Lynn Sweet Flaks for Flake - Defense of Desiree Rogers?

Let's be clear - I learned what a self-absorbed dim-witted Diva Desiree Rogers happens to be years ago. When Desiree Rogers was ushered away from her post as Illinois Lotto Ball watcher and seated in position at People Gas that oversaw corporate citizenship by the utility the Diva turned that citizenship ( Corporate Charity) on herself.

Desiree Rogers ended Peoples Energy Corp.'s long standing annual grants to the Black kids at Leo High School.

Leo High School received $ 3,000 annually following a formal written request ( all that 501(c)3 stuff) to help families in need of financial assistance. Desiree Rogers ended that and told me that she going to do "more systemic good."

That year Peoples Gas funded a Fashion Show that featured Desiree Rogers. It was in ALL the columns, Magazines, Janet Davis & Features and Mary Cameron Frye stuff! Desiree was said to be Gorgeous! The Fash Bash did more "systemic" good for the kids from Englewood, Gresham and Brainerd who wanted an education in a high school where they could avoid getting Lit Up. That is Desiree Rogers, Boys & Girls! Leo Alumni many of them Peoples Gas workers themselves made up the grant - thank God.

Oh, so that's what clouds my opinion of Ms. Rogers? Yep.


Lynn Sweet* has a reputation for being a serious reporter. Today she writes, "The Rogers I know is down-to-earth. She grew up in New Orleans, graduated from Wellesley College, picked up a MBA from Harvard, and then built a successful, lucrative business career in Chicago, starting at AT&T. I met her around 1991, when she was the director of the Illinois State Lottery." Pravda?

Today Lynn Sweet offers a flak-catching puff piece on Desiree Rogers - the Diva with a Government Job.

President Obama was put in harm's way, not because of the Secret Service, but because Desiree Rogers' ego can be powered by her limited mental capacities and moral compass.

Two goofballs crashed America's 1st State Dinner in Honor of the Indian Prime Minister at the Obama White House.

Rogers' Social Secretary Policy placed President Obama in danger of harm and the Secret Service has been ordered to wear the jacket.

Chicagoans know Desiree Rogers. Chicagoans continue to be asked to 'really admire' Desiree, even though the pretty, wealthy and protected dimwitted woman can not handle a simple task - Rogers left a simple job at Illinois Lottery under cloud, at Peoples Gas, Rogers oversaw gas-shut offs to the elderly, explosions in Mount Greenwood and insulted skilled tradesmen. Rogers holds appointed positions on charities, business and civic boards and tax-funded sinecures, due to the authority of her ex-husband John Rogers.

Lynn Sweet is giving Desiree Rogers cover that she neither deserves nor appreciates.
It appears in Politics Daily and not in The Chicago Sun Times.

Maybe the Sun Times should hire April Ryan, who seems to ask real questions concerning the very limited capacities of Desiree Rogers and her responsibilities to our President.

What is sad is that Lynn Sweet's flack-jacket woven for the Dimwitted Diva appears only out of town. Chicagoans should read this. Click my post title.


* No Defense of Desiree by Lynn Sweet here in Chicago! Blackout?

LYNN SWEET ::


