Mayor Vs Community Organizer (1)

The Obama campaign and its media cheer leaders are stunned.  Somehow, the McCain-Palin campaign has roared to life, forcing their candidate to deal with challenges he didn’t expect and isn’t prepared to take on.

In our Inbox this morning was a second petulant email defense of so-called Community Organizing, a major component of Obama’s meager resume.

Why would the Republicans spend a whole night of their convention attacking ordinary people?  With the nation watching, the Republicans mocked, dismissed, and actually laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and organizing.

Our convention was different…You may have missed it, but we…showed the country a video with the faces and voices of those organizers, volunteers, and donors from every corner of the country.  Watch the video and make a donation of $5 or more now to show that in this election, ordinary people will make their voices heard.

Really?  Will this video explain why Obama claims his experience as a community organizer prepared him to be President?  Great!

So we clicked on the video.  What a waste of three minutes!

• Video of cars driving up and down streets,
• people walking around with clipboards,
• half-second clips of people holding up little “hope” and “change” signs,
• vapid three-second soundbites from those proud “ordinary people,”
• Joe Biden bellowing that “this may be the last time to reclaim the America we love,” and finally,
• sputtering to an end with the same old banal, “oratory” from obama, with the usual cheering mob in the background…

We are one people! We are one nation! And together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story…YES WE CAN!”

Where’s the defense of community organizing as preparation for the most challenging executive position in human history?  Not in this video!

Alaska Governor, and Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin blew the doors off the GOP Convention last night. If you’ve read or heard the commentary you know the word “electrified” is already tattered from overuse.

Governor Palin has established herself as THE rising star of the GOP.  There were dozens of memorable lines including:

Before I became governor of Alaska I was mayor of my home town.  I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer except you have actual responsibilities.

In this morning’s email to fans and supporters, David Plouffe of the Obama campaign had a defensive tone as he stuck up for community organizing:

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies…despite what John McCain and his attack squad say, everyday people have the power to build something extraordinary when we come together.  Make a donation of $5 or more right now and remind them.

Actually, “community organizing,” first developed by self-described socialist revolutionary Saul Olinsky, generally operates at the local level and consists mostly of firing up angry mobs who then make demands on the political or business establishment.  Sometimes there are legitimate grievances. More often, they just want to harness the power of government to seize from others what they have not earned.

Organizers promise “economic justice” - unearned cash or benefits - to motivate local residents to participate in marches and protests against local employers or retailers.  Often the tactic is storming city council or zoning board or school board meetings.  Outcomes almost never come close to equaling promises.  More often than not, conditions worsen, businesses close or move away, jobs cease to exist and the “organizer” moves on to stir up something new, somewhere else.  Often the organizer is co-opted by, and becomes part of, the entrenched, unresponsive political establishment.

Mayors and Governors are held directly accountable by voters for everything that happens on their watch.  Often they are blamed for troubles they did not cause and were powerless to prevent.  In contrast, avoiding accountability is inherent in the community organizer’s strategies and tactics.  The local political or business establishment is always blamed when results are disappointing, as they usually are.  Only if there is noticeable improvement does the organizer step forward to claim the credit.

Governor Palin’s next words were:

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.

What can we say about that?  Nothing!

when someone caught her attention and made her laugh with a sign about hockey moms she broke from her prepared speech and ad-libbed:

“You know what they say about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”

The metaphor fits Governor Palin’s skill and talent in the political arena.  Our prediction is that Governor Palin will turn out to be the new era’s critically needed conservative pit bull, with a charming smile and disarming demeanor, who will turn out to be one of the top two or three most effective leaders in recent memory.

In our previous post we mentioned the US weekly cover showing a photo of Sarah Palin with her baby and the headline, “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.”

Here’s a Fox News segment comparing US Weekly’s treatment of Sarah Palin with its treatment of Barack Obama.

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Later in the day the editor of US Weekly was interviewed on Fox News and said the article, inside the yet to be published magazine, does not allege that Governor Palin lied about anything, but rather that some bloggers lied about her baby.

The Obama Campaign, and the Media Herd are obviously alarmed and flummoxed by the challenge they now face in the nomination of Sarah Palin, who has electrified the previously listless GOP base, and threatens to cut into voting blocks Obama was taking for granted.

