Joe Raymond / Associated Press
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama addresses a rally at South Bend Washington High School Wednesday in South Bend, Ind.
They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel.
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer April 10, 2008
CHICAGO -- 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."Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House."I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions."That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations."Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."Looking for cluesBut because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified."In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians."He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."Ties with IsraelEven as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright."In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
McCain Slams LA Times for Double Standard in Withholding Obama-Khalidi Tape
John McCain says he's sure The Los Angeles Times would be quick to produce a tape that purported to show him or his running mate at a neo-Nazi event, so he can't understand why it won't show Barack Obama in the company of a former PLO mouthpiece.
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/29/mccain-slams-la-times-double-standard-withholding-obama-khalidi-tape/
Rashid Khalidi, a professor and activist tied to the PLO, was feted by Barack Obama at a farewell dinner for the Palestinian activist. (AP photo)
John McCain slammed The Los Angeles Times Wednesday for refusing to release a videotape that the newspaper's editors say shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who served as a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was a U.S.-designated terror group.
Speaking to two Florida radio stations, the Republican presidential candidate suggested a double standard in reporting by the newspaper and said if he were hanging out with neo-Nazis he'd bet the tape would be made public.
The Times says it is standing by its promise not to show the tape, which it got from an anonymous source. The newspaper also has not provided a transcript of the 2003 farewell party for University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi. Among others in attendance at the soiree were former Weather Underground founders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
"Apparently this is a tape with a dinner that Mr. Ayers ... was at, and also ... one of the leading spokespersons for the PLO. Now, why that should not be made public is beyond me," McCain told La Kalle radio.
"I guarantee you, if there was a tape with me and Sarah Palin and some neo-Nazi or one of those, you think that that tape wouldn't be made public? Of course, Americans need to know, particularly about Ayers, and also about the PLO. So hopefully there will be enough pressure on the L.A. Times that it'll come out, but its really unfortunate that we have to go through this," McCain continued.
Palin too lambasted the newspaper for its inaction.
"If there's a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in cow-towing, then the LA Times, you're winning," she said.
The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said.
The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
Asked about the party and his relationship with Obama, Khalidi refused Wednesday to discuss the matter.
"I am not speaking to the press at this time, and do not speak to Fox in any case, as I just wrote one of your colleagues," Khalidi wrote in an e-mail statement to FOXNews.com.
The Obama campaign called the impasse "just another recycled, manufactured controversy from the McCain campaign to distract voters' attention from John McCain's lock-step support for George Bush's economic policies."
"Barack Obama has been clear and consistent on his support for Israel, and has been clear that Rasheed Khalidi is not an adviser to him or his campaign and that he does not share Khalidi's views. Instead of giving lectures on media bias, John McCain should answer why, under his own chairmanship, the International Republican Institute repeatedly funded an organization Khalidi founded, the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, over the course of many years," said spokesman Tommy Vietor.
Referring to the polling company used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1990s and hired by IRI, the nonprofit, nonpartisan democratic advocacy organization s overseen by Congress, the McCain camp said Vietor's allegation doesn't compare.
"Funding polling by a relatively well-respected organization that may or may not have had Khalidi on its board at the time does not come close to equating to hours of dinnertime conversations and glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner," retorted McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb.
The L.A. Times first reported on the relationship between Obama and Khalidi in April.
In the article, it quoted Obama at Khalidi's going-away party, calling Khalidi his "friend and frequent dinner companion." At the time, Obama reminisced about dinners at the home of Khalidi and his wife Mona, who were leaving Chicago and heading to New York for Khalidi's new job at Columbia University.
The dinner talks 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," the Times wrote, quoting Obama on the purported videotape.
The article went on to describe how Obama offered new hope to Palestinian Americans for a new U.S. policy on the Middle East and mentioned that one guest at the party compared "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Usama bin Laden because both had been "blinded by ideology."
Palin said she wants to know how Obama responded to derogatory comments said about Israel and America's support for its ally during the party.
"Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism instead of the victim. What we don't know, what we don't know, is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he now professes to support, and the reason is the newspaper that has the tape, The Los Angeles Times, refuses to release it," she said. "It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking after his best interests like that. The original article pointed out that the party, in which Khalidi encouraged guests to support Obama's run for the U.S. Senate, was videotaped and a copy had been obtained by The Times. It did not mention that the Times reporter and editors had vowed not to show the tape to anyone.
Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account.
"This is a story that we reported on six months ago, so any suggestion that we're suppressing the tape is absurd -- we're the ones that brought the existence of the tape to light," Sullivan said.
Khalidi, who from 1976 to1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO, is currently the Edwards Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia.
When Columbia hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a guest speaker last year, Khalidi told The New York Times after the appearance that he was "embarrassed" that university president Lee Bollinger wasn't nicer to the head of the Islamic Republic during his visit.
A pro-Palestinian activist, Khalidi has been a fierce critic of American foreign policy and of Israel, which he has accused of establishing an "apartheid system" of government. The PLO advocate helped facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the early '90s, but he has denied he was ever an employee of the group, contradicting accounts in The New York Times and Washington Times.
Khalidi, who has a new book coming out in February titled "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East," has been called "the foremost U.S. historian of the modern Middle East." That description appeared in a 2004 book review from University of Maryland professor Warren I. Cohen that appeared in the The Los Angeles Times.
The L.A. Times article in April noted that Khalidi was a professor at the University of Beirut at the time he was a mouthpiece for the PLO.
Obama in recent months has distanced himself from the man the Times says he once called a friend. "He is not one of my advisers. He's not one of my foreign policy people," Obama said at a campaign event in May. "He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel's policy."
The Los Angeles Times endorsed Obama for president on Oct. 19.
Tell the LA Times What You Think by e-mailing the paper's "readers' representativeJoe Raymond / Associated Press
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama addresses a rally at South Bend Washington High School Wednesday in South Bend, Ind.
They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel.
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer April 10, 2008
CHICAGO -- 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."Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House."I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions."That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations."Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."Looking for cluesBut because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified."In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians."He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."Ties with IsraelEven as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright."In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/29/mccain-slams-la-times-double-standard-withholding-obama-khalidi-tape/
Rashid Khalidi, a professor and activist tied to the PLO, was feted by Barack Obama at a farewell dinner for the Palestinian activist. (AP photo)
John McCain slammed The Los Angeles Times Wednesday for refusing to release a videotape that the newspaper's editors say shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who served as a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was a U.S.-designated terror group.
Speaking to two Florida radio stations, the Republican presidential candidate suggested a double standard in reporting by the newspaper and said if he were hanging out with neo-Nazis he'd bet the tape would be made public.
The Times says it is standing by its promise not to show the tape, which it got from an anonymous source. The newspaper also has not provided a transcript of the 2003 farewell party for University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi. Among others in attendance at the soiree were former Weather Underground founders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
"Apparently this is a tape with a dinner that Mr. Ayers ... was at, and also ... one of the leading spokespersons for the PLO. Now, why that should not be made public is beyond me," McCain told La Kalle radio.
"I guarantee you, if there was a tape with me and Sarah Palin and some neo-Nazi or one of those, you think that that tape wouldn't be made public? Of course, Americans need to know, particularly about Ayers, and also about the PLO. So hopefully there will be enough pressure on the L.A. Times that it'll come out, but its really unfortunate that we have to go through this," McCain continued.