LATEST BLOG HEADLINES
Obama taps Victoria Kennedy, Ted's widow, for Kennedy Center board (12/04/2009 5:45:01 PM)
Obama approval at 48 percent: CNN poll (12/04/2009 1:22:39 PM)
New jobless rate: 10 percent, a tick down (12/04/2009 8:04:10 AM)
President Obama official schedule and guidance, Dec. 4, 2009. Going to Allentown (12/04/2009 4:00:12 AM)
Obama family light national Christmas tree. Transcript. (12/04/2009 0:21:38 AM)
Chicagoans at Obama White House Christmas party; tighter security checkpoints (12/03/2009 11:33:12 PM)
Giannoulias first 2010 Illinois Senate race commercial (12/03/2009 12:00:52 PM)
Obama Afghanistan speech cable ratings (12/03/2009 11:01:01 AM)
Obama's war (12/03/2009 10:45:47 AM)
Secret Service agents who allowed Obama party crashers placed on leave (12/03/2009 10:33:38 AM)
Friday, December 4, 2009
Party crashers Salahis face subpoenas Desiree Rogers does not
WASHINGTON -- Reality TV show wannabees Michaele and Tareq Salahi face a subpoena from the House Homeland Security Committee after skipping Thursday's hearing on how they passed through Secret Service checkpoints to crash President Obama's Nov. 24 state dinner and ended up shaking hands with him.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
State delegation divided on Thomson
Members of the Illinois congressional delegation -- after an unusually long meeting Wednesday -- were divided over the possibility of the Obama White House transferring inmates at the Guantanamo Bay military prison to a nearly vacant prison in northwestern Illinois.
This D.C. invite turned down
The Obama White House on Wednesday blocked social secretary Desiree Rogers from testifying today before the House Homeland Security Committee hearing on how wannabe reality TV stars Tareq and Michaele Salahi whizzed by Secret Service agents and crashed the Nov. 24 state dinner.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Obama's friends on left wrestling with policy
Lynn Sweet: President Obama's decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by adding 30,000 U.S. troops -- at the same time announcing an exit strategy to start in July 2011 with no firm end date -- was clearly difficult for many of his most ardent supporters. This is not a popular policy with an important segment of Obama's base.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Rogers asked to testify about party crashers
WASHINGTON --White House social secretary Desiree Rogers has been asked to testify at a Thursday hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee about how wannabe reality TV stars Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed the Obama's first state dinner last week.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
State dinner gate-crashers met Obama
WASHINGTON -- The White House confirmed Friday that President Obama met the couple who crashed Tuesday's state dinner --wannabe reality-show stars Michaele and Tareq Salahi -- releasing a picture of Michaele Salahi shaking hands with the president in a receiving line that included first lady Michelle Obama, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
State dinner, Obama style
WASHINGTON--President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hosted their first state Tuesday night, including their closest friends from Chicago among the guests honoring India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharon Kaur, with Chicago songsters Jennifer Hudson and Kurt Elling performing.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Burris heads for Iraq in wake of panel's rebuke
WASHINGTON -- A day after the Senate ethics committee handed him a stinging rebuke, Sen. Roland Burris on Saturday voted to advance the Democratic health-care bill to the Senate floor and then departed for an official visit to Iraq.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Illinois' Gitmo could bring 3,000 jobs: White House
Lynn Sweet: A White House analysis of a federal purchase of the nearly vacant northwestern Illinois prison to house Guantanamo detainees and other federal prisoners, obtained by the Sun-Times on Saturday, concludes that in the first year 2,290 to 2,960 jobs would be created, and local residents would be "excellent candidates" for 1,240 to 1,410 of those jobs.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Senate ethics panel admonishes Burris, but no charges coming
Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) was admonished today by the U.S. Senate ethics committee over his testimony in Springfield concerning how he got appointed to Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. But his actions following his appointment by then Gov.-Rod Blagojevich did not rise to level of pursuing ethics charges against Burris, the committee ruled.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Trials: 'Failure is not an option'
WASHINGTON -- Trying terrorist suspects now detained at Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba in U.S. federal courtrooms -- rather than military tribunals, which operate under different rules -- met with skeptical questioning by some senators at a Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
If you like Sarah Palin, you’ll like 'Going Rogue'
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Going Rogue is really two books: about half an interesting telling of growing up in Alaska, an outdoor and sport-filled life -- and a good chunk of the second half whacking her McCain campaign crew of handlers.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Dems at risk of losing Obama's old Senate seat
WASHINGTON -- About a year ago, thousands jammed Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate Barack Obama's election to the White House, a communal civic defining moment. But those giddy days are long gone as Democrats in Illinois face the potential of losing the Senate seat President Obama once held next November.
Durbin, Quinn see economic boon
WASHINGTON -- Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba may be transferred to a nearly vacant maximum-security state prison in northwest Illinois, the Obama White House said Saturday.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Exclusive interview with Sam Kass White House chef
WASHINGTON -- A lot of lives have changed since Barack Obama won the presidential election one year ago last Wednesday, none so much as the life of Chicago's Sam Kass, the engaging, shaved-head assistant White House chef and food initiative coordinator, a crusader for healthy eating who has shot to fame in the almost 10 months the Obamas have been in the White House.

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

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!

John McCain: Mark Halperin's Help Can't Help - Obama will Unravel On His Own

Mark Halperin's point-by-point analysis - 'not advice' - on how to beat Barack Obama is nice - thanks Mark. Put it in the closet with the fruitcakes and the lint rollers.

Barack Obama's record and Illinois Legislative past with a thick emphasis on ties to indicted Tony Rezko will unravel his campaign on its own. In today' Chicago Tribune it is reported that:

In her ruling, St. Eve said the government contends that Rezko directed business associates Joseph Aramanda and Elie Maloof to make contributions to an unnamed political candidate in late 2003 and 2004 because Rezko had already contributed the maximum legal amount.

The only candidate Maloof and Aramanda contributed to during that time frame was Obama, then running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. Maloof and Aramanda each gave $10,000 to Obama's campaign.

Maloof of Vernon Hills had supported Obama in an earlier political campaign, and disclosure reports from that effort listed her as a vice president of operations for a Rezko pizzeria management firm. Aramanda is a Glenview businessman whose son received a coveted summer internship in Obama's Capitol Hill office in 2005.

Until his recent legal troubles, Rezko had been a longtime friend and financial supporter of Obama's political career. Prosecutors have not alleged any wrongdoing on Obama's part, but the developments come at an awkward time as Obama faces crucial March 4 primary contests, one day after the scheduled start of the trial.

Obama's campaign says it has given more than $150,000 in Rezko-linked contributions to charity, including the money from Aramanda and Maloof.

"We had no knowledge of any straw donations and have returned any of the donations about which we have any reasonable question," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement late Monday.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-obama-rezko_both26feb26,0,5062637.story

Even Leftie Mother Jones is piling on to the calls from Illinois Democratic legislative former colleagues who learned to their collective surprise that Obama took credit for 823 pieces of legislation:

In 1999, Barack Obama was faced with a difficult vote in the Illinois legislature — to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults, a position that risked drawing fire from African-Americans, or to oppose it, possibly undermining his image as a tough-on-crime moderate.
In the end, Mr. Obama chose neither to vote for nor against the bill. He voted “present,” effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator.
Sometimes the “present’ votes were in line with instructions from Democratic leaders or because he objected to provisions in bills that he might otherwise support. At other times, Mr. Obama voted present on questions that had overwhelming bipartisan support. In at least a few cases, the issue was politically sensitive
.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6659_yesterday_the_n.html


Barack Obama's Campaign will unravel on its own. Halperin means well, but give him a pass. Keep being John McCain. Keep things respectful - tough but respectful - like you did in Cincinnati when the disc jockey started to sneer at Barak Obama's name. Keep it McCain-like and dignified. Barack Obama's mummy like rhetorical wrapping is unwinding.