Sarah Palin’s resume, two years as Governor of Alaska, preceded by six years as Mayor of her home town, is less than ample for a Vice President, and could be a point of legitimate criticism, except that Obama  is manifestly less qualified.

Barack Obama’s only executive experience was Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, purportedly an effort to improve Chicago schools.  In that capacity he doled out over $100 Million Dollars to forty five community groups that promised, but utterly failed, to improve student performance.  Obama can’t discuss this experience because the project failed and because it ties him to the man who appointed him to the job, and worked with him, William Ayers.  Ayers is an admitted, and unrepentant, former terrorist, founder of the Weather Underground, and confessed bomber of the Pentagon and the Capitol. Obama strenuously denies any connection with Ayers, calling him “just a guy who happens to live in my neighborhood.”

Thus, the only way to deal with the threat of Vice Presidential Candidate Palin is a good old fashion campaign of personal attack, smear, innuendo and lies.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran three, separate, front page stories, each critical of Sarah Palin.  All day yesterday the media herd pumped a story about Todd Palin the Governor’s husband’s  drunk driving arrest, 22 years ago, before they were married.

The media herd has stampeded to Alaska to “cover” a dispute between the Governor and a state official she fired.  Allegedly the firing had some connection with her sister’s ex-husband who was a State Trooper, and also was fired, allegedly because he was a lousy husband.

Today, ABC news is running a story titled, “Another Controversy for Sarah Palin.”  It begins…

Gov. Sarah Palin is already facing ethical questions over her firing of the Alaska public safety commissioner, and now she faces questions over the firing of a longtime local police chief.

“Now” she faces “ethical questions?”  Well, no.  It turns out that twelve years ago she fired the police chief of the town where she had been elected Mayor.  It turns out that the fired Chief sued her in Federal court, and lost.  In this “news story” ABC forgot to report the Mayor Palin’s reasons for firing the Chief, but did manage to locate the lawyer who represented the fired chief in court twelve years ago - and lost.  Guess what?  Amazingly, this lawyer still says his client was wronged!

US Weekly magazine has sent out a preview of the cover of its next issue, featuring a photo of Palin and her baby, with the headline: “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.”  This is just one of scores of examples of breathless and baseless rumor mongering about the Governor, her daughter, her baby, her husband and her family.

On and on it goes. Obama and his media pals obviously believe that crushing Sarah Palin’s reputation, immediately, is their most critically important campaign priority.

Tonight Governor Palin Speaks to the Convention and to America.

Today is the first day of the Republican Convention.  Most convention events and speeches are canceled in deference to the potential human suffering from Hurricane Gustov.

Scheduling for the remaining three days is uncertain as everyone waits for Gustov to subside.

A few minutes ago came the announcement that Sarah Palin’s unmarried, Seventeen year old daughter is pregnant.

Here is a Press Release from the McCain-Palin Campaign:

ARLINGTON, VA — Today, Sarah and Todd Palin issued the following statement regarding today’s Reuters story:

“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates.”

The Reuters story included references to Internet rumors claiming that Governor Palin’s baby, born in April, was really her daughter’s baby.  A conflicting rumor claims Governor Palin caused her baby to be born with Downs Syndrome by not taking proper prenatal precautions.  Reuters reports that John McCain knew the daughter was pregnant when he picked Gov. Palin as his running mate.

One would expect Barack Obama, who presents himself and his campaign as the vanguard of a new post-partisan politics to condemn repulsive rumor mongering.

Don’t hold your breath.

This is the third update in our series of reports on our and others’  on-going investigation of The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a grant program headed by Barack Obama, and Sixties Terrorist William Ayers, purportedly to improve Chicago schools.

For background see our previous reports:

Barack Obama, William Ayers and The Annenberg Challenge

First Update on Obama, Ayers and The Annenberg Challenge

Second Update on Obama, Ayers and The Annenberg Challenge

On Thursday Evening, Dr. Stanley Kurtz, who has been carefully studying thousands of documents from the archives of the Annenberg Challenge, appeared on Chicago’s WGN radio for an interview with host Milt Rosenberg.  You can hear a podcast of the two hour program here.