Palin too lambasted the newspaper for its inaction.
"If there's a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in cow-towing, then the LA Times, you're winning," she said.
The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said.
The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
Asked about the party and his relationship with Obama, Khalidi refused Wednesday to discuss the matter.
"I am not speaking to the press at this time, and do not speak to Fox in any case, as I just wrote one of your colleagues," Khalidi wrote in an e-mail statement to FOXNews.com.
The Obama campaign called the impasse "just another recycled, manufactured controversy from the McCain campaign to distract voters' attention from John McCain's lock-step support for George Bush's economic policies."
"Barack Obama has been clear and consistent on his support for Israel, and has been clear that Rasheed Khalidi is not an adviser to him or his campaign and that he does not share Khalidi's views. Instead of giving lectures on media bias, John McCain should answer why, under his own chairmanship, the International Republican Institute repeatedly funded an organization Khalidi founded, the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, over the course of many years," said spokesman Tommy Vietor.
Referring to the polling company used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1990s and hired by IRI, the nonprofit, nonpartisan democratic advocacy organization s overseen by Congress, the McCain camp said Vietor's allegation doesn't compare.
"Funding polling by a relatively well-respected organization that may or may not have had Khalidi on its board at the time does not come close to equating to hours of dinnertime conversations and glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner," retorted McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb.
The L.A. Times first reported on the relationship between Obama and Khalidi in April.
In the article, it quoted Obama at Khalidi's going-away party, calling Khalidi his "friend and frequent dinner companion." At the time, Obama reminisced about dinners at the home of Khalidi and his wife Mona, who were leaving Chicago and heading to New York for Khalidi's new job at Columbia University.
The dinner talks 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," the Times wrote, quoting Obama on the purported videotape.
The article went on to describe how Obama offered new hope to Palestinian Americans for a new U.S. policy on the Middle East and mentioned that one guest at the party compared "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Usama bin Laden because both had been "blinded by ideology."
Palin said she wants to know how Obama responded to derogatory comments said about Israel and America's support for its ally during the party.
"Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism instead of the victim. What we don't know, what we don't know, is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he now professes to support, and the reason is the newspaper that has the tape, The Los Angeles Times, refuses to release it," she said. "It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking after his best interests like that. The original article pointed out that the party, in which Khalidi encouraged guests to support Obama's run for the U.S. Senate, was videotaped and a copy had been obtained by The Times. It did not mention that the Times reporter and editors had vowed not to show the tape to anyone.
Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account.
"This is a story that we reported on six months ago, so any suggestion that we're suppressing the tape is absurd -- we're the ones that brought the existence of the tape to light," Sullivan said.
Khalidi, who from 1976 to1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO, is currently the Edwards Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia.
When Columbia hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a guest speaker last year, Khalidi told The New York Times after the appearance that he was "embarrassed" that university president Lee Bollinger wasn't nicer to the head of the Islamic Republic during his visit.
A pro-Palestinian activist, Khalidi has been a fierce critic of American foreign policy and of Israel, which he has accused of establishing an "apartheid system" of government. The PLO advocate helped facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the early '90s, but he has denied he was ever an employee of the group, contradicting accounts in The New York Times and Washington Times.
Khalidi, who has a new book coming out in February titled "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East," has been called "the foremost U.S. historian of the modern Middle East." That description appeared in a 2004 book review from University of Maryland professor Warren I. Cohen that appeared in the The Los Angeles Times.
The L.A. Times article in April noted that Khalidi was a professor at the University of Beirut at the time he was a mouthpiece for the PLO.
Obama in recent months has distanced himself from the man the Times says he once called a friend. "He is not one of my advisers. He's not one of my foreign policy people," Obama said at a campaign event in May. "He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel's policy."
The Los Angeles Times endorsed Obama for president on Oct. 19.
Tell the LA Times What You Think by e-mailing the paper's "readers' representativeJoe Raymond / Associated Press
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama addresses a rally at South Bend Washington High School Wednesday in South Bend, Ind.
They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel.
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer April 10, 2008
CHICAGO -- 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."Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House."I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions."That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations."Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."Looking for cluesBut because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified."In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians."He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."Ties with IsraelEven as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright."In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape
Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, but the press doesn’t think it’s quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?Do we really have to ask?So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat? At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency. Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy? Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it. Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party. Wallsten’s story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):
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."...[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than … his opponents for the White House....At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel — a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn’t know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers’s views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers — the “education reform” allies who barely know each other … except to the extent they together doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books — just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he “did not know” whether Ayers was there.) Why won’t the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground’s 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement—The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!END AID TO ISRAEL!
Barack Obama wouldn’t possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports … would he? I guess to answer that question, we’d have to know what was on the tape. But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn’t Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin’s sartorial splendor?— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?Do we really have to ask?So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat? At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency. Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy? Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it. Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party. Wallsten’s story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):
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."...[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than … his opponents for the White House....At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel — a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn’t know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers’s views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers — the “education reform” allies who barely know each other … except to the extent they together doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books — just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he “did not know” whether Ayers was there.) Why won’t the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground’s 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement—The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!END AID TO ISRAEL!
Barack Obama wouldn’t possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports … would he? I guess to answer that question, we’d have to know what was on the tape. But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn’t Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin’s sartorial splendor?— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
A glimpse into the future...
(The following story comes from both my imagination and what I foresee to be the future. At the present, this is fictional. But if certain people are elected into office, I believe this to be a version of the things to come. Some of you reading this will delete without a second glance while others will forward it. It's my hope that people will read this, look at today’s society and see the connection that could happen. Enjoy the entertainment. Nicholas S.)
Jan 21, 2013 Inauguration Day
The crowd gathers outside The Rainbow House, formerly known as the White House, awaiting the speech to be given by the Benevolent One, Barrack Obama. The leader steps onto the podium and smiles as he waves to his people. The people begin a lackluster cheer when the "applause" sign is lit up by the "Network". The "Network", which is the official country operated news media, is currently broadcasting on every TV channel and Internet bandwidth. Radio became obsolete when the government enforced the "Fair Radio Act” and instituted the "Hate Radio" law. All radio DJ's and their networks were arrested and brought to justice for speaking what their leaders called "Hate" against the government and its people.
"Greetings, my comrades. I, your Benevolent leader, am proud once more to stand before you in leading our country into its bright future. Four years ago, you entrusted me to bring about "Change". I’m happy to say that we have accomplished that goal. Just think, four years ago we stood as a capitalistic society demanding money for those who said "we worked hard for it." Today, I'm proud to say that everyone who works helps out their brothers and sisters. We spread the wealth. Joe the Plumber is still a plumber, but now he helps out Mike the Jobless and Andrew the Minority. This is what we needed. We have the best public healthcare system available. No longer can doctors charge outrageous fees. No longer can a doctor practice his profession with the goal of owning a Porsche. We are all EQUAL. I thank you, my fellow people, for casting your open vote for me. Those who were on the other side were made to see what a mistake it would be to vote against the Socialist Party. As always, I would like to thank our good friends Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and many of our Islamic brothers who showed us the truth of our despicable former ways. We are indebted to you more than you know. I would also like to thank our new House of Government for creating new laws that will help us to a brighter, more controlled future. Thank you to all who have helped and contributed to my re-election. As always, we are here for you and we will run this country in the best interest of the people."
