to on graduation day is a keynote speaker who does anything but uplift, motivate, and encourage. Commencement Address Hell.  Michelle Obama recently gave a speech to graduates at George Washington University.  The underlying message?  Do as I say, not as I do.  Also ... There's war and famine and an overcooked planet.  Become global citizens and fix the mess!  Clean the feet of lepers in Calcutta, eradicate malaria in the Sudan, and live like a monk with no personal needs.  Of course, Michelle's own personal journey has been a tad different.  After she graduated from racist-infested Princeton University, Michelle made big bucks as a corporate lawyer.  Working as a vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, she saved the hospital a bundle through patient-dumping — sending those unable to pay to other hospitals. First Lady to Waste Millions 'Visiting' The Gulf Oil Spill.  When times were flush, I guess it didn't seem so outrageous for the First Lady of the White House to fly about the country "visiting" places as if she were an important part of our national government. ... And now?  Why, now Michelle-My-Bell is making plans to "visit the Gulf Coast oil spill region" as if she is some sort of potentate touring her outlying tracts of land.  Yes, the angriest First Lady of them all is going to pack her royal bags, wing off to the coast, and wave to the masses from the royal coach as she inspects her subjects woes due to her husband's continuing impotency there. Michelle Obama Set To Appear At NAACP Convention.  First lady Michelle Obama will speak at the NAACP convention at Bartle Hall Monday as the keynote speaker of the event. Michelle Obama Rouses NAACP Before Vote Condemning 'Racist' Elements of Tea Party.  First Lady Michelle Obama brought renewed energy to the NAACP today, delivering the keynote speech at the annual convention one day before the nation's largest civil rights group is expected to condemn what it calls racist elements in the Tea Party movement.  The nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization will vote on the resolution Tuesday [7/13/2010] during its annual convention in Kansas City, Mo. More about the NAACP. Liberal Ignorance, Hate, and Intolerance:  Michelle Obama Addresses the NAALCP.  Does Mrs. Obama ever have anything positive to contribute to the national discourse?  Like her husband, she's always agitating, always rabble-rousing, always bringing the worst out of people.  She may blame the other side of the aisle for stoking hate, fear, division, and racism.  But, perfectly illustrating the psychological defense mechanism of Projection, it is she and her ideological ilk who do it, and they do it as frequently and effortlessly as breathing. The Obama family will be in Maine, but you go ahead and enjoy the Gulf. Michelle Obama:  'There are still 1000s of miles of beaches not touched by the spill'.  First Lady Michelle Obama arrived at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport at 2:34 today [7/12/2010] to begin meeting with local officials and residents about the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. While the Obamas Head to Maine... First Lady Encourages Americans to Vacation on Gulf.  On her first trip to the Gulf Coast since the BP oil spill, First Lady Michelle Obama encouraged Americans to consider vacationing on the region's beaches that have not been directly impacted by oil. ... The Obama family will be taking a mini-vacation of their own this weekend, but instead of going to the Gulf Coast they are traveling to Maine's Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. Rumors abound as to exactly how Mrs. Obama obtains her wardrobe.  Rumors abound as to exactly how the first family obtains all the pomp and frills associated with Mrs. Obama's wardrobe.  Do the Obamas pay for it all themselves or are the first lady's outfits given to her gratis?  As with most things, it appears the answer lies somewhere in the middle.  Ikram Goldman, owner of the Chicago boutique Ikram, manages the majority of the first lady's sartorial needs.  Any designer wishing to dress Mrs. Obama must first go through Goldman, who remains exceedingly tight-lipped as to her dealings with the first lady. Fat Black Kids Showcase America's Racism.  The most recent statement by Michelle Obama baffles me, as she compared black children's health to the age old Democrat policies of slavery and Jim Crow laws:  ... Imagine my surprise to learn that one can recognize racist policies caused fat black kids.  Here I thought racism was when black men intimidating white voters are not prosecuted for obvious voter intimidation, by a black Attorney General, simply because the perpetrators were black.  I erroneously believed that racism had occurred when a black president speaks out (without any facts) on behalf of a black professor behaving badly, and who is given preference over a white cop doing his job. White House looks to leverage Michelle Obama's popularity.  Playing it safe can sometimes pay off, as first lady Michelle Obama is finding with some of the highest favorable ratings in official Washington.  And she could be taking those numbers out for a test drive, as the White House looks for ways to leverage her popularity without diminishing her value as an asset. Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation.  While most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns — or forgoing them altogether — the Obamas don't seem to be heeding their own advice.  While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends."  According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort.  Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times. Let them eat tapas.  The Obama family has been working hard to show their indifference to the plight of middle America.  Whether it's the president's golfing fetish, private air transportation for family dog Bo to a Maine vacation, or Michelle Obama's taxpayer subsidized trip to the Spanish Riviera, the gulf between the White House leisure class and the American middle class has grown to unprecedented proportions.  Everyone is entitled to some R & R, though Mrs. Obama's jaunt is her eighth holiday this summer. Spanish police close public beach for Michelle Obama's £250,000 Spanish holiday.  Michelle Obama today faced a fresh wave of attacks over her lavish break in Spain with 40 friends, which could easily cost U.S. taxpayers a staggering £50,000 a day.  The First Lady has been lambasted for her extravagance at a time when the economy is still struggling. One blogger went so far as to brand her a modern-day Marie Antoinette. Michelle Obama's Lavish Spain Vacation Sparking Criticism.  While First Lady Michelle Obama continues sightseeing and shopping in southern Spain with daughter Sasha and friends as "private" tourists, questions are being raised about the cost to taxpayers and whether a lavish vacation sends the right message during tough economic times in the U.S. The Pain in Spain Falls Mainly on US Taxpayers.  While millions of Americans cut back on what they can spend on their vacation, Michelle Obama is concluding her last vacation with a new vacation trip along with 40 guests to Spain billed at a cost of 300,000 dollars a day.  If Michelle Obama wants to go for a swim, an entire beach in Spain must be closed.  Considering her busy working schedule of appearing on talk shows and then appearing on magazine covers, I think we can all agree that nine vacations is very modest.  And the real tab gets much higher when you consider how many of the other unstated expenses are being picked up by "friends", which is usually a fancy way of saying people who expect favors in return, again, at taxpayer expense. What Was Michelle Obama Thinking?  When we're in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, it's not a good idea to take a luxury vacation that most of your countrymen could never possibly afford in the best of times, at considerable taxpayer expense for the security, in a foreign country. First Lady claims working class roots, but her lifestyle is luxury.  When images of Jean Paul Gaultier-clad First Lady Michelle Obama on a $75,000-a-day Spanish holiday hit the wires, controversy was bound to erupt back home.  Her carefully crafted image as "everywoman" was blown.  In addition to the high cost, the evolving justifications for the trip offered by the White House's flack were just as dizzying. Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Michelle.  Michelle Obama is a woman of her word.  In July, she made a drive-by through the Gulf coast region and urged people to "do a few things [to] help this community."  Emphasis on the word "few."  She even recorded an ad inviting Americans to "come on down" to the Gulf as she herself then headed back to Washington to collect her family to head to a holiday in a national park in Maine.  At least Maine is in America.  With her recent holiday junket to Spain, she has now officially spit in the eye of Gulf coast residents. Public Service:  Nice Work If You Can Get It.  In 1991, Michelle Obama left the world of corporate law to serve the public in Chicago Mayor Daley's office.  She then served the public at the Chicago Department of Planning and Development and by founding the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, a non-profit organization.  In 1996, Mrs. Obama continued her public service at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Hospitals.  By 2005, Mrs. Obama's salary had "responded" to her public service work to the tune of $317,000.  Nice work if you can get it. Where's the Michelle Obama Who Said This?  Earlier this year, Michelle Obama ... rolled out this nationwide initiative, Let's Move, earlier in 2010.  She said she learned when she and Barack were working that her children's nutrition was suffering from not being able to cook meals for them.  She said she started making changes and wanted to bring those lessons to the White House.  Apparently, they were all lessons she forgot when trying to win over Iowa voters on the campaign trail with her husband. Funding Michelle Obama's Priorities.  In a special session that epitomized everything people hate about Congress, a bill to help states was passed with $26 billion in money that was offset with strange accounting measures.  That is something we've come to expect from this Congress — worry about paying for it later, by our children and grandchildren.  Many Democrats were uncomfortable with the vote on August 10, but they may come back to Congress for another vote that will be billed as an $8 billion child nutrition bill.  This bill is at the center of Michelle "Marie Antoinette" Obama's "Let's Move" initiative to fight childhood obesity. The Editor says... Michelle Obama's childhood obesity crusade was harmless enough until it developed a price tag of eight billion dollars.  Now it's not so cute.  It's just another way for the Obamas to spend other people's money on their pet projects. Out-Of-Control Michelle Obama's Spending Spree.  After blowing nearly a half-million dollars on a Spanish shopping spree, Michelle Obama has plans to spend a whopping $2 million in the coming year — while the nation struggles with its worst recession ever. Michelle's War On Fat.  American first ladies often go to bat for good causes.  Nothing wrong with that.  But Michelle Obama's push for intrusive regulations, pressure tactics and one-size-fits-all solutions to end obesity goes too far.  The first lady had no difficulty telling members of the National Restaurant Association on Monday [9/13/2010] how to run their businesses to help reduce childhood obesity, her pet cause. Michelle the Menu Maven.  The woman who's taste-tested every flavor of ice cream from Maine to Spain is out dictating gastronomical edicts to the National Restaurant Association. ... The same woman who ordered hot fudge sundaes while eating her way across the North and Southeast of America is now "plead[ing] with restaurants to take a little butter or cream out of their dishes, use low fat milk and provide apple slices or carrots as a default side dish on the kids' menu."  One can't help but wonder whether Sasha would have agreed to being prodded toward carrot-flavored frozen skim milk in lieu of the "melon and raspberry" ice cream concoction Mom purchased for her on the notorious Spanish "private mother-daughter" trip. First Lady Pushes for Healthy Produce in Liquor Stores.  First Lady Michelle Obama told those gathered for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Legislative Conference on Wednesday [9/15/2010] that her "Let's Move!" campaign to end childhood obesity required grassroots efforts in communities across the nation, such as planting community gardens and making fresh produce more readily available, including in liquor stores. Michelle Obama Keeps Her Promise.  "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."  Michelle Obama told us that on the campaign trail in 2008, and it is fair to say that her campaign promise has been kept. The Two Faces of Michelle Obama.  Mrs. Obama kicked off her electioneering with an online "grassroots" appeal to individual donors coordinated by the White House political arm Organizing for America (OFA).  With humble heart, the president's wife asked followers ("the folks who voted to make change real") to scrounge up "$3 or more to help grow this movement."  The first lady announced an eyebrow-raising pledge program by anonymous donors (so much for transparency) who will "match" every contribution made before November 2.  She identified the "Michelle Match" participants as "teachers and firefighters, truckers and nurses" — which may be Obama code for Big Labor and its $88 million midterm-campaign war chest. Michelle Obama Panhandles Poor for Rich Democrat Pols.  Apparently, Michelle Obama knows no shame.  Just coming back from a whirlwind summer of elegant soirées, a sumptuous vacation abroad, and a jet-setting Martha's Vineyard junket on a multimillion-dollar estate, first lady Michelle Obama has sent a mass mailing panhandling America's poor to stuff the campaign coffers of the rich Democrat pols, the same pols whose legislation has impoverished the people and left them jobless. ... Americans need to start asking whether Michelle Obama has ever done a single thing that's made us proud of her. Forbes's list of 100 powerful women seems to confuse marriage with achievement.  [Scroll down]  But Michelle Obama as number one — sorry?  Apparently, she beats every chairwoman of the board, political leader and high-rolling one-woman entertainment conglomerate on the planet for her role of being "within pillow-talk range of her husband the president". First Lady may have violated Illinois election laws.  First Lady Michelle Obama reportedly violated Illinois election laws by encouraging voters to support President Obama at a polling place in Chicago Thursday morning [10/14/2010].  Election laws in Illinois prohibit anyone from engaging in "any political discussion within any polling place," or "within 100 feet of any polling place."  The first lady was reportedly speaking with other voters in a polling place and urged them to keep President Obama's agenda going. First Lady Michelle Obama accused of breaching law by campaining in polling station.  Michelle Obama has been accused of breaching electoral law by campaigning inside a polling station.  The First Lady cast her ballot for the mid-term elections in Chicago but then posed for photos and told voters to back her husband. Michelle Obama and Illinois Election Law.  Did Michelle Obama violate Illinois election law?  The question arose after the first lady, who voted early at her Chicago precinct Thursday [10/14/2010], responded to voters who voiced support for her husband.  It's unlawful in the state to have a "political discussion" or engage in "electioneering" within 100 feet of a polling place. A Soulless White House.  I think Barack and Michelle Obama are secret totalitarians — in spirit, if not yet in fact — who believe mostly in their own superior intentions.  Michelle really does think the country needs an all-powerful Food Mom who will make the kids eat right so they never get fat... even though Michelle can't control her own appetite any more than the rest of us can. Marie Antoinette has nothing on the Obamas.  Clearly this administration learned nothing from the public outcry over Michelle Obama's turn as Marie Antoinette re-incarnate on her last little junket to Spain.  If you thought the flaunting FLOTUS dropping a cool half million on a vacation trip for 40 of her pals and 70 secret service agents was over-the-top, wait to you get a load of the Obama itinerary for the Mumbai junket. Freedom Fries.  Of course people should eat healthier.  American adults are overweight; so are their offspring.  But Mrs. Obama's health initiatives are perturbing on more levels than the food pyramid.  Not only does this seem rather invasive, as privately owned restaurants have always possessed the right to sell raw foods, obscene amounts of alcohol, and food laden with butter as long as that's what their customers are willing to pay for.  It also ignores the personal responsibility of those who choose to partake.  None of this is of any concern to Mrs. Obama, who proceeds directly from the fact that obesity is unhealthy to the notion that government officials — and their hectoring wives — should regulate our diets accordingly. The First Lady & the Cheeseburger.  After a recent Milwaukee campaign event for Sen. Russ Feingold, Michelle Obama tucked into a juicy cheeseburger and fries at a local favorite, Miss Katie's Diner.  While having photos taken and signing autographs on paper napkins, the first lady was unaware that her brief stop at Miss Katie's would create an Internet stir, with the blogosphere erupting in criticism of her hypocritical lunch choice. Michelle Obama's $400 Million 'Food Desert' Scam.  First Lady Michelle Obama has called on Congress to create a $400 million-per-year program to encourage the establishment of supermarkets in places she calls "food deserts."  The situation in these "food deserts," as Mrs. Obama describes it, is quite dire indeed.  American children are growing fat because their parents cannot get to a supermarket — to buy fruits and vegetables — without undergoing the hardship of boarding a bus or riding a taxi.  As a consequence, food-desert-dwelling children are forced to eat fast food and junk procured at chain restaurants and convenience stores. The further adventures of Michelle and Barack in India.  Michelle said, "I didn't grow up with a lot of money."  Reminding exploited youngsters that rough childhoods are not exclusive to India, Mrs. Obama exhorted those that sleep curled up on railroad platforms to follow her lead and make sure to get an education.  After presenting waifs with bags of stationery and "White House M&M sweets," the First Lady put her very expensive Cynthia Vincent ballet flats back on and headed toward New Delhi on a one-woman mission to stimulate India's economy.  Behaving like royalty in a dearth-plagued country filled with street urchins who oftentimes go without food, Mrs. Obama descended on the National Handicrafts and Handloom Museum in the Pragati Maidan complex.  While there, the well-heeled First Lady disregarded the abject poverty beyond the walls of the museum and, for two hours, furthered diplomacy by procuring frivolous curios and trinkets. It takes a vittle: First lady engineers government takeover of children's food.  In the case of obesity, the so-called problem is very much an illusion.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, the average height of Americans has increased by an inch since the 1960s.  That's a sign of proper nourishment.  While average weight increased by 24 pounds over the same period, we're all living an average of eight years longer.  That's a sign of good health.  The bottom line is that Americans can take care of themselves just fine without help from Mrs. Obama.  It doesn't take a village to solve a public health crisis that doesn't exist. Behind the broccoli: Liberalism's war on liberty.  What this country needs is a crop of healthy, hunger-free kids — and now, thanks to the hectoring of Michelle Obama and the terrible swift presidential pen of her husband, it has one:  the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. ... ObamaCare and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 are the things that expose modern liberalism for the iron fist in the velvet glove.  Can't feed yourself?  Dinner's on us.  Out of work?  We'll pay you to stay unemployed.  After all, you're too stupid to make your own best decisions in what used to be personal matters.  All we ask in exchange for your freedom is your vote. Most Americans oppose Michelle Obama's Healthy Hunger-free Kids Act.  A significant percentage Americans oppose the Healthy Hunger-free Kids Act pushed by First Lady Michelle Obama and signed into law by President Barack Obama signed on Monday.  Among other things, the $4.6 billion law allows the USDA to set nutritional standards for foods made and sold in schools; increases the number of children who qualify for school meal programs, and "sets basic standards for school wellness policies including goals for nutrition promotion and education and physical activity." FLOTUS chows at the taxpayers' trough.  First lady Michelle Obama didn't feel like waiting around cold, boring old Washington, D.C., for her husband and Congress to wrap up their work for the year.  So she simply stuck the taxpayers with the $63,000 tab to start her Hawaiian vacation a bit early — just a few short months after the Spain vacation with her gal-pals that set us all back a pretty penny.  With her husband announcing a two-year pay freeze for federal employees as a way to save taxpayers a few precious dollars, it's jaw-dropping that Michelle Obama could be so relentlessly politically tone-deaf. The Obamas Police Food and Football.  [Scroll down]  On the food front, Michelle Obama likewise said something that, given the context, conjures up a lot of history.  Speaking at a public school to commemorate the signing of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, the First Lady said flat out that the federal government must act because we can't just leave [child nutrition] up to the parents."  She means it:  The law she was on hand to praise gives the federal government the power to regulate the food sold in public school cafeterias nationwide.  We are a very long way from 1994, when Republicans were threatening to end the Department of Education in order to turn more power over to local and state control.  The federal food police are acting in the name of fighting childhood obesity, a real problem for which there is scant evidence that school lunches play any role whatsoever.  School lunches, for the kids who eat them, constitute one meal a day, five days a week, about nine months of the year.  They are not the dominant food source for the vast majority, if any, of America's kids. Fattening Government to Fight Obesity.  The child nutrition bill signed into law by President Obama on Dec. 13 has been touted as essential to combating the "epidemic" of childhood obesity.  It is also a welfare expansion, adding $4.5 billion to the cost of school lunches.  Despite the additional six cents per meal which will be paid to the schools, critics say it amounts to an unfunded mandate which could bankrupt schools. Could Sarah Palin be right about Michelle Obama?  If Michelle Obama were just a Chicago-based community activist who was organizing a nation-wide propaganda campaign to urge people to eat healthily I would have no objection.  Although Ms. Obama does not hold any official office she is a spokesperson for the White House and her husband, the president.  Nothing she does or says happens without political vetting, approval, strategizing and so forth.  In this sense she is an arm of the executive branch. Michelle Obama's Barbecue Hypocrisy.  The first rule of political pandering:  Know what you're talking about. ... In an e-mail congratulating Charlotte, N.C., on being named host city for the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Obama mentioned that Charlotte has "great barbecue."  As someone who grew up an hour from Charlotte, I can tell you that few natives would say that.  Nobody travels to Charlotte for the barbecue. The First Lady Of Junk Science.  While her husband may have paid lip service to ending the abuse of science for "politics or ideology," first lady Michelle Obama gave herself a super-sized waiver. ... Just as the White House costumed Obamacare activists in white lab coats, the fashionable Mrs. O has cloaked her meddling anti-obesity crusade in medical fakery. Keeping Abreast of Michelle Obama's Nanny Attacks.  First lady Michelle Obama apparently has far too much time on her unspoiled hands, inevitable when one has 30 or more servants to help meet the demands of a family of four. Mrs. Obama's blunders expose the folly of First Lady activism.  While the First Lady wields no formally-mandated power, the institutionalization of her office confers upon her a degree of influence that no unelected or unappointed citizen ought to have.  A candidate's spouse does not "run" for First Lady.  In fact, we are frequently urged to keep a presidential candidate's family off limits and collectively tut whenever anyone is so boorish as to violate this unwritten compact.  But ... if the First Lady is to play a formal role in the governing of this country — even a comparatively frivolous one — then it is more than a little disingenuous of her to cower under any kind of apolitical aegis. Michelle's Healthy, Hunger-Free Menus.  The growing sixth grader who eats his 1.5 ounces of turkey and throws his cup and a half of broccoli, cauliflower and green beans in the compost will probably not be hunger-free.  A Devil Dog at the convenience store on the way home will easily remedy that problem. Michelle Obama's school lunch. Looks like the meal you'd get in a vegetarian prison. Michelle Obama accused of hypocrisy (again).  