Obama's Clout Trail Weaves Ayers/Dohrn & Sidley & Austin

Professor Steve Diamond has made the case for Obama's disembling concerning his biggest distraction Ayers/Dorhn/ACORN Progressive Chicago Clout.

The Chicago newspapers and the Daley Administration are busy trying to find dirt on garbage truck crews, but could care less about the millions of dangerous dollars tossed into the hands of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and buttoned out to ACORN and other real estate scam artists from Chicago Foundations. It's all good.

Read this in Full:

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Who "sent" Obama?
See June 19, 2008 post: That "guy who lives in my neighborhood" for more detail on Ayers-Obama relationship.Updated May 24, 2008: former Sidley managing partner tells Chicago Tribune he hired Bernardine Dohrn as favor to Bill Ayers' father Thomas Ayers.Updated May 18, 2008 with information from Nell Minow, daughter of Obama mentor Newton Minow and sister of Obama's Harvard professor, Martha Minow.Updated May 3, 2008: Ken Rolling, first Executive Director of the Annenberg Challenge, had been a program officer of the Woods Fund; Republican activist claims Ayers is "advisor" to Barack Obama. In Chicago politics a key question has always been, who "sent" you? The classic phrase is "We don't want nobody that nobody sent" - from an anecdote of Abner Mikva's, the former White House Counsel (Pres. Clinton) and now retired federal judge. (And someone I campaigned for while in high school when he ran, unsuccessfully, for Congress in the early 70s.) As a young student, Mikva wanted to help out the his local Democratic Party machine on the south side of Chicago. In 1948, he walked into the local committeeman's office to volunteer for Adlai Stevenson and Paul Douglas and was immediately asked: "Who sent you?" Mikva replied, "nobody sent me." And the retort came back from the cigar chomping pol: "Well, we don't want nobody that nobody sent."


So it is reasonable to ask, who "sent" Barack Obama? In other words, how can his meteoric rise to political prominence be explained? And, of course, in an answer to that question might lie a better understanding of his essential world view. When I started looking at this question a few weeks ago I quickly grew more concerned about the kinds of people that seem to have been very important in Obama's ascendancy in Chicago area politics. It is the connection of some of these people to authoritarian politics that has me particularly concerned. And a key concern of this blog has been the rise of authoritarian tendencies in the global labor movement.


The people linked to Senator Obama grew to political maturity in the extreme wings of the late 60s student and antiwar movements. They adopted some of the worst forms of sectarian and authoritarian politics. They helped undermine the emergence of a healthy relationship between students and others in American society who were becoming interested in alternative views of social, political and economic organization. In fact, at the time, some far more constructive activists had a hard time comprehending groups like the Weather Underground. Their tactics were so damaging that some on the left thought that government or right wing elements helped create them. There is some evidence, in fact, that that was true (for example, the Cointelpro effort of the federal government.)


Today, however, many of these individuals continue to hold political views that hardened in that period. Many of them have joined up with other wings of the late 60s and 70s movements, in particular the pro-China maoists elements of that era and are now playing a role in the labor movement and elsewhere. And yet this question of Obama's links to people from this milieu has not been thoroughly explored by any of the many thousands of journalists, bloggers and political operatives looking so closely at Obama.


The most recent effort was by Jonathan Kaufman in the Wall Street Journal who argued that a critical connection for Obama was his links to some in the wealthy and prominent Jewish community in Chicago. This article contains some important insights and is well worth reading. But, I think Kaufman gets it wrong.


So, who did “send” Obama? The key I think is his ties not to well connected uber lawyer Newton Minow, as Kaufman suggests, but more likely to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but also Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well. Obama was a community organizer from about 1985 to 1988, when he left Chicago for Harvard Law School. During that time a critical issue in Chicago politics was the ongoing crisis in the public schools. A movement was underway from two angles: below in black, latino and other communities for more local control of schools and from above by business interests who wanted to cut costs. (For a fascinating account and analysis see Dorothy Shipps, The Invisible Hand: Big Business and Chicago School Reform, Teachers College Record, Vol. 99, #1, Fall 1997, pp. 73-116 or her later excellent book on the subject: School Reform, Corporate Style: Chicago, 1880-2000 (Kansas 2006.))


A 1987 teachers’ strike brought those two sides together to push for a reform act passed by the Illinois legislature in 1988 that created "Local School Councils" (LSC) to be elected by residents in a particular school area. According to Shipps, the strike "enrag[ed] parents and provid[ed] the catalyst for a coalition between community groups and Chicago United [the business lobby] that was forged in the ensuing year." (The full story of this complicated process is provided by Shipps in her book.)


The LSC’s were to be made up by a majority of parents and have the power to hire and fire principals thus creating a new power center in the school system against what both reform groups viewed as the bureaucratic and expensive school board, on the one hand, and, on the other, the teachers union. In my view these types of councils are reminiscent of the manipulative "community" bodies set up in regimes like those of Hugo Chavez and the Sandinistas - used to control genuine democratic movements such as trade unions. Dorothy Shipps argues, as I will suggest below, that there is an alternative approach that is genuinely democratic and possibly more effective in improving outcomes for students.

Active in the local control from below, on the "community" side of this effort, was Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as an assistant professor of education at the University of Illinois' Chicago Circle campus, after surfacing from the underground and earning his Ph.D. at Columbia. Another ally in this battle at the same time was Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project (DCP), as Obama notes briefly in his Dreams From My Father. (See also, "Meeting on School Reform Halted," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 19, 1988 at 3; and "Black Parents" A letter to the Chi. Trib. on Aug. 23, 1988 from a DCP member defending the 1988 local control reform bill) The DCP had its origins in the "radical" movement started by Saul Alinsky. (It should be remembered Alinsky's world view was one that is and was often in tension with many in the trade union movement - for example, Alinksy was an almost uncritical admirer and biographer of trade union bureaucrat par excellence John L. Lewis. For one independent approach that urges re-examination of the Alinsky view of unions today in light of rise to power of SEIU's Andy Stern, see Staughton Lynd, Commentary: Another World is Possible, Working America, March 2008).


Ayers, of course, had long held what the left once knew, broadly, as “maoist” politics – a view of the world that was opposed to Russian style bureaucratic communism from above, instead advocates of this approach supported sending revolutionary cadre to “swim among the masses like fish in the sea” or attempting to establish guerilla foco as romantically theorized by Regis Debray and carried out with disastrous results by Che Guevara.


Today one of the approaches used by these types is the "long march" through the (presumably "bourgeois") institutions. (See this discussion of it by "Progressives for Obama" supporter, Fidelista and former SDS leader Carl Davidson.) Of course, the "long march" referred to is that taken by Mao and the Red Army in 1934. Now, Davidson et. al apply the concept to the tactics of the "left" inside various "reform movements" such as the anti-war movement. Davidson was one of the organizers of the 2002 anti war rally at which Obama first spoke out against the war.


Here is how Ayers in 2006 described his approach to "electoral politics" in an interview with the left wing Chicago magazine, In These Times:



"ITT: [A]ren’t progressives putting high hopes in November? Even leading Republicans admit that the Dems are likely to recapture at least one house of Congress.



"So what? That’s not the point, Ayers says. Electoral politics is a tool to connect causes, like gay rights, disability rights, voting rights, human rights. 'That’s how you use electoral politics. Not as an end in itself, but as an organizing mechanism. Our deepest belief, I think, is that we need to connect all these good projects and build the movement. …we should always be positioning ourselves, thinking, okay, if I’m involved in this next election, how am I positioned to help contribute to building a movement, raising consciousness, making the connections, and that’s a real tricky business.'"


Bill Ayers appears to be attempting to lead a similar "long march" in the education world. Ayers is a vigorous advocate of local control along with a related concept called “small schools,” most likely because he believes it gives him the potential to build a political base from which to operate. He has discussed these ideas in speeches and writings on his blog. As he said in a speech he gave in front of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in late 2006: "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!"


Bill raised money to start the Small Schools Workshop in the early 90s and eventually hired another former maoist from the 60s (and actually someone who was a bitter opponent of Ayers as SDS disintegrated) named Mike Klonsky to head it up. [Bill's brother John later got in on the small schools approach also, raising money in part from the Annenberg Challenge program started by Bill and chaired by Obama (see School Leadership in Times of Urban Reform edited by Bizar and Barr).]

A leading figure in the Chicago business groups that were lobbying for cost cutting and "efficiency" in the Chicago schools in the 1980's was Bill Ayers' father, Thomas Ayers. Tom Ayers, of course, was a very prominent Chicago business man, a retired head of Commonwealth Edison, a lifelong liberal, and a supporter of open housing campaigns (in which my parents participated when I grew up in Chicago in the 60s) as well as Martin Luther King. According to Dorothy Shipps, Tom Ayers co-authored a report of a joint public-private task force on school reform and was later nominated to head up Chicago United, a business backed school reform group that Ayers helped found, by Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne, but was opposed successfully by black community activists.


When the 1988 Reform Act was passed a group called Leadership for Quality Education (LQE) was formed, according to Shipps, by the elite business lobby that was in part behind the new reforms, to train the newly elected local school council members. Some 6000 LSC members were elected. And they became a huge thorn in the side of school administration in Chicago.


Interestingly, one LSC member was John Ayers, son of Tom and brother of Bill. In 1993, John was made head of the LQE - which, by then, according to Shipps, was caught in the middle of the battle emerging to re-centralize control of the schools in the hands of the mayor.

In the fall of 1988, however, Obama left the city to go off to law school. My best guess, though, is that it was in that 86-88 time frame that Obama likely met up with the Ayers family. I will explain why I believe that in a minute. Interestingly, after his first year in law school Obama returned in the summer of 1989 to work as a summer associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. This in and of itself is a bit unusual. Very few top tier law students work for big law firms during their first summer. The big law firms discourage it because if you work for them in the first summer you are likely to work for a second firm the following year and then the firms have to compete to get you.


So, why or how did Obama - at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) - end up at Sidley?


Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was Comm Ed's key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (and Sidley partner Newton Minow, too). It turns out, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also. She was hired there in the late 80s, because of the intervention of her father-in-law Tom Ayers, even though she was (and is) not a member of any state bar.