The Benevolent One waves as the crowd is once again encouraged, by the Republic Guard standing around them with automatic weapons, to give applause and cheer.
Obama sits down and the Speaker of the House of Government, Nancy Pelosi steps to the podium. She is beaming with pride.
" Greetings, Comrades. It's amazing. In only four years we took a broken nation and transformed it into what it should be. In a short time, we have passed laws that help bring all of us together in unity. We have the Open Vote law which creates equality. All citizens are now required to voice their choice rather than vote by a secret ballot. This new system has allowed the government to truly see what our citizens need and how to better address their opinions.
The Share the Wealth law instituted by our Benevolent leader has also given us great progress. Where else in the world can a government take the income of its working people and share it with those unfortunate souls unable or unwilling work? It took some getting used to and, yes, there were those individuals who had to be corrected for speaking against the law and against us for that matter, but I'm happy to report that the re-education camps are working very well.
The Open Religion law has also had a wonderful effect upon us all, except for a very small band of people who insist that there is only one God and worship some son of his,” Pelosi wrinkles her nose in disgust. “However, thanks to the wording of the Open Religion law, the teaching or preaching of only one none-Islamic god or the mythical person of Jesus is banned. Now, we can have a truly open society. In addition, this wonderful law will finally put an end to all the years of oppression by the "Christian faith" by making it illegal to teach our children such a hateful doctrine. Luckily, only a handful of children had to be saved from their parents. They are doing well in our state-run schools. Their parents have been dealt with and will no longer pose a threat to our fair society.
The Gun Ban law has made our country even safer. It was hard for some of the southern states to accept this law but we know that there was always a little group of people who clung to their guns and religion! However, as I said before, the re-education camps are showing wonderful progress!
In conclusion, we have seen what a strong change that the people of this great country wanted and will continue to have. In the coming years, we will be voting on several new laws. We will pass a "No Term Limit" bill for our Benevolent leader and his staff. There will be a group of new tax laws for the wealthy, which are those making more than 40,000 dollars a year. In addition, we will institute government education assistance which will help guide our students into the field of work the government believes they are most suited. There will be other changes and we will notify you as we make them. All Hail the United Socialist Republic of America."
Jan 21, 2013 Inauguration Day
The crowd gathers outside The Rainbow House, formerly known as the White House, awaiting the speech to be given by the Benevolent One, Barrack Obama. The leader steps onto the podium and smiles as he waves to his people. The people begin a lackluster cheer when the "applause" sign is lit up by the "Network". The "Network", which is the official country operated news media, is currently broadcasting on every TV channel and Internet bandwidth. Radio became obsolete when the government enforced the "Fair Radio Act” and instituted the "Hate Radio" law. All radio DJ's and their networks were arrested and brought to justice for speaking what their leaders called "Hate" against the government and its people.
"Greetings, my comrades. I, your Benevolent leader, am proud once more to stand before you in leading our country into its bright future. Four years ago, you entrusted me to bring about "Change". I’m happy to say that we have accomplished that goal. Just think, four years ago we stood as a capitalistic society demanding money for those who said "we worked hard for it." Today, I'm proud to say that everyone who works helps out their brothers and sisters. We spread the wealth. Joe the Plumber is still a plumber, but now he helps out Mike the Jobless and Andrew the Minority. This is what we needed. We have the best public healthcare system available. No longer can doctors charge outrageous fees. No longer can a doctor practice his profession with the goal of owning a Porsche. We are all EQUAL. I thank you, my fellow people, for casting your open vote for me. Those who were on the other side were made to see what a mistake it would be to vote against the Socialist Party. As always, I would like to thank our good friends Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and many of our Islamic brothers who showed us the truth of our despicable former ways. We are indebted to you more than you know. I would also like to thank our new House of Government for creating new laws that will help us to a brighter, more controlled future. Thank you to all who have helped and contributed to my re-election. As always, we are here for you and we will run this country in the best interest of the people."
The Benevolent One waves as the crowd is once again encouraged, by the Republic Guard standing around them with automatic weapons, to give applause and cheer.
Obama sits down and the Speaker of the House of Government, Nancy Pelosi steps to the podium. She is beaming with pride.
" Greetings, Comrades. It's amazing. In only four years we took a broken nation and transformed it into what it should be. In a short time, we have passed laws that help bring all of us together in unity. We have the Open Vote law which creates equality. All citizens are now required to voice their choice rather than vote by a secret ballot. This new system has allowed the government to truly see what our citizens need and how to better address their opinions.
The Share the Wealth law instituted by our Benevolent leader has also given us great progress. Where else in the world can a government take the income of its working people and share it with those unfortunate souls unable or unwilling work? It took some getting used to and, yes, there were those individuals who had to be corrected for speaking against the law and against us for that matter, but I'm happy to report that the re-education camps are working very well.
The Open Religion law has also had a wonderful effect upon us all, except for a very small band of people who insist that there is only one God and worship some son of his,” Pelosi wrinkles her nose in disgust. “However, thanks to the wording of the Open Religion law, the teaching or preaching of only one none-Islamic god or the mythical person of Jesus is banned. Now, we can have a truly open society. In addition, this wonderful law will finally put an end to all the years of oppression by the "Christian faith" by making it illegal to teach our children such a hateful doctrine. Luckily, only a handful of children had to be saved from their parents. They are doing well in our state-run schools. Their parents have been dealt with and will no longer pose a threat to our fair society.
The Gun Ban law has made our country even safer. It was hard for some of the southern states to accept this law but we know that there was always a little group of people who clung to their guns and religion! However, as I said before, the re-education camps are showing wonderful progress!
In conclusion, we have seen what a strong change that the people of this great country wanted and will continue to have. In the coming years, we will be voting on several new laws. We will pass a "No Term Limit" bill for our Benevolent leader and his staff. There will be a group of new tax laws for the wealthy, which are those making more than 40,000 dollars a year. In addition, we will institute government education assistance which will help guide our students into the field of work the government believes they are most suited. There will be other changes and we will notify you as we make them. All Hail the United Socialist Republic of America."
McCain: Obama's Definition of Rich Is 'Creeping Down'
John McCain raises flags over Joe Biden's latest call for tax breaks for the middle class -- "people making under $150,000 a year."
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Photos
John McCain speaks at a rally in Hershey, Pa., Tuesday.
John McCain accused his Democratic rivals on Tuesday of steadily downgrading their definition of the middle class in an effort to hit more voters with tax increases.
"We can't let that happen," the Republican presidential nominee told a Pennsylvania audience.
Barack Obama has consistently said that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see a tax increase under his administration. He also says those making under $200,000 will see a tax cut.
But Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, told a Scranton, Pa., TV station on Monday that Obama's tax break "should go to middle class people -- people making under $150,000 a year."
McCain, who over the past few days has warned about the "dangerous" economic consequences of allowing a Democrat in the White House to work with a Democratic majority in Congress, said Tuesday that Biden was previewing Democratic tax policies to come.
"You getting an idea of what's on their mind, huh? A little sneak peak," McCain said, pointing to Biden's comment. "It's interesting how their definition of rich has a way of creeping down. At this rate, it won't be long before Senator Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just $42,000 a year should get a tax increase."