Michelle Obama's campaign for better nutrition has come under fire yet again, just days after Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie defended her anti-obesity initiative.  And what is the complaint against the first lady this time?  She is now being accused of stuffing a staggering 2200 calorie meal into the mouths of state governors at a White House gala last night. Mrs. Obama Serves Governors a 2,200 Calorie Meal.  First Lady Michelle Obama Sunday night stuffed about 2,200 calories worth of dinner into the nation's governors, hosting a White House bash that pulled few punches on the fattening front despite her profile as the leader of a national crusade to trim the waistlines of the country's youth. President Feasts on Fast Food While First Lady Values Veggies.  While the main message coming from the White House Friday focused on the resurgent U.S. auto industry, the Obamas sent mixed messages on the food front as the first lady planted vegetables while the president dined on less healthy fare.  "Mustard, onion, chili sauce sounds just right... a little cheese on it, nothing wrong with that," the president said as he placed his order at Rudy's, one of the locals' favorite hot dog joints in Toledo, Ohio. Michelle Obama to Hold Another 'Listen Only' Press Briefing.  First Lady Michelle Obama will hold another "listen-only" conference call with reporters this afternoon, continuing a pattern of holding events for the media where access is sharply limited. ... The First Lady appears to be establishing a new routine, where she speaks and — from beginning to end — reporters mutely listen. Michelle Obama carries $1,000 tote.  Michelle Obama put another label name on the map this week, when she was spotted carrying a bold new handbag to her daughter's parent-teacher conference.  The teal blue leather tote by U.S. designer Reed Krakoff has already sold out around the world — despite the fact that it costs nearly $1,000. Distraction -- Number One Strategy of Obama Act.  If there has ever been a moment for the old adage, "Don't get mad, get even", Barack and Michelle are IT.  Michelle is into childhood obesity because that's what's most likely to get parents looking to resurrect the MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) clause.  It goes without saying that it should be up to Mama what the little ones eat, not the self-centered, unelected wife of an anti-American president. Michelle Obama's high staff turnover.  [Scroll down]  In fact, Michelle's job as a community organizer at the hospital [the University of Chicago Medical Center] appears to be one created purely as an act of political patronage.  Her starting salary of $121,910 suddenly leaped to $316,962 once her husband was elected as U.S. senator from Illinois.  One of Barack's first acts in the Senate was to provide a million-plus dollar earmark to Michelle's employer.  There is no evidence to support the idea that Mrs. Obama actually supervised any staff in this position, which was so vital to the hospital that it was eliminated once Michelle no longer needed the income. A new Michelle emerges in Africa.  As First Lady, Obama sets herself up as a nutrition expert, an all-out effort to end Childhood Obesity her main legacy.  In Cape Town, a more playful Obama got off a laugh line in a reluctant admission how she can't pass on the French fries.  In response to a soft question Obama mentioned she included among her favourite food, Indian food and then Mexican food, and then said:  "No, if I picked one favorite, favorite food, it's French fries."  The audience began to laugh.  "Okay?  It's French fries," Obama continued.  "I can't stop eating them." Michelle Obama Tells Tales to South Africans.  Now that most of the dupes who voted for their love-object in 2008 have been betrayed in the worst way, Michelle Obama is trying to sell the same pre-election snake oil 8,000 miles away. Michelle Obama tucks in to fat cakes and French fries on trip to Botswana.  She has been widely outspoken about the perils of children eating too much fatty food with her campaign for better nutrition.  So perhaps Michelle Obama should have thought twice before posing enthusiastically for her latest photo opportunity in Botswana. Michelle Obama's 'goodwill tour' of Africa cost U.S. taxpayers up to $800,000.  According to Whitehousedossier.com the First Lady's trip to South Africa and Botswana last week will certainly cost well over half a million dollars and could be as much as $800,000.  The cost of local transportation, Secret Service protection, food for her family and staff members, the cost of firing up 'Air Force 2' not to mention the pre-trip preparations would all have contributed to the final amount. Top 10 Obama Attacks on Capitalism:  [#10]  Leave corporate America:  Michelle Obama, during the 2008 presidential race, described her and her husband's philosophy on the superiority of public service over the business world:  "We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do.  Don't go into corporate America.  You know, become teachers.  Work for the community.  Be social workers.  Be a nurse."  Because, you know, community activists are so much more valuable than corporate leaders. First Lady spotted consuming '1,700 calorie' Shake Shack meal.  Her 'Let's Move' healthy diet campaign seemingly forgotten, Michelle Obama was spotted chowing down a 1,700-calorie strong meal from Shake Shack.  Mrs Obama reportedly ordered a ShackBurger, fries, chocolate shake AND Diet Coke at the newly opened branch of the fast food chain in Washington, the Washington Post reported. Michelle Obama orders 1,700-calorie meal at Shake Shack.  First lady Michelle Obama ordered a whopper of a meal at the newly opened Washington diner Shake Shack during lunch on Monday [7/11/2011].  A Washington Post journalist on the scene confirmed the first lady, who's made a cause out of child nutrition, ordered a ShackBurger, fries, chocolate shake and a Diet Coke while the street and sidewalk in front of the usually-packed Shake Shack were closed by security during her visit. ABC: How dare you criticize Mrs. Obama!  I passed on this story and really, I do not care what Mrs. Obama eats.  Sure, she is lecturing the rest of us on obesity while wolfing down a bunch of garbage food.  If I criticized every liberal for every hypocrisy, I'd have to write 100 posts a day. Michelle Obama deserved a grilling on her burger choice.  A health-conscious Michelle Obama scarfing down a "burger, fries, a chocolate shake and a Diet Coke," at a greasy hamburger joint?  The irony was as thick as mayo.  And for critics, it should have been faster to heat up than Easy Mac. First Lady smashes another barrier.  For the first time ever, a First Lady has been photographed barefoot in the White House, as an official White House photographer captured the First Family watching the World Cup Women's Championship match. Barack Hussein Obama is a Fraud.  Neither Barack Obama, nor his wife Michelle Obama, love this country. Michelle Obama disclosed her disrespect for America, even though she has had all of the work and educational benefits a person could ask. After she saw the success her husband was having in the presidential campaign, she said on 2-18-2008, that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of America. I suppose she hated America like many of her other associates, until then. I think she still does. Michelle Obama spotted at We The Pizza.  The first lady and daughter Sasha swung by the Capitol Hill pizza joint owned by Spike Mendelsohn on Monday night.  No word on what FLOTUS ate, but the restaurant's menu doesn't offer too many healthy options. Obama Vacay: In Your Facemanship.  If the Obamas insist on spending two weeks in an enclave noted for the rich and famous, especially while the nation's unemployment rate hovers at just over 9%, then the least they could do is exhibit a modicum of restraint, and try to be as modest and discreet as possible.  Instead, Michelle Obama, renowned for her impatience when it comes to reaching her desired destination, put thousands of additional dollars on the taxpayers' tab, "so she could have just a bit of extra vacation" -- all of four hours' worth. Michelle Obama's out-of-control spending.  There does appear to be an unhealthy sense of entitlement on the part of the First Lady, which seems in poor taste at a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, the housing market is collapsing, and the United States is facing the strong possibility of a double-dip recession. Judicial Watch sues for Michelle travel documents.  Judicial Watch is filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the United States Air Force to obtain records related to the June 21-27, 2011, trip taken by First Lady Michelle Obama, her family, and her staff to South Africa and Botswana.  Earlier reports suggested that the cost for air travel cost taxpayers $430,000, but Judicial Watch believes that additional Secret Service officers and White House staff security tallied further expenses. U.S. sued over Michelle's secretive 'family outing'.  Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit over the federal government's refusal to disclose how much taxpayers spent to send Michelle Obama on a "family outing" that included a safari in Africa. Michelle Obama Spent 42 Days on Vacation this Past Year.  First Lady Michelle Obama over the last year has spent a total of 42 days on vacation, or a little more than one out of every nine days, according to a White House Dossier analysis of her travel.  Her vacations, the cost of which are mostly borne by taxpayers, include trips to Panama City, Fla., Martha's Vineyard, Hawaii, South Africa, Latin America, Vail, Colo., and her visit this week to her brother in Corvallis, Ore. Why so glum, Michelle?  On Aug. 9, the first lady sneaked out of Washington and flew aboard a government plane to Corvallis, Ore.  On board, dozens of staffers, Secret Service agents, Mrs. Obama's mother and one of the Obamas' daughters (we never did find out who).  No husband.  Her office never announced the trip; the news was broken by Oregon's Register-Guard newspaper. ... No, there's something going on there.  How else to explain all those vacations away from President Obama — to Florida, California, South Africa, Latin America, Colorado, Spain? Michelle the Menu Micromanager.  Even though Michelle tends to unabashedly frequent establishments that serve high-end, calorie-rich cuisine, she has nonetheless anointed herself the maven and monitor of healthful eating. ... Thanks to Mrs. Obama, who allows her two girls to eat fried shrimp baskets and hot fudge sundaes on vacation, America's children will find that when it's treat time for them, "French fries and sugar-sweetened beverages will become the exception and not the rule." Lost My Appetite for Olive Garden.  Looks like I won't be eating at Olive Garden anymore.  In addition I won't be eating at Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze or Seasons 52, all Darden Restaurants. ... On September 15, 2011 Darden Restaurants decided to collaborate with Michelle Obama's childhood anti-obesity campaign. Michelle the Menu Micromanager.  Even though Michelle tends to unabashedly frequent establishments that serve high-end, calorie-rich cuisine, she has nonetheless anointed herself the maven and monitor of healthful eating.  Thus, the first lady's obvious double standard has delivered yet another initiative whose success is measured by the level of Obama hypocrisy it manages to expose.  When Michelle goes on vacation — which, by the way, is quite frequently — she justifies indulging in whatever she happens to crave. Michelle Obama: "All This Just For a Flag".  The internet was buzzing Tuesday night with video of First Lady Michelle Obama apparently showing extreme disrespect to the American flag at a ceremony in honor of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.  As police and firefighters fold the flag to the sound of marching bagpipers, a skeptical looking Mrs. Obama leans to her husband and appears to say, "all this just for a flag."  She then purses her lips and shakes her head slightly as Mr. Obama nods. What is Michelle Obama saying during the 9/11 flag ceremony?  There is a growing internet buzz over the First Lady's comment to her husband during the 9/11 commemoration Sunday, as the flag ceremony is taking place.  Watch the video clip below, and lip readers are invited to comment on what she is saying.  To my unskilled eyes, it looks as though she is saying, "All that for a flag!" Can liberals shop at Target now?  Photos of First Lady Michelle Obama were featured on all major network newscasts yesterday [9/29/2011] as she was spotted shopping at a local Target retail store wearing a hat and sunglasses.  Target notoriously sparked the outrage of liberals and LGTB activists after donating money to Republicans in Minnesota. Another staged moment in the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama.  Michelle Obama just had to get out to Target to do a little shopping last week.  But, before the shopping run the White House tipped off AP photographer Charles Dharapak so that he would be at the store to memorialize the moment. Michelle Obama is right on Target.  Finally, the White House has decided to be transparent — and embarrassingly so.  The first lady officially announced her husband's kickoff of the 2012 election with a thinly veiled photo-op trip to a local Target discount store.  It's not clear if Mrs. Obama took her own taxpayer-funded private jet to the store or perhaps three jets to accommodate her entourage, as she did for her European vacation.  Sources are unclear how often she frequents the Target stores at her usual getaways to places such as Vail, Hawaii or Martha's Vineyard or whether she wears her $42,000 diamond bracelets while clipping coupons. Michelle Says Bank Discriminated Against Barack's Grandmother.  First Lady Michelle Obama said at a fundraiser in Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday night [9/30/2011] that a bank where Barack Obama's grandmother had worked discriminated against her for nearly two decades "because she was a woman."  However, the Washington Post reported earlier this year that Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had been the first female vice president of the Bank of Hawaii. WaPo Now Wonders If Michelle's Target Photos Were Just Orchestrated PR with AP.  Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi is finding a lot of unusual circumstances — and unusual no-comments — around Michelle Obama's razzle-dazzle distraction outing to Target after her latest controversy over wearing $42,000 diamond bracelets.  He found "there might have been something to the notion of White House orchestration." Nearly $500K to send Michelle, family to Africa.  How much does it cost taxpayers to fly First Lady Michelle Obama, her two daughters and her mother, a niece and a nephew, a hairstylist and makeup artists to South Africa and Botswana to give a few speeches, meet Nelson Mandela, and enjoy a safari on a private game preserve?  Nearly half a million dollars, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) concerning Obama's June 21-27 journey. Michelle Obama's Africa Vacation Cost More Than $432,142.  First lady Michelle Obama's family trip to South Africa and Botswana in June cost taxpayers well over $424,000, according to new accounting based on Air Force manifests obtained by Judicial Watch, a taxpayer watchdog group.  The use of Air Force aircraft alone for the June 21-27 trip cost $424,142, said the group, and that doesn't include the food, lodging, and ground transportation for the 21 family and staff members. Michelle Obama's taxpayer-funded spending is an embarrassment for the White House.  Although ignored by most of America's liberal-dominated media, several online US news sites are reporting that Michelle Obama's grand tour of southern Africa earlier this year cost American taxpayers nearly half a million dollars — and that's just for the flights.  This follows in the wake of claims this August from sources inside the White House itself that the First Lady may have spent "$10 million of taxpayers' money on vacations alone in the past year." Michelle Obama's warning to gun owners.  Nearly three years into President Obama's first term in office, Michelle Obama finally said something with which I can agree.  At a recent fundraiser for President Obama's re-election campaign in Providence, Rhode Island, the first lady told her audience:  "We stand at a fundamental crossroads for our country.  You're here because you know that in just 13 months, we're going to make a choice that will impact our lives for decades to come ... let's not forget what it meant when my husband appointed those two brilliant Supreme Court justices ... let's not forget the impact that their decisions will have on our lives for decades to come." Michelle offends the British.  I was going to title this "Today In Smart Diplomacy."  Once again, Michelle Obama is vacationing on the public's dime (the Obamas are worth over $10 million), this time in Cape Town, South Africa, with her daughters — or as the official manifest described them, senior advisers.  (Her husband stayed home to declare another war on another Third World nation, this time Uganda.)  Missus Obama ticked off the British again. Obama: Michelle 'loves french fries, pizza'.  President Obama said his wife loves pizza and french fries during his appearance Tuesday night on Jay Leno's show.  Though the first lady has used her office to campaign against obesity and to tout healthy eating habits, she's OK with fattier foods in moderation, Obama said. Michelle Obama and 'the Few at the Top'.  When Ms. Obama charges, "Will we be a country where opportunity is limited to just the few at the top?  Who are we?" one wonders, why, then, in the past three years of hard times, did she insist on vacationing, in iconic fashion, at Vail, Martha's Vineyard, and Costa del Sol, the tony haunts of "the few at the top"?  In these rough times, surely a smaller staff, less travel, and budgetary economies would have enhanced her populist message of some at the top enjoying perks at the expense of others. The very angry first lady.  Michelle [Obama] is going to break with a hundred years of tradition and play the role of attack dog, heaping derision on her husband's political opponents like no other first lady before her.  And it's already begun.  Mad Michelle this week popped down to Davis Island, Fla., to hobnob with the very people her husband despises — the 1 percent.  At a massive mansion on the bay, filled with the wealthiest of the wealthy, America's first lady launched into a tirade about "them" — the Republicans. Mrs. Obama Preaches Against Childhood Obesity, Then Gives Kids M&Ms.  First Lady Michelle Obama brought her "Let's Move!" campaign to the 2011 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Hawaii. ... Following her discussion on ending childhood obesity, the Obamafoodorama Blog reported that the young farmers were presented boxes of President M&Ms. At Let's Move! Event, Michelle Obama Presents Gifts Of White House M&Ms.  On Saturday [11/12/2011] in Hawaii, during a visit to MA'O Organic Farms, First Lady Michelle Obama held a roundtable discussion on the importance of healthy eating and organic farming for her Let's Move! campaign to end childhood obesity.  After, Mrs. Obama presented the student interns who run the farm with a special gift:  Presidential M&Ms. Mrs. Obama: Let Them Eat Steak — And Arugula.  Visiting an organic farm in Hawaii on Saturday [11/12/2011], First Lady Michelle Obama said that "arugula and steak" was her "favorite" meal and expressed her view that American children need to "get their palates adjusted" so they will begin eating properly.  Mrs. Obama also said that children in "underserved communities" become obese because they "aren't growing up with vegetables because there are no grocery stores." The very angry first lady Michelle Obama.  Michelle's back, and she's madder than ever.  She was already pretty angry, seemingly unhappy with just about everything. ... She even seems to be mad at her silver-tongued husband.  When the two were to set off on a luxurious 10-day vacation to Martha's Vineyard, she left early — four hours early — and flew up alone.  And those private vacations.  She's traveled to some of the world's most plush resorts, taking 42 days off in the past year — that'd be eight weeks of vacay time if she held down a normal job.  Now, she is ready to spew her bilious disgust with America on the campaign trail. ... So, America's first lady will travel the country this election season to tell her fellow Americans just how bad it is out there (between lavish vacations, of course). FLOTUS dines at Co Co. Sala.  First lady Michelle Obama enjoyed a lovely evening at Co Co. Sala on F Street on Monday night [11/28/2011]. ... We're told Obama's favorite savory was Chef Tiptur's Moroccan Swordfish Sliders with chermoula marinade, fennel salad, aged pecorino and hazelnut coffee dressing. Michelle Antoinette's Hawaii hat trick.  Obviously unwilling to submit to hubby Barack's executive order for "federal agencies to curtail travel expenses and save," this year First Lady Michelle Obama decided to leave early again for Christmas vacation, and commence with the holiday festivities in Oahu.  Last year Michelle went on ahead of her husband, who was delayed by Congress, which is the excuse that has become a Christmas tradition every year since Obama took office. Is Michelle Obama a vacation junkie?  In a story published late last week in The Daily Mail which followed another by the National Enquirer, First Lady Michelle Obama's vacation habbits including expensive massages, top shelf vodka and five-star hotels are under attack.  Critics have discovered over $10 million tax dollars has been spent on her personal recreation — in the last year. What Is More Racist?  Michelle Obama has received intense criticism for the flagrant way in which she spends taxpayer money and the tone-deafness she demonstrates.  Two-thousand dollar dresses, wearing sneakers that cost the equivalent of three months mortgage payments while at a homeless shelter, insisting on million-dollar Hawaiian vacations while your husband simultaneously lectures Americans about scaling back, yes, the comparison to [Marie] Antoinette is apropos.  Those who call it racist demonstrate the failings of public education. Mystery: Angry Black Woman Angry at Her Angry Black Woman Image.  Michelle Obama is in the news loyally defending her husband's dubious record of political accomplishments while denying her own record as an angry, difficult first lady who has disrupted White House operations.  In an interview with CBS the feisty first lady, formally trained in the fine legal art of denial of blatant, obvious truths, rather defiantly and sarcastically stated she is not the angry black woman being depicted in the media. A Portrait of the First Lady as an Angry Young Woman.  One does not have to take a leap of faith to believe Mrs. Obama to be an "angry black woman."  It is nothing more than a logical conclusion given the evidence she has provided.  "For the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of my country."  These are the words of Michelle Obama in 2008, said in response America's energetic reception of Barack Obama.  And clearly, they are the words of an angry person. School Kids Boo Michelle Obama During Healthy Lunches Speech.  School kids in Virginia booed Michelle Obama on Friday [1/13/2012].  The local ABC 7 Channel skipped the booing part in their report. Michelle Obama and Stokely Carmichael on Collective White Guilt:  [Scroll down]  The First Lady's 1985 thesis on being black at Princeton gave the tormented, race-obsessed young woman the chance to articulate long-repressed feelings of abjection, separateness, and anger.  When she purposely chose the Black Supremacist, radical, separationist, and anti-Semitic ideas of Stokely Carmichael to shore up a study of "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community," the writing was on the wall.  From there, she would go on to Harvard Law school and eventually end up at Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Afrocentric Trinity United Church of Christ with her husband and children.  Coincidently, Wright also happened to be a fan of the rabidly anti-white Carmichael. Michelle Obama unveils tougher nutrition standards for school meals.  The new regulations, according to the Department of Agriculture, will:   •   Ensure that students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;   •   Substantially increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods;   •   Offer only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties;   •   Limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and   •   Increase the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium. The Editor offers this reminder: Michelle Obama is neither an elected official nor an authority of any kind, and is in no position to tell you to do anything.  Nor can she enforce any "regulations" to change your pesonal dietary selections.  Any time you see Michelle Obama in the media spotlight (intentionally), what you see is merely a façade for big intrusive government. Michelle Obama biography. Related story:  Michelle Obama's apocryphal lingerie shopping binge. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn When questioned about his association with Bill Ayers, Obama's defense is that he was only eight years old when Ayers was actively engaged in domestic terrorism.  That is a ruse -- nobody is saying that Obama went along for the ride and lit the fuses on Bill Ayers' bombs -- but Obama had years of close association with Ayers when the two men were both adults, and Mr. Obama -- unless he is hopelessly gullible and utterly clueless -- must have known about Mr. Ayers' criminal history. This one issue alone would have been enough to derail any other candidate's campaign.  