Obama's Community Organizing IQ - 'I quit' - the core of Community organizing 'Self Interest'

'Let Me Be Perfectly Clear! All is Self-Interst!' Young Barry Obama - Community Organizer

Community Organizer - Kids forget the MBA and Harvard Med School or the apprenticeship to Local 597 Pipe Fitters - Be a community organizer, just like Obama!

'My God, Sir! A community organizer? Not a community organizer? You don't say! Me I work for Bell Labs and was a project director at Fermi, but I am in awe of you!

Wow the gang down at the Malt Shop and drop it on 'em, ' I'm going to be a Community Organizer, Sally! I'm going to get people to complain about anything - at the Grassroots Level!'

'Gee, Seth, maybe I will go out with you now!'

I read an article by John Judis for the New Republic and got a reprint from our friends at Petroleum World. Now, over the weekend I stated that Judas (Iscariot) seemed more of community organizer than Jesus - Judas had the grant money on him when he did the Dutch Act after ratting out Jesus to Caiaphas and the lads of Sanhedrin. 'We gave Judas an unrestricted grant of thirty (30) pieces of silver to be used for the stated purpose of producing the 'self-proclaimed Messiah!'

John Judis is a nice Lithuanian sounding lad. He examines Obama'secrets as a community organizer - a guy who gets other people to complain about anything.


Both Chicago papers ( Tribune & Sun Times) immediately jumped on the 'community organizing' - the latest panties in a twist from Barack Obama's Campaign. Rudy Giuliani got the ball rolling down the lane - no gutter ball that one. Strike! Right at the heart and core of Obama's Branding Narrative. Then Gov. Palin struck another thunderball and shattered Obama's pins:


Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

Owwww. Progressive America is smarting. Communuity Organizing, it is said, goes back to Gamaliel the teacher of St. Paul. Why, I do not know. I think because some radical icon said so - Saul Alinisky who linked the story of Ananias and Sapphira from Acts of the Apostles to taking grassroots initiatives at pressuring people to get what you want. Gamaliel was a Pharisee - most leaders of the Temple at the time were Sadducee's- and he counseled the Sanhedrin ( The Law Givers) to 'be careful' with the Apostles of Jesus. He counseled enlightened self interest. Let's wait and see, Gents!

Alinsky too Gamaliel to be the first community organizer - Ok. Obama's robots want Jesus to be the first, but Jesus was a carpenter with side job - preacher.

Well it seems that Barack Obama's days as a community organizer - someone who gets other people to complain about anything, like former gang-bangers hired by CeaseFire to end the co urge of gun violence - bang-up job you're doing! It seems Obama took Saul Alinsky at his word and took the path to self interest - He quit:

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. Personally, he might end up like his father; politically, he would fail to improve the lot of those he was trying to help.

And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school. Kellman, who was already thinking of leaving organizing himself, found no reason to argue with him. "Organizing," Kellman tells me, as we sit in a Chicago restaurant down the street from the Catholic church where he now works as a lay minister, "is always a lost cause." Obama, circa late 1987, might or might not have put it quite that strongly. But he had clearly developed serious doubts about the career he was pursuing.

Yet, two decades later, to hear Obama the presidential candidate tell it, those years in Chicago as a community organizer shaped the person--and the politician--he has become. Campaigning in Iowa last year, he declared that community organizing was "the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School." In a video this spring, Obama stated that community organizing is "something I carry with me when I think about politics today--obviously at a different level and in a different place, but the same principles still apply." "Barack is not a politician first and foremost," Michelle Obama has said. "He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."

Certainly, Obama has good reason to tout his community organizing experience. After graduating from an Ivy League college, Obama passed up more lucrative jobs to devote three years to organizing low-income African Americans in Chicago. That choice tells us something about his values, and his pride in it is understandable.

But his campaign has taken the point a step further, implying that Obama the politician is a direct descendant of Obama the organizer--that he has carried the practices and principles of community organizing into his campaign, and would carry them into the White House as well. This is the version of Obama's biography that most journalists have accepted.

Give most journalists a sandwich and you can tell them that Amelia Earhart is living in Hyde Park and they'll print it. A guy is a career gangbanger, gets convicted, goes away, gets out, and becomes an activist with more ink from journalists than Heather McCartney and Oprah with the flu.

Click my post title for more on Obama's secret life as a community organizer - someone who gets alot of people to complain about anything in the name of self-interst. Self-Interest - Yes, We Can!

How about Country Before Self!

If you are interested in just how a community organizer gets trained read from this link

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

Obama Paloozza II, or Grant Park Reducks

The Obama Campaign 2008 resembled a Leni Riefenstahl (or was that Reni Liefenstahl?) production and McCain/Palin Campaign was like Wagon Train without Ward Bond.

Obama had doric columns in his Denver Parthenon and John McCain showed up somewhere.

Obama was on a half-shell high above Olympus and Strobe-lighted and John McCain had a Polaroid Land-camera album of his carrier days.

Obama had Campaign Stuffed with gold and McCain had old gum, lint, popcorn kernels, toe-nails, and some coins found in the couch in the rumpus room.

Barack Obama wanted to win big like a kid on Star Search; McCain thought it might be nice.

Thus, we have The Making of a President 2008 for Dummies.

Now, we are hip deep in an the orchestrated Orwellian howl-hootenanny 2012. President Obama will face Someone. It could be a new Thomas Jefferson, a new Roland Burris - Someone 2012's got my vote.

I am backing and voting with all of my heart and soul, time, treasure and talent, for Someone 2012!. Someone was, is and shall be better choice than President Obama. If John McCain had tried even a little he would have been President, but he allowed Governor Palin to do all of the heavy lifting.

