Sophia A. Nelson:

As we all know by now, and as his remarks Friday indicate, President Obama is a cautious man, particularly when it comes to matters of race. But I was relieved to see that he did not “apologize” to the officer in question or the Cambridge police department.

~~~

The bottom line is that the president was right to speak out against racial injustice & racial profiling given this nation’s history with race and police brutality against black men.

President Obama should have calibrated his Friday remarks to offer a flatout apology to Crowley and the Cambridge police department for his earlier “ill-informed” presidential opinion. And then he should have apologized to the American public for exacerbating race relations in the United States.

The “trans-racial” president has been anything but “post-racial”. On the surface, he looks and sounds centrist, speaks of bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle, and pretends to be the American president, rather than “the black” president. But sitting in Reverend Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years, President Obama can’t help himself, but be who he is: black first, American second.

There is a kind of racism that America has yet to overcome. And it is exemplified by President Obama. It is not based on hatred, but based on an an “over-emphasis” of racial identification. Of seeing oneself primarily in terms of skin color before all else.

President Obama can’t escape the influence he subjected himself to and gravitated toward all his life, in spite of his attempts to distance himself from Reverend Wright and other radical associations during the 2008 presidential campaign.

When visiting a slave station in Ghana recently, Anderson Cooper asked the president how he explained the slave trade to Sasha and Malia. He used it as a teaching moment about how “people were willing to degrade others because they appeared differently“. Really?! Ghanaians at the slave station degraded their fellow Africans because “they appeared differently?”

President Obama also said the capacity of discrimination is “not just on the basis of race, but on the basis of religion, or the basis of sexual orientation or gender” rather than shedding light on the fact that it was Africans who captured and sold fellow Africans at slave stations like the one he was being interviewed at. He could have used it as a teaching moment to educate people that slavery was a universal crime, and one not strictly about racism.

Senator Obama has stated that he is against the notion of reparations:

“I have said in the past — and I’ll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed,”

The second half of that statement is important to note. Because although he knows the “30 acres and a mule” brand of reparations is unrealistic with a great deal of political opposition, what President Obama is trying to accomplish is a sort of “stealth reparations” through policies like his healthcare proposals, that will carry out “economic justice”, with minorities being the most affected. Glenn Beck:

More from Glenn Beck on Back Door Reparations.

President Obama didn’t have all the facts in; yet his instincts were to condemn the police of “acting stupidly” and give his friend Gates the benefit of the doubt (because he’s a friend, or because he’s a black man?).

Mona Charen:

President Obama was so ready to take sides. Why? Well, he answered that: “… What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

Not quite. It’s a contentious and emotional minefield. Yes, there has been harassment of blacks by white police departments. But that’s hardly the whole story. Blacks and Hispanics also commit a disproportionately high percentage of crimes.

It seems the Obama presidency means we’re mostly past white racism. As for reverse racism, it’s still in fashion.

Unfortunately, racism is alive and well in the United States; but it is being kept alive by both “traditional” victims and stereotypical “traditional” perpetrators.

And the problem is being exacerbated by a supposed “post-racial” president who can’t calibrate his words and rise above his own racist shortcomings.

Take this bit of race baiting for example. He spoke out about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, after admitting he didn’t know all the facts, and said that if it had happened to us “any of us would be pretty angry.”

Those racist cops don’t know when to quit eh? Responding to a 911 call about a couple men breaking into a house, described as two black men, and then having the gall to question the men…who coincidentally had jimmied their way into the house AND fit the description given in the 911 call…for ID.

How dare they!

Patterico hits the nail on the head:

According to the police report, which I find more credible than Gates’s account, Gates started screaming about racism right from the get-go. (If he didn’t, then why did he get arrested?) And why? Because a police officer was reasonably following up on a reasonable concern?

No, it’s because Gates assumed he was being profiled. And so does Obama, who gives us a long lecture about the history of racial profiling in this country — as if that had anything to do with this incident.