The radical left is hoping that the voters will forgive and forget the actions of the Weather Underground back in the 1960s. First of all... What was the Weather Underground?  If you believe the mainstream media or the spin coming from the former leaders of the Weather Underground, you would think that the Weather Underground were just a group of young anti Viet Nam war activists who pulled some pranks where no one was hurt or killed.  You would be wrong.  The Weather Underground were a group of Communists who wanted the Vietnamese Communists to defeat the United States.  They also engaged in terrorist acts including severe injury and sometimes death. Obama and Dohrn and Ayers.  In all likelihood Barack Obama first learned of Ayers and Dohrn in his college years.  His claim to not know their terrorist background is ludicrous. ... After high school in Hawaii, Obama went to Occidental College (1979-1981), a liberal arts college in Los Angeles.  Obama's first public speech was at an Occidental event sponsored by the Students for Economic Democracy, a group affiliated with far left radical Tom Hayden and Hayden's militant group SDS (Students for a Democratic Society.)  David Peck, an organizer of the Occidental rally, is now coordinating Americans in Spain for Obama. Did Ayers Help Obama Get Into Harvard?  The National Review's Steve Diamond has documented that both Ayers and Obama worked on a significant 1988 educational reform project in Chicago.  Although CEO of a major power company, Commonwealth Edison, Bill Ayers's father, Tom, also worked on this same project.  Tom Ayers was a prominent client of Sidley Austin, and it stands to reason that he got Dohrn her job.  Given her contempt conviction for refusing to cooperate in a terrorist investigation, a conviction that prevented her from actually practicing law, Dohrn would have needed major league pull to get hired by a high end law firm like Sidley.  A few years later, of all the law firms in Chicago, it was Sidley Austin that hired Obama on as a summer intern. Obama Associate Implicated In Murder Plot.  The sub-headline over the article says it all:  "The investigation into a cop killing in the '70s leads to a law professor who helped launch Barack Obama's political career."  The law professor is former Communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, a leader of the Weather Underground known for praising mass murderer Charles Manson.  Writer Peter Jamison, who is based in San Francisco, where the cop killing occurred, spent months working on the story and developed many different sources of information. Radical Loon When Obama Was Only 47.  In the past week, TV anchors have taken to claiming that Obama "refuted" John McCain's statement that Obama launched his political career at the home of former Weather Underground leader Ayers.  No, Obama "denied" it; he didn't "refute" it.  If "denying" something is the same as "refuting" it, then maybe the establishment media can quit harping on Palin's supposed lack of qualifications to be president, since she too "refuted" that by denying it. The Apologists for William Ayers.  William Ayers is a Marxist by his own admissions.  Barack Obama "assumes he has been rehabilitated" after he says he doesn't know the guy and then saying that he was "just a guy in the same neighborhood" even though they shared duties on two boards and shared office space for three years.  Barack Obama then says to "buy his book", the book written by William Ayers, the guy Barack doesn't know. Obama's Ties to Socialism:  Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were the national leaders of a radical leftist movement called the "Weatherman Underground Organization."  An offshoot of the radical Left "Students for a Democratic Society" (SDS), the Weathermen sought to enlighten the American consciousness to the evils of the Vietnam War.  Unlike their parent organization SDS, the Weathermen pursued or more radical modus operandi. When Barry met Billy.  When you have as many areas of your life deliberately obscured as Obama does, there is always the chance of being caught in a major lie. Obama all but accuses critics of stoking anti-government violence.  [Scroll down]  And by tut-tutting about violence on the heels of earlier comments trying to delegitimize critics of big government, the suggestion that people who criticize his government are stoking violence is pretty clearly telegraphed.  Which is one heck of a charge coming from a guy who spent years working side-by-side with an actual, unrepentant anti-government terrorist, and has lied his head off about it ever since. Obama's Desperate Equivalency Gambit.  One of the oldest tricks in politics — at least on the left — is to accuse your enemy of that which you are most guilty.  Barack Obama has been taking a beating based on his personal and political associations, particularly with the terrorist William Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground, and his campaign has decided not to take it anymore. Bill Ayers worked with Cuba says FBI report.  Unrepentant terrorist former leading Weather Underground Organization (WUO) member William Ayers was aided by Fidel Castro's Cuba in the 1970s, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report. Candidate of the Left.  For his entire adult life, Obama's closest political allies have been pro-Soviet progressives like state senator Alice Palmer who chose Obama as the politically appropriate figure whom she chose to inherit her state senate seat; or anti-American radicals like Bill Ayers, who organized a terrorist army in the 1970s with the intention of launching a race war in America, and bringing down the "empire."  Others may be under the illusion that the Weather Underground was organized to protest the Vietnam War.  But you know better. Getting the 'Ayers Issue' Straight.  [Scroll down]  This is the "Ayers issue."  [1] First, it is an issue that goes to Obama's honesty and forthrightness with the American people.  Why is he secretive about what he initially called a "flimsy" relationship?  Why has he been gradually changing his story as the facts emerge?  [2] Second, this goes to Obama's judgment.  Obama did not work against a radical domestic terrorist who continues to have radical views, he worked along side him.  [3] Third, it follows, this goes squarely to Obama's ideology itself.  What in Obama drew the radical Ayers into alliance with him?  And why was Obama so comfortable moving within his sphere and advancing his agenda?  The "Ayers issue" is not 1960s terrorism. Why should McCain be angry? Top 10 reasons.  [#3] Obama continues to lie about his relationship to Bill Ayers.  Obama did launch his political career at Ayer's home but continues to deny it.  This relationship to a terrorist goes much deeper than Obama wants anyone to know and McCain gets no help from the media who give Obama a pass. Barack Obama's Cop-Killer Supporters:  While Barack Obama's friends and supporters in the news media downplay his friendship and business relationship with former terrorist and Marxist university professor Willam Ayers, one aspect of the Ayers terrorism saga that's totally ignored is his reputation as a cop-killer.  For instance, in Nyack, New York, Ayers' terrorist group the Weather Underground launched an armored-car robbery that left two Nyack, NY police officers — Officer Waverly Brown and Sergeant Ed O'Grady — mortally wounded.  In addition, the Brinks armored-car driver, Peter Paige was also shot to death by the Weathermen. Was a Communist Obama's Sex Teacher?  Ayers and Dohrn, you see, are husband and wife and can't be compelled to testify against one another.  The evidence of their involvement came from an FBI informant in the Weather Underground.  His testimony, given before Congress, would be dismissed by clever Marxist lawyers as "hearsay."  Murder charges would have to be based on other, possibly forensic, evidence.  It is never too late to bring murder charges in this case. It is what it is: Obama allied with scoundrels.  In the best tradition of Bill Clinton's declaration that the answer to the question of whether he was having an affair depended on "what the definition of is is," Sen. Barack Obama was clearly concealing the truth when he said that William Ayers was "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood."  The Ayers-Obama connection was, in fact, an intimate collaboration that it led to the only executive or administrative experience in Obama's life. Weathermen:  Home-grown US radicals.  Embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, with many of the grievances of the civil-rights movement still unanswered, the US government was facing widespread protests in the late 1960s.  Often those who rebelled were rich in idealism but unable or unwilling to take concrete action.  On 8 October 1969, all that changed.  A newly-formed group of left-wing extremists, dubbed the Weathermen, went on the rampage in a well-planned protest in Chicago — the so-called Days of Rage riots. Eliminating 25 million Americans:  That was the plan of the Weather Underground after taking power. ... I asked, "well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?" and the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated.  And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. ... And they were dead serious. Obama's words and deeds:  Obama dismissed inquiries about his relationship with Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, by saying that he was just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."  In fact, Obama served from 1995 to 1999 as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), the brainchild of Ayers, an organization that funneled some $100 million into the hands of community organizers and activists, including ACORN, in order to radicalize Chicago's public schools.  Between 1969 and 1974, the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for some 20 bombings in the United States — at police stations, banks, jails, courthouses, the Capitol and the Pentagon. Sowing ACORNs to reap the biggest oak tree in Washington, DC.  The bombs set in the Sixties by the Weatherman Underground were just a means to an end:  Ayers and Dohrn wanted to become famous and earn their Leftist street cred.  They didn't care if people died to make it happen.  You gotta break some eggs to make that omelet. The Stealth Candidate:  I disagree with those who've said the most important issue concerning the Obama-Ayers connection is Obama's "judgment."  The very word implies that Obama doesn't share and never shared Ayers' views.  The crucial question is whether Obama is of like mind with such radicals. … Does anyone doubt that if any Republican presidential candidate had a small fraction of the questionable alliances Obama has, he already would have been hounded into withdrawing from the race? Blood On the Hands of Obama's Terror Associate.  Barack Obama was asked, during one of the Democratic presidential debates, about his relationship with communist terrorist Bill Ayers.  But the more controversial relationship was with his wife, communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.  Both were present and hosted Obama when he launched a run for the Illinois State Senate.  In effect, Ayers and Dohrn sponsored Obama's political career.  But it has now come to light that Dohrn repeatedly refused to deny credible reports that she planted a bomb at a police station that killed a law enforcement officer. The Ayers Question:  "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. Obama's Hot Ayers.  Ayers' distant past isn't the only reason to distrust him.  He has a present, as well — and Obama is a part of it.  The two of them have worked hard to radicalize Chicago's public schools.  Ayers' work funding radical "education" groups in Chicago came just in the last 12 years.  And he teamed up directly with Obama on that. William Ayers, "Former" Radical.  Stories at Politico and ABC refer to William Ayers as a "former radical," but wouldn't Ayers need to disavow his Sixties extremism to be a "former" radical?  He infamously told the New York Times in a story published on September 11, 2001, that he regretted not setting more bombs. The Bomber as School Reformer.  Back in the early eighties, in an interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, Bill Ayers remembered his reaction upon learning that he would not be prosecuted by the government for his bombing spree as a member of the Weather Underground.  "Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country," he exulted.  Ayers is now a university professor, but he must have been exulting all over again after reading Saturday's front-page story in the New York Times. NYT Reporter Implies Obama-Ayers 'Not Close' Contrary to Own Reporting.  On the same day that the Associated Press noted that "few people watch TV or read newspapers Friday evening and Saturday," the New York Times ran an article questioning Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's questionable relationship with admitted, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.  If the AP is correct and Friday is one of the least read days of the week, then it's interesting that the NYT chose to publish one of the most controversial campaign issues when the fewest readers would see it. CNN Ignores Bernardine Dohrn's Terrorist Past While Defending Obama.  Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Bernardine Dohrn also worked at the same law firm according to sources. … There is much more about the Dohrn story that goes relatively unnoticed.  According to the Canada Free Press she has made frequent guest appearances at events sponsored by George Soros.  She stated in 1982 that "Those of us who participated in the [Vietnam] anti-war movement were not drastic enough" even though Americans died as a result of their bombings. Terrorists For Obama.  "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.'"  That Ayers' totalitarian revolutionary agenda isn't history is shown by Ayers today sitting on the directorate of the Miranda International Center, a think tank funded by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez….  Ayers is both a hero and adviser to Hugo Chavez and a colleague of Obama's. Ignorance of Ayers?  Top Obama advisors tell CNN that, when they first met in the mid-1990s, Obama didn't know of Bill Ayers' radical past.  It's the first time they've said that, as far as I know. … On the other hand, Obama's not that young. … And Ayers' past was hardly a secret in Chicago, where he was regularly quoted as an ex-radical and ex-fugitive. Does Obama Read His Hometown Paper?  As discussed quite a bit around here, David Axelrod says Obama didn't know about Ayers' past when Obama first started allying himself with the former terrorist.  Ayers was "just a guy in the neighborhood" — which, if true, says something just plain awful about that neighborhood if you ask me.  But anyway, just out of curiosity, I decided to see if the Chicago Tribune had written anything about Ayers and his terrorist past during the period of Obama's plasible deniability. Guilt by Agreement.  An unapologetic aging domestic terrorist writes a book about "justice" and Barack Obama praises it.  This isn't guilt by association but guilt by agreement.  Had Ayers written a book about ping-pong and Obama praised it, perhaps that wouldn't be revealing.  But Ayers, the ultimate juvenile delinquent, wrote a book about the juvenile justice system and won a "rave review" from Obama, according to the New York Times. Obama's Weathermen pals should worry voters.  Obama might not have heard of Ayers and Dohrn's brutality from the '60s through the '80s had they merely tossed a rock or two in anger.  But these two went much, much farther.  In 1970, Ayers encapsulated the Weathermen's worldview:  "Kill all the rich people.  Break up their cars and apartments.  Bring the revolution home.  Kill your parents."  In his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days," Ayers brags that he helped blast NYPD headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.  Dohrn was an equally stalwart subversive. Why Ayers Still Matters:  Nearly forty years after the crimes for which he and his associates became notorious, "Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise," writes Stanley Kurtz.  That Obama knew none of this as a rising politician fails even the smell test at Democrat-friendly CNN.  Long past his eighth birthday, Obama publicly endorsed Ayers' book on juvenile justice. Time to Level with the American People about Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers.  Pam Meister interviews John Murtagh, whose family had a terrifying brush with the Weather Underground during the terror group's heyday in the early 1970s. Ayers Has Not Left Radicalism Behind.  Bill Ayers isn't out bombing anymore, but he has never stopped being a radical.  His ties to hostile Marxist regimes remain, raising more questions about Barack Obama's refusal to fully repudiate him. Obama's Weatherman shows which way the wind blows.  The seemingly inevitable ascent of Barack Obama to become US president has hit a hurdle, as he is forced to confront accusations, supported by a hard-hitting television ad campaign, that he had a long-time association with two of America's leading terrorists from the 1960s, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, one-time leaders of the Weathermen (also known as the Weather Underground). Why Obama Can't Be President:  William Ayers and others from the Weather Underground are responsible for being a part of a terrorist wave in this country that murdered police officers.  To downplay this or dismiss it as "guilt by association" is to be shortsighted and make a mistake.  I don't believe most Democrats or independents find this kind of thing acceptable behavior.  What kind of man sits in the pews of a church where his preacher spews hate about his own country — hate for Jews, hate for whites, hate for blacks who don't agree with him — and then says he had no idea his preacher was saying any of these things?  Again, I ask you to look deep inside yourselves, ask yourselves if you see such a man representing your country as president of the United States. You Need a Weatherman To Tell Which Way Obama Will Go.  Barry Obama had many such academic mentors and one namely is Bill Ayers, a white guy from a wealthy family who in his leisure time (of which he had much, not having to mow lawns or deliver newspapers) liked to throw bombs in order to bring about "social justice" as a member of the Weather Underground.  Well, rich kids don't know much about munitions, so occasionally "bad choices" are made in the design, building, and detonation of bombs, like your girlfriend and buddies getting killed, which happened in Ayers's case. Obama's radical relationship:  Sen. Barack Obama is hiding his relationship with a 1960s radical. ... For months, conservatives have been trying to direct attention to the relationship between Mr. Obama and William Ayers.  Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, which planted bombs in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.  He went on the lam after a nail bomb his group was building to kill soldiers and their wives at a dance at Fort Dix went off prematurely, killing three of the conspirators. Obama:  The Company He Kept.  [William Ayers] and his wife, fellow Weatherperson Bernardine Dohrn, were indicted in 1970 for inciting to riot and conspiracy to bomb government buildings, but charges were dropped in 1974 because of technicalities involving illegal surveillance.  Dohrn had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List and both remained in hiding. When they surfaced in 1980 Dohrn received three years probation and a fine of $1,500. Obama's Foul Weather Friends:  Weatherman was a revolutionary communist sect that split from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969.  Weatherman's founding document called for a "white fighting force" that would be "akin to the Red Guard in China" to work with the Black Liberation Movement and other "anti-colonial" movements to bring about a communist revolution and destroy "US imperialism."  Weatherman committed at least 40 bombings between 1969 and 1975.  Targets included the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Capitol, other government buildings, military bases, police offices and corporations.  Two of the group's primary leaders were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Resume of a Terrorist:  Obama's Buddy Ayers.  [Scroll down]  I find it difficult to understand how a man who is running for president of the United States would even know someone as anti-American and destructive as William Ayers.  Plus, Ayers, his wife and their comrades at the Weather Underground are cop-killers.  And Obama doesn't just know him personally — he's a close friend with Ayers. Obama's Leftism:  For the next four to five years, the two [Obama and Ayers] worked together to raise the matching funds and disburse small grants to local organizations pushing the reform program.  It could only have been an intimate partnership.  When Obama decided to run for the state senate, his first fund-raising event was held in the home of Ayers and Dohrn.  In 1997, Ayers published a book about juvenile justice, A Kind and Just Parent, which Obama blurbed as "a searing and timely account."  The two also served together on the board of the leftist Woods Fund from 1998 until 2001.  This is what is now public about the relations between Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.  There may be much more, so far successfully hidden by all concerned; but even these facts suggest that Ayers was among Obama's closest collaborators. Obama Begins the Ayers Walk Back and Heads Into the Reparations Trap.  Steve Diamond notes that Barack Obama is beginning a walk back on his preposterously untrue former claims that Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood.  Using Linda Lenz, a close ally of both men to do so, the Chicago Sun Times quotes her as admitting that Ayers and Obama closely collaborated on the failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge fiasco. Profile of the Massive Waste of Money Known as the Annenberg Challenge:  We were covering the massive waste of money known as the Annenberg Challenge long before anyone had heard of its Chicago chairman, Barack Obama, or its Chicago co-founder, real life terrorist-turned-educational terrorist William Ayers.  The article appeared in the March 1998 issue of Foundation Watch. William Ayers, Model Citizen?  The Obama campaign's response to Jerome Corsi's book about Senator Barack Obama makes clear that they are determined to delegitimize even legitimate criticisms of the senator by mixing them up with smears.  Even mainstream journalists have noted that their rebuttal document at times employs risible arguments and overreaches in attempting to defend certain aspects of Senator Obama's career.  One example is the defense of Obama's relationship to William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn — two unrepentant former members of the domestic left-wing terror movement known as the Weathermen. Blood On the Hands of Obama's Terror Associate.  Barack Obama was asked, during one of the Democratic presidential debates, about his relationship with communist terrorist Bill Ayers.  But the more controversial relationship was with his wife, communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.  Both were present and hosted Obama when he launched a run for the Illinois State Senate.  In effect, Ayers and Dohrn sponsored Obama's political career.  But it has now come to light that Dohrn repeatedly refused to deny credible reports that she planted a bomb at a police station that killed a law enforcement officer.  Shouldn't Obama be asked about the reported involvement of his political associate in cold-blooded murder? Obama's Other Radical Friends:  Apparently, back when he was running for state senate, Barack Obama had fund-raising events at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and there's been some press about the senator's friendship with this controversial Weathercouple.  Many reporters are well aware, even though Mr. Obama has described his connection to Ayers and Dohrn as "flimsy," that the senator's relationship with his radical Hyde Park neighbors is actually quite warm, even close. … But mostly, the press doesn't want to touch this story — and no one else does either, as if it actually were TNT. Obama's Ties to Left Come Under Scrutiny.  Senator Obama's ties to a former leader of the violent left-wing activist group the Weather Underground are drawing new scrutiny as he battles Senator Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Change that Sees No Evil:  The Candidate of Hope seamlessly mixed pathetic understatement with bald lying and, naturally, righteous indignation.  Ayers, whom Obama carefully cultivated as a young "community organizer" in sharp-elbowed Chicago politics, was not someone he had "received some official endorsement from."  No, of course not.  Ayers and his wife (and fellow terrorist) Bernadine Dohrn merely launched his political career by hosting his coming out fundraiser in 1995 — an imprimatur that credentialed the up-and-coming Obama in the hard Left circle where he remains most comfortable. Communists, "Progressives," Obama and the Media:  Tom Hayden, who cheered for a communist military victory in Vietnam, is calling attention to Senator Hillary Clinton's old ties to communists.  But Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, formerly of the Washington Post, wonders if Hillary's comments on Senator Barack Obama's ties to communist terrorist Bill Ayers constitute McCarthyism. Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem:  Barack Obama complains that he's been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers.  Obama has a point.  