In our first Annenberg post we included this excerpt from one of several reports on The Annenberg Challenge that are available at the University of Illinois at Chicago website :

Its primary strategy was to create networks of schools with common interests and needs and to link them to individuals and organizations that would serve as External Partners. This strategy followed a logic that schools would find more direction and support for improvement if they worked together and with an External Partner than if they worked alone.

Dr. Kurtz’s said his preliminary examination of Annenberg Challenge records indicates that the External Partner selection process, the function headed by Barack Obama,  seemed to favor organizations that were politically active with a leftist agenda or focus on ethnic identity over organziations that emphasized improved academic performance.

For example, a group called “South Shore African Village Collaborative” received a grant to teach students about celebrating “Juneteenth” slang for June 19, a holiday commemorating the abolition of slavery in Texas. In the words of the grant application, “Negroes celebrate Juneteenth instead of 4th of July,” as their national independence day.

Dr. Kurtz said William Ayers’ own organization, “Small Schools Network” received a grant for a so-called “Peace School.”

In contrast, a grant application from a group called The Chicago Algebra Project was denied.

Dr. Kurtz research is just beginning and he was hesitant to present any sweeping conclusions.  We can expect to hear more from him later, hopefully before voters decide which candidate to support for President.

In this report last May we exposed deliberately deceptive editing of a video of John McCain’s answer to a voter’s question.  The Democratic National Comittee and The Obama campaign intended to make McCain appear to have said something he did not say.

In The Big Speech In The Stadium last week Barack Obama once again attempted to deceive voters regarding John McCain’s views.  He said:

Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know.  Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year?

Obama hoped listener reaction would be something like: “…John McCain thinks that?  Wow, how out of touch can anyone be?”

This deception comes from an answer McCain gave to a question in The Saddleback Church Civil Forum where both candidates answered questions on a range of issues.

Here, directly from the transcript are the actual words of Pastor Rick Warren who asked the question, and John McCain who gave the answer:

Pastor Warren asked:

OK, on taxes, define “rich.” Everybody talks about taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. At what point — give me a number, give me a specific number — where do you move from middle class to rich?  Is it $100,000, is it $50,000, is it $200,000? How does anybody know if we don’t know what the standards are?

John McCain answered:

Some of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life are the most unhappy. I think that rich should be defined by a home, a good job, an education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.

I don’t want to take any money from the rich — I want everybody to get rich.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER & APPLAUSE]

I don’t believe in class warfare or re-distribution of the wealth. But I can tell you, for example, there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week that some people would classify as — quote — “rich,” my friends, and want to raise their taxes and want to raise their payroll taxes.

Let’s keep taxes low. Let’s give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let’s give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let’s not have the government take over the health care system in America.

So, I think if you are just talking about income, how about $5 million?

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

…The point is that I’m trying to make here, seriously — and I’m sure that comment will be distorted — but the point is that we want to keep people’s taxes low and increase revenues.

It’s obvious from the transcript, and it’s even more obvious on the video, that “$5 Million” was a sarcastic quip, not McCain’s definition of the middle class.

As McCain predicted, Barack Obama did distort, in what will be the most watched speech of the campaign.

If, as Democrats always claim, voters believe all Republicans are hopelessly out of touch with the middle class, why did Barack Obama believe he had to stoop to a deliberate deception?

Dr. James Dobson is founder and leader of Focus On The Family, a Christian organization dedicated to nurturing and defending the institution of the family and promoting biblical truths.  Focus on The Family publishes a wealth of books, videos and other materials primarily about marriage, family, and raising children.  Dr. Dobson has a daily radio program and is loved and respected by tens of Millions of Christians and Jews.

Dr. Dobson occasionally steps out of his role as leader of Focus On The Family and into the political arena.  Because he is so respected by so many Christians he can be very influential.  It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that he could make the difference in a very close election.

Six months ago Dr. Dobson flatly stated he could not vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, and would stay home on election day.  Today, he told talk radio host Dennis Prager that, largely due to the selection of Sara Palin, he has changed his mind.  Here’s an excerpt from that radio interview:

Well, you know I did a radio program about a month ago with Dr. Albert Mohler, and we talked about what was at stake in this election and our concerns about the policies that Barack Obama would implement. The more I hear the more I learn, the more concerned I am, and…John McCain is not the perfect candidate. He certainly would not be my choice and, for over a year, I did not feel that I could vote for him…But I can tell you that if I had to go into the voting booth today, I would pull that lever [for McCain].