I like Barack Obama in same way, that I like many Illinois politicians. Barack Obama comes from the Protected Panjandrum species - Ald. Brendan O'Reilly, Sheila Simon, and Chris Kennedy. They are the " Where the Hell Did He/She Come From?" only a hen-scratch better than the Ain't They Greaters. They come fully funded by someone, or some group and get appointed or slotted into an easy to win race. Obama v. Keyes e.g.


I dislike a very few - Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool, Tony Preckwinkle and of course Jan Schakowsky. They are Ain't They Greaters -moved from post to post and office to office, more to get them out of town, or out of the way than anything else.

Then there are "What Can You Do?" goofballs - seemingly harmless dopes who have the backing of far more competent persons. These officials, like Blago, Sen. Roland Burris, Sen. Dick Durbin and former Gov. Pat Quinn, never fail to disappoint.

President Obama, in my opinion, will go down in history as the worst President since James Buchanan and just slightly worse than Jimmy Carter. However, given the GOP's tendency to do political seppuku at any moment, he has a slim chance of holding onto the White House in November. President Obama helped only the Abortion Industry - Planned Parenthood in his term of office. Oh, and he allowed a Navy Seal Team to rub-out Osama. Hell, I could have done that, bit no one asked me.



Oh, really?, say thee.

Sure. Without citing the Corporate Sponsorship of Obama Bundler and Hyde Park Mogul John Rogers ( ex. of Desiree Rogers), explain Arne Duncan.

Take your time and use all of your notes; this is open book.


Dave Axelrod is planing another Grant Park Obama-palooza Obama Palooza II. Like Lalapalooza, perhaps the Obama Campaign will asked to pay for the park, finally.

I wonder if the bill from 2008 was paid. Probably written off by Daley, in exchange ofr the Distinguihsed Harris Professorship at U of C.

Presidential advisor David Axelrod said Thursday that the location hasn't been discussed.

"But, you know, our [campaign] headquarters is here. The president's heart is here. So, you know, I think that will help guide our decision-making," Axelrod said.

Axelrod said he would like the festivities to be in Chicago.

Remember these?


* "Press File Seat - $935 (includes 1 Press File Credential, seat in heated Press File Tent, Power, Cable Television, High Speed Wired Internet Service, Catering)"

* "Radio Position - $715 (includes table space and chair behind the riser, power and an ISDN BRI line for radio -- comes with two credentials)"

* Obama's top donors--not the masses who donated the $5, $10 and $25 the campaign brag about--will have VIP access throughout election night and received an early heads up a week ago to plan to spend Election Night in Chicago.

Now, did the Obama 2008 Campaign up on all of the Grant Park Obamapalooza I?

Before, what just might be . . .
check the ledgers.


Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/Obamas_Bill.html#ixzz1lKeSib49

http://chicagoist.com/2008/10/21/obama_goes_ticketmaster_on_media.php

It's A Small International Workers Paradise After All! ObamaInternationalistas Ayers/Jefe Chavez/FARC & Etc.

It Takes a Village of Idiots to help snakes this big!




Billy Ayers, the Trust Funded, Insulated, Media Pampered Hyde Park Domestic Terrorist, who still, mercy sakes alive, has a job at University of Illinois Chicago Campus is the tack on the chair of Senator Obama's Senate Seat.

Senator Obama is up and moving about the country weaving rhetorical flourishes to the people who think that Stanley Fish matters and that MSNBC provides information. While Senator Obama has been out of his seat, Illinois laughing-stock and Check Kiting Bob Creamer's Bonnie Parker, Congressperson Jan Schakwosky is trolling for the chair - which would be Jan's via appointment from Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Guv has problems. Jan Schakowsky, like most self-absorbed posers, is unaware of her problems. Her husband, Bob Creamer recently got out of the Federal Pen in Terra Haute, Indiana for check kiting and immediately wrote a boffo book on Progressive Politics and ran Camp Obama for the Obama -Jugend. Jan Schakowsky wants Obama's Senate Seat and the Kite Runner knows that Jan couldn't get five votes beyond her district and so she needs to knead the Guv's temples while he is still semi-comatose.

Following me so far? Hey, this is what comes of talking to the well-read neighbors: Chicago Cops, Firefighters, teachers, tradesmen, housewives, housedads, lay-abouts and Twenty-Something Impecunious,Sponge off the Folks for a Few Years Obama Backers. People who read widely, listen and watch the news and filter out the nonsense with their Faith, Patriotism and Life Experiences. Shucks, us folks get on the porch and have us just a thunderous round of weighty assessments on the life public.

Very smart Internet journalists like Anne Leary the Backyard Conservative and John Rubery the Marathon Pundit have been studying up on the oafish Ayers and his odious wife Bernadine Dohrn for years. Not only that Dohrn has played a crucial role helping to orchestrate the undermining of confidence in the American Justice System from her insulated perch at Northwestern University Law. She has also traveled often to Columbia, which is undergoing assaults from Communists terrorists of FARC - which is a Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Army of Columbia and is supported by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez who fancies himself a later- Castro.

Another journalist by the name of Doug Ross has been keeping an eye on Chicago's Brahmin Bolsheviks (Dohrn and Ayers) and has noted Senator Obama's very tangible part in this international intrigue - I always wanted to say that, damn! Here's the executive summary of Doug Ross's exhaustive study.

Executive Summary: Barack Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers appears to go beyond their Woods Fund board membership. Even today, Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, sound utterly unrepentant over their attempts to overthrow the U.S. government in order to install a pro-communist regime.