In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city's civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Bill Ayers and the Subversion of Education:  Barack Obama's longstanding ties to Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn have elicited a great deal of controversy and have weakened his campaign.  Senator Obama attempted to distance himself from this dynamite duo … by stating that their actions as leaders in the Weather Underground bombings happened when he was 8 years old.  Of course, he elided [sic] the fact that they have no remorse for their actions and Ayers publicly wished there had been more of them.  Ayers escaped prosecution on procedural grounds.  In the words of Ayers, "Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country". Debunking Obama's Ayers "Fact Sheet".  Let's examine Obama's claim that his connection to [William] Ayers and [Bernadine] Dohrn is "tenuous" and "phony."  Is it phony that Obama's political coming-out party in the mid-1990s was hosted by Ayers and Dohrn?  What about the panel discussions in which Ayers and Obama both took part — that were organized by Michelle Obama?  Tenuous?  I suppose the goodbye party for prominent Israel basher and Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, attended by Obama, Ayers and Dohrn, is also unworthy of discussion. Taking His Sweet Time.  For at least six months, we've known that Robert Malley's associates and his record of anti-Israel revisionism have no place in an American presidential campaign.  But Obama, being Obama, could no sooner denounce his Arafat-embracing Middle East advisor than, say, not sell out his grandmother.  Instead, the campaign shrugged the issue off by claiming Malley was not a "day-to-day" advisor.  Just as in the case of Jeremiah Wright, Obama tried to wish the whole thing away until the very source of the problem addressed him directly. Obama's 'mainstream' friends:  Obama's ties to Ayers and Dohrn aren't nearly as trifling as he suggests, and their views — today, not 40 years ago — are about as "respectable" and "mainstream" as those of, say, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's incendiary minister.  The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these:  Barack Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's and Dohrn's home, when a group of "influential liberals" gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer's chosen successor. Barack's Bomber Bud:  The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American diatribes will haunt Obama.  But Obama's relationship to William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, members of the '60s domestic terrorist group the Weather Underground, may prove more vexing.  The Weather Underground bombed the Capitol, the Pentagon and New York City police headquarters in the '70s; Ayers claimed to have personally participated in the bombings. Obama's Marxist Axis Of Friends:  Barack Obama wishes questions about his associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and other radicals would end.  But maybe the reason they won't is that there's a pattern:  Marxism. … When one looks at Obama, it's shocking how radical and anti-American his closest associates are. Barack Obama pal is an enemy, too.  Obama was indeed only 8 in early 1970.  I was only 9 then, the year Ayers' Weathermen tried to murder me. Photo:  Bill Ayers Stomping the American Flag. Take a look  at the door and wall outside "Distinguished Professor" Bill Ayers' University of Illinois Office. Smells from the shadows:  Nobody has accused little 8-year-old Barack of anything, not even of tiny misdemeanors in the nursery, of wetting his bed or not eating all his carrots and broccoli. … [But] The senator has never explained why, at the age of 33, or 38, or however old he was when he did, in fact, "pal around" with Bill Ayers, he inevitably preferred to walk in the shadows on the shady side of the street.  He even served with Bill Ayers on the board of a charity that dispensed millions of dollars to left-wing Chicago enterprises.  The unanswered questions are not about crimes, but about his judgment. Weather Underground Victim Says Obama Should Have Known of Ayers' Past.  "Barack Obama constantly says, 'I was only 8 years old when this happened.'  That's kind of his throwaway line," John Murtagh told FOX News Thursday morning.  "I'm not questioning what Barack Obama was doing when he was 8 years old.  I'm questioning his behavior as an adult to choose his friends, mentor and longtime personal and longtime personal and professional colleague." Obama, the Closer.  Obama's followers make high-tech videos, mindlessly chanting, "Yes, we can" instead of making bombs to blow up government buildings, or holding up armored trucks and killing police officers. … Evidenced by his list of supporters, from Ayers Dohrn, Hayden and Fonda, to the New Black Panthers, the New SDS, the New Winter Soldiers, et al., the radical Left has anointed Obama as the One.  Every aging, anti-war, anti-capitalist group and their new offshoots are flocking around Obama like moths to a flame. Obama and his friends:  [Cliff] Kincaid's group wants a major news organization to follow up on the investigative work it has done that documents that an elderly black man who mentored Sen. Obama in Hawaii was a lifelong member of the Communist Party USA.  Kincaid also would like to see a serious journalistic vetting of Sen. Obama's relationship with the left-wing radicals in Chicago — Bill Ayers and others — who helped Obama launch his political career. Mr. Obama's Neighborhood:  "I never had roots growing up," Obama has often said. … From Hawaii to Indonesia and back to Hawaii, then to Los Angeles and Manhattan and Cambridge, Mass., and finally to Hyde Park:  He's never lived in a part of the country that's like 90 percent of the rest of the country. … Hyde Park's the neighborhood he returned to, the place he'd chosen to live, and its roots were torn out 50 years ago. It's the Communism, Stupid.  Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to deflect a question about his relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers by saying that he "engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old" and that he was now a professor and a neighbor.  The real issue is whether Obama shares Ayers' communist views.  Obama admitted to exchanging ideas with Ayers on an irregular basis but did not say what those ideas were.  But we know that Ayers, rather than just being a 1960s "radical," was a member of a Marxist-Leninist communist group. Beginnings of a Radical:  Where do you suppose Barack Obama's first public speech was given?  1. Chamber of Commerce?  2. Woman's Club?  3. Jaycees?  4. Toastmasters?  Sorry.  None of the above.  According to Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, Barack Obama gave his first speech before an offshoot of the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) which had morphed into the Weather Underground. The Obama-Ayers Connection:  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." An absence of candour to believe in.  Obama is twisting and turning over his relationship with unreprentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, trying to pretend it didn't amount to anything other than a chance acquaintance.  But his story becomes ever more preposterous. … The idea that Obama didn't know about Ayers's past is absurd.  He would have to have been living on Mars not to know.  The Weather Undergound was notorious and received huge publicity in the media. Bernardine Dohrn:  Professor Dohrn has said of her Weatherman past, "We rejected terrorism.  We were careful not to hurt anybody."  Both assertions are false, however.  Weatherman's twofold agenda was terrorism (which is why Charles Manson was Dohrn's hero) and war (the organization's very existence was launched with a formal "declaration of war"), and Dohrn periodically issued "war communiqués" to the public at large. Michelle Obama, Bernardine Dohrn, and Sidley & Austin.  According to Wikipedia, Bernardine Dohrn worked for Sidley & Austin from 1984 to 1988, while she unsuccessfully sought admission to the New York and Illinois bars.  (According to Sidley's managing partner, Dohrn didn't get admitted to the bar because "She wouldn't say she's sorry" for her acts of domestic terrorism.) Ayers / Dohrn -- The Biggest Albatross Around Barack Obama's Neck.  Barack Obama has some 'splainin' to do.  When he was questioned at the last debate about his association with Bill Ayers, he tried to spin it away.  "I was eight," replied Obama.  As far as he was concerned, that was all that was necessary in terms of an explanation.  Unfortunately, that won't fly with voters. Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers.  You might wonder what Obama was doing working with a character like this.  And you might wonder how an unrepentant terrorist got a huge grant and cooperation from the Chicago public school system.  You might wonder — if you don't know Chicago. Ayers Unrepentant for Radical Group's Violence in 1960s, 1970s.  William Ayers, who was a founder of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground, told FOX News correspondent James Rosen in a candid 2004 interview that he still believed he was "on the side of justice" years after the group's wave of attacks.  In the interview, conducted three years after the September 11 attacks, Ayers argued the U.S. government had carried out "many other acts of terror … even recently, that are comparable," and claimed he and his bomb-planting comrades were "restrained" in their actions. Talk Turns To Jive About Ayers.  "Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that (Ayers) had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was 8 years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.  You'd think a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School would have known that the actions of America's premier terrorist bomber did not, due to tainted evidence, result in a single day of prison time.  So just when and where did he think Bill Ayers was rehabilitated? Ayers Is No Education 'Reformer'.  One of the most misleading statements during the presidential debates was when Barack Obama claimed that William Ayers was just "a guy in the neighborhood."  But that piece of spin is nothing compared to the false story now being peddled by Mr. Obama's media supporters that Mr. Ayers — who worked with the Democratic nominee for years to disperse education grants through a group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge — has redeemed his terrorist past. Taking A Peek Behind Bill Ayers' Office Door.  An op-ed writer thinks Bill Ayers is now a model citizen.  If that's the case, why would an unrepentant terrorist have an unrepentant cop killer's picture on his office door? University cancels speech by Ayers.  The University of Nebraska-Lincoln rescinded its speaking invitation tonight for 1960s radical-turned-educator William Ayers.  University officials cited "safety reasons" for canceling Ayers' Nov. 15 appearance.  Spokeswoman Kelly Bartling declined to elaborate on what safety concerns would keep Ayers from addressing a College of Education and Human Sciences event.  Earlier today, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman strongly condemned the invitation and called on the NU Board of Regents and President J.B. Milliken to block it. Ayers Brothers Led Annenberg Grantees and Contributed to Obama.  William Ayers is a one-time leader of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group that in the 1970s took credit for bombing the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.  "I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers told the New York Times in 2001 about his experience with the Weathermen.  "I feel we didn't do enough."  In 1995, Obama, then a Chicago lawyer, received an early boost in his initial bid for the Illinois State Senate, when he went to a political meeting at Ayers' home. Just a guy in the neighborhood?  I think not. Obama Praised 'Searing and Timely' Book by Ayers.  Barack Obama, who has consistently downplayed his relationship with William Ayers during his presidential campaign, once gave a glowing endorsement of a book by the former domestic terrorist and was mentioned by name in the book itself.  A blogger unearthed the Dec. 21, 1997, endorsement in the Chicago Tribune and posted photographs of the praise for Ayers' book on Zombietime.com Saturday. The Editor says... It's always a shame when amateurs do a job better than professionals.  Why don't "mainstream" journalists do some digging and discover information like this?  The answer is obvious:  Newspaper and television journalists don't want to find out anything negative about Obama.  But that's a topic for another page. Obama's Pal William Ayers:  The 'Peaceful' Terrorist.  In the re-release of William Ayers' book, Fugitive Days, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist revealed that he and President-elect Barack Obama are "family friends."  Last Friday [11/14/2008] Ayers appeared on ABC's Good Morning America reinventing himself as a peaceful anti-war activist.  "We tried to end [the Vietnam] war," Ayers said, "but we never committed terror.  It's not terrorism because it doesn't target people," referring to his 1970's bombing sprees. Ayers Targets Media.  Domestic terrorist William Ayers spoke about his ?brush with celebrity" and bashed the media's discussion of his relationship with President-elect Barack Obama in speech to Georgetown Law School Students Monday afternoon. ... He said most of his opposition was comprised "mostly of middle-aged men who are ventilating on their computer in their mother's basements who are sweating profusely" and told students, "if you ingest way too much Fox News you are going to be confused by a lot of things." The Editor says... In my opinion, if Mr. Ayers dislikes Fox News so much, that's reason enough to stay tuned to Fox News! Now he tells us. Bill Ayers:  Barack Obama a 'family friend'.  In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama's political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate. Ivory Tower Hero.  William Ayers hasn't given up railing against authority figures in the four decades following his time with the Weather Underground.  The current target of the perennial anti-conformist:  standardized testing and "authoritarian" school structures.  And yes, Fox News, which he compared to George Orwell's "two minutes of hate." Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again.  Like his memoir, Fugitive Days, "The Real Bill Ayers" is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left. The Unreal Bill Ayers.  In his Times column, Ayers's chronology focuses on 1970, the year he co-founded the Weather Underground "after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village."  But this wasn't some especially radicalizing furnace mishap.  On March 6, 1970, three members of a Weatherman cell died when a bomb they were making blew up in their faces.  Packed with nails for maximum lethality, it had been intended for a noncommissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix, N.J. Judge sets sentencing date for Tony Rezko.  A federal judge has set a Jan. 6 sentencing date for political fund-raiser Tony Rezko.  The rushed sentencing date is an about-face from what lawyers in the case requested in October — to put off sentencing as Rezko and prosecutors engaged in ongoing discussions. Obama Was Mute on Illinois Corruption.  [Last spring], Mr. Obama was being grilled over news that he bought his house through a land deal involving Tony Rezko, a political fixer who was later convicted on 16 corruption counts.  Rezko is mentioned dozens of times in the 76-page criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich.  Mr. Obama has an ambiguous reputation among those trying to clean up Illinois politics.  "We have a sick political culture, and that's the environment Barack Obama came from," Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, told ABC News months ago. Is Obama Following The Leninist Line?  Blogger Trevor Loudon, a respected anti-communist researcher and analyst in New Zealand ... points out that former Weather Underground members Rudd, Jones, Ayers and Dohrn are all now working through an organization called Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), which is operating as "a parent body for Progressives for Obama." The response to Bill Ayers the New York Times wouldn't run.  Freedom of the press, open to diverse opinion?  Not at the rapidly sinking NY Times. The Op-Ed the New York Times Wouldn't Run:  Bill Ayers would like to use the fog of time to plead his case that he was just another protester against the Vietnam war, a point that the Times is perhaps willing to let him make considering his longtime association with the president-elect they so nakedly support.  No amount of inspired fantasy, however, can omit the simple truth that there is only one significant difference between Bill Ayers and Timothy McVeigh.  Competence. The legacy of William Ayers:  So we should forgive William Ayers his past because he is now a prolific writer, community activist and received a misguided "Citizen of the Year" award?  And if we don't we are "promoting a trajectory of hate?"  Ayers, a son of great privilege, may be highly educated and eloquent.  That, however, does not give him a free pass in life. The Fort Dix Five.  What is the difference between the five Muslim immigrants convicted in a Federal court in Camden, New Jersey on Monday, and Bill Ayers and his comrades in the Weather Underground?  The answer:  not much, except for the outcome. Ayers and Free Speech:  Who said crime doesn't pay?  Certainly not Bill Ayers, the 1960s terrorist who emerged from the "underground" proudly admitting he was "guilty as hell and free as a bird" metamorphosing as a "father of three, esteemed professor at UIC — and unabashed patron of the great bourgeois coffee chain, Starbucks," according to an adoring portrait of him in the August, 2001 of Chicago Magazine. William Ayers turned back at Canadian border.  An American education professor, one of the founders of a radical 1960s group known as the Weather Underground, which was responsible for a number of bombings in the United States in the early 1970s, was turned back at the Canadian border last night [1/18/2009]. Teachers:  They're All Bill Ayers Now.  Students at Georgia Southern University did not get to hear Bill Ayers speak last week for the now oft-given reason of expensive security.  Like students at other campuses, some students there objected to the use of their student fees to bring in the co-founder of the Weather Underground.  Ayers' past also led Illinois State Senator Larry Bomke to call for his firing through his proposal to forbid a public university from employing someone who has "committed a violent act against the United States." Campaign for Justice for Victims of Weather Underground Terrorism. Remarks of Cliff Kincaid.  [Scroll down]  Other Weather Underground members have also been walking around free.  In fact, two of them, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, associate with prominent politicians and posture as educational experts.  In truth, Ayers and Dohrn are vicious criminal terrorists who waged a campaign of violence and murder and are now trying to spread their filth and poison to young people. Washington Post Censors Truth About Bill Ayers.  I am Larry Grathwohl and have been acknowledged as the only person to infiltrate the Weather Underground as an informant for the FBI.  I offer the following comments and observations regarding the article "The Unreal Bill Ayers" recently written by Charles Lane for the Washington Post. S.F. police union accuses Ayers in 1970 bombing.  Leaders of San Francisco's police officers union have accused Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, of taking part in the 1970 bombing of a city police station that killed a sergeant.  The union leveled the charge in a letter to a conservative organization lobbying for arrests in the case, but said it had not been in contact with investigators and had no new evidence related to the bombing, which killed Sgt. Brian McDonnell. Ayers Under Fire.  Ayers claimed last November that he was thrust "unwittingly" and "unwillingly" into the national spotlight during the campaign and the victim of a "thoroughly dishonest narrative... and the big lie that gets perpetrated... that somehow I killed people, somehow I've been a violent person, all of it false and I couldn't find a way to interrupt the demonization."  However, two knowledgeable WU-affiliated persons contradict this story. (Ellipses in original.) Justice for Victims of the Weather Underground.  Ayers and Dohrn, now university professors, were members of a communist terrorist gang called the Weather Underground during the 1960s and 1970s whose aim was to support communist regimes and anti-American movements around the world and destroy the United States.  The group received terrorist training in Communist Cuba and was advised by Soviet and Cuban intelligence agents. A Murder Revisited.  Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are currently hailed by the Left as "respected" university professors  — Ayers in the University of Illinois' education department, and Dohrn at Northwestern University's School of Law.  In the mid-1990s, both were instrumental in helping to launch 34-year-old Barack Obama's political career in Chicago. ... On Thursday, March 12, the National Press Club hosted an event where several key speakers urged federal authorities to reopen an investigation into the role that Ayers and Dohrn — both of whom are former leaders of the notorious terror group Weather Underground — may have played in the February 16, 1970 murder of Sergeant Brian McDonnell at Park Station police headquarters in San Francisco. Justice Department to San Francisco Police:  Shut Up!  Allegations that presidential pal Bill Ayers was involved in the murder of a San Francisco policeman appear to be running into something of a gag order from at the Department of Justice.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Justice Department and the San Francisco Police Department have contacted the San Francisco Police Officers Association and told them not to talk about the Ayers case. Guilty as Hell, Free as a Bird (for now).  Bill Ayers' famous quip may come back to haunt him.  There is no statute of limitations on murder charges. BC nixes invite to former radical.  Boston College yesterday abruptly withdrew two student groups' invitation to former radical William Ayers to speak on campus Monday.  A BC spokesman said he was unaware of the plan for the controversial figure to speak on campus until contacted by the Herald yesterday afternoon.  But students last night were scrambling to hold the speech off-campus. Freeman Affair Reveals Problems For Obama and the Media.  The recent appointment and ultimate withdrawal of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council has exposed much that is wrong with President Barack Obama's first months in office, both in terms of policy and vetting, as well as the media coverage surrounding both.  Many of Obama's supporters said it was unfair to criticize Obama's associations with people like the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and the anti-Semitic preacher of hate, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and called it guilt by association.  It is now becoming clearer why those sorts of associations matter. Ayers Has Not Left Radicalism Behind.  Bill Ayers isn't out bombing anymore, but he's never stopped being a radical.  His ties to hostile Marxist regimes remain, raising more questions about Barack Obama's refusal to fully repudiate him. Seminar in Shamelessness.  Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn gave a seminar in shamelessness last week.  On the road to promote their new book Race Course Against White Supremacy, the radical couple sat in armchairs on a small stage at Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library, conducting a "dialogue" instead of the usual book-tour speech. Bill Ayers is back.  Bill Ayers has kept a low profile since President Obama took office, so we thought he might have gone underground again.  That was until we ran into him in Baltimore on Wednesday [5/13/2009] and he lobbed a bomb at one of our editorial writers. Ayers, Dohrn say racism not dead.  So how do a couple of ex-radical anti-war activists spend Memorial Day? Former "Weather Underground" activists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn held a discussion about whether President Obama's election moved America past racism — far from it they say — at the Hyde Park Arts Center. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn Appear on C-SPAN.  Ayers, 65, and Dohrn, 67, are the radical 1960s antiwar activists and, for eleven years until they turned themselves into authorities in 1981, former underground fugitives from justice who were among the founders of the violent domestic terrorist group, the Weather Underground.  In recent years, Ayers has gained some notoriety for comments he made that appear to defend his bomb making past (gaining for him in some circles the moniker "unrepentant domestic terrorist") and for his murky but apparently influential association during the 1990s with the then new-on-the-scene, up-and-coming Chicago politician, Barack H. Obama. Obama Associate Implicated in Murder.  The sub-headline over the September 16 article says it all:  "The investigation into a cop killing in the '70s leads to a law professor who helped launch Barack Obama's political career."  The law professor is former Communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, a leader of the Weather Underground known for praising mass murderer Charles Manson.  Writer Peter Jamison, who is based in San Francisco, where the cop killing occurred, spent months working on the story and developed many different sources of information. The Obama-Ayers meeting:  What you haven't been told.  