Dohrn was not admitted in either NY or Illinois because of her past jail time for refusing to testify about the murderous 1981 Brinks robbery in which her former Weather Underground (now recast as the "Revolutionary Armed Task Force") "comrades," including Kathy Boudin (biological mother of Chesa Boudin, who was raised by Ayers and Dohrn) participated. She was finally paroled after serving 22 years of a plea bargained single 20-to-life sentence for her role in the robbery where a guard was shot and killed and two police officers were killed. The father of Chesa Boudin, David Gilbert, was sentenced to 75-to-life, with no chance of parole, after a trial in which he refused to participate. Chesa is the co-author of a recent apologia for the regime of Venezuelan "left" strong man, Hugo Chavez.


Trienens recently explained his unusual decision to hire Dohrn, who had never practice law and had graduated from law school (before going on her bombing spree) 17 years before in 1967) to The Chicago Tribune saying, "[W]e sometimes hire friends."



I can only speculate, but it is possible that Tom Ayers introduced Obama to Sidley. That might have happened if Obama had met up with Bill and Tom and John Ayers prior to attending law school when Obama's DCP group was supporting the reform act passed in 1988. Or it might have been Dohrn who introduced Obama to the law firm. Dohrn's CV indicates that she left Sidley sometime in 1988 for public interest work prior to starting a position at Northwestern (again, hired there by some accounts because of the influence of Tom Ayers and his Sidley counsel Howard Trienens). Obama and Dohrn would likely not have been at the firm at the same time, although if Obama and Dohrn met before Obama left to attend Harvard Law School, she might have discussed the firm with him and introduced him to lawyers there.


My best guess, though, is that it would have been Tom Ayers who introduced Obama to Sidley and that would have helped him get the attention of someone like Newton Minow. And that would have come in very handy later in Obama's career as Kaufman suggests.


(Recently I heard from Nell Minow, daughter of Newton Minow, who tells me her sister Martha, a Harvard law professor, had Obama as a student at HLS and that she called her father to tell him about Obama. While Nell contends on the basis of this anecdote that her family met and supported Obama before he met Bill Ayers, she was unable to provide me any evidence of when in fact Obama met Ayers, either Bill or Tom.)

In any case the summer of 1989 was eventful for Obama as he did meet his future wife, Michelle, there, already a lawyer and working as a Sidley associate. Michelle was Obama's first supervisor or mentor there. Obama went back to Harvard in the fall of 1989 where, of course, he became president of the law review in the spring of 1990. After graduation in 1991 he went back to Chicago to run a voter registration campaign (which would turn out to be an important step in his career).


Then Obama joined a tiny, little known (outside Chicago, at least) public interest law firm called Davis Miner Barnhill. The partner who hired him was Judson Miner. Miner was a well known left wing lawyer in Chicago who had been counsel to the progressive black mayor in the 80s, Harold Washington. But Miner possibly also had ties to the Ayers family. He was law school classmates with Bernardine Dohrn at the University of Chicago (both Class of 1967). He formed a lawyers group against the war after graduation and organized a left wing alternative to the local Chicago bar association.

Then, in late 1994 or early 1995, Obama made what I think was probably the key move in his early career. He was named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million grant program to funnel money into reform efforts at Chicago schools. It turns out that the architect of the Annenberg Challenge was Bill Ayers, who designed the grant proposal and sheparded it to success. The purpose of the program was to defend the controversial and troubled local schools council effort that had been put in place back in 1988. The first Executive Director of the Challenge was Ken Rolling, who came there from the much discussed Woods Fund (where he had been a program officer). The Woods Fund had provided grants to Obama's DCP in the late 80's and Rolling was a part of the school reform effort in which both Bill Ayers and Obama participated. Obama joined the board of the Woods Fund in 1993 in 1999 he would be joined on the board by Bill Ayers.


A report authored by Dorothy Shipps on the first three years of the Annenberg Challenge program, when Obama was its Board chair, concluded: "The Challenge sought to build on the momentum of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act which had radically decentralized governance of the Chicago Public Schools."


While apparently several hundred school principals had been fired by the LSC’s, kids were still doing poorly in schools and there was chaos of a sorts in the system. (See Shipps, Invisible Hand, for a summary of the problems.) Interestingly, Shipps concludes that the local control movement in Chicago, though backed by radicals like Ayers, gave "business the clearest voice in systemwide reform." She argues that a district level democracy effort such as an "Education Assembly" is required rather than the parochial local control approach:


"A large districtwide elected group intended to serve as a legislative body, such an assembly would have both the staff and structure of one. This alternative vision of democracy rests on citizenship and stewardship even as it builds on the private interests and knowledge of concerned parents and neighbors. As an example of a different form of democratic governance, it serves to remind ordinary Chicagoans that they now have no systemwide forum through which to debate broad issues of equity, standards, and accountability."


This represents a very different vision than that of Ayers & co. (not to mention of the charter school business group approach now in vogue). In fact, in retrospect the Ayers/Ayers (business from above, local activism from below) joint campaign against both the Chicago School District bureaucracy and the Teachers Union is reminiscent of the kinds of alliances one finds in neo-stalinist regimes like that of Cuba, China or Sandinista-run Nicaragua. In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, for example, Mao appealed to local activists to attack the party bureaucracy. These authoritarian movements often try to build their power against democratic institutions like unions. Well-intentioned liberals even from the business community are often willing to support such efforts because they view the traditional labor movement as even more of a threat than the neo-stalinist authoritarians like Castro, Chavez or Ortega. While many on the left try to portray such movements as a new form of democracy, they are anything but.


One educational policy analyst called the early 90s Chicago school system "dysfunctional." The former business allies of Bill Ayers and the local control advocates broke away from their support of the LSC's in favor of recentralization of power in the hands of Chicago's new Mayor Daley. According to Shipps,


"for six years, LQE [led by John Ayers until he later joined up with the charter school movement] remained a strong advocate of the 1988 reform. But in 1993 Club [ Commercial Club of Chicago ] members decided the LQE's support for community organizing and voter turnout campaigns was not producing better schools, resurfacing their initial skepticism about political decentralization as a reform strategy. Moreover, they determined that the role of outside agitator might suit community groups, but was ill suited to corporate leadership. It was creating a rift between Club leaders and the central administrators whom they hoped to influence. Club leaders were increasingly convinced that central office accountability was a necessary component of results. As the fundamental divisions between the business view of administrative decentralization and the political version held by community activists reemerged, activists felt betrayed. They protested the 'pull-back' loudly, but succeeded only in becoming less central actors in future reform efforts."


Now the business groups backed re-centralization through a 1995 bill that gutted the power of the LSC’s.


But the Annenberg Challenge money came through anyway due to the efforts of Bill Ayers, among others. It had to be matched 2 to 1 by corporate and foundation money (in fact, they raised an additional $60 mn by 1999), so the Board Chairmanship would have allowed Obama to be in touch with the powerful money interests in Chicago, including possibly the Pritzker Family and others that Kaufman mentions in his story. Penny Pritzker would join the board of the Chicago Public Education Fund which received its startup funding from the Annenberg Challenge as the Challenge wound down in 2001 - the Challenge, in effect, handed the baton of support for school reform to the CPEF. Penny Pritzker is now a key Obama campaign insider in charge of fund raising.

Thus, we have one possible answer to the question: Who "sent" Obama? It was the Ayers family, including Tom, John, Bill and Bernardine Dohrn.


It is highly unlikely that a 30-something second year lawyer would have been plucked from relative obscurity out of a left wing law firm to head up something as visible and important in Chicago as the Annenberg Challenge by Bill Ayers if Ayers had not already known Obama very well. One possibility is that Obama proved himself to the Ayers's in the battle for local school control when he was at the DCP in the 80s.


One guess as to why Obama does not play up his educational experience more thoroughly now – it certainly could be of use to him one would think in beefing up his “I have the experience to be President” argument – is that it would lead to a renewed discussion of the Ayers connection, which is clearly toxic for Obama. And it turns out the impact of the Annenberg Challenge on actual students in Chicago schools is considered mixed at best, although Bill Ayers deemed it a success on political grounds. Indeed the 1995 and 1999 legislative attempts to recentralize power over the schools in the hands of the mayor did not quite succeed in wresting control completely away from the LSC's, instead it helped, in the words of Alexander Russo, "keep the flame alive for decentralized, community-based school reform - even as the system was moving in a very different direction."


This likely explains why Obama tried a kind of head fake when asked about Ayers by George Stephanopoulos in the TV debate with Clinton prior to the Pennsylvania primary. Obama said Ayers was a "professor of english." Yet, Obama chaired the Annenberg Challenge for three years and served on its board for another three years, working closely with Ayers on grants to Chicago schools. And he did not know that Ayers was a professor of education? That strains credulity.


Perhaps this would be of just historical interest if it could be firmly established that Bill Ayers no longer has any role in the Obama campaign. But that is not something we know for sure yet. In a recent television interview with Greta Van Susteren (granted, it was on Fox), John Murtagh, a Republican town council member from Yonkers, New York, said that Ayers is currently an "advisor" to Obama. Murtagh has a particular and understandable sensitivity to the Ayers-Obama connection besides his Republican politics: his father was a New York Supreme Court (in NY the Supreme Court is a trial court) judge who presided over a trial of the "Black Panther 21" in 1970-71.


Murtagh was 9 years old at the time. During the trial Murtagh's home was fire bombed and Murtagh claims the Weather Underground was responsible for that bombing along with several others in "solidarity" with the Panthers. He charges, specifically, that Bill Ayers' wife Bernardine Dohrn later took credit (apparently on behalf of the entire WU group) for the bombing. Accounts sympathetic to the Panthers confirm the role of the Weather Underground. (See David Barber, "Leading the Vanguard: White New Leftists School the Panthers on Black Revolution" in In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement, edited by Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams (Duke 2006).) The Panther 21 were acquitted of the bombing-related charges made against them, after a lengthy trial.


Certainly Ayers' politics remain unapologetically authoritarian. He recently traveled to Venezuela - only the most recent of several such trips - and delivered a speech in front of Hugo Chavez in which he spoke of education as the "motor force of revolution" and his interest in "overcom[ing] the failings of capitalist education" and said he thought Chavez was creating "something truly new and deeply humane." He closed his speech by mouthing typical slogans of the authoritarian left: "Viva Mission Sucre! Viva Presidente Chavez! Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta La Victoria Siempre!"