It didn’t. As Jack Dunphy said at the Corner:

The claim that Gates had been “profiled” is ludicrous. Police responded to a 911 call from a witness who described two black men she believed to be breaking into a home. If contacting a black man then found inside that very home is deemed to be “profiling” then the term itself has been stripped of its meaning.

Welcome to post-racial America — where race hustlers hold sway, and all their paranoid fantasies receive official stamps of approval.

But who can blame Obama….he learned from the best in Wright, Meeks and Pfleger.

Problem is, he is no longer Candidate Obama…he is President…and if you don’t know all the facts, as he so readily admitted, you don’t proclaim to the world that one side acted stupidly.

But hey, in the same press conference he inferred our nations doctors are just after a quick buck ready to do unnecessary surgery in their quest for riches.

Cops and Doc’s…..those eeeeeviiiillllll bastards!

More here.

UPDATE

Dan Friedman has some great advice in an email:

If you think, as I do, that the sergeant deserves our encouragement and support, here’s the non-emergency phone number of the Cambridge Police Dept.: 617-349-3300.

I called this a.m. and they were very friendly, and in a neutral way (wink, wink) thanked me for my comment. Try it yourself. Couldn’t hurt.

And this article is pretty good about the officer:

The Cambridge cop prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. claims is a racist gave a dying Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a desperate bid to save the Celtics [team stats] superstar’s life 16 years ago Monday.

“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man. I was working on another human being,” Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward’s fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer.

It’s a date Crowley still can recite by rote – and he still recalls the pain he suffered when people back then questioned whether he had done enough to save the black athlete.

“Some people were saying ‘There’s the guy who killed Reggie Lewis’ afterward. I was broken-hearted. I cried for many nights,” he said.

Crowley, 42, said he’s not a racist, despite how some have cast his actions in the Gates case. “Those who know me know I’m not,” he said.

Yesterday, Lewis’ widow, Donna Lewis, was floored to learn the embattled father of three on the thin blue line of a national debate on racism in America was the same man so determined to rescue her husband.

“That’s incredible,” Lewis, 44, exclaimed. “It’s an unfortunate situation. Hopefully, it can resolve itself. The most important thing is peace.”

Gates, 58, an acclaimed scholar on black history and a PBS documentarian, went on the attack against Crowley on Tuesday, demanding he apologize for arresting him for disorderly conduct last Thursday while investigating a reported break-in at his home. Gates, returning from a trip, was seen by a Malden woman trying to force his front door open. Police alleged he initially refused to identify himself.

Though he harbors no “ill feelings toward the professor,” a calm, resolute Crowley said no mea culpa will be forthcoming.

“I just have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “It will never happen.”

Robert Reich:

I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers. … I have nothing against white male construction workers. I’m just saying that there are a lot of other people who have needs as well. … Criteria can be set so that the money does go to others, the long term unemployed minorities, women, people who are not necessarily construction workers or high-skilled professionals.

Reich’s bio:

Robert Bernard Reich served as the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

A Dartmouth graduate, Reich is a former Harvard University professor and the former Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Reich is also on the board of directors of Tutor.com…. He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security.

He is also an occasional political commentator, notably on Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos , CNBC’s Kudlow & Company, and National Public Radio.

In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century, and the Wall Street Journal placed him among America’s Top Ten Business Thinkers. On November 7, 2008, he was selected by President-elect Barack Obama to be a member of the President-elect’s economic transition advisory board.

This top ten business thinker in America believes that there should be some sort of means test by setting up some criteria on who gets the funds and who doesn’t. The criteria? Anyone but a white guy.

Ed Morrissey:

This sounds a lot more like a paternalistic welfare program than a real effort to improve American infrastructure. We’re building roads and bridges for all Americans, using tax money from all Americans. Everyone should have equal access to the jobs created by this stimulus plan.

In the beautiful world of Obama we were supposed to all come together right? Change! Apparently the change means that race will become a important factor in who gets what opportunities.