Obama's campaign released a statement standing by his tax plan, saying, "The McCain campaign's attacks are getting more desperate by the hour."
Spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama's plan has consistently been to make sure families earning $250,000 do not see an increase to their share of the tax burden.
The statement did not explain what Biden was referring to when he defined middle class as those making under $150,000 annually.
The "tax calculator" on Obama's Web site, which allows users to punch in their income and calculate what kind of tax cut they'd receive under an Obama administration, shows families making between $150,000 and $200,000 would get a $500 tax cut, and those making under $150,000 would get a $1,000 tax cut.
"Maybe the McCain campaign keeps lying about Obama's tax plan because with seven days left in this election, voters are rejecting McCain's plan to give billions more in tax giveaways to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans -- but nothing to more than 100 million middle-class families," Vietor said.
On a conference call Tuesday, McCain supporters and advisers suggested Obama was blurring the lines on his tax proposals.
"Now it's somewhere between $150 and $250 (thousand). We don't know what the latest iteration is," former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp said, referring to the income threshold Obama has set for a tax increase.
"It's now clear that the ... Obama-Biden ticket wants to raise taxes," McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said. "They're very interested in redistribution."
In a statement, the campaign pointed to an Obama TV ad released Saturday as evidence that Obama was shifting his tax policies.
In the ad, Obama says his middle-class tax cuts will help 95 percent of working Americans, and that "If you have a job, pay taxes and make less than $200,000 a year, you'll get a tax cut."
The McCain camp alleged Obama was "bringing the threshold down" from $250,000 to $200,000, before Biden seemed to lower it to $150,000.
However, the Saturday ad was not the first time Obama talked about the $200,000 mark.
At the final presidential debate two weeks ago, he said his plan would provide "a middle-class tax cut for people making less than $200,000."
He said nobody making less than $250,000 would see their taxes increase.
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Photos
John McCain speaks at a rally in Hershey, Pa., Tuesday.
John McCain accused his Democratic rivals on Tuesday of steadily downgrading their definition of the middle class in an effort to hit more voters with tax increases.
"We can't let that happen," the Republican presidential nominee told a Pennsylvania audience.
Barack Obama has consistently said that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see a tax increase under his administration. He also says those making under $200,000 will see a tax cut.
But Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, told a Scranton, Pa., TV station on Monday that Obama's tax break "should go to middle class people -- people making under $150,000 a year."
McCain, who over the past few days has warned about the "dangerous" economic consequences of allowing a Democrat in the White House to work with a Democratic majority in Congress, said Tuesday that Biden was previewing Democratic tax policies to come.
"You getting an idea of what's on their mind, huh? A little sneak peak," McCain said, pointing to Biden's comment. "It's interesting how their definition of rich has a way of creeping down. At this rate, it won't be long before Senator Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just $42,000 a year should get a tax increase."
Obama's campaign released a statement standing by his tax plan, saying, "The McCain campaign's attacks are getting more desperate by the hour."
Spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama's plan has consistently been to make sure families earning $250,000 do not see an increase to their share of the tax burden.
The statement did not explain what Biden was referring to when he defined middle class as those making under $150,000 annually.
The "tax calculator" on Obama's Web site, which allows users to punch in their income and calculate what kind of tax cut they'd receive under an Obama administration, shows families making between $150,000 and $200,000 would get a $500 tax cut, and those making under $150,000 would get a $1,000 tax cut.
"Maybe the McCain campaign keeps lying about Obama's tax plan because with seven days left in this election, voters are rejecting McCain's plan to give billions more in tax giveaways to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans -- but nothing to more than 100 million middle-class families," Vietor said.
On a conference call Tuesday, McCain supporters and advisers suggested Obama was blurring the lines on his tax proposals.
"Now it's somewhere between $150 and $250 (thousand). We don't know what the latest iteration is," former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp said, referring to the income threshold Obama has set for a tax increase.
"It's now clear that the ... Obama-Biden ticket wants to raise taxes," McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said. "They're very interested in redistribution."
In a statement, the campaign pointed to an Obama TV ad released Saturday as evidence that Obama was shifting his tax policies.
In the ad, Obama says his middle-class tax cuts will help 95 percent of working Americans, and that "If you have a job, pay taxes and make less than $200,000 a year, you'll get a tax cut."
The McCain camp alleged Obama was "bringing the threshold down" from $250,000 to $200,000, before Biden seemed to lower it to $150,000.
However, the Saturday ad was not the first time Obama talked about the $200,000 mark.
At the final presidential debate two weeks ago, he said his plan would provide "a middle-class tax cut for people making less than $200,000."
He said nobody making less than $250,000 would see their taxes increase.
Obama Affinity to Marxists Dates Back to College Days
Barack Obama shrugs off charges of socialism, but noted in his own memoir that he carefully chose Marxist professors as friends in college.
By Bill Sammon
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/28/obama-affinity-marxists-dates-college-days/
German philosopher Karl Marx, author of "The Communist Manifesto," advocated redistributing wealth in order to achieve a classless society.
Barack Obama laughs off charges of socialism. Joe Biden scoffs at references to Marxism. Both men shrug off accusations of liberalism.
But Obama himself acknowledges that he was drawn to socialists and even Marxists as a college student. He continued to associate with Marxists later in life, even choosing to launch his political career in the living room of a self-described Marxist, William Ayers, in 1995, when Obama was 34.
Obama's affinity for Marxists began when he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles.
"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists."
Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."
After graduating from Columbia in 1983, Obama spent a year working for a consulting firm and then went to work for what he described as "a Ralph Nader offshoot" in Harlem.
"In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of …Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia," Obama wrote in "Dreams," which he published in 1995. "At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature."
Obama supporters point out that plenty of Americans flirt with radical ideologies in college, only to join the political mainstream later in life. But Obama, who made a point of noting how "carefully" he chose his friends in college, also chose to launch his political career in the Chicago living room of Ayers, a domestic terrorist who in 2002 proclaimed: "I am a Marxist."
Also present at that meeting was Ayers' wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, who once gave a speech extolling socialism, communism and "Marxism-Leninism."
Obama has been widely criticized for choosing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an anti-American firebrand, as his pastor. Wright is a purveyor of black liberation theology, which analysts say is based in part on Marxist ideas.
Few political observers go so far as to accuse Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, of being a Marxist. But Republican John McCain has been accusing Obama of espousing socialism ever since the Democrat told an Ohio plumber named Joe earlier this month that he wanted to "spread the wealth around."
Obama's running mate, Biden, recently contradicted his boss, saying: "He is not spreading the wealth around." The remark came as Biden was answering a question from a TV anchor who asked: "How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
"Are you joking? Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?" an incredulous Biden shot back. "It's a ridiculous comparison."
But the debate intensified Monday with the surfacing of a 2001 radio interview in which Obama lamented the Supreme Court's inability to enact "redistribution of wealth" -- a key tenet of socialism. On Tuesday, McCain said Obama aspires to become "Redistributionist-in-Chief."
Obama has managed to cultivate the image of a political moderate in spite of his consistently liberal voting record. In 2006, he published a second memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," that leaves little doubt about his adherence to the left.
"The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact," Obama wrote in "Audacity." "Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal."