As it turns out, there are other ex-SDS types around the Obama campaign as well, including Marilyn Katz, a public relations professional, who was head of security for the SDS during the disaster in the streets of Chicago in 1968. She is close (politically) to Carl Davidson, a former vice president of SDS and longtime Fidelista, who is webmaster for a group called Progressives for Obama, that is headlined by other former 60s radicals like Tom Hayden and the maoist Bill Fletcher. Davidson and Katz were key organizers of the 2002 anti-war demonstration where Obama made public his opposition to the Iraq war that has been so critical to his successful presidential campaign. Davidson apparently moved into the maoist movements of the 70s after the disintegration of SDS.


Now that we have some idea of who "sent" Obama, the left and labor movement deserve to know more about how the exhausted ideas of the authoritarian side of 60's politics may still be influencing the thinking of a potential U.S. president. Maybe Andy Stern's endorsement of Obama makes more sense, now.


In any case, imho, if either Hillary or Obama wins they will keep our troops in Iraq for at least three years and possibly longer....makes you want to run into the arms of Ralph!
Posted by Steve Diamond at 8:59 PM

Chicago Daily Observer's Tom Roeser Takes the Ayers out of Obama

Billy Ayers has hidden like the cockroach that he is under the dollars of his family fortune and his dear departed Daddy's influence.

Politics makes strange bed bugs. Witness all the University Dons who could not find a Chinaman on 22nd Street, giving direction and advocacy advice to Progressive Tax-Trough Hogs.

Ayers understands this fact. Compromise is the mother's milk of politics , or is it free T-Shirts for the children? Compromise and the quick-fix gets more votes; thus, Daley,pere et fils, will make nice with stern, sober and humorless advocates of everything in order to shut up opposition or weasel some easy votes. Hence a Gay High School where Dads and Dads and Moms and Moms can watch their sons and daughters enjoy a Prom of their choosing as well as watch videos of Great Homosexuals in History, Entertainment, Sports, Business, and in their community. What about the Gaylesbian/Bisexual omnivore, Asthmatic, Benthamite, Neo-Prussian Wiccan student who wants to concentrate on the novels of Anne Rice and study Vampires? Chilling, how this systemic racism works on the voiceless.

Today, Tom Roeser chases the cockroach Ayers into the light of day, as well as Obama's smarmy distractions:

What sort of man is it who sits in a church for 20 years while his pastor…his good friend…god damns the United States of America? And who then throws his pastor under the bus when it gets hot?

Answer: The same. A craven, rudderless, opportunistic trimmer with no fixed principles who has always placed his own career ahead of anything else including his once firm friends whom he later saw as impediments to his political career which he placed ahead of any other factor.

What sort of man is it who buddies with an undisguised, unrepentant terrorist (who never apologized for bombing the Pentagon) and who used this association in the early days to advance himself by gaining a foundation chairmanship and other benefits-throwing Billy Ayres under the bus when it became advantageous…Axelrod, the Artful Dodger, declaring that Obama never knew of Ayres’ connection because Obama was 3 years old when Ayres bombed the Pentagon?

Answer: A craven, rudderless, opportunistic trimmer with no fixed principles who has always placed his political career ahead of anything else including his once firm friends whom he later saw as impediments to his political career which he placed ahead of any other factor-including love of country.

A bit of history. There was never a time when Bill Ayres allowed his radical history to dissolve into the mists of time. He traded on it. I met him in the 1980s when he and Bernardine Dohrn lived in a Hyde Park carriage house adjunct to the house John McDermott owned. McDermott was his landlord. This was about the time Obama came to town. Ayres has always boasted of his hatred of the United States and always…to me particularly…said how he regretted not doing more damaged to the United States. In fact given this culturally deprived society we are living in, Ayres and his wife benefited from their terrorist associations…she landing a job in the law firm where Michelle Obama worked…he become a celebrity in the fey, decadent lefty society that comprised the Hyde Park of the time.

Axelrod gets away with the fiction that Obama didn’t know Ayres’ background because he trades on the lefty nature of the pro-Obama, supine media of Chicago…imagine a prominent TV “political reporter” on CBS-TV asked him to allow a photo taken with his family when he gets to the White House and to send him a Christmas tree ornament. That’s the objective nature of this local media beast with no teeth but gummy patronization where Obama is concerned. Why did it take a local blogger, Fran Eaton (kudos to her) to unveil the truth about Jeremiah Wright? Why did it then take a national ABC TV correspondent to make it national? Where was the supine Chicago media cross-eyedly Democratic ? Hoping to get THEIR kids to be photographed with the next president.

These are the questions that can make the difference-if. If McCain is willing to risk

Who Hired Bill Ayers -Lynn Sweet Pretends to Care.

Who sent you? Who's your guy?

Obama went to see Bill Ayers, because Bill Ayers was Hyde Park-made. He became somebody, because his Daddy was somebody - the Head of ComEd who makes the lights go on and stay on, unless there's a screw-up or consumers get snotty about rates.

Billy Ayers is a rich punk who was allowed by Mater & Pater to play with explosives and Communism. Billy blew up property and tried to blow up Americans. He went all 'Underground Man' when things got thick and had Daddo's Ambulance Chasers bail him out. Then Pater Ayers eased Billy and his odious Old Lady ( Bernardine Dohrn - far more dangerous than Billy and a convicted felon to boot) into the tweedy world of academics where flakes and pipe-smokers play at being armchair Trotskies. Academics depend upon Foundations for the Long Green Difference. Billy got the Boards. Then along came Barack Obama, an ambitious kid who wanted to be somebody. Now, whoever was involved in easing Billy into academics - who hired the Boy for the swell job of Distinguished Professor of Education at UICC - knows who was involved in getting Billy situated. That person or persons will also know how and who helped Obama get close to Billy Ayers.

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times pretends to be 'on the story.'

So, did he know who Ayers was when he went to his home in 1995?

"My understanding is that when he went there, he did not," Axelrod said.

Reporters noticed that clause -- "my understanding is" -- and pressed further. Did Axelrod ask Obama if he knew Ayers' history when he first met with him?

"Yes," Axelrod said.

And he did not know?

"Yes," Axelrod said. "That's what I've said -- I answered the question when I was asked the other day. But no one's suggesting that he never knew. I mean that's not -- we weren't offering that. I wasn't offering it -- I was asked a question that you just asked me and just answered it. I wasn't making an argument about it."

I'm not arguing either. I'm just curious.

Now, that's a gritty Chicago pitbull journalist! Lynn Sweet,'OJ are you guilty?'

OJ, 'No.'

Lynn Sweet, 'There you have it, Chicago!'


Sweet is no where near breaking a sweat. Tim Novak, the only real investigative reporter at Chicago Sun Times, has not been allowed to pursue Rezko, or Wright, much less Bill Boy Ayers and his protege Barack Obama. I believe that Sun Times editors have Novak chained in the basement.

Lynn Sweet needs Dave Axelrod to tell her what's what. . .; And they (MSM) they believe that readers are the dopes.

Boss Brokaw Brokers Belmont Boondoggle! NBC - The New Tammany

Palm the cards and you can not lose. The Belmont Debates were a YAWN unmatched since the night Jimmy Carter wore a sissy-boy Cardigan Sweater to calm the country.

Yep, wearing Tim Russerts brogans Boss Brokaw made sure that a Townhall Debate morphed into The Harvard Faculty lounge. This was shameless brokering by Brokaw. He is every bit as much of a baggy pants clown as Olbermann -no mean trick that!

Take the gloves off McCain/Palin -and fill them with ball bearings.

From Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics:

Call it a town hall about nothing. After two days of sharply negative campaigning, the buildup heading into tonight's debate was that we would see a lively and spirited exchange between the two men. The gloves were coming off, we were told.

Ninety minutes later, both John McCain and Barack Obama departed the plush, red-carpeted stage at Belmont University having sleepwalked through one of the most boring, least informative, most poorly moderated debates in recent memory. It turns out the most spirited thing that happened all night was the handshake.

Director John 'Prancer' Hancock Opts to Film Billy Ayers 'Fugitive Days'

I was coaching football at La Lumiere School during the late summer and fall when Director John Hancock filmed a nice Christmas film called 'Prancer.'

In fact, Jane Lundberg, who cooked at La Lumiere School ( alma mater of USSC Chief Justice John Roberts, Hollywood Director Paris Barclay, Comedian Jim Gaffigan and attended by the late Chris Farley) babysat for Katherine Ross and Sam Elliot's children. My wife, daughter Nora and I used to run into the 'Movie Stars' at Harry Jorgensen's great Prairie Tavern in Rolling Prairie, Indiana. All of Hancock's movie Prancer was filmed in LaPorte ( 700 North East of Fail Road for Home Shots), In and Three Oaks, MI - in Galien Township where the Hancock Apple Orchard provided the the setting.

We were briefly a Hoosier Hollywood.

Now, I read that John Hancock has the option on the Billy Ayers story. Good luck with that Mr. Hancock.

I loved Prancer and Bang the Drum Slowly. If the Billy Ayers saga gets out of the can, which he himself managed to avoid, I'll take a pass.

Click my post title for the Hollywood skinny

OBAMA R.A.W.( Rezko,Ayers, Wright) - Who Sent Bill Ayers to UICC and Who Hired Him and Why?

Carol Marin could get to the bottom of 'who hired an unqualified building inspector.' No sweat. Root it out. The Chicago Tribune could launch an eight month investigation into who hired a guy who sleeps in a garbage truck. We'd have more reporters rooting out 'systemic' corruption in the HDO - who's his clout and why?

William Ayers? He got there by elves. How about ONE little story that begins to connect the dots. Who benefited from Ayers being 'made' a professor at a public University? Why would someone with his criminal past be acceptable? Is this common University practice? Who's Bill Ayers' Chinaman? Ayers became Obama's clout; would one not want to know more? This simple citizen sure would at any rate. Did Stanley Fish* hire Ayers? Nope! Had to be during Stanley Ikenberry's reign and Capital Campaign! Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Was it to help make Cement City (UICC) more trendy and more Salon worthy? Totally Rad and Rehab?

Let's start with Wikipedia - which gets erased almost daily. Move Fast. 1987 Billy Ayers gets himself two degrees from Columbia in New York. Then, he leaps to Chicago as Distinguished Professor.