Perhaps coincidentally, Obama's name was recently discovered on a captured FARC computer. In the documents, FARC -- Colombia's brand of pro-communist terrorists -- implied that it had met with Obama's representatives to secure his support after the election. Interestingly, Dohrn has traveled to Colombia in the recent past in order to organize against Colombia's pro-U.S. government. Is it possible that Dohrn served as a cutout between Obama and FARC? That much is not yet clear, but the question deserves to be asked.

As True as the numbers when I step on the scale, Doug! But those questions will go unasked by the Chicago Media, with the exception of John Kass. Barack Obama's Senate seat has a huge tack resting point up by the name of Billy Ayers. That point designates overt cooperation with radicals, communists and terrorists who seek to harm America. Senator Obama's name was found in a back-pack containing a computer with a treasure trove of damning evidence as to Hugo Chavez' active role violating Columbia's sovereignty. Interpol announced yesterday that computer files with this information are valid.

Senator Obama's association with Ayers and Dohrn is far more dangerous and of consequence than the goofiness of Reverend Wright. The Ayers tack on Senator Obama's seat will pierce right through the heart of his campaign.

Click my post title for the link to Doug Ross's full text along with several others, but for good solid home grown studies look to Anne Leary and John Rubery.

BTW- Chicago Tribune researcher Brenda Killanski wrote a wonderful piece on the Ayers/Obama link-up and she should be writing more on this story, but the Medill Mafia at the Tribune seems to prefer to further insulate Ayers and by extension Obama. Give them a jingle or drop them a note.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/04/recurring-ties-between-obama-and.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/obama_and_farc.html

http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2008/04/six-degrees-of-hugo-chvez.html

McCain/Palin: William Ayers Sings 'Gimme Shelter!'

William Ayers - Billy Ayers - Billy 'The Bomber' Ayers - the whack-a-mole of Barack Obama's shady past pops up all the time. Camp Obama is using its cadre of really concerned Obama partisans to shout down critics of the Agent of Change.

WGN Radio's distinguished and thoughtful Dr. Milt Rosenberg's Extension 720 has twice been assaulted by nuisance callers attempting to drown out inquiry of Senator Obama's 'White-Out' relationship with domestic terrorist Billy Ayers.

People want to know exactly what that relationship says about Obama's judgment and agenda for America - especially with regard to public education. Ayers is no friend of America - read his blog.

Chicago newspapers with exception of Sun Times investigative journalist Tim Novak and Chicago Tribune's John Kass seem perfectly willing to dismiss any and all inquiry where Obama, Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Davis, Dohrn, or any number of radical leftists are concerned. WGN is part of the Tribune Empire - therefore:

Obama's campaign says supporters have placed thousands of phone calls to TV and radio stations and sent even more letters to newspapers.

A page on the campaign's Web site, headlined "Hit 'em where it hurts," told supporters how to complain to advertisers at stations that ran a recent anti-Obama ad.

"We'll provide you with talking points on this maliciously false hit ad to help guide you through the process," the page said, citing a spot run by a conservative group called the American Issues Project.

The campaign says supporters sent roughly 100,000 e-mails in August to stations that aired the ad, which criticized Obama for his ties to former 1960s radical William Ayers.

WGN also was flooded with calls and e-mails shortly before and during an Aug. 27 interview with Stanley Kurtz, a conservative writer who has examined Obama's ties to Ayers.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," read the first message confronting the station, an e-mail that also provided detailed background information on Kurtz, Obama and Ayers.

The WGN alerts were sent primarily to Obama supporters in the Chicago area but were quickly posted to electronic message boards and Web sites, spreading them worldwide. Many of those who called to complain were from outside Illinois, and they flooded the station's switchboard in a way a WGN producer called "unprecedented."

On Monday night, Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg," said the response was about the same. "It's just constant, constant phone calls, and the e-mails are pouring in," he said, adding that the extra volume of calls made it more difficult to run the show.

Obama's campaign describes the system as a grass-roots truth squad that arms supporters with information. But others see an attempt to stifle free speech.

"If Barack Obama demonstrates this little regard for free speech from his opponents during the campaign, what could the American people expect from him as a president?" Ed Martin, president of American Issues Project, said in a statement.

Christian Pinkston, the group's spokesman, said Martin was referring to legal threats by Obama's campaign about the ad. He said the counterattack has only heightened the profile of the group, which "soon" plans to run more ads.

"It's worth noting that for all the shouting from the campaign, not one single television station pulled the ad," Pinkston said. "It may have been good for their fundraisings efforts, but it had no impact whatsoever on our efforts."

The sole financier of the group's ads, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, was also a major contributor to the Swift Boat group that attacked Kerry.

Fox News and CNN declined to run the ad. Still, the group says it ran more than 7,300 times in markets that covered Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, at a cost of $2.8 million.

Another use of Obama's Action Wire came earlier in August, when a controversial book called "The Obama Nation" was released.

The book by Jerome Corsi, who wrote one in 2004 that launched an attack on Kerry, paints Obama as a stealth radical liberal who has tried to cover up his "extensive connections to Islam." The alert about the Corsi book asked supporters to share an e-mail critical of the text with friends and family.

Bruce Gronbeck, a University of Iowa professor who studies political communications, said protests against television and radio stations are fair game in a presidential campaign.

"The media are players in the process," he said. "If they are a player, the parties are certainly going to try to hold them accountable."

Careful inquiry to the nature, depth, substance, and length of Senator Obama's relationship to domestic terrorist Billy Ayers is no distraction - it is a public service obligation and Chicago's media is running away from its duty.

Sweet! "You’ll have to work for ticket to Barack Obama Bash" - Noun, or Verb?

FOWARD!  TWO PICKETS To . . .