A new book released today uncovers for the first time where and how President Obama first met Weather Underground terrorist-group founder William Ayers — and it is much earlier than previously believed.  The book reveals the two were brought together by a student of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, whose name, it has emerged, was obscured in Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father." Ayers, Dohrn helped organize flotilla group.  Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as well as Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, helped organize the Free Gaza Movement, which launched the six-ship flotilla from Turkey to Israel that ended in a violent clash with Israeli Defense Forces, BigGovernment.com reported. Ayers, Dorhn helped organize 'peace' flotilla.  We should have known.  The techniques used by violent radicals in the 1960's are perfectly suited to this kind of war that Hamas is fighting against Israel.  No doubt Ayers and Dorhn were able to school their less experienced colleagues in the art of violent propaganda. The Left-Fascist Axis Again.  We are seeing another Left-fascist axis in our time, recapitulating Stalin's (and worldwide communism's) embrace of Hitler's Germany.  The Gaza flotilla crisis was set up by the radical Left (Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jodie Evans and other Obama buds), in collusion with Hamas, which is about as fascist as they get. Turning Down The Terrorist Emeritus.  In an era when our universities have become liberal re-education camps, '60s radical William Ayers has been denied professor emeritus status.  For one brief instance, academia shows a spine. Will the Truth Catch Up to Bill Ayers and his Comrades?  Christopher G. Kennedy, chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, led the effort to deny Bill Ayers the title of professor emeritus because Ayers had written a book dedicated in part to the killer of his father, Robert F. Kennedy.  But this "book," titled, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, had been written back in 1974.  Let's hope that Christopher Kennedy's expression of disgust can not only lead to a review of what Ayers said but what he did — in the form of eyewitness testimony that Ayers had knowledge of a bombing plot that took the life of San Francisco Police Officer Brian V. McDonnell back in 1970.  The case is still open and will be the subject of an October 21 conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Obama's Prairie Fire Companion.  Every now and then, our monolithic, woefully over-priced universities do something right.  A case in point is the news that University of Illinois trustees have denied emeritus status to a tenured faculty member:  Bill Ayers. Controversy Trails Ayers in Retirement.  Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical, retired from the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago this summer, but he is still stirring up controversy at the school. A Horrid Crime, a Dishonest Debate.  On June 5, 1968, a deranged 25-year-old Jordanian named Sirhan Sirhan slithered through a crowd toward Sen. Robert Kennedy as the Democratic presidential candidate basked in the glow of his California presidential primary triumph.  Sirhan shot and killed Kennedy, wounding several others. ... Two people profoundly impressed by the assassination were the terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.  In 1974, they dedicated their own communist manifesto, Prairie Fire, to Sirhan, hailing him — among a cast of violent radicals — as a courageous political prisoner. Bill Ayers Admits For Second Time He Wrote Obama's 'Dreams From My Father'.  For the second time in less than eighteen months, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers admitted he wrote Barack Obama's book "Dreams From My Father."  This time, it was recorded on videotape as he was speaking last Thursday [3/24/2011] at Montclair State University. Ayers affirms he wrote Dreams from my Father.  Last Thursday evening [3/24/2011] at Montclair State University, with a video camera rolling, Bill Ayers volunteered that yes indeed he had written the acclaimed Barack Obama memoir, Dreams from My Father. Still duped after all these years.  [Scroll down]  Consider probably the best-known communist radical on the public's radar:  Bill Ayers.  Ayers achieved infamy in the 1970s when he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, formed the Weather Underground.  Committed to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, Ayers and comrades were wanted for terrorist activities.  Ultimately, they managed to evade prison time.  Where did Ayers end up?  Columbia University accepted him into John Dewey's Teachers College, where he earned a Ph.D.  He became a tenured professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, training public-school teachers to be "change agents." Former American radical Bill Ayers again denied access to Canada.  Former American radical Bill Ayers has once again been barred from entering Canada.  Mr. Ayers was scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Worldview Conference on Media and Higher Education this Thursday [6/16/2011] in Toronto. The Editor says... Who says he's a former radical?  And why won't Canada let him in?  There must be a good reason. Obama Pal Dohrn Linked to Mexican Killer Case.  Crime reporter and blogger Tina Trent says that President Obama's intervention on behalf of an illegal alien killer can be traced back to a 2003 conference that featured Bernardine Dohrn, Van Jones, and representatives of the Soros-funded Open Society Institute. Destroying the system from within.  You may remember [Bill] Ayers from his tangential role in the 2008 presidential election.  It turns out that he was an early supporter of Barack Obama and had helped the future president get jobs on two boards that divvied up millions of dollars in education and anti-poverty grants.  That wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that Ayers is best known for blowing things up.  As a founding member of the Weather Underground, he turned to violence in the late 1960s as an approved tactic for bringing about social change.  That may have been the most dangerous thing Bill Ayers did in the turbulent Sixties, but it is certainly not the most effective technique he found for changing America from a capitalist nation to a communistic one. Barack Hussein Obama is a Fraud.  Two terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground led in launching Obama on his political career.  They were William "Bill" Ayres, and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.  Although the terrorist activities of these two were some years ago, Ayres was reported by the New York Times, on 9/11/2001, as saying about their own terrorist acts:  "I don't regret setting bombs.  I feel we didn't do enough." Why care about Ayers?  If Ayers is irrelevant, then so is Barack Obama.  If Ayers is irrelevant, then so is Hillary Clinton.  If Ayers is irrelevant, then so are dozens of top-level players and consultants in and out of the Obama administration such as Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn, Valerie Jarrett, Carol Browner and Ron Bloom.  All of those people — Obama, Clinton and the rest — have ties to radical organizations either dating to the 1960s such as SDS or Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation or to later socialist organizations that shared the goal of dismantling American society and rebuilding it as a socialist state.  You merely need to read their own words to see that none of this is secret. What price Ayers?  The Illinois Humanities Council is a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities; frequent subject Jim Leach presides as chairman of the NEH.  The NEH provides almost all the funding for the IHC, but the IHC is looking for more.  It has posted the Public Square's tenth anniversary online fundraising auction with 12 items up for bid.  The bidding opened yesterday and runs through December 19.  Item 2 is dinner for six with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the unrepentant terrorists and former friends of Barack Obama. Dinner with terror ringleaders: $2,500.  For the low, low price of $2,500, one lucky bidder and five friends are set to have dinner cooked for them by Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.  The auction was hosted by the Illinois Humanities Council (IHC), a non-profit founded — and still funded — by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Bidders were invited to "[e]njoy an unforgettable and scintillating dinner for a party of six cooked by veteran activists and educators Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. $2,500 to Sup with Ayers and Dohrn — How Much for Dinner with Manson?  In the sixties, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground, a communist terrorist group that planted bombs at the Pentagon, the Capitol building, and other government buildings.  Ayers himself planted a bomb at a statue commemorating police casualties during the 1886 Haymarket riots in Chicago.  When a bomb he was hoping would kill American soldiers in New Jersey exploded prematurely in a house, Ayers became for ten years a fugitive from justice, but all charges against him were dropped in 1980 when an FBI program that was investigating the Weathermen was accused of improprieties.  Ayers, however, remains unrepentant, saying in 2001:  "I don't regret setting bombs...  I feel we didn't do enough." Tucker Carlson Wins Dinner with Bill Ayers.  Conservative correspondent Tucker Carlson has bid on and won a dinner with controversial Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers in a fundraiser for the Illinois Humanities Council, the group confirmed today [12/16/2011].  As part of the auction item, Carlson, of Fox News and The Daily Caller, will have dinner with the former college professor who has written about helping with bombings at the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and other government sites. Dinner With Terrorists.  If you were running the Illinois Humanities Council and a famous terrorist offered to help in your fundraising drive, what would you do?  If you said, "slam down the phone" or something to that effect, it just shows how remote you are from the sensibilities of the Obama age.  Because, in fact, when Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers offered to auction "dinner for six" at their house, the IHC cheerfully accepted. What evidence lurks at the University of Illinois? University won't open Obama-related records now.  The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers.  The university's Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material. School seals records on Obama's service with radical Ayers.  These annoying journalists are at it again, trying to poke around into papers in the background of candidates' lives.  This time it involves freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, his friend and former radical activist William Ayers and the University of Illinois. Bill & Barack's Excellent Adventure.  We soon will know much more about the period of collaboration between Obama and Ayers following the start of the CAC [Chicago Annenberg Challenge].  Even if the archives continue to be withheld from public scrutiny, the cat is out of the bag with the documents available to all. The formidable analytical engine of bloggers trading insights and new data is warming up.  But the period prior to 1995, the time when Bill and Barack, the terrorist and the presidential aspirant, got to know one another and build the relationship of trust, is one excellent adventure likely to remain obscure. Founding Brothers:  New evidence strongly suggests that Barack Obama has been less than forthcoming about the role that unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers may have played in choosing him to lead the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).  Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I have obtained an e-mail message from former CAC executive director, Ken Rolling, to Warren Chapman and Anne Hallett, two of CAC's three co-founders. Bill Ayers was the third founder. ... [I]n the immediate wake of my attempt to gain access to the CAC records, Rolling appears to have been maneuvering, both to block my access, and to make sure that the full story of who chose Obama as CAC head would not come out. Barack Obama records sealed at Illinois.  The University of Illinois has refused to release records related to Sen. Barack Obama's service for a nonprofit educational project that put him in contact with activist William Ayers, a 1960s-era radical and now education professor.  The university's Chicago campus maintains that the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not handed over ownership rights. Conservative Scholar Takes On U. of Illinois in Fight Over Papers Linked to Obama.  Stanley Kurtz suspects that the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is playing down his ties to the radical left.  The conservative scholar just can't prove it.  That's because the University of Illinois at Chicago, which houses the papers of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge — a defunct education foundation with ties to both Mr. Obama and the former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers — won't let him see the papers. When Daley says shhh, library is quiet on Obama.  [Stanley] Kurtz believes the documents may show Obama and Ayers were close -- far closer than Obama has acknowledged -- over oodles of foundation gifts on education projects the two worked on together.  First the librarians told Kurtz yes, come look.  But by the time Kurtz landed in Chicago, the librarians changed their minds.  The donor of the documents hadn't cleared his research.  Perhaps they'll let him look at the documents on Nov. 5. Obama's Lost Annenberg Years Coming to Light.  [Scroll down]  Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a "neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the CAC, working with Obama on distributing scores of millions of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic that the Obama campaign wishes to avoid at all costs.  A compliant media has averted its eyes so far. University to release Obama records.  In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was awarded nearly $50 million by a foundation to help reform Chicago schools.  Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Obama and Ayers have other ties.  Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s.  Ayers and Obama live in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. Can Obama Survive the Annenberg Cover-up?  The last thing Obama should want made public are his dubious associates.  The public has had some exposure to his long time spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, many have heard of the convicted Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, and some have just a bit of knowledge about William Ayers. U of I at Chicago opens Ayers records.  The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was set up to support school reform, promote literacy, teacher training and community involvement in Chicago Public Schools.  The $49 million grant from Annenberg was — at the time — the largest private gift ever to the Chicago school district.  Barack Obama was the board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge board for its first three years. Files linking Obama to '60s radical a hot commodity.  The UIC records showed that Ayers was instrumental in securing the $50 million education grant to reform Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg.  After Chicago was awarded the money, Obama served as president of the Challenge's board of directors, the fiscal arm that disbursed the grants to schools and raised private matching funds. Annenberg Papers:  Putting On Ayers?  The Obama camp tries to suppress a campaign ad and university archives linking the candidate to a '60s terrorist who hosted his first campaign fundraiser.  Is he being "swiftboated," or is this a cover-up? Obama tipped off about search of Annenberg Records.  If there is an innocent explanation, the University should give it.  But it is very hard to see how this is anything except partisans at both the U of I and the Obama campaign working together to scrub records that may have had extremely damaging information about the relationship between Obama and William Ayers. Obama's Plumbers:  Since the spring, [Professor Steve] Diamond has led the investigation into the intimate working relationship between Obama and Ayers that dates back at least to the beginning of 1995 and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Grants.  Diamond believes this group is not harmless.  "It's a 'Plumbers' unit.  You know, we are old enough to recall the Plumbers in Richard Nixon's White House.  This is like that.  The job is to stop anyone trying to use the (Chicago) Annenberg (Challenge) papers to figure out how Ayers and Obama worked together on education." Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools.  Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience.  From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001.  The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.  The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Cowardly Bill Ayers Seeks Police Protection.  It's been quite a turnaround for Bill Ayers.  The Communist terrorist who planned bombings of police stations, in order to inflict maximum injury and death on police officers, is now depending on the police at the University of Illinois, where he is a "distinguished" professor, to protect him from the tough questions of students' parents. McCain campaign ad shines a light on the Ayers connection ... and Obama's reaction shows that McCain hit a sore spot. Obama dogged by links to 1960s radical.  Conservatives are stepping up efforts to turn 1960s radical Bill Ayers into a political liability for Barack Obama.  This spring, Obama's links to Ayers briefly became a campaign controversy.  Now American Issues Project is spending $2.8 million to air a TV ad highlighting links between Obama and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground Organization, which opposed the Vietnam War and was responsible for several bombings. The Biggest Goof Yet.  In the next 24 hours thousands if not millions of voters who never heard of or didn't understand the extent of the Obama-Ayers relationship are going to get a full education.  That Justice Department complaint is a stunt reeking of abject panic.  Really, isn't this just unlimited free publicity for the McCain accusations? Does Obama support free speech or not?  The latest example of this growing anti-First Amendment mentality is Obama's heavy-handed response to a television ad by an independent nonprofit that raises some very basic questions about the Illinois senator's relationship with William Ayers, the unrepentant 1960s terrorist bomber.  Obama's campaign has encouraged supporters to flood television stations with protests whenever they see the ad.  Nothing wrong with that, but the other thrust of the Obama response was to ask the Justice Department to intervene to stop further airing of the ad. Obama's Worst Fear:  A private group is running an ad questioning [Obama's] ties to unrepentant '60s Chicago terrorist, William Ayers, and the Obama camp is doing everything in its power to suppress it.  The extreme reaction shows how nervous Obama and [David] Axelrod are about negative ads ripping off the mask of moderation they've worked so hard to craft for him. Ayers Head:  Barack Obama's supporters insist that an ad from a conservative group attacking his ties to unrepentant 1970s radical William Ayers is irrelevant to the campaign. … You wouldn't know that from the reaction of the Obama campaign. Obama's Friend, America's Enemy.  Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist?  Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings.  No, the question is whether you've ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you.  Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you'd known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks — and that America still "makes me want to puke"? Frank Marshall Davis Who was Frank Marshall Davis?  The FBI file on Davis, consisting of 601 pages and covering the years 1944-1963 means that Davis was under investigation or surveillance for at least 19 years. Exposing Un-American Activities.  [Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall] Davis had denounced Richard Wright for "treason" for leaving and exposing the party.  This is why Obama covered up Frank's identity.  He knew that acknowledging the truth could destroy his political career.  And it could still do so if the truth is examined.  Obama decided not to say who Frank was.  He could have named him, saying he was an old acquaintance picked as a mentor by his grandfather who had no effect on him.  Instead, he acknowledged Frank's influence but covered-up his full name, hoping nobody would notice and follow through.  We did.  Some conservatives have belatedly discovered that Obama has socialist and anti-colonial views.  But that is not even half the story. Barack Obama's Surrogate Father.  New Zealand blogger Trevor Loudon broke the story of "Frank" being Frank Marshall Davis and we followed up, not only confirming the identity but disclosing the FBI's 600-page file on Davis.  All of this occurred during the 2008 presidential campaign but very few people wanted to talk about it.  David Maraniss of the Washington Post wrote a 10,000-word article about Obama's growing-up years in Hawaii without even mentioning Davis.  Former Post reporter David Remnick's 2010 biography of Obama, The Bridge, takes a different tack.  "When Obama was running for president, Remnick writes, "the right-wing blogosphere attacked Frank Marshall Davis.  He was, by turns, a card-carrying Communist, a pornographer, a pernicious influence.  The attacks were loud and unrelenting."  The "attacks" were actually statements of fact and they came from those who took the time to document Obama's relationship with Davis.  This is a function that should have been performed by U.S. media. Barack Obama and the Communist Party:  Barack Obama's first known connection with a Communist Party USA supporter was his boyhood relationship with communist poet Frank Marshall Davis in Hawaii.  Barack Obama's relationship to Frank Marshall Davis, first came to light through a March 2007 speech at New York University's Tamiment Library by Communist Party USA supporter and historian Gerald Horne. Decrypting Obama's 'Pop':  [Scroll down slowly]  In Dreams, [Frank Marshall] Davis is strategically referred to by his real name, "Frank."  Other than public figures like Jeremiah Wright and members of the Obama family, no one else is.  Ayers and Obama wanted black Chicago to know Obama's pedigree, but they were savvy enough to omit Davis's last name, as well as any reference to his communism.  Had they written this book with the presidency in mind, they would likely have eliminated all references to Davis — and Wright too, for that matter.  Obama has had to depend on the media and the literary establishment to keep "Frank" out of the public debate, and they have largely obliged him. Obama's Father Figure:  Frank Marshall Davis.  [Scroll down]  Another one of Barry's splendid adult role models was communist, poet, alcoholic, sexual deviant and fomenter of racial hatred, Frank Marshall Davis.  Cleverly disguised as "Frank" in Dreams [from my Father], we learn that young Barry was treated to Davis' counsel on numerous occasions.  Dear Grandpa Stanley, blessed with an inordinate amount of free time thanks to his wife's hard work, enjoyed whiling away the hours with Davis, drinking and smoking pot.  Davis was an open supporter of the Soviet Union and his influence on Obama is hard to overlook.  The poet also admitted to writing a pornographic novel under the pseudonym of Bob Greene in which the protagonist seduces a 13 year old girl. Obama's Communist Mentor:  In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit."  But what about Obama's secret political life?  It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist. Media's O-Colored Glasses Blank Out Leftist Truth.  [Scroll down]  At the beginning of Obama's life, for example, there was "Frank," Obama's boyhood mentor who appears in his 1995 memoir "Dreams from My Father."  Accuracy In Media's Cliff Kincaid has identified "Frank" as Frank Marshall Davis, a known Stalinist in a Soviet-sponsored communist network in Hawaii.  But Obama obscures Frank's identity in his book, even, as Sean Hannity has reported, going so far as to drop passages about "Frank" from the more recent, recorded version of the book.  Why?  The media never asked. Barack Obama: Red Diaper Baby.  Barack Obama is a "red diaper baby" who has spent his formative years — literally from the moment of his birth — interacting with members and sympathizers of the Communist Party, USA.  His mother Stanley Ann Dunham has been described by former classmates as a "fellow traveler."  His grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham arranged Obama's mentorship by Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. Same title, different author: Obama:  A Red Diaper Baby.  From everything I have read about Barack Hussein Obama I have concluded he is a classic example of what used to be called "a red diaper baby"; a person brought up from birth to be dedicated to at best socialism and at worse communism.  His mother and grandparents were extremely liberal and, in Hawaii, young Obama's mentor was Frank Marshall Davis, widely known to be a communist.  I believe Obama has been personally driven from an early age to acquire power and, if possible, to seize power. Misunderstanding Obama's Momma.  As if to make my case, [Roger] Cohen praises [Stanley Ann] Dunham as "an unrivaled authority on Javanese blacksmithing."  