How about one news hound getting on the trail? Who hired Ayers? Who went to bat for him? Why did they go to bat for him knowing the criminal career of bombing American citizens and property? Why was that a good thing?

Ayers is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues.[35]

He began his career in primary education while an undergraduate, teaching at the Children’s Community School (CCS), a project founded by a group of students and based on the Summerhill method of education. After leaving the underground, he earned an M.Ed from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1984), an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed.D from Teachers College, Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction (1987).
He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and has appeared on many panels and symposia.

Civic and political life
Ayers worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in shaping the city's school reform program,[36]and was one of three co-authors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform.[37] Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941.[38]According to Ayers, his radical past occasionally affects him, as when, by his account, he was asked not to attend a progressive educators' conference in the fall of 2006 on the basis that the organizers did not want to risk an association with his past.[39]

*Stanley Fish Salon goer:

Confession time. I too have eaten dinner at Bill Ayers’s house (more than once), and have served with him on a committee, and he was one of those who recruited my wife and me at a reception when we were considering positions at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Moreover, I have had Bill and his wife Bernardine Dohrn to my apartment, was a guest lecturer in a course he taught and joined in a (successful) effort to persuade him to stay at UIC and say no to an offer from Harvard. Of course, I’m not running for anything, but I do write for The New York Times and, who knows, this association with former fugitive members of the Weathermen might be enough in the eyes of some to get me canned.
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/bill-ayers/

The New Yorker Speaks to the Rubes, Hawkey Mawms, Joe Six Packs and Racist-es! GOBAMA, YO!

Lookee Here! The New Yorker endorses Obama! Well, I'll be dipped and rolled! Who'd D Thunk? Aint't that a Wonderment? EyeUz Thumbin' through it while waiting for my re-loads after Church this morning. The New Yorker says that it hates McCain and everything he and Sarah Palin Represent - but, . . .

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nowadays, almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate. Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.

A Presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. “Dreams from My Father” is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests—personal, spiritual, racial, political—that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.

Thigh Tingling! Gotta Git! Hope there's some fresh Arugula down to the Safeways!

OBAMA R.A.W. ( Rezko, Ayers, Wright) * Things to Remember about Rezko/Obama

Tim Novak where have you been? Where is the best investigative journalist at Chicago Sun Times being held? STNG ( Sun Times News Group) Free Tim Novak! Get him back on Rezko, Ayers and Wright - at least pretend the paper is not totally part of Team Obama. Here's one of his Greatest Hits! from January 2008!

1. They met in 1990. Obama was a student at Harvard Law School and got an unsolicited job offer from Rezko, then a low-income housing developer in Chicago. Obama turned it down.

2. Obama took a job in 1993 with a small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill, that represents developers -- primarily not-for-profit groups -- building low-income housing with government funds.

3. One of the firm's not-for-profit clients -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., co-founded by Obama's then-boss Allison Davis -- was partners with Rezko's company in a 1995 deal to convert an abandoned nursing home at 61st and Drexel into low-income apartments. Altogether, Obama spent 32 hours on the project, according to the firm. Only five hours of that came after Rezko and WPIC became partners, the firm says. The rest of the future senator's time was helping WPIC strike the deal with Rezko. Rezko's company, Rezmar Corp., also partnered with the firm's clients in four later deals -- none of which involved Obama, according to the firm. In each deal, Rezmar "made the decisions for the joint venture," says William Miceli, an attorney with the firm.

4. In 1995, Obama began campaigning for a seat in the Illinois Senate. Among his earliest supporters: Rezko. Two Rezko companies donated a total of $2,000. Obama was elected in 1996 -- representing a district that included 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects.

5. Rezko's low-income housing empire began crumbling in 2001, when his company stopped making mortgage payments on the old nursing home that had been converted into apartments. The state foreclosed on the building -- which was in Obama's Illinois Senate district.

6. In 2003, Obama announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, and Rezko -- a member of his campaign finance committee -- held a lavish fund-raiser June 27, 2003, at his Wilmette mansion.

7. A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood -- a deal that has dogged Obama the last two years. The doctor sold the mansion to Obama for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price. Rezko's wife paid full price -- $625,000 -- for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a strip of her land, so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Questioned later about the timing of the Rezko deal, Obama called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor.

8. Eight months later -- in October 2006 -- Rezko was indicted on charges he solicited kickbacks from companies seeking state pension business under his friend Gov. Blagojevich. Federal prosecutors maintain that $10,000 from the alleged kickback scheme was donated to Obama's run for the U.S. Senate. Obama has given the money to charity


We just might go on the Acronym Paradigm-it's edgy and so MSM!

Ray Coffey -The Ear of the Grunt in Vietnam Gave Voice to Truth in Chicago

Ray Coffey covered the Vietnam War for nearly three years in the 1960s, marching through swamps with U.S. soldiers and winning journalism awards in the process. ( from Chicago Sun Times) Click my post title for the tribute to Ray Coffey.



Mr. Ray Coffey was a great friend to the kids of Leo High School for whom he always had time - to listen.

God bless you Holly Coffey! God bless all of your kids! God Bless the heart of Ray Coffey that made his ear the organ and conduit of truth in Chicago Journalism.

Ray Coffey 'gave his ears a chance.' That rule is lost on too many of us who want to hear the sounds of our own voices rather than articulate a means to bring people together. In America's most divisive war - Vietnam - Ray Coffey turned his ears to voices of the kids taking the shots from the enemy and returning their fire. Ray Coffey endured the horrific pounding of General Giap's artillery from hills around Khe Sahn with the Marines, while Brooks Brothers journalists took notes from command sources.

Ray Coffey listened to Ronald Reagan. He listened to Civil Rights Marchers. Coffey listened to cops and firemen. His ears were not the sole property of agendas or or strategic demographic initiatives.

Chicagoans read the thoughts and feelings of people through the pen and the typewriter of Ray Coffey.

Ray Coffey went home to Christ this weekend. He leaves a gaping hole in our hearts, but thick body of writing that accurately reflects our American times.

This is from Governor George Ryan's proclamation of Illinois Ray Coffey Day:



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 30, 1999



Governor Ryan Proclaims December 30, 1999 As Ray Coffey Day



CHICAGO -- Governor George H. Ryan today congratulated Raymond R. Coffey on 38 years of service in the windy city working on newspaper business and announced that Thursday, December 30, 1999 will be proclaimed as Raymond R. Coffey Day.

"Many have said that Ray Coffey is an indelible name in Chicago journalism and that when you read his columns one hears the voice of Chicago," Ryan said. "To that I will add that the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers are all the better for having Ray Coffey's name appear on their pages."

At the age of 70 years old, Coffey will end his journalism career after working as a columnist and editorial board member at the Chicago Sun-Times from 1987 through 1999. Most of his newspaper days were spent with the Chicago Daily News from 1961 to 1978. Before signing on with the Sun-Times, Coffey began working at the Tribune in 1978.

Since before Ryan joined government service, the governor noted that Coffey has been reporting on political events and even worked at the UPI bureau in Springfield. Although he grew up in Racine, WI, Coffey adopted Chicago as his hometown and raised his seven children there with his wife, Holly.

"I consider it an honor to be able to name a day on behalf of a civic-minded, compassionate journalist like Ray Coffey, " Ryan said. "And I challenge all aspiring journalists to look to Ray for inspiration on how to do it right. To Ray, I want to say thank you. The newspaper business is better today because you were a part of it."

Thank you Ray Coffey!

Ayers/Obama: Past is Prologue -Except When it Makes Obama Uncomfortable

The New York Times offers a flabby push-up, as opposed to rigorous work-out on Obama's long, close, dangerous and uncomfortable association with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Chicago's complex and cowardly web of convenience that weaves radicals, Private Foundations ( Woods Fund, Joyce Foundation, MacArthur and others), law firms ( Sidley & Austin,,Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, Bluhm Center, Peoples Law Office) real estate opportunists ( Tony Rezko, Allison Davis, Cullen Davis), universities ( UICC, Northwestern, and University of Chicago), and the media ( WGN, Chicago Tribune, Medill School of Journalism) and gutless and cynical politicians ( Daley and Blagojevich) provides the cover for this long, close and dangerous association.

This corporate weave is the 'dumb-down comforter' that wraps Ayers and his odious wife in such warmth that they can stare down from their stoops at America with contempt and allow Billy the Bomber, who polka-ed all over Old Glory in the Tribune's glossy and chi-chi Chicago Magazine, to give AMERICA THE FINGER. Even a Huffington Post Obamabot Michael Shaw noticed that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-emny_b_131855.html

Obama is rooted to William Ayers and his political ascendancy owes more to Ayers than it does to the urban myth - Obama as Chicago Machine Politician. Obama is no more a Democratic Machine Politician than Tony Rezko is a philanthropist, or the Chicago Sun Times is a newspaper.

For all the protestations from Obama's journalists - worldwide - there has never been a serious inquiry, much less valuable study of William Ayers and his dangerous influence upon Obama by any Mainstream Media -including the cut-and-paste work of Sean Hannity.

Professor Steve Diamond and National Review's Stanley Kurtz have conducted the only real examinations of Ayers and the many other radical mentors of Barack Obama.

The Annenberg Challenge which was funded by Ambassador Walter Annenberg, himself a publisher of sorts -TV Guide and such - and the off-spring of real Chicago Gangsters - Moe Anneberg and the nephew of Max Annenberg. The lazy media dismiss the Annenberg Challenge as a Republican cover -'not just Ayers but Republicans too.'

Nuance!

Ayers and Dohrn were helped to toss their crimes against Americans into the Orwellian Memory Hole, through political convenience. Dorhn has been helping radical lawyers bring suit against Illinois taxpayers through her studies of children being assaulted by a racist Justice system that promotes police torture of blacks, inadequate legal representation for minorities at Northwestern Law School. Dorhn can not practice law. However she can yield power and influence over our courts through radical agitation methods and heavy, heavy lawsuits - Sue the City, Sue the County, Sue the racist People of America. I wish she would have stuck to C-4 as she would have done much less damage to lives and property.

Ayers bombs minds at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They got these jobs and cover of academic propriety through Law Firms - notably Sidley and Austin, where Michele Obama worked.