It appears the words of Obama’s mentor, Rev. Wright, had a bit more meaning to him then we were told eh?

Democratic unity starts to show cracks

Democrats head into 2009 with sky-high expectations but points of intra-party friction are already starting to show a month before President-elect Obama’s inauguration, forecasting bigger fights next year. Veteran Democrats say the party has become more split along parochial interests since Democrats last controlled majorities as large as they will in the 111th Congress. They say the growth of their majorities in Congress, which has ushered in a new cadre of lawmakers from conservative-leaning states and those with new views on old policy problems, has only made the Democratic caucuses less governable. “Because the Democratic caucus is itself diverse, reflecting many different points of view, it will be a challenge for the leadership to keep that coalition of interests together on the priorities established,” said former Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan (Nev.). “That will be a big challenge.”

The publicly funded Franco-German “cultural” channel Arte did not waste any time celebrating the dawn of a new era in transatlantic relations. This is the same Arte, incidentally, whose earlier contributions to transatlantic understanding have included a report accusing American soldiers of beheading Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War and a portrayal of President George W. Bush with devil’s horns and fangs. On the day after the election of Barack Obama to succeed the outgoing demon-president, the channel broadcast a 70-minute-long special, live from Washington, with the highly imaginative title “A Black Man in the White House” [Un Noir à la maison blanche]. (To their credit, the editors at Arte-Germany chose to abjure the racist impulses of their French counterparts and titled the show instead “Obama: A New Wind in the White House” [Frischer Wind im Weissen Haus].) The guests on the program included Annette Heuser, the executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s new Washington, DC, office. The influential German foundation set up shop in DC just this past spring, presumably in anticipation of the impending “change.” Host Daniel Leconte revealed that the foundation had even helpfully prepared “a little aide, a little white book” for the incoming president on how to conduct his relations with Europe. He was careful to interject that the “white book” had been prepared for both candidates.

In any case, Bertelsmann can be sure that Mr. Obama will read its “little aide, its little white book” very carefully. For — as Ms. Heuser failed to disclose and as was not mentioned either in an op-ed on Obama that she published in the Washington Post in July — the Bertelsmann Corporation happens to be the president-elect’s principal source of income. It was Bertelsmann, namely, that agreed to pay Obama a reported $1.9 million in advances for a three-book deal that the then-senator-elect signed with its fully owned American subsidiary, the Random House publishing group, in December 2004. And who knows? The real amount of the deal might well be more than the reported amount. After all, it was only in April of this year that we discovered that a reported $10 million book deal signed by former President Bill Clinton with Bertelsmann/Random House in 2001 had in fact been worth $15 million.

John goes on to detail the fact that Obama has earned over four million dollars in income from the Random House division of Bertelsmann:

In the interest of transparency, Obama should surely now release the full details of his contractual relationship with the Bertelsmann Corporation. After all, if one is to judge by his recent tax returns, even as president, he will be paid far more by Bertelsmann than by the American taxpayers. For him to be taking advice from the Bertelsmann Foundation suggests conflict of interest on a magnitude that has perhaps never before been seen in the history of the American presidency. Although legally distinct, the foundation and the corporation are, in effect, just functionally distinct parts of a single entity. The Bertelsmann Foundation is in fact the majority shareholder in the corporation, presently holding roughly three-quarters of the company shares, to which, however, there correspond no voting rights. All the remaining shares are held by the Mohn family: family patriarch Reinhard, his wife Liz, and their children. The Mohns in turn control the foundation (to which Reinhard Mohn assigned a large part of the company capital in 1993), such that foundation and corporation are perfectly intertwined and both are, in effect, emanations of the Mohn family’s power.

Even more interesting is the fact that the Mohn family has commissioned three histories of the family and the Bertelsmann Corporation, all written by Dirk Bavendamm. Dirk is not only a twoofer, but also believes FDR permitted Pearl Harbor to happen:

His book Roosevelt’s Way to War (Roosevelts Weg zum Krieg) was published in 1983. Rewriting history, he stated that Roosevelt, not Hitler, had caused World War II. He also wrote that American Jews “controlled most of the media,” and he claimed they gave a false picture of Hitler.