National Journal magazine ranked Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate. The publication is far from conservative, employing such journalists as Linda Douglass, who resigned in May to become Obama's traveling press secretary.
Bill Sammon is the Washington deputy managing editor for FOX News Channel.
By Bill Sammon
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/28/obama-affinity-marxists-dates-college-days/
German philosopher Karl Marx, author of "The Communist Manifesto," advocated redistributing wealth in order to achieve a classless society.
Barack Obama laughs off charges of socialism. Joe Biden scoffs at references to Marxism. Both men shrug off accusations of liberalism.
But Obama himself acknowledges that he was drawn to socialists and even Marxists as a college student. He continued to associate with Marxists later in life, even choosing to launch his political career in the living room of a self-described Marxist, William Ayers, in 1995, when Obama was 34.
Obama's affinity for Marxists began when he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles.
"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists."
Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."
After graduating from Columbia in 1983, Obama spent a year working for a consulting firm and then went to work for what he described as "a Ralph Nader offshoot" in Harlem.
"In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of …Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia," Obama wrote in "Dreams," which he published in 1995. "At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature."
Obama supporters point out that plenty of Americans flirt with radical ideologies in college, only to join the political mainstream later in life. But Obama, who made a point of noting how "carefully" he chose his friends in college, also chose to launch his political career in the Chicago living room of Ayers, a domestic terrorist who in 2002 proclaimed: "I am a Marxist."
Also present at that meeting was Ayers' wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, who once gave a speech extolling socialism, communism and "Marxism-Leninism."
Obama has been widely criticized for choosing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an anti-American firebrand, as his pastor. Wright is a purveyor of black liberation theology, which analysts say is based in part on Marxist ideas.
Few political observers go so far as to accuse Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, of being a Marxist. But Republican John McCain has been accusing Obama of espousing socialism ever since the Democrat told an Ohio plumber named Joe earlier this month that he wanted to "spread the wealth around."
Obama's running mate, Biden, recently contradicted his boss, saying: "He is not spreading the wealth around." The remark came as Biden was answering a question from a TV anchor who asked: "How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
"Are you joking? Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?" an incredulous Biden shot back. "It's a ridiculous comparison."
But the debate intensified Monday with the surfacing of a 2001 radio interview in which Obama lamented the Supreme Court's inability to enact "redistribution of wealth" -- a key tenet of socialism. On Tuesday, McCain said Obama aspires to become "Redistributionist-in-Chief."
Obama has managed to cultivate the image of a political moderate in spite of his consistently liberal voting record. In 2006, he published a second memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," that leaves little doubt about his adherence to the left.
"The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact," Obama wrote in "Audacity." "Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal."
National Journal magazine ranked Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate. The publication is far from conservative, employing such journalists as Linda Douglass, who resigned in May to become Obama's traveling press secretary.
Bill Sammon is the Washington deputy managing editor for FOX News Channel.
Monday, October 27, 2008
E-mail that I received this a.m.
From: Hondo, AZ
Monday, October 27, 2008, 11:11 AM
Heartwing,
Do you know anyone in the McCain/Palin campain you can pass this on to? I would like to ask why neither Senator McCain or Governor Palin have addressed the speech Obama gave in which he promised to do away with the Starwars satellite program and said he would stop all future nuclear testing and then do away with our nuclear armaments? The speech is on Utube and is accessible to anyone. I feel this is a huge issue for our national security especially with Barney Franks now talking about cutting military spending by 25%.
Regards,
Hondo
My response:
Hondo,
They know...everyone knows. It doesn't seem to matter. Nor do his other issues...
What about this: http://www.rightsidenews.com/200810262351/editorial/obama-s-birth-certificate-still-missing.html
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/janak/081027
or this:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57363
http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/senator-barack-obama-in-kenya-obama-and-odinga-the-true-story/
or this:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78640
http://www.capveterans.com/barack_obama/id64.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU2Yv-rnJEo&feature=related
or this:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obamas-trots-out-his-racist-grandmother
http://www.capveterans.com/barack_obama/id64.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hPR5jnjtLo
You read all of this and then tell ME why people and the media don't seem to care...
Sincerely,
Heartwing
Monday, October 27, 2008, 11:11 AM
Heartwing,
Do you know anyone in the McCain/Palin campain you can pass this on to? I would like to ask why neither Senator McCain or Governor Palin have addressed the speech Obama gave in which he promised to do away with the Starwars satellite program and said he would stop all future nuclear testing and then do away with our nuclear armaments? The speech is on Utube and is accessible to anyone. I feel this is a huge issue for our national security especially with Barney Franks now talking about cutting military spending by 25%.
Regards,
Hondo
My response:
Hondo,
They know...everyone knows. It doesn't seem to matter. Nor do his other issues...
What about this: http://www.rightsidenews.com/200810262351/editorial/obama-s-birth-certificate-still-missing.html
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/janak/081027
or this:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57363
http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/senator-barack-obama-in-kenya-obama-and-odinga-the-true-story/
or this:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78640
http://www.capveterans.com/barack_obama/id64.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU2Yv-rnJEo&feature=related
or this:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obamas-trots-out-his-racist-grandmother
http://www.capveterans.com/barack_obama/id64.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hPR5jnjtLo
You read all of this and then tell ME why people and the media don't seem to care...
Sincerely,
Heartwing
Fear of an Anti-Capitalist Planet
October 27, 2008
By Tobin Harshaw
Here’s a quote that has the gang at National Review and most of the rest of the right side of the blogosphere in a collective uproar:
One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.
While the bold-facing is Bill Whittle’s, the words are Barack Obama’s, from a 2001 Chicago Public Radio interview (audio of entire interview here), in which he also laments that “the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.”
Whittle gives his interpretation:
We all know what political and economic justice means, because Barack Obama has already made it crystal clear a second earlier: It means redistribution of wealth. Not the creation of wealth and certainly not the creation of opportunity, but simply taking money from the successful and hard-working and distributing it to those whom the government decides ‘deserve’ it. This redistribution of wealth, he states, ‘essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.’ It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the chief executive.
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary thinks this is the tip of the iceberg:
It is fairly obvious that Obama was saying nothing extraordinary in his own mind. This is the sort of thing left-leaning “intellectuals” bandied about. It’s the outlook that underscored the bent of not just his closest comrades at the time (e.g. Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger), but the activist organizations he and Bill Ayers supported through the Woods Fund. It is absurd, really, to write off all these associations as an aberration or exaggeration, or to ignore them as some imagining of paranoid conservatives. What comes through loud and clear was that Obama shared the classic anti-capitalist, redistributionist philosophy accepted as dogma by many on the Left.
Remember, this isn’t ancient history. Obama was sharing Socialism 101 with radio listeners just seven years ago. At the same time, he was sitting on the board of the Woods Fund, going to Trinity United Church, and a enjoying a robust professional relationship with Bill Ayers. Has he given all that up? We don’t know, because no one in the media has taken seriously Obama’s intellectual and professional development.
Meanwhile, ABC’s Jake Tapper had a chat with Bill Burton of the Obama Campaign, who gave him this reponse:
“In this interview back in 2001, Obama was talking about the civil rights movement -– and the kind of work that has to be done on the ground to make sure that everyone can live out the promise of equality,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton says. “Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Obama’s economic plan or his plan to give the middle class a tax cut. It’s just another distraction from an increasingly desperate McCain campaign.”