Obama took the path to White House holding the hands of Ayers and Dorhn.

Sarah Palin's Genuine Decency Confounds People Like Couric

Governor Sarah Palin confounds the phonies and the mediocrities who dominate public debate.

Sarah Palin connects with Americans in a way unseen in politics since Truman and IKE. They too were sneered at by the Madly for Adlai pipe-smokers.

Truman vowed to punch a 'delicate' music critic in the mouth over an unnecessarily snotty review of his daughter's piano debut. He also 'Fired' the American Caesar for insubordination to the Commander in Chief. The artillery Captain fired the big general.

Sarah Palin is a force that the louses in public debate can not touch, but with whom Americans connect with ease.

Katie Couric, for all of her chipmunk cheek chirpiness, is a typical passive aggressive punk trying desperately to right her sinking career- a career that requires a dearth of talent and cargo of aggression.

The MSNBC Doublemint Twins of Propaganda Olberbore and Maddow have not the wit nor the substance to disarm Sarah Palin.

Change has come and it is long overdue in American Public Discourse. Sarah Palin brings back decency.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2008/10/debate-biden-exudes-charm-class-but.html

The Debate: Biden Exudes Charm & Class, but Palin Connects to Americans

The Chicago Tribune rolled out its underwhelming 'damn with faint praise' edition of the Post VP Debate spin.

Steve Chapman's charge of 'Small Town Snobbery' that he lamely leveled against Sahara Palin still banners up for the Salon set. Using some dweebish sociology paper, Chapman explains that crime is down in small town America because the towns are small:

This deters crime in two ways. First, you don't want to damage your reputation among people who may ostracize you for doing wrong. Second, you don't want to rob someone who can easily identify you to police—and in a small town, that limits your pool of victims. Crime is more common in cities because they offer a target-rich environment and much less chance of being spotted by someone who can tell the cops your name, address and 3rd-grade teacher.
One of these days, the 80 percent of Americans who live in more populated areas may tire of being obliquely insulted. Most urbanites and suburbanites don't think they're any better than their country cousins. But Palin might want to think twice before telling them they're worse.

Homicide, Assault, Robery in Englewood, Chatham, Gresham, Roseland where the body count goes up higher than Franklin Raines' Fannie Mae buyout loot?

Steve, you really need to get out a bit. Violent Crimes in those neighborhoods do not occur because of the economic rich pickings, Steve and all too often the neighbors and relatives witness the actual crime and 'NO SNITCH!'

Anyway, Joe Biden is a compelling, forceful, witty, and delightful man and Sarah Palin faced one of the most skilled debaters in the U.S. Senate. Gov. Palin held her own and gave back as good as she got.

What is important is this - Sarah Palin spoke to America.

Joe Biden won the debate, but Sarah Palin won the hearts and minds - if not the ears of folks all over America - I expect more disertations on Palins mispronunciation of the 'N word' - NUCLEAR. I believe that her pronunciation was part of the tactical plan to connect with Americans - irregardless of Party Affiliation. That was the mission. Check!

Steve Chapman's is to help paint the Yellow Brick Road that Obama is skipping on - for now.

Schakowsky's Convicted Check Kiting Hubby Worried About McCain the Risk Taker! Hey, Bob, Tell Him About Your Sure Thing! A Few Semesters in the Pen!

Camp Obama Commandant, Convicted Check-Kiting Felon*, Hubby of Congressman Jan Schakowsky ( 40Watt, IL) and Huffington Post Talent Bob 'The Kite Runner' Creamer worries about John McCain as a 'risk taker!'

Oh, Please do click my post title for morsels tossed to the soul-patch and brown rice rice revolutionaries of Obama Reich! Did you guys happen to see the little kids chanting to Kim Il Obama? The guy has a head on him like a Weber Kettle!

Here's a taste of Jan's Jail Bird's thoughts on good government endangered by McCain the Gambler!!!!!

McCain is notorious for his willingness to throw the dice -- literally.

Last Sunday's the New York Times describes the scene at the Foxwoods resort Casino as he "tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 AM, the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings."

McCain is a lifelong gambler - gambling as often as once a month, according to the Times. "In May 2007, as Mr. McCain's presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip," where he raised funds, "attended a boxing match and hit the crap tables."

But that's not all. McCain seems to like taking risks -- in his own life -- and with the country. Tossing around $100 chips is nothing for McCain. He's perfectly comfortable tossing around trillion dollar chips.

If that don't clean out Rosie O'Donnell's colon nothing will! Bob, You Mastermind!

Bob!!!! McCain didn't Kite a Check! He didn't get convicted and go to the Joint! You Did! Your Old Lady is drooling to get Gov. Blago to name her to Obama's seat Before He Goes Away! Tony Rezko is Singing to the Feds! Kid Hope is in the On Deck Circle! Bob! You're a Howl, Bob! Keep him employed, Arianna! Let him BOUNCE some more great ideas! This is the most fun I've had with my clothes on! bwaaaahhhaaaaa!!!!!

I wonder if Bob tried to bounce a Czech? Probably get his ass kicked!


*But what has not been known until now is that an organization associated with billionaire leftist and convicted inside trader George Soros had hired a controversial Democratic Party political consultant to help organize its campaign against Bolton. This consultant, Robert B. Creamer, was under indictment at the time and subsequently pleaded guilty to federal bank fraud and tax charges. On April 5, he was sentenced to five months in prison and is currently serving time in the Terra Haute Federal Correctional Institute.

Hey Camp Obama erased Bob's swell Wikipedia file! Quid Nunc?

Here's Who Hates Sarah Palin - Glad I'm With Her!

They really Hate Sarah Palin!

Heck, I ain't mad at nobody. Hate beets.

POTUS SATELLITE RADIO; AIR AMERICA: MSNBC - The Tool Shed; NPR; PBS; Gwen ' Books to Sell' IfillCNN- Wolf's Pack; Hollywood - except for the one's with genuine enduring talent; Bruce 'I'M Woody Guthrie!' Springsteen; most of the really bad tippers at Keegan's Pub -both of them; The View - except for the skinny blonde broad; Kathleen Parker?; the New Yorker; Rolling Stone; THE GDs; The Stones (not Rolling -the gang-bangers) Vice Lords; Four Corner Hustlers; Mikey Cobras; all seven operators of the open and active Crack Houses on Morgan between 87th & 79th Street; community activists everywhere; Hugo Chavez; SEIU; Catholic School Girls Against The War; and Michael Moore in between meals HATE SARAH PALIN!

That makes me feel good. I care not a fig for most of those yamheads- can't say that I hate 'em. Bored by, yes. Irriated by their volume, to be sure. Tickled by their intrisicly humorless self-absorbtion, all the time, but hate is for losers. Looks like Obama has a huge problem - the Hate/Loser demographic in his corner is bigger than Michael Moore's snack! Here is a great article from last month by Dave Kahanne that sums up the idiocy of group think.

But she’s not a Democrat, which despite her va-va-va-voom appearance, means she’s not really a woman, which is one of the reasons we’ve spent the past four days since McCain unveiled her trying to tear her limb from limb. Just because she’s the governor of a state sandwiched between two obscure and unimportant countries, Canada and Russia, and spent more time in her first five minutes visiting American troops in Iraq than Evita Barry did during his entire Rainbow Tour, what could she possibly know about foreign policy? It’s not like she’s John Edwards or something.

So that’s why we’re having our Wellstone Funeral Moment at the moment. We mean well; we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go over the top with our outright loathing of the Neanderthals who preach “Christian” values while practicing Wiccanism and child sacrifice and who hate black people and gay people and want to destroy the environment just because they can, and want to amass more money than even John Kerry or Jon Corzine or Herb Kohl or Jay Rockefeller or Dianne Feinstein — the five richest senators — or Ted Kennedy or John Edwards or Nancy Pelosi have. That, usually, is the Kos Kidz’s job. Along with speculating exactly how Bush got from My Pet Goat to planting the depth charges that blew up the levees in New Orleans.

But sometimes the mask slips and you can see — whoops! — how much we hate you. Normally we’re against hate in all its forms, and embrace tolerance as one of our defining moral attributes. But when it comes to you conservatives, well, with the best will in the world, we just can’t tolerate you. You’re elitist, you’re judgmental, you’re hypocritical, and we know that deep down you hate us even more than we hate you. Therefore, by any means necessary, we will defeat you this fall. Voter fraud, “walking around” money, legions of lawyers, as many recounts as it takes — bring it on!

Because we need to take back our country. We need to take it back from fascists like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and give it back to its rightful proprietors, patriots like Henry Wallace, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas, Gus Hall, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Saul Alinsky, William Kunstler, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, and, yes, my guy, the Talking Parrot, you know who.

And Sarah Marshall Palin stands in the way of all that. After we sent Bill n’ Hill packing with their twin gold watches in Denver, we thought we had a clear playing field. The sunshine of the uplands was ours. Mother Gaia had opened wide her arms to embrace us, shunning the Orcs and the Uruk-hai of the Anti-Slavery, Anti-Segregation, Anti-Secularism, Anti-Sedition and Anti-Surrender Party. We were going up against Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, Herbert Hoover and Whoever, Daddy Bush and Dan Quayle, Gerald R. Ford and, well, Bob Dole.

Piece of cake, walk on the beach, a Renaissance Weekend in a non-denominational heaven for atheists. Until Sarah Marshall Palin showed up, bringing with her 10 million bucks for the bad guys in three days, a level of enthusiasm not seen since Ronnie was a pup, and a clear shot to Republican dominance with her and Bobby Jindal and whatever seduced and corrupted minority group is coming next for eons to come.

So that’s why we hate you, Sarah Marshall Palin. We hate you because you remind the other side of their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, and make them want to fight for you against our sneers and our smears. We hate you because you’re smart and accomplished and didn’t make your bones on the back of Monica Lewinsky. We hate you because you’ve made us forget that our last two candidates for vice president were Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, whoever they were.

We hate you because you’re smart and beautiful and we wish we had women like you on our side.

We hate you.

McCain/Palin: Palin Will Be Great and So Will Joe Biden

This will be a politcal event unmatched in viewership. The Debate between Senator Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin will be a study in two political agenda's. Palin* will will excite her audience with direct and intelligent appeals to common sense public service and Biden will display a mastery of issues with sparkle of wit and charm.