~~~

In a second book, Roosevelt’s War (published in 1993, reissued in 1998), Bavendamm accuses the US President of enacting a plan to start World War II. In the same book he suggests that Hitler’s threats in early 1939 against European Jewry were a reaction to Roosevelt’s strategy against Germany.

~~~

Bavendamm said in an interview that he could not “remember exactly” what his role had been in the publication of the fake Hitler poems and drawings. Discussing Roosevelt and Hitler, he described his views as “nonconformist and independent.” He added, “All the world is under the impression that Hitler was in the main responsible for the outbreak of World War II. But I see it in a bigger framework of the United States moving to the status of a superpower.”

Bevandamm is not alone in his beliefs. Jeremiah Wright also buys into the FDR let Pearl Harbor happen baloney and has said so in his sermons:

The government lied about Pearl Harbor too,” he says. “They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie.

So the company that made Obama a millionaire, and has printed an “advice” book for Obama to show him how to conduct relations with Europe, also has this twoofer and obvious America hater in their employ. Coincidentally Obama sat in the pews while Wright spewed the same America hating rhetoric.

Once again, his associations and judgment are in question.

The Obama team and the Mohns would undoubtedly say that it is scandalous to suggest that the Mohns were using their millions to influence the American presidency or that Obama could possibly be corrupted. But as a reputed former professor of constitutional law, Obama will surely recall the famous words of James Madison in the Federalist Papers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The president-elect’s most fervent followers may well be convinced that he is divine. But his financial relationship to Bertelsmann proves, after all, that he is only human.

Indeed.

“My friend Rashid is a hero among our Palestinian brothers along the West Bank, and with his continued effort, and our continued support, we can guarantee the removal of the Jewish invaders from our promised land! Without a doubt, a united Palestinian front can banish the racist Israeli state back to the four corners of the world and cleanse the holy land of their stain! Then, we will use the example of Palestinian liberation to usher forth a new age in America! An America where heroes like my good friends Bill Ayers, Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Malik Zulu Shabazz will bring and end to the tyranny of capitalism, democracy, and white christianity! We will take the wealth of the American economic elite, and use it to buy the votes of the American poor! Then, when we have control of the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, the United States Supreme Court, and of course, the White House, we will show the American people what real governance is! We will redistribute the wealth! We will bring down the corporations, and eliminate the small busenessmen! We will put them on the path to socialism, and get this nation ready for the next step toward Marxist Communism! We will give them change!”

Well, at least I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. Well, actually, I have no idea what he said, I’m just guessing. But, if the LA Time refuses to release the video so we can know for sure, I’m just going to have to assume that I guessed right!

We know John McCain. We don’t know Barack Obama.

Peter Nicholas, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote an interesting piece in yesterday’s Times on trying to get to know the man behind the image, spending 18 hour days on the campaign trail with the Illinois Senator. What comes across to him, is how well-disciplined Senator Obama is, making every word and action deliberate and calculated, with few instances of spontaneity. The mask is constantly kept on. Nicholas concludes:

First Clinton, then John McCain made the argument that Obama is someone we don’t really know. Obama’s supporters counter that we have his record in the U.S. and Illinois senates, two memoirs that reveal his inner thinking and a vast trove of public speaking. Ironically, those of us who were sent out to take his measure in person can’t offer much help in answering who he is, or if he is ready. The barriers set in place between us and him were just too great.

Obama detractors also argue that

“we have his record in the U.S. and Illinois senates,

What has he even accomplished as a U.S. Senator, other than running for president within his first term? He said it himself in the Gibson interview, he’s been running for president for the last 2 years; that gives little time for the freshman senator to actually do his duties as a legislator.

Where is the evidence that he has ever “reached across the aisle” to accomplish any bipartisan legislation?

At the Saddleback Forum Debate back in August:

REV. WARREN: Can you give me a good example of where you went against party loyalty and maybe even went against your own best interest for the good of America.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, I’ll give you an example that in fact I worked with John McCain on, and that was the issue of campaign ethics reform and finance reform. That wasn’t probably in my interest or his, for that matter, because the truth was that both Democrats and Republicans sort of like the status quo. And I was new to the Senate, and it didn’t necessarily then engender a lot of popularity when I started saying, you know, we’re going to eliminate meals and gifts from corporate lobbyists. I remember one of my colleagues, whose name will be unmentioned, who said, well, where do you expect us to eat, McDonald’s?

That’s a completely dishonest account by the resume-padding Senator from Illinois. Factcheck.org:

Obama claimed that “I worked with John McCain” on ethics legislation. In fact, the two worked together for barely a week, after which McCain accused Obama of “partisan posturing” and added, “I won’t make the same mistake again.” McCain later voted against the ethics bill that Obama supported, stating that it was written by Democrats with “no input” from Republicans.

Here is the letter McCain sent to Obama.

Resume-padding doesn’t stand up to even light scrutiny:

Very little has been made of two instances, reported last month by the Washington Post, where Mr Obama exaggerated his role in legislative accomplishments. When a bipartisan attempt was made to reform America’s immigration policy, Mr Obama claimed to be one of the senators who in 2006 “had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out.” If it were true, it would’ve boosted his repuation as a uniter of Republicans and Democrats. But miffed Senate staffers say Mr Obama never attended the critical early morning negotiating sessions where the bill was hammered out. And he played an even smaller role when the issue was re-visited in 2007—after showing up late for a meeting he was even upbraided by Ted Kennedy.

More recently, when referring to housing legislation unveiled this year, Mr Obama called it “the legislation I put forward with my colleague Chris Dodd”. Mr Dodd, an Obama supporter, may be too kind to say so, but this simply isn’t accurate. Mr Obama backed the measure, as did Mrs Clinton, but he did not author or sponsor the legislation, which is to say he didn’t put it forward anymore than Mrs Clinton did.

In yet another instance Mr Obama claimed to have passed a bill on nuclear regulation that never made it out of the Senate.

“two memoirs that reveal his inner thinking”

Hugh Hewitt played the audio tapes, Dreams from My Father, read by Senator Obama himself. It is worth noting that the book was published in 1998 and mentions Frank Marshall Davis. But the audio version was recorded in 2005, after Senator Obama entered public office, and any mention of Frank Davis, an early influence and mentor in Obama’s life, is conspicuously made absent. Another one of those things that makes you go, “Hmmmm…..?”

“and a vast trove of public speaking”.

The problem with this, is that things he’s said in public that could be most damaging to his bid for the presidency is either suppressed by the media, or does not receive the frontpage splash headline news and wide-circulation it might warrant. As Senator Obama likes to say, any of this kind of negative coverage that questions his character and judgment are “distractions”. “Talk about the issues“. And a fawning media is all but happy to comply and rewrite the narrative so that Joe “the Plumber” is the one whose character is under scrutiny, as if that in itself is not the real distraction from the validity of the question and the moment of candor in Senator Obama’s response. It was a window into his soul; a glimpse into how he truly feels and thinks behind the carefully crafted image of a centrist.

Public records have been made inaccessible:

a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is likely to flesh out the story. That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material. Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama’s leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.

Unfortunately, I don’t yet have access to the documents. The Special Collections section of the Richard J. Daley Library agreed to let me read them, but just before I boarded my flight to Chicago, the top library officials mysteriously intervened to bar access. Circumstances strongly suggest the likelihood that Bill Ayers himself may have played a pivotal role in this denial.

What we don’t know:

1. Occidental College records — Not released
2. Columbia College records — Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper — “not available”
4. Harvard College records — Not released
5. Selective Service Registration — Not released
6. Medical records — Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule — “not available”
8. Law practice client list — Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate — Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth — Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published — None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles — None

Yet, somehow we’re supposed to know Barack Obama….

The Jerusalem Post notes:

Obama, in fact, has held some major job titles which are noteworthy all by themselves: United States Senator, Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law Review President-each of these titles puts him in rarefied company. Tack on a few Illinois State Senate terms, and his resume actually appears solid. Yet, in spite of these prestigious positions, Obama has increasingly resorted to making claims of accomplishment that are so patently inflated that even his cheerleaders at CNN and the New York Times are taking notice. Why?

It seems that Obama recognizes that while his résumé titles are impressive, his actual accomplishments are weak.

Who is the real Senator Barack Obama? I only know enough to believe that he is wrong for the country.

“Barack Obama followed a preacher of hate and said nothing as Wright raged against our country…For 20 years, Obama never complained, until he ran for president,”

Hat tip: American Power

Here is the interview, lasts a little over 16 minutes but well worth the time to listen to the whole thing:

Here is the transcript of the Ayers/Khalidi part:

SK: Now if you lived just a few blocks away from someone, and you’ve been on a foundation together, and at least in the first year, you were on the board together, and then you’re on a panel together, when you run into each other, what are you going to be talking about? Here’s something I also haven’t mentioned. Rashid Khalidi and Bill Ayers were practically best friends. People don’t know this, and I’m actually saying this for the first time. I haven’t written about this. They were best friends, and we know that Obama had interactions with Khalidi, that Khalidi had held the coffee that kicked off his Congressional campaign, I believe. And Ayers and Khalidi were extremely close if you look at the acknowledgements in their books.

HH: Tell us about Khalidi. Tell us who he is and his role in Obama’s life.

SK: Rashid Khalidi is really, in a sense, the American successor of Edward Said, a very strong advocate for the Palestinians, extremely radical in his views and his opposition to American foreign policy. He was a friend and colleague of Obama. Apparently they used to get together and discuss world affairs. And he’s practically the best friend of Bill Ayers. Bill Ayers features Khalidi in some of his books about how to politicize the teaching for students. So actually, the more you look into it, the more you see that this is not just people running into each other. And again, I object to the idea of just simply counting the times people were together in a room. When you fund Bill Ayers education projects, with hundreds of thousands of dollars, when you as Bill Ayers publish Rashid Khalidi’s essay in your book of collected essays, they might have gone on. That’s a lot without meeting once.