I was confused by Lynn Sweet's headline.  Not surprising. due to the subtle nuances of political language and all . I will be required to work for ticket -in order to - Obama bash?

The Chicago Tribune endorsed the President most comfortable with a woman's choice to murder her child in the womb, because the Bruce Dold's deep-thinkers want voters to "Think of the Children!" No kidding -

Tribune endorses Obama: Our children's America!

Super, Bruce.  Not to be out done, Chicago Sun Times Obama maven Lynn Sweet invites us all willing to work to Bash Obama!

Shucks, President Obama has done a pretty effective job of setting up an Obama Bashing nearly every day these past four years - 

However, To Bash ( v.transitive) is not the same as A Bash (n.).  To Bash means to strike violently, or rhetorically  to the criticize, diminish, or make small of a person. A Bash is a fete, party, or celebration where one might 'pitch a bitch!'

The DNC bash was moved in-doors because Team Obama Party Planners were concerned with the 70 degree weather in Charlotte , NC and certainly not a concern that tens of people would show up to celebrate Obama 2012 Foward. Likewise Bash enthusiasts determined that Grank Park just might be a wee bit nippy on November 6, 2012l therefore going Foward Indoor.

The cost to Bash Obama is signing up to work in Wisconsin.

The “Illinois Victory Volunteers” GOTV canvass in Wisconsin will take place Nov. 3, 4 and 5. Once completed, tickets will be handed out on a first-come, first-served system. Each shift will last between two and three hours.
The Obama team selected McCormick Place in part because they were worried about bad weather and wanted an indoor venue.
Obama’s field operation has used events as organizing tools since the first days of the 2008 campaign. More recently, the Obama campaign pegged a massive volunteer effort in North Carolina to tickets for what was to have been the Democratic National Convention finale at the Bank of America stadium in Charlotte. The outdoor stadium event was canceled because of bad weather and Obama and Vice President Joe Biden delivered their acceptance speeches inside at the Time Warner Cable arena. . . .Major donors are expected to get VIP treatment on election night, as they did in 2008. And for those who don’t want to canvass, a donation ($150 or even less to the Obama campaign) will get you entered in a lottery to get “right up front” with Obama in Chicago on election night. The campaign ran a similar program in 2008, promising a backstage pass and front row seats for Grant Park.The Obama drive to send Illinois troops to Wisconsin to help the president may have an unintended consequence before election day: It could drain a pool of motivated volunteers from the big Chicago area House races in the closing days of the campaign — when Tammy Duckworth, Bill Foster and Brad Schneider will also need GOTV help.

GOTV ain't cable - it means Go To Victory!  Obama bash bashing on my part?  Well, I just go where I'm invited - To Hell or to Victory!  As Fats Waller was wont to say  " One never knows, do one??

I got my ticket.

12 Years is all that is Required to Examine Obama's Presidency and You Thought Getting His College Records was Tough

           

   

By late morning Tuesday, Chicago seemed to have been taken captive – albeit willingly – by plans for an enormous election party in the city’s front yard, Grant Park, where Senator Barack Obama, would spend election night. Monica Davey reported throughout the day from park. By the time of Mr. Obama’s victory speech, according to city officials, an estimated 240,000 people had gathered in the park and its surrounding streets.  New York Times November 5, 2008

 But consider, too, the intangibles of his legacy, things that Chicagoans share and will pass on about Obama to our next generation because we were there from the start.
No matter our political ideology, race, gender, religion or income, we have a story to tell. We were there when a state senator from Hyde Park with a funny name catapulted from Springfield to the White House — with a brief stop in the U.S. Senate — all in the span of about four years.
A Chicagoan broke a racial barrier and became the nation’s first African-American president. And then he won a second term, running both national campaigns from headquarters in downtown Chicago.
We can’t sugarcoat this: Chicago has been grappling with persistent problems with violence these years while Obama has been in the White House. The city’s longstanding, race-related problems and festering issues with the police department did not vanish just because Obama was the president. There were 780 murders in Chicago in 2016.
That doesn’t diminish the fact, though, that Obama is “indelibly in the fabric of Chicago, the history of Chicago,” said Bill Daley, a former Obama White House chief of staff who is part of Chicago history himself as the son and brother of Chicago mayors. " He Made us all proud"  Lynn Sweet Chicago Sun Times January 8, 2017

Sorry, Lynn. Just not seeing it.

President Obama's Legacy is vanishing.  Not because of Trump, or Republicans, but because of the very thin-skinned and prickly man himself.

His last days in Office have been tantrums, terrorist releases, land grabs and brag fests to his pet media lap-dogs, like Carol Marin and other sycophants.

He believes that if you want to know about him, ask Hollywood, watch South Side With You  and the up-coming box-office stinker Barry, ironically about top-secret college days.

The genuine man, the man I have met, spoken with and remain thoroughly underwhelmed by, is pretty much the man I refused to cast a vote for in 2008 and 2012 - a thin-skinned, prickly, egoist with a genuine lack of gravity, substance and people skills. I found him to be rather a dim bulb, as well. That's just me.

His term of office never let me down. I had set a very low bar for him long before he announced for President.

Historians and regular people who deeply and passionately fell in love with the man image, fabricated by Valerie Jarrett, Desiree Rogers, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and the Brothers Daley between 2004-2008, remain so and may never know what happened in America for eight years. They will not be moved, but they will forget.

Obama had his college records disappeared, he had his work for Bill Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge suppressed at University of Illinois Chicago library and last July did the same for his Presidential records.