Katie Couric will continue to scratch for her political life at CBS; Gwen Ifill will cash-in her credentials as a 'career journalist' for a book deal; the Debate Commission will have revealed itself as hack-dominated clown opera; the Obama propaganda organ ( MSNBC, CNN, ABC,CBS, and NBC as well as the brokered print corporations) will whirl dervishily to cloud what everyone in America already understands about the Presidential Race; Hollywood will continue to act as if it matters; American voters will act according to the dictates of their hopes and commitment to their country.

Tonight's debate will be a great study of two dedicated public servants.


* Click my post title for a nice account of Palin's debating skills

John McCain - Say 'No' in Thunder! Vote No Bailout!

Senator McCain, Please Vote No on the Bailout Bill when you enter the Senate and Shout Out No - in Thunder!

This is a bad bargain with the Devil for America! I have no dog in this fight. I have no money. My salary goes to mortgage ( saved and locked), utilities, kids tuition, groceries, my Church and charities, gas, and tons of taxes. I am worried that my kids will suffer for decades if this bargain is sealed.

Consider what your native Arizonans say:

First, Congress should suspend the mark-to-market accounting rule for mortgage-backed securities. This requires MBSs to be booked for the highly discounted price at which they can currently be sold, not the much higher price they are likely to be worth if held to maturity.

The bill rejected by the House would have empowered the SEC to suspend the rule. Instead, Congress should mandate it. This would provide virtually as much balance sheet relief as Paulson's proposal that taxpayers buy the MBSs.

Second, enact the House Republicans' idea for the federal government to insure MBSs. Paulson says it won't work. But he would have a hard time explaining why companies pay trillions for such private insurance but won't purchase more secure insurance from the federal government.

Third, have the federal government guarantee the refinancing of homes based upon extending the life of the mortgage for as long as it takes, even if well beyond the conventional 30-year period, to reduce monthly payments to a certain percentage of income. With such a program, no one would have to lose their home, lenders wouldn't have to take a hair cut, and, given the income requirement, federal outlays would be minimal.

This program relieves the credit crunch caused by artificially depressed MBSs as much as the federal government is capable of doing. It doesn't fundamentally change the role of the federal government in the private economy, as House Republicans fear. It helps homeowners, as Democrats want.

And it doesn't put taxpayers at considerable risk to bail out imprudent big-boy investors, as a remarkable coalition of independent-minded Democrats and conservative Republicans commendably called a halt to on Monday.

Absolutely! Chicken Little Scam artists are all over this bailout.

There will be no Depression.

There will be no Collapse of the Economy

There will be no Bread Lines

There will be greater scrutiny placed upon the louses who cheated the tax-payers and Empty Suit Obama who wants to provide them cover.

Strike boldly McCain! Say No in Thunder!

McCain/Palin: Thompson on Palin and What Most Americans Know; The Media Will Not Allow It To Be So

Senator Fred Thompson states the case for Governor Sarah Palin. Most people I know feel the same way; yet, turn on the Tube, glance at the paper, or listen to the Radio and one might think otherwise. Sarah Palin scares the hell out of kooks and phonies - the power structure of my Party - the Democratic Party -is controlled by kooks and phonies.

Corporate NBC, CBS,ABC, most newspaper conglomerates like Tribune Company, Time/Warner, CNN, and affiliated DNC propaganda organs have done a pile-on of Sarah Palin and John McCain unknown hitherto in American politics.

This morning Senator Fred Thompson offers the view shared by most of the people I know - I know many people. I raise money from fabulously wealthy folks, drink coffee in the morning at Kean Gas Station with ComEd workers, Peoples Gas workers, County, State and City of Chicago workers and live among cops, firefighters, school teachers and a few community activists. I work at a Catholic high school ( Leo High School) that serves the poorest black families in Chicago. Two Leo Graduates were McCain Delegates - BTW. Here is how we feel.

When John McCain selected Governor Sarah Palin, as his running mate, the Democrats and their far-left constituency let out a primal scream that could be heard from sea to shining sea. How dare he choose someone that they and their pals in the media had not had a chance to vet (i.e. libel, slander, and otherwise and otherwise eviscerate). Ah, but it was not too late. These seekers of “a new kind of politics” poured torrents of malicious abuse upon her and her family.

Plane loads of scandal mongers, lawyers and other truth seekers became more numerous in Alaska than the polar bear, as they rallied local Democrats and disgruntled Republicans to their cause.

Here was a woman who chose to have children and a career. Aging Washington socialites weighed in with newly discovered sensitivity for mothers with careers outside the home. Here was a woman who became upset because her ex-brother-in-law had tasered her nephew and threatened her father. The Democrats and their friends had to save the country from a woman like this.

Governor Palin’s every comment was scrutinized by the media and judged against what Jefferson or Lincoln might have said. Never mind that her counterpart, the 30-year-Washington-veteran Joe Biden, apparently is unaware that America relies upon coal for a lot of it’s electricity or that he recently referred to a top level U.S. official’s visit to Iran that never happened. That’s just Joe being Joe – protected by the sheer number of his gaffes and the fact that he is Barack Obama’s running mate.

For a while there it seems the fact that so many uninformed yahoos (average people) love her was going to drive the main stream media nuts. They had a hard time grasping the fact that people like her because she is precisely the kind of politician that everyone has been saying they’ve wanted: Independent, not a captive of the Beltway including a Congress with a 9% approval rating, who will take on hacks of either party; who has the tenacity to win and the courage to fight for the long-term benefit of those she represents.

Apparently what no one counted on was that a politician like this would actually show up on the national scene. The media was caught by surprise. The media doesn’t like surprises.

Naturally, there was a backlash to the treatment of Governor Palin and cooler-headed critics have largely concentrated on what they claim is her lack of qualifications. Of course much of the criticism of her qualifications reveals the application of the same old double standard. Less accomplished governors in times past have been considered to be perfectly “well-qualified” as VP picks.

However, it is a legitimate issue and should be taken seriously. I especially take seriously the criticism of people such as New York Times columnist David Brooks who I consider to be an insightful analyst of the political scene. He recently wrote that governance is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all it requires prudence. What is prudence? Among other things, it is the ability to absorb information and discern the essential current of events – the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and to understand which arguments have the most weight. How is prudence acquired? Through experience. Experience allows a leader to judge what is important and what is not. He added, “Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter.”

One can hardly disagree with the desirability of our leaders having the qualities that Brooks describes (putting aside the question of how many of our leaders who are not Sarah Palin have demonstrated these qualities). But there are other important qualifications, such as will, courage, and determination. Frankly, an infusion of these qualities into our body politic is desperately needed – not just to raise hell with the establishment, but to speak the hard truth about unpleasant choices facing our country. To push for choices that will, in the long term, benefit our country, our children and our grandchildren. In other words, things which “prudent” leaders are all too often reluctant to do.

For many years we have failed to address looming problems that will prove catastrophic to our nation. It’s not because we are bereft of leaders with great experience. And it is not because they do not understand the “essential current of events.” They know these things all too well. It is because they do not have the political courage to do anything about it.

Recently, a Washington Post editorial pointed out that even before the recent financial crisis on Wall Street, the Government Accountability Office issued a report declaring the federal government on an “unsustainable long term fiscal path.” This was primarily due to the projected cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, brought on by an aging population. We will be spending $41 trillion dollars more on these entitlements in the next 75 years than we will receive in payroll taxes and premiums, although the crunch will actually begin much sooner than that. And we already owe Japan and China about $500 billion each.

David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States calls this problem much larger than the recent financial rescue plan. In fact he calls it the “super sub-prime crisis.” Which bring me to the current sub-prime crisis.

Wall Street and Washington were full of people who were “qualified and experienced” in the field of finance. Sen. Barack Obama, for one, has a great deal of experience in the housing field. So do many of his closest advisers. I would have traded some of that experience for a few more leaders with less experience and more courage to buck the establishment and tell the truth about what was happening.

This brings me back to Governor Sarah Palin, and why I say that courage and political will are at the very top of the “qualification” requirements for today’s leaders. So the question is, how does Sarah Palin compare on that score with Biden and Obama, for that matter? Very well, I’d say.

Sarah Palin - Palin is Ready to Lead and Meet Her Critics - I Do Not Believe that They Will Care to Meet The Governor on a Level Playing Field

The front page of the Chicago Tribune features a nude painting done by a 69 year old artist - who employed his daughter as a model for Governor Palin. The Chicago Tribune editorial geeks are solidly behind Senator Obama. Along with the cork-screwing Sun Times, the Tribune engages in a daily beatdown of McCain or Palin. No big deal really as no one in Chicago seems to pay much attention to the Chicago editorial dweebs and pencil-necks who tend to live in lily-white suburbs while celebrating diversity.

With all the news that the Chicago Tribune is not covering - Tony Rezko, Willliam Ayers and their long and close associations with Senator Obama; another murdered Chicago Police Officer; multiple killings and shootings on the south and west sides; a moronic Governor bankrupting the State; Public Schools looting the budget and world wide terrorism; the editorial snobs decided to be edgy.

The painting is in no way offensive - its is badly done art, by what appears. It might be to Gov. Palin's father or her husband, but then again the 'artist' would cower behind freedom of speech and artistic expression to avoid a sound beating by either or both gentleman.

What is offensive is the 'nuanced' editorial gigglers. Nuanced means bullshit these days - Obama is 'nuanced.' Obama is using 'Middle Class' more than TV sit coms use 'Dude!' - when in fact, Obama committed to Trinity United Church of Christ which demanded that members 'disavow' the American Middle Class. That's Nuanced. The editorial Board at the Chicago Tribune is Nuanced.

The Chicago Tribune long ago shred its dignity along with editorial intelligence. No matter, people will stop buying the paper product and more hard working and effective people with the Tribune will be laid off - and the talentless and smugly mediocrities will soldier on.

The painting is of no consequence and even of less consequence is the Chicago Tribune.

A Chicago Police Officer was murdered by a drug-dealing thug - every day occurrence; the greatest financial catastrophe in decades brought on by Progressive nitwits and scam mortgage pirates; a simpleton Governor is bankrupting Illinois - but Chicago Tribune needs to mock the Governor of a solvent State running for Vice President.