~~~

HH: So Stanley Kurtz, Rashid Khalidi, very close to Barack Obama, read during the break that Khalidi had a farewell dinner in 2003 that Obama was one of the presenters at, and in those remarks, alluded to the numerous dinners he’d had at the home of the Khalidi’s.

SK: Yes.

HH: It simply defies imagination to think that Khalidi was not a bridge between Ayers, that this is not an operating subgroup of Hyde Park, doesn’t it?

SK: Right. I mean, that’s what it seems like when you look, when you read these acknowledgements back and forth between Khalidi and Ayers of how close they are as friends, and you see that Khalidi had dinners at Obama, it really, to think…and then that Khalidi hosted something to kick off Obama’s Congressional campaign, you’ve got to think that Ayers and Khalidi are both talking about Obama, because they’re so close. And you’ve go to think that…it begins to look like a pretty tight network. You know, you can only show what’s actually in the papers, and what are in the documents as far as the number of meetings and everything else. But it sure looks a lot tighter than what we can absolutely see. It looks like a lot more. But it’s hard to show for sure, just like people, I think rightly assume that Barack Obama had to have known a lot more about what Jeremiah Wright was saying all those years than he’s letting on.

These relationships, and there shared views, are quite important in understanding Barack Obama and the way he thinks. What he believes.

The evidence known so far tells us that Obama and Ayers have known each other since at least the early 90’s but Andy believes it goes back a bit further to Obama’s Columbia days, the days he refuses to comment on.

In 2003 there was a dinner held for Khalidi who was leaving the University of Chicago to go to Columbia. Among those at the dinner were Ayers and Obama. Both gave glowing remarks about Khalidi. Obama’s remarks gave us some insight into how well he knew the man:

It was a celebration of Palestinian culture — a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi’s friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”Obama and Ayers both gave Khalidi a rousing send off at a party to celebrate Khalidi leaving the University of Chicago to Columbia.

Andy takes it from there:

Khalidi was leaving to become director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, assuming a professorship endowed in honor of another Arafat devotee, the late Edward Said. A hero of the Left who consulted with terrorist leaders (including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah) and was once photographed hurling rocks at Israelis from the Lebanese border, Said was exposed by researcher Justus Reid Weiner as a fraud who had created a fictional account of his childhood, the rock on which he built his Palestinian grievance mythology.

We know precious little about Obama’s Columbia years, but the Los Angeles Times has reported that he studied under Said. In and of itself, that is meaningless: Said was a hotshot prof and hundreds of students took his comparative-lit courses. But Obama plainly maintained some sort of tie with Said — a photo making the Internet rounds shows Obama conversing with the great man himself at a 1998 Arab American community dinner in Chicago, where the Obamas and Saids were seated together.

Said had a wide circle of radical acquaintances. That circle clearly included Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. When they came out of hiding in the early 1980s (while Obama was attending Columbia), Ayers took education courses at Bank Street College, adjacent to Columbia in Morningside Heights — before earning his doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College in 1987.

Said was so enamored of Ayers that he commended the unrepentant terrorist’s 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days — the book in which the haughty Ayers brags about his Weatherman past — with this glowing dust-jacket blurb:

What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers’s America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or “second thinking.” For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading.

Sorry mess, indeed. For his part, Ayers is at least equally enthralled by Said, of whom, even in death, Ayers says “[t]here is no one better positioned … to offer advice on the conduct of intellectual life[,]” than the man who was “over the last thirty-five years, the most passionate, eloquent, and clear-eyed advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people.”