Obama ordered his Presidential Records to be suppressed for Twelve (12) Years:

The letter, released to POLITICO on Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, also indicates that Obama is exercising his rights to put many of those records off-limits for 12 years after he leaves the presidency later this month. While the move could be seen as at odds with Obama's frequently stated commitment to transparency, it's a step other recent presidents have also taken before leaving the White House.

Well his legacy will vanish of its own accord.  Eventually the passionate people who wept real tears of joy in Grant Park  and around America on November  5th in 2008, or thousands of Chicagoans who stood in single digit Chicago arctic wind outside of McCormick Place to secure one (1) ticket to Obama's Farewell Speech tomorrow night, will wonder what exactly was it that Obama actually had done for eight years, besides, party, vacation, golf, bow, divide races, fire military leaders, bitch slap America's history and people, draw red lines and smirk.

John McCain: PT-527 The Huffington Post

Huffington Post Ship of Fools: Obama's PT -527

Byron York has a good point - any questions directed to Senator Obama that the shadowy R. Senator from Illinois does not 'feel' like answering is "swiftboating."

It's common to see mentions in the press these days about some "swiftboating" of Barack Obama that is allegedly in the works, or might someday allegedly be in the works, or might someday be thought to be allegedly in the works. While I'm sure there will be some hit jobs on Obama — this is a presidential campaign, after all — this talk seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding, perhaps willful in some cases, of the swiftboat episode in the 2004 campaign.

. . .

Today, there is a tendency to describe any criticism of Barack Obama as "swiftboating." So far, it's been a pretty effective attack pre-emption device. But it has nothing to do with "swiftboating"; you can't just "swiftboat" somebody. Now, if all of the pastors who worked with Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago came together to criticize his behavior back then, that would qualify. But until something like that happens, could everyone — at least those not working for the Obama campaign or the DNC — dispense with the "swiftboating" talk?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2VmMjlhZGIwZDQ4MTRjZGMwYzhhYzQxODg4OGI3Mjc=

Byron York notes that Obama warns everyone with a 40 Watt intellect that 'they will try to make you afraid.'

They being the plural pronoun and all that it portends. Chilling, as the venti latte crowd is wont to lisp.

Well, Folks. Senator Obama has 527s aplenty. MSNBC, Daily Kos, The Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times & etc. More Swiftboats than the League of Nations had to deal with!

The Swiftboat Flagship is Arianna Huffington's Greeks & Geeks Navy PT-527 The Huffington Post with a wacky crew that McHale's Navy would not allow near the plywood deck of anything afloat. Marty Kaplan, Steve Weber, and other Hollywodd lightweights man Arianna's bubble blasters with such broadsides as Marty Kaplan'sBush Gives Dems STDsBush or Steve Weber's imitation of Lord Bulwer-Lytton and this Andy Borowitz bit of fecal artistry Cindy McCain Robot Gets New Head by Andy Borowitz.

Real 4th grade stuff.

Today HUFFPO is locked and loaded with George Carlin tributes attesting to his rock-ribbed detestation of the Faith in which he was Bapitized which always gets hugged in Hollywood like one of Michael Vick's pups.

Bill Maher, a Carlin Lite, equates dogs to 'retarded children' and has made a career of spitting on the crucifix. He's huge for Obama!

Obama reaches out to Catholics with Bill Maher and Huffington Post. He is worthy of the Seal he now has put into the attic.

Huffington Post, Boys and Girls, is a 527 Swift Boat - P(olitical) T(railMix Eaters)-527

Here is today's attack plan:

The Blog


BIO
Arianna Huffington: McCain's Campaign Funding Hypocrisy: Why Are the Media Looking the Other Way?The mainstream media's overheated response to Barack Obama's decision to opt out of the public campaign finance system is prime evidence of the media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society and its offshoot, the Swift Boat Media for McCain, and of how their highly motivated efforts are affecting the presidential race. McCain called Obama's decision "a big deal." What's actually a big deal is the Swift Boat Media's complete indifference to McCain's bald-faced hypocrisy on the same issue. Amidst all the attacks on Obama's "flip-flop," how much have you read in the old media about the fact that McCain has "completely reversed himself" on public financing -- and is currently breaking campaign finance law on a daily basis?


Featured Blog Posts Feeds

BIO
Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global WarmingDr. James Hansen, 06.23.2008

Today, I testified to Congress about global warming, 20 years after I first alerted the public that warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference.

Read Post | Comments (117)

BIO
George Carlin: An Irish Mensch Robert S. McElvaine, 06.23.2008

After one of George's hilarious shows, we talked about my theories on the meaning of vulgar language. I was struck by what a calm, deep-thinking person he was off-stage.

Read Post | Comments

BIO
The Politics of Identity PoliticsJeff Chang, 06.23.2008

After an ABC/Washington Post survey created a thoroughly bunk way of measuring how racist white American voters actually are, many of the poll's conclusions are completely useless.


BIO
The Real Food Crisis John Feffer, 06.23.2008

The current food crisis is an early warning, and it looks as though we're ignoring it -- there are ever more people to feed and a declining ability to feed them all.

Barack Obama Merchandise
Show Your Support! Buy Obama Tees, Stickers, Buttons, Yard Signs

Dream Ticket
Obama Hits Clintons on 'Dream Ticket'. Read Full Story.


BIO
Blue Alert: Obama And the Dems Need Contingency Plans for Terror and WarRJ Eskow, 06.23.2008

Obama should start laying the groundwork now with a series of speeches that explain why we can -- and must -- defend the liberties that make us Americans, even in the face of terror.


BIO
What George Carlin Told Me About the Afterlife and What He'd Like on His Tombstone David Hochman, 06.23.2008

When I interviewed him a few years ago for Playboy, he told me, "The best afterlife for me would be to be able to sit comfortably and watch the world on a kind of heavenly CNN."