Burton continues: “In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of ‘redistributing’ wealth. Obama’s point – and what he called a tragedy – was that legal victories in the Civil Rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country.
Spin or substance? Andrew Sullivan thinks the latter: “So Obama was arguing that the Constitution protects negative liberties and that the civil rights movement was too court-focused to make any difference in addressing income inequality, as opposed to formal constitutional rights. So it seems to me that this statement is actually a conservative one about the limits of judicial activism. Is this really all McCain has left?”
And the judicious Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy also sees more smoke than fire.
Based on the audio posted, however, I find it hard to identify Obama’s normative take. When Obama says that he’s “not optimistic” about using the courts for major economic reform, and when he points out the practical and institutional problems of doing so, it’s not entirely clear whether he is (a) gently telling the caller why the courts won’t and shouldn’t do such things; (b) noting the difficulties of using the courts to engage in economic reform but not intending to express a normative view; or (c) suggesting that he would have wanted the Warren Court to have tried to take on such a project.
My best sense is that Obama was intending (a), as his point seems to be that the 60s reformers were too court-focused. But at the very least, it’s not at all clear that Obama had (c) in mind. It doesn’t help that only parts of the audio are posted: Given the obvious bias of the person who edited the audio, it’s probably a decent bet that the rest of the audio makes the comments seem more innocuous than they do in the excerpts. Of course, there’s the separate point about Obama’s interest in “major redistributive change” more generally: It would be interesting to know if Obama endorsed that goal in the interview, and what specifically he had in mind.
Well, if the polls can be trusted, Orin, we should find out pretty soon …
By Tobin Harshaw
Here’s a quote that has the gang at National Review and most of the rest of the right side of the blogosphere in a collective uproar:
One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.
While the bold-facing is Bill Whittle’s, the words are Barack Obama’s, from a 2001 Chicago Public Radio interview (audio of entire interview here), in which he also laments that “the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.”
Whittle gives his interpretation:
We all know what political and economic justice means, because Barack Obama has already made it crystal clear a second earlier: It means redistribution of wealth. Not the creation of wealth and certainly not the creation of opportunity, but simply taking money from the successful and hard-working and distributing it to those whom the government decides ‘deserve’ it. This redistribution of wealth, he states, ‘essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.’ It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the chief executive.
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary thinks this is the tip of the iceberg:
It is fairly obvious that Obama was saying nothing extraordinary in his own mind. This is the sort of thing left-leaning “intellectuals” bandied about. It’s the outlook that underscored the bent of not just his closest comrades at the time (e.g. Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger), but the activist organizations he and Bill Ayers supported through the Woods Fund. It is absurd, really, to write off all these associations as an aberration or exaggeration, or to ignore them as some imagining of paranoid conservatives. What comes through loud and clear was that Obama shared the classic anti-capitalist, redistributionist philosophy accepted as dogma by many on the Left.
Remember, this isn’t ancient history. Obama was sharing Socialism 101 with radio listeners just seven years ago. At the same time, he was sitting on the board of the Woods Fund, going to Trinity United Church, and a enjoying a robust professional relationship with Bill Ayers. Has he given all that up? We don’t know, because no one in the media has taken seriously Obama’s intellectual and professional development.
Meanwhile, ABC’s Jake Tapper had a chat with Bill Burton of the Obama Campaign, who gave him this reponse:
“In this interview back in 2001, Obama was talking about the civil rights movement -– and the kind of work that has to be done on the ground to make sure that everyone can live out the promise of equality,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton says. “Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Obama’s economic plan or his plan to give the middle class a tax cut. It’s just another distraction from an increasingly desperate McCain campaign.”
Burton continues: “In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of ‘redistributing’ wealth. Obama’s point – and what he called a tragedy – was that legal victories in the Civil Rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country.
Spin or substance? Andrew Sullivan thinks the latter: “So Obama was arguing that the Constitution protects negative liberties and that the civil rights movement was too court-focused to make any difference in addressing income inequality, as opposed to formal constitutional rights. So it seems to me that this statement is actually a conservative one about the limits of judicial activism. Is this really all McCain has left?”
And the judicious Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy also sees more smoke than fire.
Based on the audio posted, however, I find it hard to identify Obama’s normative take. When Obama says that he’s “not optimistic” about using the courts for major economic reform, and when he points out the practical and institutional problems of doing so, it’s not entirely clear whether he is (a) gently telling the caller why the courts won’t and shouldn’t do such things; (b) noting the difficulties of using the courts to engage in economic reform but not intending to express a normative view; or (c) suggesting that he would have wanted the Warren Court to have tried to take on such a project.
My best sense is that Obama was intending (a), as his point seems to be that the 60s reformers were too court-focused. But at the very least, it’s not at all clear that Obama had (c) in mind. It doesn’t help that only parts of the audio are posted: Given the obvious bias of the person who edited the audio, it’s probably a decent bet that the rest of the audio makes the comments seem more innocuous than they do in the excerpts. Of course, there’s the separate point about Obama’s interest in “major redistributive change” more generally: It would be interesting to know if Obama endorsed that goal in the interview, and what specifically he had in mind.
Well, if the polls can be trusted, Orin, we should find out pretty soon …
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Robin Hood was a socialist
http://perrinelson.com/2007/6/21/828.aspx
by Perry Nelson
Published Thu, Jun 21 2007
Think about that for a minute. "Rob from the rich and give to the poor." Isn't that one of the primary socialist and modern day liberal policies?
Today, as I was driving to work I happened to fall behind a woman with a lot of bumper stickers on her car. Before I say more, take a guess as to the general message of those bumper stickers.
Probably the two most prominent messages plastered onto the back of her car were "Tax the rich. Now!" and "Social Justice. Now!". Another one said "Endless this War". Three guesses as to what was her likely choice for how to end the war. I'm willing to bet that "achieving victory" wasn't on the list.
Yet another bumper sticker on this woman's car proclaimed the slogan "Catholics for Kerry". I assume this was a reference to the Catholic church's position regarding the pro-abortion positions held by many politicians that were touting their Catholicism.
Yes, I mean pro-abortion and not pro-choice. "Pro-choice" is a euphemism designed to mislead the electorate into thinking that the issue is all about a woman's "right to choose", when it's really about promoting abortion as a way to escape the consequences of licentious sexual behavior. If this were truly about "choice" then we'd see more "pro-choice" people promoting the "choice" of abstinence, but what they really promote is free access to abortion with no restraints whatsoever.
I'm sure you can guess where this woman's politics lie. It's obvious to me at least.
Come to think of it, have you ever seen a conservative plaster their car with that many bumper stickers? Oh sure, I've seen lots of conservatives with bumper stickers. Usually it's only one, or at the most two. They carry messages like "Support our Troops" or a simple "W 04". But you don't really (at least I don't) see a lot of conservatives with any bumper stickers, let alone plastering the entire back end of their car with them.
Listening to the radio this morning, as I was driving to work, I was treated with the words of Michael Moore on his new documentary "Sicko". Here we are again with another socialist trying to change the perception of his policies by changing the terms used. Michael Moore believes that we shouldn't call socialized medicine "socialized medicine". Instead he thinks we should call it "Christianized medicine".