After they left Columbia, both Obama and Ayers went to Chicago: Obama to become a “community organizer” (the director of the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Gamaliel Foundation dedicated to Saul Alinsky’s principles for radicalizing society); Ayers, two years later, to teach at the University of Illinois. Diamond details how they both became embroiled in a major education controversy that resulted in 1988 reform legislation.

Ayers’s father, Tom Ayers, a prominent Chicago businessman, was also deeply involved in the reform effort. Interestingly, in 1988, while Obama and Ayers toiled on the same education agenda, Bernadine Dohrn worked as an intern at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin — even though she could not be admitted to the bar due to her contempt conviction for refusing to cooperate in a terrorist investigation. How could that happen? It turns out that Sidley was the longtime outside counsel for Tom Ayers’s company, Commonwealth Edison. That is, Ayers’ father had pull at the firm and successfully pressed for the hiring of his daughter-in-law.

The next summer, though he had gone off to Harvard Law School (another impressive accomplishment he prefers not to discuss), Obama returned to the Windy City to work as an intern at Sidley. Dohrn was gone by then to teach at Northwestern. A coincidence? Maybe (Diamond doesn’t think so), but that’s an awful lot of coincidences — and a long trail of common people, places and experiences — for people who purportedly didn’t know each other yet managed to end up as partners in significant financial and political ventures.

In short, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama moved in the same circles, were driven by the same cause, and admired the same radicals all the way from Morningside Heights to Hyde Park. They ended up publicly admiring each other, promoting each other’s work, sitting on the same boards, and funding the same Leftist agitators.

You could conclude, as I do, that it all goes back to a formative time in his life that Obama refuses to discuss. Or you could buy the fairy tale that Bill Ayers first encountered an unknown, inexperienced, third-year associate from a small Chicago law-firm over coffee in 1995 and suddenly decided Barack Obama was the perfect fit to oversee the $150 million pot of gold Ayers hoped would underwrite his revolution.

Obama, Ayers, Khalidi, Wright…..peas in a pod who believe in revolutionary causes to take this country apart brick by brick and make it into something it was never meant to be.

Come November 5th they may be one step closer.

Obama is LYING about Ayers!

Charlie Gibson held an interview with Barack Obama on Wednesday. Readers will recall Charlie Gibson’s gotcha question for Sarah Palin on the “Bush Doctrine.” Did Gibson press Obama on his association with Ayers? Nope! The report on the ABC News web site reads more like a press release from the Obama campaign:

Obama: McCain Scoring ‘Cheap Political Points’
Democratic Contender Discusses Economy in Post-Debate Exclusive With Charlie Gibson
ABC News
Oct. 8, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama says the personal attacks levied against him by the campaign of his presidential rival, Sen. John McCain, particularly references to his association with 1960s anti-war radical Bill Ayers, are an attempt to “score cheap political points.”

“Why don’t we just clear it up right now,” Obama told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an exclusive interview for World News. “I’ll repeat again what I’ve said many times. This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois . . . And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that . . . I’ve ‘palled around with a terrorist’, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”

Obama went on to suggest that these questions about his character were a distraction from the real issues facing Americans in this campaign.

But Obama LIED about Ayers. The two have a relationship that goes back many years during which Ayers continued to express his profoundly anti-American views. Ayers helped launch Obama’s political career and has been at his side throughout Obama’s early career. (see here and the short video Curt posted here).

No snide followups from good old Charlie Gibson on all that… No surprise there!

Obama is LYING about ACORN

ACORN, the group of community organizers who are notorious for voter fraud and militant far left activism may be about to be indicted AGAIN (Curt’s report here).

Obama has denied that he has any ties to this group. Obama web site:”Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.”

Once again, the facts suggest otherwise. Sweetness and Light has the video of Obama discussing his action on behalf of one of ACORN’s subgroup “Project Vote.” Obama also used his legal expertise on behalf of ACORN in an effort to weaken Illinois efforts to combat voter fraud.

Most tellingly, this statement:

Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the Chicago ACORN community organization: “Barack has proven himself among our members. He is committed to organizing, to building a democracy. Above all else, he is a good listener, and we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.”

Obama LIED about Rev. Wright

“God DAMN America” (video)

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.” — Barack Hussein Obama March 14, 2008

Obama lies about who and what he really is. How can anyone believe his promises in this presidential campaign?