She was unrivaled because no one else thought it worth doing, not even the scholars in Java, and they would not have had to forsake their children to pursue their studies.  In the encyclopedia of unintended consequences, Dunham's picture could grace the definition of what David Mamet calls "the social tinkerer," the classic do-gooder who paves the road to someone else's hell with her good intentions. Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis.  While much attention has been paid to Obama's relationship with communist-terrorist Bill Ayers — and rightly so — much less attention has been devoted to Davis.  That's a mistake, since Obama was influenced more by Davis than Ayers. The Frank Marshall Davis Cover-Up Is Over.  [Scroll down]  [Frank Marshall] Davis was identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), controlled and subsidized by the Soviet Communist Party and the KGB.  As late as 1956, when he was called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Davis was still refusing to deny that he was a communist.  Wouldn't it be helpful if [Jon] Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, would make an elementary effort to get the facts right?  But that is too much to ask when the presidency is at stake and the media-backed candidate is trying to cover up his controversial background. Why Obama's Red Mentor is News.  Barack Obama is still an enigma because a lot of his life has been carefully hidden, as National Review's David Freddoso points out in The Case Against Barack Obama.  His campaign is hypersensitive because his life is filled with awkward facts and dubious associations.  Obama has declared his personal history out of bounds and scrubbed it clean.  The media are obediently censoring things we need to know.  The most obvious example is Obama's adolescent mentor and father figure, Frank Marshall Davis. Obama's Radical Revolution: Its Alinsky Root and Global Vision.  Obama was raised on the mother's milk of socialism.  Both his parents were fellow travelers, who met at the height of the Cold War in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii.  Obama's grandfather was a close friend of Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, sending young Barry (as he was then known) to him for mentoring, despite (or in ignorance of) Davis being a pedophile.  From the time he returned from 4 years in Indonesia and rejoined his grandparents in Hawaii at the age of 10, he was taken often to be with Frank Marshall Davis. Was a Communist Obama's Sex Teacher?  [Frank Marshall] Davis led "a secret double life," the online version of the Enquirer story notes.  True.  But the story also notes that "Obama has been extremely secretive about the true nature of his experience with the self-admitted deviant."  This is also true.  And this is why this terribly troubling story just won't go away.  There are too many questions that deserve answers. Why Doesn't McCain Fight Back?  [Scroll down]  One of the most glaring taboo topics, even for the McCain campaign, has been Frank Marshall Davis, the black communist "poet" and "journalist" who mentored Obama in Hawaii for about eight years.  Davis was under investigation by the FBI for 19 years.  His 600-page FBI file notes that he was even considered by his fellow communist comrades as anti-white.  The Davis relationship helps explain why Obama would later attend and belong to Wright's church, where he would get married and have his children baptized. Red Faces Over Obama's Red Mentor.  [Scroll down slowly]  When will the media ask Obama about the Obama/Davis relationship?  And why did he conceal the complete identity of "Frank" in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father?  I think we are beginning to understand the reasons for this cover-up.  Not only would the identification of "Frank" as Frank Marshall Davis expose communist influence on a young Obama, it might also expose those who collaborated with him and tried to whitewash his communist activities. The Frank Marshall Davis Network in Hawaii:  [Scroll down]  A 1949 letter sent to NAACP acting National Secretary Roy Wilkins by a Honolulu attorney and NAACP leader named Edward Berman:  "I was at one of the election meetings at which one Frank Marshall Davis, formerly of Chicago (and formerly editor of the Chicago Communist paper, the Star) suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership about our 'racial problems' in Hawaii.  He had jut sneaked in here on a boat, and presto, was an 'expert' on racial problems in Hawaii.  Comrade Davis was supported by others who had recently 'sneaked' into the organization with the avowed intent and purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line…. Obama Plays Reagan in Berlin.  The depth of the deception that is now underway can be understood by analyzing the significance of Obama's "I love America" foreign policy speech in Berlin, Germany, in view of the fact that the candidate and his media acolytes continue to conceal the central role that a Stalinist Communist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis played in his upbringing. AP Lies About Obama's Red Mentor.  Under the innocuous headline, "Writer offered a young Barack Obama advice on life," the story calls Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) when it faithfully echoed the Stalinist line, merely a "leftleaning black journalist and poet" known for "leftist politics" and someone who might be accused by some of having "allegedly anti-American views."  Davis was not a "journalist" in any real sense of the term.  He was a propagandist and racial agitator for the CPUSA.  He was also a recruiter for the communist cause. Obama Confirms Relationship with CPUSA Member.  the Obama campaign's [40-page] attack on [Jerome] Corsi's book and Corsi personally acknowledges on pages 9 and 10 of its report that the mysterious "Frank" in Obama's 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, is in fact the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member Frank Marshall Davis.  This identification by AIM and others hasn't been disputed by the media, which has desperately tried to ignore the Obama-Davis relationship, but the Obama campaign has not responded to it until now. Return of the Dupes and the Anti-Anti-Communists.  A couple of weeks ago in Washington, Herb Romerstein and Cliff Kincaid, two veteran investigators of American communism, held a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce the release of two new reports on Barack Obama's radical past, or, more specifically, his association with extremist elements from the American left — yet more evidence of a frightening pattern of associations by Obama throughout his distant and recent life, from Bill Ayers to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, all of which at the least shows bad judgment.  At the press conference, they discussed Romerstein's report on Frank Marshall Davis, an influential figure in Obama's early life, whom Obama refers to only as "Frank" (albeit affectionately) in his autobiography Dreams From My Father. Obama's Red Mentor Praised Red Army.  Barack Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, wrote a poem dedicated to the Soviet Red Army.  "Smash on, victory-eating Red Army," he declared.  He also wrote poems attacking traditional Christianity and the work of Christian missionaries. Young Obama's Red Mentor:  The mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing Barack Obama's early mentor.  But they've downplayed the mystery man's communist background. Communists, the Media, and the Democratic Party.  Why the outrage over Senator Clinton drawing attention to a well-documented personal connection between Obama and a communist terrorist?  Is there something else more damaging that has to be hidden from public view?  Does new information have to be discredited in advance as "McCarthyism?"  The information may have to do with Obama's upbringing.  Obama says that he was raised by his mother and grandparents.  But those aren't the only people who had influence over him during his formative years. Is Barack Obama A Marxist Mole?  In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit."  But what about Obama's secret political life?  It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.  In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature.  But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes. Obama's Red Roots:  The word is that Barack Obama is a mainstream politician who sometimes attracts fringe leftists.  The record tells a different story — that he has sought out radicals.  What does that say of his agenda? Obama:  Guilty By Association.  The Obamans insist that mentioning any of the man's disreputable friends and religious mentors is a no-no that smacks of McCarthyism.  This is an odd complaint because, one, McCarthy was right when he pointed out that the folks who associated with other people at Communist cell meetings were in fact Communists, and, two, every child is told that he's going to be judged by the company he keeps.  So, let's face facts — John Dillinger ran with a nicer crowd than this guy. Frank Marshall Davis:  (1905-1987) was a black poet and writer (he wrote for the Honolulu Record, a Communist newspaper), and a known member of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA).  In 1950 Edward Berman, a member of the NAACP's Honolulu branch, testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Davis had "sneaked" into local NAACP meetings to "propagandize" the organization's members about America's "racial problems," with "the avowed intent and purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line." Communism in Hawaii and the Obama Connection:  Of Barack Obama's contacts and associations with anti-American political figures, none is more controversial than Frank Marshall Davis, a writer an poet identified as a member of the Communist Party USA by several sources, including some sources sympatheitic to him.  Obama and Davis met in Hawaii, at a time when a young Obama was in need of a black role model and mentor.  Obama's relationship with Davis, including subsequent associations with radical, communist and socialist figures in Chicago, should be investigated for the benefit of promoting the public interest and the public's right to know. Communism in Chicago and the Obama Connection:  Obama is relatively new on the national scene and the media, in our view, have failed to serve the public interest by adequately investigating his background and associations. Could Barack Obama Get a Security Clearance?  Two veterans of investigations into Communist influence on the U.S. political process [have released] two new explosive reports that allege that Barack Obama had ties with extreme anti-American elements, including agents of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA.  The reports will shed important new light on Barack Obama's mysterious past and rise to power. ... The major points in the reports allege [that] Obama has been in the middle of two international communist networks -- one in Hawaii and one in Chicago. Report:  Obama mentored by Communist Party figure.  Investigative journalist Cliff Kincaid and Herbert Romerstein, a former investigator with the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities, presented evidence Obama was mentored, while attending high school in Hawaii, by Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American poet and journalist who was also a CPUSA member. Socialist Scholars Conference:  In his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father, Obama reveals that during his student years at New York's Columbia University he "went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn."  The socialist conferences he cites were those of the SSC. Conservatives for Obama?  Here is a man who has consistently aided and abetted people who have openly expressed their contempt for this country, both in words and in such deeds as planting bombs to advance their left-wing agenda.  Despite the spin that judging Obama by what was said or done by such people would be "guilt by association," he has not just associated with such people.  He has in some cases donated some serious money of his own and even more of the taxpayers' money, as both a state senator in Illinois and a member of the Senate of the United States. What Barack Obama learned from the Communist Party:  As he grew and changed, Barack Obama seems to have learned to discard and look down upon the actions and attitudes of the family members he has grown up with, searching for something superior in which to believe.  Only his long-absent father seems to have inspired the dreams of his adulthood.  That his father has left behind a published record of an embrace of communist policies may or may not have played a role in Obama's embrace of his father's African identity and his literary embrace of his father's dreams. Obama's teenage mentor liked sex with kids.  Closer scrutiny of the important people (that is, the poeple Obama himself identified as important) in Barack Obama's life is proving to yield what can only be called a "ick factor."  Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko and Frank Marshall Davis head the list. Obama's Scandal is Bigger than Edwards'.  Obama's communist connection, which he failed to disclose in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, by referring to Davis only as "Frank" and ignoring his communist affiliation, is a far more serious scandal than an Edwards "love child."  As I commented to Michael Savage on the Savage Nation radio program last week, this is the key to understanding Obama because Davis's influence over him during his high-school years in Hawaii helps explain why he would later associate with terrorists, communists and socialists. Frank Marshall Davis, alleged Communist, was early influence on Barack Obama.  Although identified only as Frank in Mr Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father, it has now been established that he was Frank Marshall Davis, a radical activist and journalist who had been suspected of being a member of the Communist Party in the 1950s. Barry Soetoro:  Profiles in Chaos.  [Scroll down]  Another one of Barry's splendid adult role models was communist, poet, alcoholic, sexual deviant and fomenter of racial hatred, Frank Marshall Davis.  Cleverly disguised as "Frank" in Dreams, we learn that young Barry was treated to Davis' counsel on numerous occasions. ... Davis was an important mentor to Obama and shared his special version of how to improve race relations:  "never trust white people".  Davis died in 1987 but was eventually replaced by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Young Obama's Red Mentor.  The mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing Barack Obama's early mentor.  But they've downplayed the mystery man's communist background. Obama the Racist?  Obama's racism against whites is upfront, in-your-face racism, which he discussed in his book Dreams from My Father. ... Obama learned this racist ideology during his formative years from his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a self-admitted communist and sexual deviant, and most certainly a racist — the kind that blacks say cannot exist. What I Learned from Obama's Pop:  In the final analysis, [Frank Marshall] Davis, a pornographer with a stated fondness for young white women, makes as likely a suspect to be Obama's blood father as Barack Sr.  Team Obama's evasiveness about the birth certificate and other questions of origins may have something to do with paternity issues. Proof That Obama's Hawaii and Chicago Communist Networks Were Linked?  It is now well established that Barack Obama was linked to the Hawaiian Communist Party network through his boyhood/teenage mentor Frank Marshall Davis.  It is also well known that after moving to Chicago, Obama linked up with the local communist networks. Stanley Dunham's FBI file reportedly destroyed.  Stanley Dunham, the man President Obama called "Gramps", was monitored by the FBI, but like President Obama, his paper trail has been obscured. News comes from Cliff Kincaid, via the Christian News Service and Canadian Fee Press. ... The reasons the FBI thought he was worth watching will probably never be known, along with so much about Obama's background that might conflict with the carefully manufactured image that the MSM cooperated in selling to the American public, while ridiculing those who sought more information on the odd lacunae in Obama's paper trail. FBI Destroyed File on Obama's Grandfather, Journalist Discloses.  The FBI destroyed a file on Barack Obama's grandfather, the man who selected Communist Frank Marshall Davis to be the future president's mentor during his growing-up years in Hawaii. ... While the exact nature of the Dunham file will be a topic for speculation, Kincaid said that is likely that some of the information was related to Dunham's relationship with [Frank Marshall] Davis. A Shrink Asks:  What's Wrong with Obama?  While I can't prove it, the degree of Obama's disconnect reminds me of my sexually abused clients.  With serious sexual abuse, the brain chemistry may change.  The child dissociates — that is, disconnects from his being — in order to cope.  Many adult survivors still dissociate, from occasional trances to the most extreme cases of multiple personality disorder.  Apparently, young Barry was left in the care of Communist Frank Marshall Davis, who admitted to molesting a 13-year-old girl.  As a teenager, Obama wrote a disturbing poem, "Pop," that evoked images of sexual abuse — for instance, describing dual amber stains on both his and "Pop's" shorts. The Unhealthy Motivations of Liberals.  Obama's childhood included an early abandonment by his father; abandonment by his stepfather; abandonment by his mother; frequent moves so he could not develop long-term childhood friendships; being teased by peers for being neither black nor white, for having big ears, and for being skinny; and he had an elderly childhood mentor (Frank Marshall Davis) who was a communist and pedophile.  (A poem written by 19-year-old Barack Obama suggests he may have been violated by Davis.)  Obama predictably turned to illegal drugs (marijuana and cocaine) in his youth and remains addicted to nicotine.  With this background, he could not escape being seriously psychologically damaged. Are the Sins of the Fatherless the Root of Obama's Tyranny?  Does Obama's anti-democratic ideology result from his dysfunctional childhood?  An intriguing book, Faith of the Fatherless:  The Psychology of Atheism, by Paul Vitz, argues this type background is a common precursor to the classic tyrant's personality.  This suggests Barack's beef with America might result from his own deficient past. Obama's Communist Mentor.  Allegations regarding [Frank Marshall] Davis's Communism are sure to infuriate the Left because of the influence Davis once had over our president.  He was a drinking buddy of Barack Obama's maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, and spent time with young Obama.  He turns up in the president's memoir, Dreams from My Father, shrewdly identified only as "Frank":  "I was intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes."  Recently, a U.S. Communist-party official confirmed the relationship, bragging in a speech of the Communist Davis's formative influence over Obama.  And yet when the allegations surfaced during the 2008 campaign, they went virtually unreported in the mainstream media. Dupes — and Traitors.  Did you know that Frank Marshall Davis, whom President Obama describes in his autobiography as his beloved mentor, was not merely a good-ole-boy who liked to bar-hop in Honolulu with Obama's grandfather, but a card-carrying member — No. 47544, to be precise — of the Communist Party of the United States?  (And did the president know it back when he sat at Davis's knee out in Hawaii, learning about the world?  Does the president know it now?) A Soulless White House.  Where Michelle is essentially a normal control freak, Barack is special because he's always been raised by nostalgic Stalinists, beginning with his adolescent mother and his surrogate father, Frank Marshall Davis — angry poet, porn artist, and Stalin's CPUSA rep in Hawaii.  You have to feel sorry for the child Barry Soetoro, raised by enraged adults.  His real father fled his wife and baby, then his mother dragged him to Jakarta to live in the bloody aftermath of a civil war that killed 200,000 people.  Then she abandoned him — sent him back to Hawaii to be cared for by the likes of Frank Davis. Stanley Ann Dunham and the Left's Exploitation of Women.  As the official story goes, Stanley Ann met Obama Sr. at college, and their relationship produced Barack.  However, American Thinker's Jack Cashill has highlighted doubts about Obama's paternity, including the possibility that Frank Marshall Davis may be [Obama's] father.  If Obama Sr. were Obama's father, this is a troubling scenario since Senior was a married man, seven years older, with an apparent alcohol problem.  But even more disturbing is the prospect of Frank Marshall Davis being Obama's father.  Davis was decades older than Stanley Ann, and a purported pedophile. What's Behind The Donald Trump For President Campaign?  [Scroll down]  Given Barack Obama's less than enthusiastic support of this nation's history is it any wonder that there are questions arising about his past?  What we know for a fact is that Marxists were present there and thus must have had some influence on his political positions.  His longtime mentor and father figure was Frank Marshal Davis who was an active member of the Communist Party. ... If Obama isn't a Marxist, he's nevertheless done an excellent job completing their goal which is the demise of our capitalist system. Our "Gay Pride" President.  [Scroll down]  One has to wonder why the President of the United States is so intent on promoting gay pride.  It could be that he was introduced to such perversion by his teenage mentor, Franklin Marshall Davis, a known Communist who was certainly aware of the lifestyle of his fellow Communist Henry Hay, founder of the homosexual Mattachine Society -- an early organization launched to homosexualize the United States. Shrink: Obama Suffers 'Father Hunger'.  The abandonment by his father when he was an infant and by his stepfather at age 10 has left President Obama with a "father hunger" that influences everything from why he distances himself from pushy supporters, to his strong desire to compromise and bring people together, to his aggressive campaign to kill Osama bin Laden, says a psychoanalytic book out next week.  In Obama on the Couch, George Washington University professor Justin Frank also reveals that Obama has spent much of his life seeking out father figures, but most, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Vice President Biden, have disappointed him.  "Obama searched for a father, for someone to relate to who could help him -- a strong man who knew what to do," Frank writes. Communism's African-American Soviet Republic.  Perhaps the most stunning element of the Revolutionary Communist Party's manifesto is the call for black Americans to unite into a separate, autonomous republic in the American South. ... When a genuine civil-rights tragedy, the case of the Scottsboro boys, hit in 1931, CPUSA was on site and ready for action.  The comrades wasted no time converting the Scottsboro case into a major communist campaign.  And how fruitful was that effort?  It was that particular recruitment tool — CPUSA's cynical Scottsboro campaign — that caught the attention and began drawing into the Communist Party a young journalist and editor in Atlanta named Frank Marshall Davis, who decades later would advise a Hawaiian adolescent named Barack Obama. Chicago "Community Organizer" is another way to say "troublemaker."  Back in the '60s they were called "outside agitators." The Abuser in Chief.  Obama's political career was made in the Democratic stronghold of Cook County.  He never had to cut deals across the aisle.  Any success he had when he served in Springfield was due to bill-jacking; the hard work across the aisle was done by others, but Obama's political mentor, State Senate President Emil Jones, schemed to have Obama's name attached to the bills so he could make a United States senator out of his protégé. Deep Cover at Organizing for America.  [Scroll down slowly]  Notice, too, the use of the phrase "take ownership of the community."  Evanston borders Chicago on the north, and they speak the same political language.  In Democrat-ese, "owning the community" means that if you got a problem with trash pickup, talk to the Democratic precinct captain.  If you have a kid who needs a job, talk to the Democratic precinct captain.  If you have trouble with delivery trucks getting ticketed for double-parking in front of your shop, talk to the Democratic precinct captain.  If you need a block party permit, a one-day liquor license, or a building code violation overlooked, talk to the Democratic precinct captain.  Democrats own the community. Welcome To Camp Obama.  [Mike] Kruglik happens to be the Alinsky disciple who first taught Obama hardball organizing tactics on the South Side.  He was Obama's boss in the '80s.  Kruglik now works for the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, which trains and deploys radicals across the country.  Kruglik once declared Obama "the undisputed master of agitation," according to David Freddoso, author of the best-seller "The Case Against Barack Obama." Obama's International Socialist Connections:  Obama's socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat.  Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the "champions" of "Chicago's democratic left" and a long-time socialist activist.  Obama's stint as a "community organizer" in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored. Obama's Days with Daley.  It was one more story of dirty Chicago politics that went unnoticed in the national media.  