The afterglow of Barack Obama’s Woodstock-lite convention event abruptly dissolved this morning as John McCain swept the Democrats off the media radar by announcing a surprise choice for his Vice Presidential Running Mate: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Obama, the self-proclaimed Prophet-of-Change and Messiah of “new politics,” had picked a conventional, rabid partisan, Senator Biden, a tediously over-exposed Washington fixture, with a history of embarrassing missteps.

Today, John McCain, steped out of his media assigned role of the old candidate of old politics by picking a bright, articulate, energetic woman with executive experience as a Governor.

Governor Palin is the mother of five.  Her fifth child was born just four months ago.  Her oldest son serves in the US Army.

This pick will immediately refocus media attention on the issue of opening the coastal plain at the Northern edge of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for new oil drilling.  Liberty Works explored this question in ANWR, The Inconvenient Truth.

Governor Pallin is a vocal, aggressive proponent of drilling in ANWR, while Senator McCain has taken the opposing side of the pseudo-environmentalist propagandists. McCain even compared ANWR, a bleak, frozen tundra, to the Grand Canyon.  Hopefully, Senator McCain will find a graceful exit from his stubborn, baseless opposition to drilling.

Predictably, the Obama campaign instantly issued a petty attack, calling  Governor Palin a Mayor with no experience, who doesn’t represent “change.”  While her experience is less than most of the people who were on McCain’s list of potential running mates, she certainly has more relevant experience than Barack Obama, who’s only executive exerience was running the corrupt, failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The Obama Campaign’s reaction to this recent TV ad questioning the Senator’s association with former Weather Underground Terrorist William Ayers has been, to say the least, alarmed.

A group called The American Issues Project created the ad, and has placed it for broadcast in several markets.  In response, the Obama Campaign has contacted the U.S. Justice Department demanding a criminal investigation of The American Issues Project.  No word yet on the Justice Department’s position.

As we noted yesterday, the Obama Campaign has come up with this response ad, which they hope will dupe voters into believing that William Ayers is a relic of the Sixties, when Obama was a child, and has nothing to do with Barack Obama’s political background or views.

The problem of course is William Ayers still believes that he was justified in bombing the Capital, the Pentagon, and several police stations.  As many others have said, he is an unrepentant terrorist and radical, anti-American leftist.  He was a political mentor to Obama for at least five years, during the nineties, when Obama was an adult in his thirties.

In our report yesterday, we described the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school improvement project headed by Obama and Ayers during the nineties.  Dr. Stanley Kurtz, Social Anthropoligist and investigative researcher with the prestigious Ethics and Public Policy Center has been combing through the archives of the Annenberg Challenge project since they were first released for public scrutiny yesterday.

So far Dr. Kurtz has discovered and reported that some of the Annenberg Challenge cash grants went to ACORN, a radical-left pressure group known for fraudulent voter registration campaigns.  In the Eighties and Nineties ACORN employed Barack Obama as a “community organizer” and trainer.  Some of the Annenberg grant money went to so called “Peace Schools,” operated by William Ayers to indoctrinate children in radical leftist dogma.

Dr. Kurtz is scheduled for a radio interview this evening on WGN, Chicago, where he will report at length on evidence he has discovered in the Annenberg Challenge archives.  Again, the Obama campaign has signaled its deep anxiety about the public learning any more about Obama’s background by sending out a mass email exhorting supporters to try to prevent or disrupt the WGN interview.

Here is the text of the mass email to Obama Fans:

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

Kurtz has been using his absurd TV appearances in an awkward and dishonest attempt to play the terrorism card. His current ploy is to embellish the relationship between Barack and Ayers.

Just last night on Fox News, Kurtz drastically exaggerated Barack’s connection with Ayers by claiming Ayers had recruited Barack to the board of the Annenberg Challenge. That is completely false and has been disproved in numerous press accounts.

It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz’s lies.

Kurtz is scheduled to appear from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. in the Chicago market.

Calling will only take a minute, and it will make a huge difference if we nip this smear in the bud. Confront Kurtz tonight before this goes any further:

http://my.barackobama.com/WGNstandards

Please forward this email to everyone you know who can make a call tonight.

Keep fighting the good fight,

Obama Action Wire