Without actually having a transcript of his comments before me, I can only paraphrase what he had to say, but he based his arguments on his interpretation of the words of Jesus regarding the poor. In Matthew 25 (I'm not sure what passages Michael Moore was quoting, but this is close to what I heard) we can find this...
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: 42for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; 43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. 46And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life.
This is probably the basis for Michael Moore's idea that "socialized" or socialist medicine should be called "Christianized medicine". It certainly seems to be the basis for the bumper sticker slogan "Social Justice. Now!" that I saw earlier today. In fact, it's probably the basis of a lot of today's liberalism and socialism.
But here, just as with the abortion debate we see the socialist left trying to make their policies more palatable by changing the words they use to describe them. By framing the debate over socialized medicine in these terms, Michael Moore is trying to make anyone that objects to socialist policies appear to be un-Christian. If you're not in favor of government regulated socialized medicine — why — you must not be a Christian, or at the very least you must be a hypocrite.
In fact this very line of reasoning is used by the left anywhere conservatives resist their socialist agenda. If a conservative speaks out against "affirmative action", expressing a desire that we stop using race as the basis for decisions, expressing a desire to not even take into account a person's race at all, why that conservative must be a racist. If a conservative speaks out against government funded abortions, why that conservative must be seeking to suppress the rights of women.
Robin Hood is considered to have been a great hero. The fact that he stole from the rich to give to the poor is touted as one of his finer characteristics. I think that this is one of the dividing lines between conservatives and liberals today.
Conservatives look at the words of Jesus quoted above and they interpret them in terms of personal responsibility. We see them as a call to personally take in the stranger, feed and clothe the poor, and minister to the sick and to prisoners. After all, these things have personal consequences. Salvation happens on an individual basis, not a societal basis.
Liberals look at these same words (when they allow religion into the conversation at all, and we'll assume that they do since Michael Moore has invoked them) and interpret them in terms of society's responsibility rather than personal responsibility. It seems to be the liberal belief that society's ills can best be ministered to by government.
So we've had a "war on poverty" for decades. We've had social "safety net" programs and entitlement programs to meet the needs of the poor and the downtrodden. These programs have been in place for so long that you would think that they'd show some success by now.
It's my belief that these programs are doomed to fail. There is of course the argument that I've used for a long time now that when you reward a behavior you get more of it. When you reward the behaviors that lead to poverty with entitlement programs you reinforce those behaviors.
On the other hand, when you reward the behaviors that lead to prosperity, such as hard work, and sacrifice, then you reinforce those behaviors. This is why welfare reform that required welfare recipients to find work resulted in fewer people on the welfare roles.
There's another reason though that the war on poverty cannot be won. No matter how you approach it with solutions, you cannot eliminate poverty. To quote Michael Moore's new-found reference material (Matthew 26 this time)…
6Now when Jesus was come to Bethany and was at the house of Simon the Leper, 7a woman came to Him with a jar of very costly, sweet-scented ointment, which she poured over His head as He reclined at table. 8"Why such waste?" indignantly exclaimed the disciples; 9"for this might have been sold for a considerable sum, and the money given to the poor." 10But Jesus heard it, and said to them, "Why are you vexing her? For she has done a most gracious act towards me. 11The poor you always have with you, but me you have not always.
Simply put, the poor will always be there, and devotion to Christ is more important. This doesn't mean that an individual doesn't have a responsibility to help those less fortunate than himself. It just means that no amount of money thrown at the problem of poverty will ever solve it.
Socialists though seem to indignantly call out with the disciples "Why such waste?" when a rich man uses the money that is his own for his own purposes. "For this might have been sold for a considerable sum, and the money given to the poor."
It's this attitude that vexes me about the modern left. It's what vexes me about Robin Hood. They appear to believe that it's acceptable to take from "the rich" to give to "the poor". Robin Hood is a hero to many for precisely this sort of behavior. It's still theft.
15Thou shalt not steal.
That's the 8th commandment, from Exodus 20. Whatever else Robin Hood might have been, he was a thief. That he gave the things he stole to the poor doesn't change that. Nothing in Judaism or Christianity permits theft, even to give to the poor. It's a socialist notion that this form of theft is a justifiable act.
The two bumper stickers I noted today read "Tax the Rich. Now!" and "Social Justice. Now!". They epitomize the Robin Hood mentality. They play upon class envy.
I have to ask though: Is it "social justice" to forcibly take the things that a man has earned through hard work and toil to give them to someone else that has not worked and toiled to earn them? Liberals claim that we all have a "right" to health care. Does that mean that we have a "right" to take away another man's possessions as well? Does it mean that we have a "right" to demand that a doctor give us his services without expectation of compensation? Is that truly "justice"? Or as Michael Moore describes it, is that "Christian"?
I don't think so. In the end, I think its nothing more nor less than communism. Whether you're on the left or the right that's an assault on your freedoms. Lets turn now to the Communist Manifesto to conclude our analysis.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Take private property from the "rich" through taxation to distribute it through the hand of the state to the poor. "Steal from the rich and give to the poor".
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
Except in the case of Michael Moore's "Christianized medicine" it actually provides every man the power to subjugate the labor of medical practitioners by means of such appropriations.
"Rob from the rich and give to the poor." That was Robin Hood's motto. "Tax the Rich. Now!" "Social Justice. Now!" A pair of bumper sticker slogans that epitomize the Robin Hood mentality of the modern left. To drive it home, this is one of the primary measures listed that are used to accomplish the Communist revolution:
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Communism and mass slavery are the end of all liberal policies. That may not be their intent, but that will be the effect of their methods. Modern day liberals tend toward these things out of good motivations and intentions. The end result of these policies though is the greatest social injustice of all. Mass slavery. After all, let's not forget the one thing that the Communist revolution absolutely requires for Communism to produce a viable economy:
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
There's only one way to attain that particular measure — slavery. It's the abolition of all religious and economic freedom (which both happen to be stated goals of the Communists). It's not something I'm willing to accept.
by Perry Nelson
Published Thu, Jun 21 2007
Think about that for a minute. "Rob from the rich and give to the poor." Isn't that one of the primary socialist and modern day liberal policies?
Today, as I was driving to work I happened to fall behind a woman with a lot of bumper stickers on her car. Before I say more, take a guess as to the general message of those bumper stickers.
Probably the two most prominent messages plastered onto the back of her car were "Tax the rich. Now!" and "Social Justice. Now!". Another one said "Endless this War". Three guesses as to what was her likely choice for how to end the war. I'm willing to bet that "achieving victory" wasn't on the list.
Yet another bumper sticker on this woman's car proclaimed the slogan "Catholics for Kerry". I assume this was a reference to the Catholic church's position regarding the pro-abortion positions held by many politicians that were touting their Catholicism.
Yes, I mean pro-abortion and not pro-choice. "Pro-choice" is a euphemism designed to mislead the electorate into thinking that the issue is all about a woman's "right to choose", when it's really about promoting abortion as a way to escape the consequences of licentious sexual behavior. If this were truly about "choice" then we'd see more "pro-choice" people promoting the "choice" of abstinence, but what they really promote is free access to abortion with no restraints whatsoever.
I'm sure you can guess where this woman's politics lie. It's obvious to me at least.