There seems to be some confusion as to what ‘guilty by association’ means. It is a phrase used in the study of “Logic”. (Logic used to be taught in high schools. If it is found at all nowadays, it is taught in college Philosophy departments.) ‘Guilty by association’ is an “informal fallacy” of logic; it means that you reject someone’s logical argument because of those with whom he associates. I think we can all see how that is unfair and illogical.

However, we have the ability, and at times even the obligation to assess someone’s associations; we’ve always done it and we need to do it.

Probably the best example is getting a job. In every resume, we are required to provide “References”. We all know what these are: they are our closest associations, people who can vouch for our basic character and virtue. If I as an employer were to criticize you for the kind of people you hang around with, could you respond that he is using the ‘guilty by association’ card? Of course not! ‘Just because all of my closest associates are drug dealers doesn’t mean you can make anything of it!’ [Yeah, right! And I don't have to give you a job, either.]

Other examples can be found when we have trials in courts of law. We can grill witnesses, jurors, lawyers and judges about who they know and why. One of the basic things we do is make judgments on associations because it is a basic way of getting at the truth. It’s something we have always done and there is no doubt it is something we have to do.

Now, Barack Obama is applying for the biggest job in the world! Also, part of the genius of our political system is the informal trial by fire candidates are forced to go through. We should take a good look at his references; the media should be forcing him to explain and account for his associations. These new books should be tested, studied and used to confront Obama and his campaign. What do we know so far? Let’s do a cursory review, shall we?

- In his own book, Obama identifies a strong influence on his youthful years, a man named “Frank”. We now know this is Frank Marshall Davis, who was a Communist Party member.

- We have all heard of Reverend Wright, but most have missed the main point: the main characteristic of “liberation theology” is that it is Marxist not Christian. (Obama has expressed doubts about the afterlife; is that a clue?) There is no way to miss this from a multitude of the church’s own statements. Obama donated large amounts of money to this group. When trouble broke about it, once again, Obama at first tried to deny knowing anything about what they teach; that it is “not particularly controversial”.

- Fr. Fleger is also part of this “liberation theology” cabal and everyone on the South Side knows it. As a state senator, Obama funneled hundreds of thousands of earmarks to Fr. Fleger and now claims to reject his message.

- William Ayers & Bernadette Dorn are unrepentant Marxist bombers. Obama’s attempts to pass them off as casual friends are totally disingenuous. He worked for Ayers for eight years, was associated with him in several other official ways and chose his house to launch his political career.

- Tony Rezko is a shady operative who has connected Obama to a host of radical figures. For instance, he used Rezko to make a large contribution to Hamid Dabashi (the one who invited Ahmadinijad to Columbia).

- At first, you could go to Obama’s web site and see many of this ilk featured. His main blogger on the site was an open Communist. (His site went down for ‘maintenance’ and ‘lost’ him; we can assume a lot of things have ‘disappeared’.) Remember the Che Guevera flag at his campaign headquarters in Texas and all the references to him on the site? Many of his ‘bundlers’ (those who get around contribution laws by putting large donors together) have been Communists or Marxists.

- During his “community organizer” stint, Obama made the choice to associate himself with the Saul Alinsky-style “revolution not revelation” model. Alinsky emphasized confrontational, polarizing, racially divisive tactics with a conscious Marxist bent. He is quoted as saying, “Anybody who tells you he was active in progressive causes in those days and never worked with the Reds (Communists) is a goddamn liar. Their platform stood for all the right things….”

Now tell me this: would Barack Obama be able to get a job for the FBI or CIA with this Marxist background? And he wants us to hire him to lead the free world?

To be fair, basing a presidential choice just upon associations is not enough, but associations and ideology are, no doubt, going to have an affect on policy and on character. One possible complication in judging is that Marxism sanctions dishonesty about what one is really doing! Did you notice the globalist, redistrubutionist and other socialist references in his speech in Berlin? I won’t spend the time here to search for all the clues. I’ll leave it to all of you to decide where you see evidence of a ‘Marxist effect’.

In ancient Greece the Sophists tried to push the supreme power of Rhetoric. They said the power of persuasion is everything, no matter what the truth is. They were opposed by others who evolved into the line of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle who said what is important is Truth, Character and Virtue. Let us not make the same mistake – let us choose Virtue and not Rhetoric. No matter what game he’s talking, we should find out if Obama is ‘guilty by association’.