BIO
Politics on the Couch: Splitting and Reparation Two Justin Frank, 06.23.2008

Healing splits between warring nations is virtually impossible, largely because it requires each country to directly face its destructiveness. But reparation has to start somewhere.


BIO
McClellan Testimony Highlights Bush's Crimes -- It's Time for Genuine Accountability Rep. Robert Wexler, 06.23.2008

Never before have high level executive officials refused to even appear before Congress when properly summoned by the legislative branch. It is now the time for Democrats to breathe fire.


BIO
Obama's Best Choice for Veep? Elizabeth Edwards Lionel Beehner, 06.23.2008

As a woman, she will help lure female Democrats, as a southerner, she'll help Obama win a few battleground states, and as a cancer survivor, she'll help shine a light on McCain's abysmal health plan.


BIO
The Seven Dirty Words You'd Never Hear Today Allison Kilkenny, 06.23.2008

Every flattering statement, every overzealous compliment about George Carlin will still be too few for one of the greatest comedians ever to shout his fearlessness into a microphone.


BIO
It's Isolation Stupid! Why Pre-Election Plans to Attack Iran Will Only Backfire Nathan Gonzalez, 06.23.2008

Conditions that Iran cease its uranium enrichment, as well as America's overt talk of bombing, only paint the Islamic Republic into a corner from which it can hardly get out, given its structure.


BIO
George Carlin Harry Shearer, 06.23.2008

One of the unalloyed joys (really) of being in show business is getting to meet and know people you've admired. While his comedy was dark, his spirit with his peers was generous.



Click my Post Title for PT-527

Is Dave Axelrod Coordinating with Billy Ayers? That Would Be Very Bad.

Larry Johnson, a Clinton White House Anti-terrorism officer, is making reports that Domestic Terrorist, University of Illinois Education Professor, and the man who gave Barack Obama his only executive experience, William Ayers has and continues to maintain steady contact with Obama Campaign Manager David Axelrod.

Chicago Media Editorial Boards need to get off their wallets and look into this - unless, of course, they already know this and are just fine with it. That would be very bad. Larry Johnson raises some bothersome points about Obama Campaign Chief David Axelrod being in steady communication with Billy Ayers concerning the way to smear scholars taking a peek at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents. Billy Ayers would have much to say about speaking to that activity, because it seems he clearly was more than 'just some guy' from Obama's neighborhood. Larry Johnson is looking into this - Chicago Media is not. It sure sounds as if Ayers is talking to Obama's Campaign.

This makes sense given the very Stalinist tone of the Official Obama Campaign in its attempt to smear a Stanley Kurtz who was blocked from study of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents at University of Illinois at Chicago and the assault on WGN and Milt Rosenberg.

August 28, 2008
In the next few hours, we have a crucial opportunity to fight one of the most cynical and offensive smears ever launched against Barack.

Tonight, WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears. He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.

Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse.

Call into the "Extension 720" show with Milt Rosenberg at (312) 591-7200

(Show airs from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. tonight)

Then report back on your call at http://my.barackobama.com/WGNstandards
Larry Johnson, a strong Hillary Clinton supporter notes:

I now have two sources confirming that Barack Obama’s Communications Director, David Axelrod has been communicating regularly with unrepentant terrorist and former member of the Weathermen, Bill Ayers, about how to respond to stories trying to report on Obama’s longstanding relationship with Ayers. One of my sources tells me that one person, a TV pundit who wishes to not be named, is talking about this without mentioning Axelrod. This person told my friend:
I predict that the howling and whining we hear from the Obama campaign about Billy Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist who bombed the US. Capitol and has been linked to candidate Obama at least for the last dozen years, will get louder, and more hysterical and more damaging because we will find that not only did Billy Ayers work closely with Barack Obama to fund left wing school schemes in the hands of Maoists (Mike Klonsky) and Neo-Stalinists (Bill Ayers) but also Billy Ayers himself, now, regularly, is talking part in strategy sessions with major Obama advisers as to how to bury the truth about the terrorist and the candidate.”
Another source with direct access to the Obama campaign reports that it is David Axelrod who is fielding these calls. It is astonishing that the Obama team thought they could contain this information. But they will fail. Their fear about Ayers has little to do with his past as a bomber of U.S. Government facilities and more to do with the mismanagement of more than 100 million dollars that was spent by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).

Larry Johnson also lays out the entire Ayers/Obama mystery so ignored by the Chicago Media.

I think Billy Ayers is a bad guy when he was blowing up buildings and trying to kill his countrymen. He was a bad guy forty years ago when Obama was eight years old. He was bad guy when cynical or leftists politicians, academics, real estate opportunists, lawyers, and foundation weasels white-washed his resume and gave Ayers and his odious wife sinecures at Chicago universities; he was a bad guy when he hatched his radical education reform scam that spent more than 100 million dollars 'improving' a Chicago Public School System that is a national disgrace; he was a bad guy when he gave Obama the only executive experience in his very thin resume; he was bad guy for helping Hugo Chavez; he is a bad guy for continuing to use his Daddy's clout, fortune and connections to undermine the American way of life.

Larry Johnson seems to think Ayers
is a pretty bad guy. Take a look at the link here. You will not get much from the Chicago Tribune, except from John Kass and nothing from the Sun Times, unless it is from Tim Novak.

If Axelrod is talking to Ayers, I think Dave Axelrod is a pretty bad guy as well.
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/29/breaking-news-david-axelrod-talking-regularly-with-bill-ayers/