This story of Patrick Daley feeding from the trough — or more properly, from the sewer — exemplifies the sweetheart deals that are typical of the political environment in which Senator Barack Obama rose.  It rounds out the story of how each member of the family of Obama's Illinois Senate mentor, Emil Jones, somehow manages to make big money from government salaries and contracts. Obama's International Socialist Connections:  Obama's socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat.  Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the "champions" of "Chicago's democratic left" and a long-time socialist activist.  Obama's stint as a "community organizer" in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored. Carl Davidson:  In the mid-1990s Davidson was a major player in the Chicago branch of the New Party, a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials. ... Davidson first met Barack Obama through the New Party, which endorsed the latter in his run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.  Obama had actively sought this endorsement, and he used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.  Davidson quickly became one of Obama's most ardent supporters.  He helped organize a large 2002 rally where Obama first established himself as an eloquent anti-war spokesman. When is Obama Not Lying?  Obama is just another shifty-eyed, moondancin' pol from the Chicago Machine, playing the race card like Jesse Jackson, even according to The New Yorker.  He makes outright deals with corruptocrat Tony Rezko to get his home cheap, and with the Teamsters to buy their election troops in exchange for Federal oversight leniency.  He's been lolling in bed with the wild-eyed zealots of ACORN for ten years or more. Obama's Aim:  In 2007, Senator Barack Obama stood up for a gun owner.  He endorsed Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman in her Democratic primary.  Not only was she a gun owner, but she had even pulled a gun on her colleagues during a contentious 1991 ward redistricting hearing, according to eyewitnesses.  Tillman, best known for demanding to be served by black (not white) waiters, and for advocating reparations for slavery, narrowly lost her race despite Obama's support. Obama and South Chicago Slum Developers:  Barack Obama's political career rose from the south side of Chicago with a lot of help from his friends involved in the housing industry.  They have profited and thrived, unlike the Senator's south side constituents.  The Tony Rezko scandal focused the nation's attention on just one piece of a much larger story:  Obama's close association with several South Chicago slum landlords, plus one property manager who is now his senior advisor. NBC's Chuck Todd Ascribes to Chicago Mayor Daley Tremendous Power Over White House Olympic Push.  This is a BIZARRE assessment.  But Todd's explanation — in defense of his bizarreness — had him venturing further into the realm of the absurd.  He insisted that Mayor Daley basically ordered the White House — and the President specifically — to get involved on behalf of his Olympic effort.  If this is true, Todd is breaking some serious news here — that the titular head of the vaunted, notorious Chicago Political Machine can bend the White House to his will whenever he wishes.  Which would be more than a little disturbing. Chicagoland.  Instead of lobbying Olympics officials to bring the games to his hometown of Chicago, President Obama should be huddling with local officials to figure out how to control violence there.  Some say Chicago is too broke to host the Olympics.  Others say it's too corrupt.  Above all, it's too dangerous.  Crime is out of control, and the president shares some blame for the trend. America, You've Been Punk'd.  It's okay to admit it: you thought you were voting for a more benevolent and wiser version of Tiger Woods when all you got was a smoother version of Chicago-style, brass knuckle politics.  It isn't so much that you voted for the wrong guy; you were lied to by the media.  But you should have known better.  Chicago has a long and storied run of thoroughly corrupt political bosses giving envy to any third-world dictator. Obama hits opponents with Chicago brass knuckles.  [Scroll down]  Daley's father of course was Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976.  Ayers' father was head of Commonwealth Edison, the Chicago-based utility, from 1964 to 1980.  You bet they were great friends.  That's governance, Chicago style.  The head of government is friends with the heads of every big business, lobby and union, and together they make decisions on how everyone else will live.  Those on the inside get what they want.  Those on the outside — well, they get what the big guys want them to have.  That's life in the big city. Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution:  The Alinsky Model.  The guru of Sixties radicals, [Saul] Alinsky urged his followers to be flexible and opportunistic and say anything to get power, which they can then use to destroy the existing society and its economic system.  Alinsky died in 1972, but left behind an organization in Chicago dedicated to his malicious ideas.  This team hired Barack Obama in 1986 when he was 23 and taught him how to organize for radical transformation. Armed pols:  An unfortunate Chicago tradition.  You want to be able to pack a weapon in public for your safety?  Fine.  All you have to do is 1) run for the [Chicago] City Council and 2) win.  Why the state assumes that aldermen are fit for this prerogative is a mystery.  "Law-abiding" is not the very first word that comes to mind when you think of the City Council.  Since 1972, 27 of its members have been convicted on charges involving malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, disfeasance and anti-feasance with mopery aforethought.  It would be hard to come up with a group of people that has proven itself less deserving of blanket trust. It's the Totalitarianism, Stupid.  It is no comfort to know that Barack Obama rose to power in the hustler world of Chicago politics and that Mayor Daley, Michelle Obama, and Valerie Jarrett, all faithful creatures of the machine, decided on all the appointments in this administration. You're known by the friends you keep.  Since the advent of his socialist circle of czar advisers, we now have a better measure of Obama.  He seems to be a progressive in a European socialist way, but his czars appear to be authoritarian — not democratic — socialists.  As manufacturing czar Ron Bloom put it, "We believe in the persuasion of power."  Let's look further back to the "friends he keeps."  Obama's consigliore is his senior adviser, progressive liberal Valerie Jarrett, a virtual cerebral body part to both him and the first lady.  Know her and you know the Obamas. Obama and the White House Chicago Boys.  Barack Obama has a problem.  His polls numbers are dropping and his policies are fueling an angry backlash across America.  The Democratic party is held in disrepute, and congressional Democrats are dropping like flies.  This imperils Obama's radical agenda and his own 2012 prospects.  What to do?  Game the system and rig the future elections.  That is how things are done in the streets of Chicago. Obama and the Government Employees:  Barack Obama may not have learned much at Harvard regarding the Constitution, but he did learn in Chicago how politics works:  the Chicago way.  Reward supporters, and keep the bribery as opaque as possible.  Chicago mores have been brought to Washington. MSM Ignores 'The Chicago Way,' Corrupt Machine That Spawned Obama, Three Suicides.  While [John] Kass calls Obama "a Chicago political guy," he knows the Machine is multi-layered.  While the hub is Chicago, spokes extend throughout Cook County, and reach deep inside the state capital at Springfield.  Because the MSM ignored the Machine from which Obama emerged, the electorate didn't realize that voting for Obama meant endorsing politics the Chicago way. Study examines decades of Cook County corruption.  Nearly 150 elected leaders, high-ranking officials and people doing business with the county have been convicted in corruption cases ranging from bribery to ghost-payrolling dating back to 1957, a study released Thursday [2/19/2010] by the University of Illinois at Chicago and Better Government Association found. Obama, the Chicago Boys, and their 30 Billion Dollar Slush Fund:  [Scroll down slowly]  Recall, Barack Obama's statement, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."  That is the modus operandi of a criminal.  Evidently that is also the governing philosophy of our President. The "Chicago Way" Of Barack Hussein Obama.  The Better Government Association, a busy Chicago-based watchdog group that has its work cut out for it, recently released its "Hall of Shame" report that details the nearly 150 county officials who have gone to jail for corruption in Barack Obama's Cook County.  And that doesn't even include the more than one hundred Chicago officials who have also gone to jail over the last few decades. The bullies in the White House.  Recall, Obama is at his most truthful when he speaks extemporaneously, when the Teleprompter and his handlers cannot control him.  He said back during the campaign that when adversaries "bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."  Those are mob rules.  It is also the modus operandi of Presidential "governance" in the Age of Obama.  These are the Chicago Boys, after all.  Chicago:  home of Al Capone, one party-and one-family rule for decades.  Alderman politics, city of corruption, and whose political mores have now been writ large. Arne Duncan's list and the Chicago Way.  When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran the Chicago Public Schools for the boss of Chicago, he kept a secret list of those who hoped to clout children into the city's top-tier public schools.  "We didn't want to advertise what we were doing because we didn't want a bunch of people calling," CPS official David Pickens admitted to Tribune reporters Azam Ahmed and Stephanie Banchero, who broke the story.  So the schools kept a clout list.  But they didn't want nobody nobody sent hassling them with calls. The Pfleger-ization of the Catholic Church.  So much that you need to know about the Catholic Church's social policy problems can be summed up in one word:  Chicago.  On race, abortion, guns, immigration and "community organizing," Catholic Church officials in the Windy City have forged unholy alliances with radical left-wingers and enablers who undermine the faith — and the faithful. Updated 3/22/2011: Chicago's Most Notorious Priest Finally On Way Out??  Father Michael Pfleger is as far from the image of a parish priest as can be imagined without crossing the line into absurdity.  He is a loud-mouthed activist that has spent a 30-year career calling people he doesn't like names, spewing race tinged "sermons," liberally tossing out the race card, and engaging in extremist political causes.  Not the model priest, for sure. First, He Was a Community Organizer.  When Barack Obama entered the 2008 Presidential Election scene, ...we were told that his most endearing credential was that he had navigated the "mean streets of Chicago" as a community organizer disseminating "hope"; that he had been successful in making the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Chicago a better place to live, a safer place to live.  As of April 25, 2010, the residents of Chicago have stood witness to 113 homicides. ... Gang crime is so bad in some parts of the city that parents, when there are two existing in the household, routinely remind their children not to play in front of the windows in their houses for fear of being struck by a stray bullet fired from the gun of a gangbanger. Shoring Up Chicago's Community Bank.  Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee want to find out if anyone in the Obama White House attempted to influence the financial bailout of a well-known Chicago-based "community bank," which faced FDIC closure last week, and which, going back to the Clinton Administration, has had close ties to ACORN and the leftist community-organizing world of Chicago. Tony Rezko, Barack Obama, the FBI Mole, and the Somnolent Chicago MSM.  The Chicago media covers Illinois political corruption like crime reporters.  They show up at the scene, gather for the perp walk, snap a photo, and cover the trial.  In short, they wait for the story to happen and then accept official explanations with minimum scrutiny.  Consequently, when the Machine gets caught, it's generally not the media that breaks the story.  And it's been that way in Chicago for a very long time. The Candidates That Nobody Sent.  The ethos of the clubhouse era was captured in the story of Illinois Democrat Abner Mikva, who — decades before becoming a House member and then a federal judge — walked into his Chicago Democratic ward office in 1948 as an earnest law student hoping to volunteer.  As Mikva later recounted, a glaring ward committee member brusquely asked him, "'Who sent you?'  I said, 'Nobody sent me.'  He put [his] cigar back in his mouth and he said, 'We don't want nobody that nobody sent.'"  This week's elections were the triumph of the candidates that nobody sent. Obama's Chicago homecoming is not so sweet.  It's been 15 months since President Obama went home sweet home to Chicago. ... [But] it should be obvious why Obama hasn't been home much.  Obama moved to Chicago to establish his political base, but now the city is a political liability. Tony Demasi and the Chicago Way.  [Scroll down]  Owning a club introduces the proprietor to the seedy world of Chicago politics unlike any other business.  In order to own a club one would need as many as six different licenses:  a liquor license, a tobacco license (smoking was still legal in bars at the time), a valet license, sidewalk license, and the Public Place of Amusement license, which allows a venue the ability to charge a cover for live music or a DJ.  In order to get these licenses successfully, building inspectors, plumbing inspectors and electrical inspectors from various city zoning and buildings departments, along with the local Alderman and Police commander would all have to approve parts of any and all of these licenses.  With his connection to [Marty] Gutilla's circle of friends, [Anthony A.] Demasi had just the right influence to navigate this process. How Illinois is that?  What could be tastier than two Democrats — President Barack Obama and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich — hanging out with the treasurer of the Republican National Committee at a Wilmette fundraiser hosted by a political fixer who would soon be in federal prison?  According to testimony by businessman Joseph Aramanda (who later wrote a $10,000 campaign check to Obama), it happened in 2003 as Obama was mounting a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Controversy Surrounding Bank with Obama Ties Grows.  Controversy continues to swirl around the Obama administration's bailout of the politically connected community lender ShoreBank, with new calls for an investigation into how the bank was able to secure tens of millions of dollars in Wall Street cash to stay alive, FOX Business has learned. Obama's Other Chicago Problem.  [Scroll down]  Mr. Obama continued to swing for Mr. Giannoulias right through the news that the Giannoulias's Broadway Bank had loaned millions to Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a convicted bookmaker, as well as other crime figures.  He stuck with him through the news that some of this money had been disbursed when Mr. Giannoulias was the bank's senior loan officer.  And Mr. Obama stuck with him when even the Democratic speaker of the Illinois House, Mike Madigan, refused to endorse Mr. Giannoulias.  "My history in politics, if you were alleged to be connected to the mob, you were done," said Mr. Madigan in the run-up to the 2006 treasurer's election. Obama "All In" for Sen. Candidate/Mob Banker Who Loaned $20M to a Guy Named "Jaws".  President Obama has thrown his political weight behind Chicago mob banker and basketball buddy, Alexi Giannoulias, in a brazen attempt to help elect one of the sleaziest Democrat politicians around to his old Illinois Senate seat. Obama Cozies Up to Giannoulias.  President Obama was believed to be avoiding Alexi Giannoulias.  Why?  Well, Giannoulias, who is vying for Obama's old Illinois Senate seat and is a former basketball buddy of the president, has become something of a political toxin.  It became public that the former banker serviced loans to mobsters and crooks, and Giannoulias's own family bank collapsed, creating yet another political embarrassment for the candidate who is currently Illinois's state treasurer.  But Obama seems to have had a change of heart, and later this week he will host a political fundraiser for Giannoulias in Chicago. Obama raises nearly $1 million for Giannoulias.  The nearly $1 million fundraising event at the Palmer House Hilton highlighted a quick visit by Obama back home to Chicago that also included a tour of a Southeast Side Ford plant and a 49th birthday dinner Wednesday night [8/4/2010] with friends including Oprah Winfrey. No Shady Banking Buddy Left Behind.  First Lady Michelle Obama's latest overseas jaunt is getting all the headlines.  But President Obama's money-grubbing junket to Chicago may cost taxpayers far more in the long run.  With his Gaultier-clad wife sashaying around the Spanish seaside, the lonely fundraiser-in-chief returned to Illinois to take care of some birthday-week business.  Job One:  Filling the Senate campaign coffers of his corruption-tainted political protege Alexi Giannoulias. Only in Chicago Would Street Gangs Be So Bold.  Chicago street thugs held a press conference where they complained they were not getting their fair share of the goodies that make Chi-Town the "City that Works." City:  Daley's friend got $31K in free water by mistake.  Two decades ago, the city's Streets and Sanitation Department began leasing a block-long garage in Chinatown, in Chicago's notorious 1st Ward.  The landlord:  Fred Bruno Barbara, a nephew of the late 1st Ward Ald. Fred Roti.  Streets and San moved out by early 2005, when Barbara — a friend of Mayor Daley — got caught up in the Hired Truck scandal.  But Barbara's garage and two adjoining buildings that he owns kept getting free water from City Hall — until three months ago, when a Chicago Sun-Times reporter asked the Daley administration why it was treating Barbara's garage as a "charitable account." Obama and Company trying to pull a fast one?  The MOVE Act was passed in 2009 in reaction to ongoing problems with having overseas military votes counted.  States have had time to prepare and abide by the law.  Is it a bolt out of the blue that Illinois — a very blue state, home to Barack Obama and his cast of West Wing characters — somehow just let this slip off their to-do list?  All levels of state government are in the hands of Democrats, and Cook County — where the Democratic machine has been in operation for decades and where corruption is king — exercises a tremendous grip on what happens throughout the state. Voter Fraud in America.  The Chicago machine that nurtured Barack Obama's political career is legendary for its ability to manipulate an election.  Indeed, cheating and fraud are such staples of Illinois politics that residents hardly notice any more.  It is, of course, always interesting to hear a Chicago news-anchor provide the latest tally of calls to the "Election Fraud Hotline" and no doubt some wagers are won and lost among citizens once the final count is announced.  But, for the most part, pay-offs, unregistered voters, dead voters, and all the rest are an accepted part of life in the Prairie State. Exposing Un-American Activities.  [Scroll down]  The big news today is that some of the people who have been supporting Obama from the start in Chicago are now under investigation by the FBI, suspected of providing support to foreign terrorist organizations in Latin America and the Middle East.  This is a trail that could lead all the way to the White House.  Joe Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner, who are husband and wife, had their homes and offices raided because of suspicions that they were providing support to foreign terrorist organizations.  Both of them have been associated with the Marxist-Leninist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and the Chicago New Party that included Barack Obama. Chief of staff pick just another cog in the Daley machine.  As President Barack Obama knighted Chicago's William Daley as his new chief of staff — and kept the Daley machine in control of the executive branch of our federal government — I couldn't help thinking of the good old days. Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs was forced out by new henchman William Daley.  I wondered yesterday [1/6/2011] whether Robert Gibbs jumped or was pushed and noted that President Barack Obama's words indicated that it was "not an entirely voluntary departure".  It's being reported by John King on CNN right now that Gibbs wanted to be a presidential counsellor — something he's been putting about for quite a while — but William Daley, the new chief of staff, nixed this because he believed that too many cooks would spoil the presidential broth.  So that's why Gibbs is out. The Chicago Machine Pumps Out A New Chief of Staff.  President Obama chose William Daley as his new chief of staff yesterday [1/6/2011], replacing Rahm Emanuel, who is leaving to run for mayor of Chicago... a job currently held by Daley's brother Richard.  It's comforting to know there will be no net loss of Chicago politics in the White House. Obama's Chicago.  Think Barack Obama left Chicago when he headed to the White House?  Think again.  The commander in chief still commands a considerable presence here in the Midwest.  Take, for instance, the rumors swirling around police headquarters today that officer Mike Shields could be the top pick to permanently replace outgoing police superintendent Jody Weis.  Sources tell NBCChicago that he'll earn the top cop job sometime after May.  Shields is a cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama. Chicago City Hall hired 139 ex-cons in two years.  One of them smuggled cocaine from Jamaica about a decade ago.  Another was a carjacker.  A third was convicted in the shooting of two Chicago cops in the 1970s, hitting one of them in the face.  They are among 139 people who got hired by the City of Chicago over the past two years despite having been convicted of crimes.  That's according to a list of all of the city's hires of ex-cons in 2009 and 2010 obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Who gets nearly free internet and computers?  [Scroll down]  Many of the key people in Obama's White House also hail from the Windy City including the man who replaced Emanuel as the Chief of Staff, Bill Daley (brother of Chicago's former mayor) and Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's oldest friends and advisers.  This sort of bullying is not uncommon in Cook County, one of the last Democrat-run city machines in the nation (wags call it Crook County for a reason).  One hand washes the other there and rules are bent to favor political allies — the seeming modus operandi of Barack Obama on a national scale over the last few years. Chicago's Violent Flash Mobs.  The Chicago Democrats have controlled the city for more than fifty years.  The mayors Daley instituted policies that not only segregated the city and the schools, but also insured the survival of the Democratic Party at the expense of many neighborhoods.  The Chicago Defender newspaper documented how Democrat politicians in Chicago set up physical barriers to integration.  The Chicago Defender claims, "The Dan Ryan Expressway was conceived in clout and racism and born into a pattern of racial segregation that's earned it the reputation as world-famous symbol of how Chicago's politicians used to create ghettos." Which state has the worst balance of assets and liabilities?  The management of the public purse in Illinois is criminally sloppy, negligent, and without parallel in the United States.  Hard to imagine that it can get any worse, but it will.  The burden they are placing on future generations means that the state will continue to empty itself of people and businesses as taxes soar.  Eventually, the bills will come due. Feds: Two Chicago cops took orders from Latin Kings.  A bistate crackdown on the Latin Kings street gang on Friday [11/18/2011] snared two Chicago Police officers accused of using their badges to rob people in Northwest Indiana and Illinois.  Their arrests were part of a broader crackdown against gang members and associates accused of taking part in 19 murders, attempted murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping and weapons violations, mostly in Chicago and Indiana but stretching down to Texas, said U.S. Attorney David Capp of the Northern District of Indiana. Obama's Gerrymander:  We've been following the ways that politicians and special interests try to influence the redistricting process for their own gain, often at the expense of voters.  An article this week in The New Yorker suggests that President Barack Obama's own political rise in Chicago was partially the result of gerrymandering.  As The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza reported, Obama worked with a Democratic redistricting consultant to draw a state senate district tailored for him. The Center for American Progress We Need Green Money, Not Green Jobs.  Van Jones is back, reconstructed and rehabilitated. ... The Center for American Progress announcement says he'll be a senior fellow and leader with its Green Opportunity Initiative.  CAP was founded by rich liberals who thought the left needed a think tank like conservatives have (as they concluded they needed talk radio, and hence founded the now defunct Air America).  