Eric Zorn says that expectations for Gov. Palin are on the floor.

It is always great to hear someone display contempt and low-regard before a contest. Generally, it comes from someone who has never been in a fight, much less won one.

People who have actually acted in the interests of other people or been placed in a situation that requires dignity and courage from them never sneer at any combatant.

Most people, and Sarah Palin is like most people not Tina Fey, or Bill Maher or Sean Hannity, face life and the occasional opponent as if they were playing Notre Dame every day.

Then there are the nuanced - those who avoid the fights, the struggles, the commitments - and sneer.

On Thursday night Governor Palin will face a great Democratic foe in Senator Biden. She had best pack a big Lunch. She will do fine.

Then, Governor Palin and turn to chat with Salon, MSNBC, CNN, and the dweebs at Chicago Tribune. Pack a big energy bar cupcakes.

McCain/Palin: Chicago Sun Times Steve Huntley Praises McCain Presidential Leadership in Crisis

Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun Times columnist, bangs out a great evaluation of John McCain's Leadership during the Fannie Mae/Mac meltdown and DNC clown opera. While Obama does what he has done all of his career - wait, test the waters, get what he can and when pushed Vote Present - John McCain leads from the front. MSNBC is tripping over its agenda to clear the brush and right Obama's path - which he couldn't find without the Scout Masters holding his hand. John McCain knows the jungle and is out in front with a machete. By Columbus Day Obama will bedown in the polls by double digits.

Read Steve Huntley!

The bottom line: McCain was right last week when he said the rescue plan was on course for failure. Had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid more attention to McCain's warning, heeded his call for a greater bipartisan spirit and acted on that advice instead of accusing him of political grandstanding, the headlines in today's paper might have been different. At the last minute it was Pelosi, not McCain, who waved the partisan red flag in a speech prior to Monday's vote. That likely doomed the Paulson plan by alienating the GOP ballots Pelosi needed to pass the bill since she didn't have enough Democratic votes lined up.

McCain's astute sizing up of the situation in Washington was just the latest example of a politician not known for expertise in economic matters proven to be right at key times on fiscal issues.

Just a week ago he came in for withering criticism from the Wall Street Journal and country club Republicans for suggesting that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox should be fired because of the Wall Street meltdown. Now we learn from the SEC's inspector general that in 2006 the SEC staff "identified precisely the types of risks that evolved into the subprime crisis" but the agency failed to rein in the aggressive subprime investment practices of Bear Sterns, the first casualty in the meltdown. McCain, it turns out, was right to tag the SEC for failure to do its job.

McCain also proved prescient two years ago when he co-sponsored a bill to tighten regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are the quasi-government mortgage underwriters at the epicenter of the financial crisis. Obama was silent on the issue.

Despite the stereotype presented about McCain, over the years he has demonstrated wisdom on economic issues.

This Just In! Air-Brushed Mo Dowd Banned from Straight-Talk Express!

Air-Brushed Mo, who looks like Dorian Gray's portrait in the 'For Real?' is reportedly banned from Plane McCain!
This from Ari at Firdoglake

Howard Kurtz drops this tidbit into his column:

The company may have been more pleasant than that of McCain aides, who have barred Dowd from the candidate's plane.

If the Obama campaign banned a FoxNews Reporter from the plane, I'm sure it would be the greatest crime against the first amendment ever committed. MoDo banned -- one sentence, no explanation.

Lacunae! as Mo would say!

McCain/Palin: Obama's Dreams of Class Warfare - He Fired the Opening Shot at the Debate

CNN - Obama second-string cheerleaders helped his Campaign Spin the Debate on Friday and craft an Obama Shot Heard Round the Nuanced Crowd!

Speaking about Friday's presidential debate, Obama accused McCain of not addressing working families.

"We talked about the economy for 40 minutes, and not once did Sen. McCain talk about the struggles that middle class families are facing every day," Obama said at a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan.

The economy took the lead in Friday night's presidential debate, as both candidates highlighted their plans to bring the United States out of what some are describing as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

McCain on Sunday brushed off Obama's latest line of attack, saying he has "bigger things to worry about."

"Who does he think I was talking about when I said 'people on Main Street'? Who did he think I was talking about, about the necessity of helping the American taxpayers and income -- and Americans who are out there working and trying to keep their jobs?" he said on ABC's "This Week."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/28/campaign.wrap/


Yep, Obama is all about the Middle Class, Mainstreet, Non-Arugula buying 'bitter and clinging Bible Toting and gun packing Middle Class Bubbas! Rubes with Union Cards- real ones

These are Obama's Words from Dreams of My Father ( clique my Post Title for more on Obama Class Warrior):

Our rage at the white world needed no object, he seemed to be telling me, no independent confirmation; it could be switched on and off at our pleasure.” (page 81);
j) “Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.” (page 85);
k) “Frank opened his eyes: ‘What I’m trying to tell you is, your grandma’s right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That’s just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it’s not. So you might as well get used to it.’ ” (page 90);
l) “Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to get trained. They’ll train you to want what you don’t need. They’ll train you to manipulate words so they don’t mean anything anymore.” (page 97);
m) “I had stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about black people: that most of us weren’t interested in revolt; that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time; that if we preferred to keep to ourselves it was mainly because that was the easiest way to stop thinking about it, easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.” (page 98);
n) “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.” (page 100);
o) “There was one particular passage in Trinity’s (Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ pastured by Reverend Wright) brochure that stood out…”A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness,’ the heading read. ‘While it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might,’ the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune (no mention of “hard work”) to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the ‘psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness” that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “US”!’” (page 284);
p) “I took the opportunity to study these tourists as Auma and I sat down for lunch in the outdoor café of the New Stanley Hotel. They were everywhere – Germans, Japanese, British, Americans – taking pictures, hailing taxis, fending off street peddlers, many of them dressed in safari suites like extras on a movie set. In Hawaii, when we were still kids, my friends and I had laughed at tourists like these, with their sunburns and their pale, skinny legs, basking in the glow of our obvious superiority.” (page 312)

He ought to get look at my pasty, Mick gams! That would get him off of Arugula!

What a phoney! That is why Obama plays so well with Olbermann, Matthews, Brown, Maddow, Blitzer, and the whole gang of Middle Class hating elites.

McCain/ Palin: Obama Clings to 'The Disavowal of the Middleclass' While Talking Up Middle Class - Both Sides of His Mouth Work Fine!

"Any black person who identifies himself as middle-class psychologically withdraws from the group and becomes a proponent of strengthening and sustaining the system,"
TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

Obama embraced the 12 tenets of Trinity United Church of Christ, but his long and warm association with Re. Jeremiah Wright, a Black Liberation Theologian, became too dicey for his Presidential ambitions.

Obama, for twenty years, embraced the disavowal of the middleclass. He now chirps like a tit-willow in love with the American Middle Class.

Obama will do anything to President and those backing his campaign know that:

He embraced:

William Ayers, a domestic terrorist

Tony Rezko, a convicted real estate swindler and slumlord

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preached loudly, strongly and continually for the disavowal of the American Middle Class

American Middle Class?

Wait for the bus to roll over you!

Click my post title for Eric Rush on the real Obama.

Sarah Palin - Change is Coming! Joe Biden will Limp Off Stage!

Tell the morons - Those Heights just past the water? That's Russia as seen from Alaska.

Sarah Palin has had to endure the contemptuous idiocies of likes Of Couric, Olbermann, Maddow, Maher, Matthews, Letterman, Fey and their Progressive print stooges and commenting lemmings in the blogosphere.

Wednesday night, the leash comes off the 'pitbull with lipstick.' Thursday Night - Hold the Phone, Joe!

Joe Biden, who massages his toncils with his Florsheims on a daily basis, will meet Sarah Palin for the first time and limp off the stage.

There will be no 'gottcha moments' orchestrated by sneaks like Couric who play on the good manners of Americans in order to serve up a victim. Couric and CBS have been a National Joke since the days of Gunga Dan Rather.

Sarah Palin was vetted by the McCain Campaign and the Media hate the fact that a genuine person in now poised to be a 'heart-beat away' from another genuine person.

Townhall's Bill Dwyer makes a nice bit of perspective.

I'm not saying that these photos and maps, by themselves, are any proof that Sarah Palin is ready to be a heartbeat from the presidency. I am saying that these photos and maps, by themselves, are indeed proof that she and others were telling the literal truth when they described Russia as sharing a border with, and being visible from, Alaska.


As for Gov. Palin's foreign affairs and national defense qualifications, however:

No job fully prepares anyone for the foreign policy and national defense responsibilities that attend the office of POTUS because no job shares more than a fraction of those responsibilities — including jobs like "Secretary of State" or "Secretary of Defense" or "U.S. Senator."

No new occupant of the office of POTUS has to undertake those responsibilities alone. Each is surrounded by advisers, including career professionals from the State and Defense Departments. In particular, any vice presidents who is suddenly elevated to the presidency is surrounded by advisers originally selected by their immediate predecessor, which would mean in the case of a hypothetical ascension by Sarah Palin to the presidency, advisers chosen by John McCain. As a former naval aviator and, then, commander of the Navy's largest air wing, and as a long-time senator with oversight responsibilities, active participation on the Senate Foreign Affairs committee, and — extraordinarily even for Senators — direct involvement in international negotiations (as when he led the United States' efforts to negotiate the resumption of diplomatic relations with the same regime that once tortured him as a POW) — John McCain's own foreign affairs and national defense credentials are among the most impressive held by anyone ever to run for president. He will put a sound system into place that would benefit a sudden successor, and he would also be a superb tutor of a co-executive in his administration whose own credentials on foreign affairs and national security are less deep than his own.

Although border state governors have more interaction with foreign affairs and border security matters than other governors, in our federal system that commits overall commander-in-chief responsibility and foreign affairs (head of state) primacy to the federal Executive, no state governor has executive experience on these matters comparable to that which must be exercised by the POTUS. State governors are, however, executives, with experience running large organizations of a sort that mere legislators at any level — including U.S. Congressmen and Senators — don't acquire. That's part of the explanation for why America has so often elected state chief executive officers (governors) to become the federal chief executive officer (POTUS), often with salutary results (see, e.g., Ronald Reagan's victory in the Cold War).

Even with the limited role that our system apportions to state governors as commanders-in-chief of their state national guards and the state executives ultimately responsible for law enforcement within their jurisdictions, those governors still have and wield executive authority that includes putting guard members' and law enforcement officers' lives on the line — in enforcement of criminal law, in handling civil disorders and riots, and in emergencies like forest fires and floods. They send them into harms' way; they direct their activities while there; and sometimes, they have go to the funerals and hand flags to grieving relatives. And among all state governors, the governor of Alaska — as the state leader with closest continual proximity to a hostile foreign state — does indeed have responsibilities and obtain defense briefings beyond those received by, for example, the governor of Arkansas (which need not fear hostile bomber overflights from Missouri). No one can seriously argue that this compares to actually being the POTUS. But it's not nothing, either. And of executive experience in general, or experience personally making decisions that have put anyone's lives on the line in particular, "nothing" is the exactly appropriate description for both Sens. Obama and Biden, because neither member of the Democratic Party's ticket can match Gov. Palin's experience of that sort (or any other state governor's, for that matter).

Obviously, Gov. Palin was selected not to augment McCain's own strengths, but to balance the ticket: A governor to complement a senator, someone with executive experience in government to complement an experienced federal legislator, youth and energy to complement age and experience. (The conspicuous exception is that they both share strong credentials as vigorous reformers.)

Sen. McCain did a great deal at last night's debate to dispel doubts about his age and mental crispness, and those who vote for him may do so with the full and reasonable expectation that he'll ably serve out at least one term. Gov. Palin's own record of accomplishments in office, along with her electoral appeal and the prospect that she will join him as a crusading reformer in Washington, amply justify her selection, and her gubernatorial experience will match that of another young and dynamic GOP vice presidential nominee upon assuming office — one T.R. Roosevelt of New York. And when he suddenly ascended to the top job, he only did well enough to get his face on Mt. Rushmore.

McCain/Palin: 'I Have a Bracelet, Too' and Absolutely No Clue What It Means!

c

CLICK MY POST TITLE FOR BARACK OBAMA'S "I HAVE A BRACELET,TOO!" Speech - 'thigh-tingling' . . .say the New York Times and Milky Mattews!!!!!

'From Sgt , Uh . . .'

Collect them All, Kids! Be A Real Commander in Chief! Just like the Big Guys!

Madre De Dios! The Kid's A Caution!

Here's another such reaction from the New York Post.

One of last night's most telling moments came when McCain revealed a wristband that had belonged to a soldier killed in Iraq given to him by the soldier's mother. Do everything in your power, the mother told McCain, to make sure "my son's death was not in vain."

"I've got a bracelet, too," Obama said - given to him by the mother of a dead soldier who asked Obama to "make sure that another mother's not going through what I'm going through."

Here lies the difference between these two men:

Obama will accept defeat if continuing on hurts too much. For McCain, any mission where defeat is an option is a mission not worth fighting in the first place.

Charles Hurt is The Post's DC Bureau Chief

.

churt@nypost.com

Barney Franks Sings The ACORN Song - In The Tank and On the Stage for His Patrons

The Acorn Song

I'm a little acorn brown,
Sitting on the cold cold ground,
Every body steps on me,
That is why I'm cracked you see.

Chorus:

I'm a nut
I'm a nut
I'm a nut, I'm a nut, I'm a nut


Called my self up on the phone,
Just to hear my glorious tone,
Asked myself out on a date,
Gotta be ready at half past eight.

(Chorus)

Took myself to the movie show,
Sat me down in the very front row,
Wrapped my arms around my waist,
Got so fresh I slapped my face.

(Chorus)

Coca cola came to town,
Pepsi cola shot him down,
Dr. Pepper fixed him up,
Now we all drink 7-up.

7-up got the flu,
Now we all drink Mt. Dew;
Mt. Dew got in a fight,
Now we all drink Lots of Sprite.*

I'm a little piece of tin,
Nobody know what shape I'm in,
Got four wheels and a running board,
I ain't a Chevy and I ain't a Ford.

Honk, Honk, Rattle, Rattle, Crash, Beep Beep,
Honk, Honk, Rattle, Rattle, Crash, Beep Beep!



*Other Soda verses can be added at this point:
(Extended Dance remix version)

Lot'sof Sprite was a thug,
Now we all drink lots of Mug
Lot's of Mug went to lunch,
Now we all drink Hawaiian Punch.

Hawaiian Punch liked to splurge,
Now we all drink lots of Surge,
Lot'sof Surge became a father,
Now we all drink lots of water.



Click my Post Title for Barney and ACORN

“Bad manners make a journalist.” Oscar Wilde on Sarah Palin

“A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude”

Allow me, Governor.

Sarah Palin, though a resident of Alaska lives in my neighborhood. Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, Chris Rock, Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Campbell Brown, Chris Matthews and all of your critics do not.

Sarah Palin, like my neighbors, Democrats largely, white and black, Catholic and Protestant,. . . Danny Levi who owned the Irish Temple Pub died last year, so Jews are scarce immediately - alot of Muslims near by.

They are great people with wonderful manners, even during Little League . . .not so much during softball, or Catholic League Games - can get contentious.

People in my neighborhood, like in Kankakee, IL, Elyria, OH, Bettendorf, IA or Moscow, WI are unfamiliar with creepy people. We pay Cable, Satellite and DISH companies for that. That is the only way boors get in our homes.

The gottcha game on TV is understood. Like I said Sarah Palin, is unfamiliar with jerks. People in the media capitalize on the good nature and manners of people. The more off-putting or ridiculous statement or lie tossed in the face of good person like Sarah Palin, stuns and is meant to stun. Good manners and propriety in a social setting, like an interview keep good people from responding to a stupid, misleading or offensive question.

The more stupid, misleading and offensive the jerk happens to be, the bigger the geek ( once freaks in side-shows who performed disgusting acts for pay) the bigger the network cache.

There will be plenty of time for Vice President Sarah Palin to let Katie, Keith, Rachel, Chris, Charlie and the others in on 'what makes her tick.' That will be must see TV.

In the mean time allow me to offer a sound byte you may wish to employ in the mean time:

Katie: 'Governor what makes you think . . .'

Sarah: 'Why, We call that a thought muscle up in Wasilla Katie.'

Keith: ' William Howard Taft . . .'

Sarah: 'The poor guy is dead, Keith. He left an empty space in many hearts. And in his environment. Really. Are you still biting the bubbles in the bathtub, Keith?'


Charlie: 'What is the Bush Doctrine?'

Sarah: ' It is the codification of beliefs, attributed to George W. Bush our 43rd President that holds that pussies in pinz nez glasses acting like Rex Harrison after a sponge bath by Paul Begala have about three seconds before my husband Todd reenacts Sonny kicking Carlo's ass from Godfather - that's a film Charley . . .here's Todd now!'

Rachel: 'With . . .'

Sarah: 'Not even With an Act of God Rachel. But bless you for asking!'

Chris Matthews: 'How . . .'

Sarah: 'Answer the Question Chris this is Hardball! This isn't Funny! Answer! "What Are You Stupid? My God ! "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” Winston Churchill said that about You Chris!'

McCain/Palin: Stephen Hayes - The Real Story on the Franks, Dodd, Reid, Schumer Mad Haters Tea Party!

Read Stephen Hayes's account of the events concerning the Balls Up on Wall Street Crisis - created by Franks, Reid, Schumer and Dodd; dumped on the American Taxpayer; endangering the American Economy; and scuttling Obama's Auadacious Hopes of a Redistribution of Waelth President.

These four weasels and their Media stooges should be run out of office - for starters.

Stephen Hayes presents a genuine piece of reportage:

Yesterday afternoon, I went to CNN to talk about bailout politics. When I arrived, I was surprised to learn from the other two panelists--CNN's Gloria Borger and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank--that a deal on an amended version of the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout plan was close. I was surprised because I had been hearing the opposite--that House Republicans were increasingly opposed to a deal and that such a deal seemed less likely yesterday than it was when the plan was originally proposed. But others, including the Associated Press, were reporting that a deal was imminent.

Then, earlier today, the AP reported that such a deal had, in fact, been reached. The Washington Post soon followed, in an article that strongly suggested McCain was irrelevant to the process and reported that he had arrived after a deal had been struck.


McCain's "Straight Talk Air" landed at National Airport just after noon, and McCain's motorcade sped toward the Senate. But by then, senior Democrats and Republicans colleagues were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached.


The Obama campaign gleefully sent the Post story out to reporters at 4:22 and affixed its own headline: "'Straight Talk Air' lands after deal was announced."

So what happened? I'm not sure anyone knows the full story, but here is my take. When John McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign, Democrats moved quickly to portray the decision as strictly political. (Senator Chuck Schumer said as much in an interview on CNN.) An
important element of their case was convincing reporters that a deal was close and McCain presence was (a) unnecessary, (b) potentially detrimental, or (c) both.

But that's a hard case for them to make for two reasons. First, Harry Reid. On Wednesday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had explicitly called for McCain to use his influence as party leader to bring House Republicans along. "We need, now, the Republicans to start producing some votes for us," Reid said. "We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands and what we should do." Reid explained that McCain was crucial to any deal because his approval of a deal would give congressional Republicans political cover necessary to sign on to a bipartisan agreement. The second reason: House Republicans were never on board. Earlier this week, they gave Vice President Dick Cheney an earful about their opposition to the deal. Yesterday morning, a group of about 50 conservative House Republicans got together and when one speaker asked for a show of hands from those who support the bailout, less than a handful said they were likely to support it. One staffer for a Republican in House leadership said: "Understand one thing. House Republicans were never on board."

By this morning, Senator Christopher Dodd and Representative Barney Frank--the two lead congressional Democrats on this issue--were telling reporters that a deal was close. But according to House sources, those claims were nonsense. "This was a smart political move by Senator McCain--working in a bipartisan fashion to try to get something done," says a senior House Republican aide. "It's something he's done in the past." Democrats, this Republican says, immediately began plotting to deny McCain credit for a deal if one was reached and to blame him if a deal was not reached.

Click my post title for the full Magilla! These creeps ( Franks, Dodd, Schumer, Reid)need an old fashioned tar and feathering! Obama has no clue about what is going on - he's being Presidential - President of Waffles!


Hayes! America owes you a beer the size of Senator Obama's hubris!