One of the major sources of funding of CAP was Marion and Herbert Sandler who got rich building Golden West Financial selling Adjustable Rate Mortgages with teaser rates to unsophisticated buyers.  Yes, the very greedy kind of businesspeople that the Obama administration would have us believe caused our current economic crisis. Did someone mention Van Jones? Obama Admin. Caught Red-Handed Working with Big Wind Energy Lobbyists.  Despite calls for increased transparency and openness, recent U.S. Energy Department documents obtained through FOIA requests and reported by The Chicago Tribune show significant collusion among Energy Department officials and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), as well as other third party special-interest groups, including the left-of-center Center for American Progress. Released Emails Show Wind Lobby, Soros Group Helped with White House PR.  Emails recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — seen here for the first time — show how political influence and lobbyists are shaping Obama administration policy and public relations.  The emails show that the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coordinated their response to a damning Spanish report on "green jobs" with wind industry lobbyists and the Center for American Progress (the progressive think tank founded by John Podesta and funded by George Soros). Did someone mention wind energy? CBS Slams Exxon for Not Drilling More.  After all the media hand-wringing the past few months over imploding financial institutions, they might praise ExxonMobil for taking care of it shareholders first and keeping ample reserve funds, rather than running on risky investments and toxic assets.  "Consumer advocate" Dan Weiss closed the story saying, "Big oil is swimming in profits with money drained from the pockets of American families."  CBS mentioned he was a senior fellow at the "Center For American Progress" yet neglected to mention that it is an avowedly liberal think tank.  The founder of CFAP is former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta. ACORN Allies Scheme to Distract from Corruption Allegations.  John Podesta's left-wing Center for American Progress Action Fund has invited many liberal and radical groups to a meeting Thursday morning [5/28/2009] to discuss how to use rhetorical misdirection to take the focus off ACORN's increasingly well publicized corruption. News media barred from ACORN meeting at Center for American Progress.  Freedom of the press stopped at the door of the Center for American Progress earlier today [5/28/2009] when this reporter and a camera crew from Fox News were barred from covering a "briefing and discussion" meeting of left-wing advocacy groups worried about recent coverage of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).  Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, refused to allow journalists to cover the meeting, which was slated to include representatives from 10 organizations. The Truth About ObamACORN.  At a closed-door powwow hosted Thursday [5/28/2009] at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, activists discussed how to combat a relentless stream of corruption charges from ACORN/Project Vote whistleblowers.  But it's too late for a reputation bailout.  Former Project Vote official and whistleblower Anita MonCrief has harnessed the Internet to crowd-source a massive cache of documents showing ties between Obama staff members and the supposedly "nonpartisan" ACORN operations. Democrats Kill Provision in AmeriCorps Bill that Would Keep Funds from ACORN.  Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) tried to stand up for civil society and taxpayers last week but his effort was shot down by liberal Democratic senators.  Vitter tried to prevent the radical direct-action group, ACORN, and its affiliates from benefitting under the odious national service legislation known as the (proposed) GIVE Act.  The bill itself, which received a glowing review from John Podesta's pro-Obama propaganda factory, the Center for American Progress, would give government money to volunteer programs and would dramatically expand the feel-good liberal program, AmeriCorps, which ACORN and other groups have used to promote their own political objectives. Did someone mention ACORN? 'Diversity czar' takes heat over remarks.  President Obama's diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez's rise to power in Venezuela "an incredible revolution."  Mark Lloyd's provocative comments — most made during a tenure at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank — are giving fodder to critics who say Mr. Obama has appointed too many "czars" to government positions that don't require congressional approval. Ex-Clinton Official Ties Minneapolis Bridge Collapse to Global Warming.  A former member of the Clinton administration, and current Senior Fellow at the virtual Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress, claimed Monday that global warming might have played a factor in the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. The article above was also posted under Global warming is blamed for everything. Obama Stimulates Unions, Inflation and Debt.  The George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which was run by Obama's Transition Project co-chair, John Podesta, said Obama would launch a "Green, Unionized Economic Recovery."  The key word was "unionized," a tip-off that public money would subsidize expansion of the labor unions that backed Obama.  One of those powerful unions, the AFL-CIO, is headed by John Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Aide Responsible For AF1 Flight Over NYC Lands Safely.  Louis Caldera, the head of the White House military office forced out over the controversial Air Force One photo-op over the Statue of Liberty, has become a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, The Mouth learned Wednesday [6/10/2009].  CAP, a center-left think thank founded by the well-connected John Podesta, is a repository of well-known Democratic operatives and policy wonks. Did someone mention the Air Force One flyover? Other questionable associates and endorsements This subsection has been moved to this page. Barack Obama and Tony Rezko The Audacity of Silence About Tony Rezko:  Jury selection began today in Chicago in the trial of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a major supporter of Barack Obama.  Two days before the 2006 elections in which Democrats won by running against a "culture of corruption," Chicago newspapers revealed that Obama purchased a home that summer for $1.6 million, but only because Rezko's wife bought an adjoining parcel for $625,000 to complete the deal.  Rezko was already under federal investigation for kickback schemes. Barack's Favors for Corrupt Crony.  Barack Obama has admitted it was "boneheaded" to get involved in a land deal with Tony Rezko, his friend and fund-raiser.  But the media's focus on that deal has distracted from the bigger question:  Why would Obama become involved in any deal with a man like Rezko, who made his living sponging off taxpayers and corrupting public officials?  Because, by the time of the deal, the two already had a long relationship of mutual benefit. An Obama-Rezko Primer:  Antoin "Tony" Rezko is a millionaire Chicago businessman who has long helped young politicians raise money and make connections.  Raised in Syria, he moved to Chicago to study engineering but wound up making money in real estate and fast food.  He is now on trial in federal court on mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and attempted extortion charges. First Wright, Now Rezko.  Now that the governor of Illinois has been implicated in the schemes of Obama's friend Tony Rezko, it might be time for Obama to explain his relationship with Rezko in a major speech on the endemic political corruption that afflicts his home state of Illinois. Obama and Rezko, the early years.  The trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, one-time patron to Sen. Barack Obama and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has turned lurid.  Under cross-examination by Rezko attorney Joseph Duffy, star prosecution witness Stuart Levine, a Chicago-area lawyer, is admitting to conspiracy, extortion, bribery, fraud and other bad acts while he "served" at the Illinois public school teachers pension fund board. A Culture of Corruption:  The News Media.  What's Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground bomber William Ayers?  Over the years, Ayers has raised enormous sums of money for the Illinois senator.  What was Obama's relationship with indicted moneyman Tony Rezko?  Over the years, it's been reported that Rezko raised over $14 million for Obama's campaigns.  When Rezko was indicted, Obama returned $85,000.00 to him.  What happened to the other $13,015,000?  What's Obama's relationship with terrorist sympathizer Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University?  Did Obama funnel money to his pal Rashid — money that eventually ended up in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah terrorists?  There are other questions that these intellectual giants in the news media could at least ask, but don't hold your breath for them to actually do their jobs. Note: Articles below were published after Rezko's conviction on June 4, 2008. Rezko found guilty on 16 charges, not guilty on 8.  Tony Rezko — the high-flying developer and fast-food magnate who was once a major campaign fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and one of the governor's closest advisers — is now a convicted felon. A large crowd under the bus.  Barack Obama learns a lot of things from the newspapers. … He famously learned that his pastor — the man who he says led him to the Lord, presided at his wedding and baptized his two daughters — was a hateful old bigot who had been preaching racist nonsense only when he read about it in the newspapers. … He learned that Tony Rezko, his one-time fundraiser and accommodating pal who was convicted by a Chicago jury this week of 16 counts of fraud and money laundering, was a crook and a slumlord only by reading about it in the newspapers. Man Of Conviction.  Tony Rezko was the classic influence-peddler and the patron saint of the old politics that Barack Obama claims he wants to change.  The 16 of 24 counts of which Rezko was convicted Wednesday [6/4/2008] accused him of corrupting two state boards and using his influence in the administration of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to squeeze cash from firms seeking state business.  Yet Obama chose to do business with him.  Sen. Obama has described Rezko as just a "guy in the neighborhood." But like so many of Obama's associations, they run long and deep and indicate a disturbing lack of judgment. Obama and his Rezko ties:  For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.  It was just four years after the landlords — Antoin "Tony" Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru — had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers.  Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on. Obama certainly has a lot of questionable associates.  It should be stated at the outset that Obama was not involved in any of the illegal acts a Chicago jury has found Rezko guilty of committing.  But Obama is guilty of maintaining a close relationship with Rezko long after it had become clear that Rezko's primary business was buying and selling political influence for personal gain. Why Did Obama Pay Rezko an Extra $64,000 For That Strip of Land?  Gabe Malor, over at Ace of Spades, notices Obama is using the same "he's not the man I once knew" line that he used with Jeremiah Wright.  Obama has returned $157,835 in campaign funds that Tony Rezko and his associates donated in his career.  But will he return the land that he bought from Rezko? Sweet Home Obama:  After Rezko's 2006 conviction on 16 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and soliciting bribes, Obama said, "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew."  Uh-huh.  Just as he said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after his anti-American rants became public, was "not the person I met 20 years ago."  Obama also said of Rezko:  "I've never done any favors for him."  Oh, yes he has, as David Freddoso points out in "The Case Against Barack Obama."  And Rezko has returned the favors. So Tell Us, Sen. Obama, 'Who Else Sent You?'.  It was, of course, inevitable.  How could any politician rise so quickly on the legendarily corrupt Chicago political scene and be as pure as Obama's devoted followers were purporting him to be?  The question in the minds of skeptics was, "Who sent you?"  Well now we're beginning to find out and it ain't pretty. The Obamas and their Mortgage:  Beyond the question of the mortgage payments, odd coincidences and connections surround the house purchase, beyond questions already raised by the handling of the mansion's side yard, which was legally divided by the previous owner into a separate lot, and sold to Tony Rezko's wife Rita Rezko at the same time the Obamas purchased the house adjoining the yard.  If nothing else, these connections illustrate how deeply the Obamas' personal and financial lives are enmeshed in the world of Tony Rezko and the Chicago political machine. Sen. Obama got sweet deal, too.  Another Democrat gets caught taking a sweetheart mortgage, and the Democrat, his bank and the left again insist:  Nothing to see here.  Only this time, the Democrat is presidential nominee Barack Obama, who scant months after his election to the Senate secured with his wife a $1.32 million mortgage, discounted by three-eighths of a point, from Northern Trust Bank of Illinois.  The cut-rate mortgage on their $1.65 million mansion in Chicago will save them at least $108,000, which is more than just chump change they can believe in. Obama the Slumlord Senator.  Tony Rezko's housing company, Rezmar, raked in more than $100 million in loans from the city, state and federal government to fix up 30 Chicago buildings for low-income housing.  All of the buildings have failed financially:  As of 2007, 17 have gone into foreclosure, and 6 have been boarded up.  Meanwhile, the city of Chicago has sued Rezmar at least a dozen times for failing to heat its buildings. The Obama/Wright/Kilpatrick Collision.  Two percent.  That's the percent of voters outside the "Motor City" that have a favorable impression of embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.  You don't have to be a pollster to understand how strongly disliked Kilpatrick is throughout Michigan. … What does this have to do with Barack Obama?  Although Kilpatrick has distanced himself from Obama and Obama has distanced himself from Kilpatrick, they are both inextricably linked to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama's letters for Rezko:  As a state senator, Barack Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezko's successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments for senior citizens. … The letters appear to contradict a statement last December from Obama, who told the Chicago Tribune that, in all the years he's known Rezko, "I've never done any favors for him." Property deal takes the shine off Obama.  The hottest potential contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, has come under scrutiny for his links to a shady businessman over the purchase of his $1.65 million family home in Chicago.  After winning extraordinary adulation, the honeymoon period of the senator for Illinois is coming to an end. Internship also links Obama, Rezko.  In addition to a land deal, Sen. Barack Obama's ties to indicted dealmaker Antoin "Tony" Rezko include an internship the senator provided the son of a contributor at the request of Rezko, an Obama spokesman confirmed Saturday [12/23/2006].  John Aramanda served as an intern for Obama for about a month in 2005, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs.  His father is Joseph Aramanda, a Rezko business associate who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal corruption case against Rezko.  Aramanda has contributed $11,500 to Obama since 2000, Gibbs said. Ethics Questions Put Obama on the Spot.  In between the "fluff and style" news items, there have been reports of Obama's connections to Antoine "Tony" Rezko.  Rezko, who was indicted in October 2006 for a multimillion dollar kick-back scheme, has been a longtime supporter of Obama.  Rezko's companies have donated large sums to Obama's campaigns.  Rezko also hosted a fundraiser for Obama.  Completing the shady political trifecta — there's even a questionable real estate deal between the two men. Rezko cash triple what Obama says.  During his 12 years in politics, Sen. Barack Obama has received nearly three times more campaign cash from indicted businessman Tony Rezko and his associates than he has publicly acknowledged, the Chicago Sun-Times has found.  Obama has collected at least $168,308 from Rezko and his circle.  Obama also has taken in an unknown amount of money from people who attended fund-raising events hosted by Rezko since the mid-1990s. Update: Obama bagman is sent to jail over $3.5m payment by British tycoon.  An undeclared $3.5 million payment from a corrupt Iraqi-British businessman has landed Barack Obama's former fundraiser behind bars.  The payment, disclosed in court papers, is the first time that Mr Obama's long-serving bagman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a Syrian immigrant to the United States, has been linked to Nadhmi Auchi, the Iraqi-born billionaire who is one of Britain's richest men. Iraqi Billionaire Threatens Reporters Investigating Rezko Affair.  Why aren't the American media investigating the role of British billionaire businessman Nadhmi Auchi in supplying loans to Barack Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko?  Some point to media bias, but there is another factor.  Working for Auchi, who was born in Iraq, attorneys from London law firm Carter-Ruck have for several months been flooding American and British newspapers and websites with letters demanding removal of material they deem "defamatory" to their client. The Obama Platform Dive:  Senator Empty Suit DQs.  There's the lingering triple play of scandals:  Obama's vote and speech against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that stuns and repulses even moderate pro-choicers; his ties to Bill Ayers and the ongoing cover-up of the documents surrounding that relationship by the University of Illinois; and of course now that houses are at the top of the news cycle, the Obamas' sweetheart house deal with crooked financier and Obama mentor Tony Rezko.  That's ten weeks worth of scandal floated in one day. … Then yesterday, Obama praises the "vastly superior" infrastructure of China. Rezko Singing: Obama Sweating?  The news out of Chicago is not good for Governor Rod Blagojevich.  Convicted Chicago political operator Antoin "Tony" Rezko is talking to prosecutors about what he knows as far as corruption in Illinois and Chicago politics.  Believe me, it's plenty. Obama fundraiser, convicted of fraud, spills beans.  Jailed political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer who helped launch Barack Obama on his political career, is whispering secrets to federal prosecutors about corruption in Illinois and the political fallout could be explosive. This article goes into great detail, if you're interested. Clever Real Estate Strategies for Politicians:  The story about Senator Obama's house purchase is well known.  On June 15, 2005, Barack and Michelle Obama closed on a new house in the historic Kenwood district of Chicago for $1,650,000, or $300,000 below the listed asking price.  On the same day, Rita Rezko, the wife of Tony Rezko, closed on the adjacent vacant lot for $625,000, which was the full listed asking price.  The Obamas subsequently purchased a 1,500-sqft strip of land from the Rezkos on January 11, 2006 for $104,166, increasing the side lot buffer between their properties.  The media confronted Senator Obama about these transactions because Tony Rezko was under federal investigation at the time for political pay-to-play schemes.  In 2008, Rezko was convicted of fraud, money laundering, and aiding and abetting bribery for government business. Were Obama's own mortgage documents signed by a 'robo-signer'?  A consumer advocacy Web site has obtained some mortgage paperwork for President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama's home in Chicago.  The documents, which show that the couple's mortgage of $210,000 was fully paid on May 10, 2005, are signed by a Chase Home Finance vice president Marshe Craine.  The interesting thing about the documents is that Craine's signature on court documents related to other people's homes looks radically different from the version on the Obamas' paperwork.  In other, unrelated cases, attorneys for homeowners have accused loan processing companies of allowing employees to forge other people's signatures. While Barack Obama talks, Tony Rezko sings.  A footnote at the bottom of one page in the 76-page Blagojevich complaint confirms Rezko is cooperating with the FBI, news that could cause an increase in the pre-holiday consumption of Mylanta by other Chicago pols.  Rezko was known as the money man or cashier to see about state jobs through the governor's office.  He's known Obama since the early '90s, tried to hire him, did hire the law firm Obama worked for, became partners with the owner of that firm, advised Obama on buying his Hyde Park home and sold him a slice of the adjacent lot. Is This the End of Rezko... or Only the Beginning?  Will the Chicago Machine corruption story break wide open in 2010?  If you think Chicago crook and long-time Obama buddy Antoin Rezko is serving out his jail sentence, think again. Where in the world is Tony Rezko?  Why is Antoin "Tony" Rezko under lock and key at an undisclosed location, like some sort of CIA-renditioned al Qaeda operative?  And why hasn't he been sentenced yet?  As the June 3 corruption trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for allegedly trying to sell Obama's former Illinois Senate seat approaches, the whereabouts of the former Blago and Obama fundraiser is literally a state secret. Rezko sentencing delayed.  Sentencing was postponed today [1/6/2011] for a tired and gaunt-looking Antoin "Tony" Rezko in case he still testifies at the retrial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, scheduled to begin in April.  However his attorney made it clear that he is not willing to wait beyond September. Obama's Sordid Past Back in the News.  The press has focused heavily on [Donald Trump's] criticism of Obama on the subject of his birth certificate, an issue first raised by supporters of Hillary Clinton that continues to dog the president.  But there were other comments by Trump last week that caught my attention, specifically Obama's ties to Antoin "Tony" Rezko and William Ayers. Where's Tony Rezko?  Thomas R. Bennett, who has been following the retrial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for the Nuclear Chicago blog, accuses U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of "sandbagging" and "running egregious political interference to both benefit and protect Team Obama" for not calling fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko to the stand as a government witness. Tony Rezko sentenced to 10-1/2 years in kickback scheme.  A federal judge sentenced Tony Rezko to 10½ years in prison Tuesday [11/22/2011], describing his actions under Rod Blagojevich's tenure as "selfish and corrupt."  Rezko, 56, has already served about 44 months. Ex-fundraiser Tony Rezko sentenced to 10.5 years in corruption case.  Tony Rezko, a prominent political fundraiser with ties to former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and President Barack Obama, was sentenced Tuesday to 10-and-a-half years in prison for his 2008 conviction on corruption charges, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.  Rezko, 56, will receive credit for the nearly 44 months he has served behind bars since he was convicted in 2008. Rezko Sentenced to 10½ Years, Media Ignore It And/Or His Ties to Obama.  Depending on which news outlet you rely on for current events, you may not have heard that convicted Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko was sentenced to 10½ years in prison Tuesday [11/22/2011].  On top of this, unless you read [a] report from Reuters, you mightn't have known just how connected he was to a junior senator from Illinois who just so happens to be the President of the United States. Obama escaped Rezko's orbit.  Although it did not go unreported, convicted Chicago political influencer Tony Rezko's 10-year prison sentence was treated as an afterthought during the short Thanksgiving workweek.  Also an afterthought:  the amazing facility with which President Obama has completely escaped Rezko's orbit in the liberal mainstream media's standard narrative.  From the coverage he gets now, you would hardly know that Rezko dined with the current president of the United States on occasion, and even hosted him at his vacation home.  You might forget that Rezko was one of Obama's most important donors. Chicago Sun Times Does Hit-and-Run on Obama-Rezko Payoff Lead.  Last July, two Chicago Sun-Times reporters noted an allegation of "payments made by Rezko to Obama" that surfaced in a deposition involving former Rezko business partner Daniel T. Frawley.  Since then, the only follow-up coverage from the Sun-Times has been the sound of crickets.  An article dated July 11, 2011, entitled "Ex-Rezko partner's sentencing delayed," announced that Daniel Frawley's sentencing for bank fraud had been postponed, yet again.  He came up for sentencing again this week, and — surprise! — there's been another postponement. Back to the Barack Obama index page More about Liberals in general Back to the Home page

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