Come to think of it, have you ever seen a conservative plaster their car with that many bumper stickers? Oh sure, I've seen lots of conservatives with bumper stickers. Usually it's only one, or at the most two. They carry messages like "Support our Troops" or a simple "W 04". But you don't really (at least I don't) see a lot of conservatives with any bumper stickers, let alone plastering the entire back end of their car with them.
Listening to the radio this morning, as I was driving to work, I was treated with the words of Michael Moore on his new documentary "Sicko". Here we are again with another socialist trying to change the perception of his policies by changing the terms used. Michael Moore believes that we shouldn't call socialized medicine "socialized medicine". Instead he thinks we should call it "Christianized medicine".
Without actually having a transcript of his comments before me, I can only paraphrase what he had to say, but he based his arguments on his interpretation of the words of Jesus regarding the poor. In Matthew 25 (I'm not sure what passages Michael Moore was quoting, but this is close to what I heard) we can find this...
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: 42for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; 43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. 46And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life.
This is probably the basis for Michael Moore's idea that "socialized" or socialist medicine should be called "Christianized medicine". It certainly seems to be the basis for the bumper sticker slogan "Social Justice. Now!" that I saw earlier today. In fact, it's probably the basis of a lot of today's liberalism and socialism.
But here, just as with the abortion debate we see the socialist left trying to make their policies more palatable by changing the words they use to describe them. By framing the debate over socialized medicine in these terms, Michael Moore is trying to make anyone that objects to socialist policies appear to be un-Christian. If you're not in favor of government regulated socialized medicine — why — you must not be a Christian, or at the very least you must be a hypocrite.
In fact this very line of reasoning is used by the left anywhere conservatives resist their socialist agenda. If a conservative speaks out against "affirmative action", expressing a desire that we stop using race as the basis for decisions, expressing a desire to not even take into account a person's race at all, why that conservative must be a racist. If a conservative speaks out against government funded abortions, why that conservative must be seeking to suppress the rights of women.
Robin Hood is considered to have been a great hero. The fact that he stole from the rich to give to the poor is touted as one of his finer characteristics. I think that this is one of the dividing lines between conservatives and liberals today.
Conservatives look at the words of Jesus quoted above and they interpret them in terms of personal responsibility. We see them as a call to personally take in the stranger, feed and clothe the poor, and minister to the sick and to prisoners. After all, these things have personal consequences. Salvation happens on an individual basis, not a societal basis.
Liberals look at these same words (when they allow religion into the conversation at all, and we'll assume that they do since Michael Moore has invoked them) and interpret them in terms of society's responsibility rather than personal responsibility. It seems to be the liberal belief that society's ills can best be ministered to by government.
So we've had a "war on poverty" for decades. We've had social "safety net" programs and entitlement programs to meet the needs of the poor and the downtrodden. These programs have been in place for so long that you would think that they'd show some success by now.
It's my belief that these programs are doomed to fail. There is of course the argument that I've used for a long time now that when you reward a behavior you get more of it. When you reward the behaviors that lead to poverty with entitlement programs you reinforce those behaviors.
On the other hand, when you reward the behaviors that lead to prosperity, such as hard work, and sacrifice, then you reinforce those behaviors. This is why welfare reform that required welfare recipients to find work resulted in fewer people on the welfare roles.
There's another reason though that the war on poverty cannot be won. No matter how you approach it with solutions, you cannot eliminate poverty. To quote Michael Moore's new-found reference material (Matthew 26 this time)…
6Now when Jesus was come to Bethany and was at the house of Simon the Leper, 7a woman came to Him with a jar of very costly, sweet-scented ointment, which she poured over His head as He reclined at table. 8"Why such waste?" indignantly exclaimed the disciples; 9"for this might have been sold for a considerable sum, and the money given to the poor." 10But Jesus heard it, and said to them, "Why are you vexing her? For she has done a most gracious act towards me. 11The poor you always have with you, but me you have not always.
Simply put, the poor will always be there, and devotion to Christ is more important. This doesn't mean that an individual doesn't have a responsibility to help those less fortunate than himself. It just means that no amount of money thrown at the problem of poverty will ever solve it.
Socialists though seem to indignantly call out with the disciples "Why such waste?" when a rich man uses the money that is his own for his own purposes. "For this might have been sold for a considerable sum, and the money given to the poor."
It's this attitude that vexes me about the modern left. It's what vexes me about Robin Hood. They appear to believe that it's acceptable to take from "the rich" to give to "the poor". Robin Hood is a hero to many for precisely this sort of behavior. It's still theft.
15Thou shalt not steal.
That's the 8th commandment, from Exodus 20. Whatever else Robin Hood might have been, he was a thief. That he gave the things he stole to the poor doesn't change that. Nothing in Judaism or Christianity permits theft, even to give to the poor. It's a socialist notion that this form of theft is a justifiable act.
The two bumper stickers I noted today read "Tax the Rich. Now!" and "Social Justice. Now!". They epitomize the Robin Hood mentality. They play upon class envy.
I have to ask though: Is it "social justice" to forcibly take the things that a man has earned through hard work and toil to give them to someone else that has not worked and toiled to earn them? Liberals claim that we all have a "right" to health care. Does that mean that we have a "right" to take away another man's possessions as well? Does it mean that we have a "right" to demand that a doctor give us his services without expectation of compensation? Is that truly "justice"? Or as Michael Moore describes it, is that "Christian"?
I don't think so. In the end, I think its nothing more nor less than communism. Whether you're on the left or the right that's an assault on your freedoms. Lets turn now to the Communist Manifesto to conclude our analysis.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Take private property from the "rich" through taxation to distribute it through the hand of the state to the poor. "Steal from the rich and give to the poor".
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
Except in the case of Michael Moore's "Christianized medicine" it actually provides every man the power to subjugate the labor of medical practitioners by means of such appropriations.
"Rob from the rich and give to the poor." That was Robin Hood's motto. "Tax the Rich. Now!" "Social Justice. Now!" A pair of bumper sticker slogans that epitomize the Robin Hood mentality of the modern left. To drive it home, this is one of the primary measures listed that are used to accomplish the Communist revolution:
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Communism and mass slavery are the end of all liberal policies. That may not be their intent, but that will be the effect of their methods. Modern day liberals tend toward these things out of good motivations and intentions. The end result of these policies though is the greatest social injustice of all. Mass slavery. After all, let's not forget the one thing that the Communist revolution absolutely requires for Communism to produce a viable economy:
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
There's only one way to attain that particular measure — slavery. It's the abolition of all religious and economic freedom (which both happen to be stated goals of the Communists). It's not something I'm willing to accept.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Palin: The 'right thing' for America will happen Nov. 4
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/palin_the_right.html
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor October 22, 2008 11:59 AM
Sarah Palin told a high-profile conservative Christian leader that she isn't discouraged by the Republican ticket's sagging poll numbers because she and running mate John McCain have been underdogs all their lives.
"I know at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4," the GOP vice presidential nominee told James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, who interviewed Palin by phone Monday in Colorado. The audio of the interview was posted online today.
"To me it motivates us. I'm not discouraged at all," she said.
During the interview, Dobson declared himself a "big fan" of Palin and said he was praying for her. "I've never seen such hatred," he said of what he called personal attacks on her and her family.
Asked what lessons she's learned, she replied, "You can't pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful." She said she has faith that the message will get out to voters, without the media filtering it.
Dobson has not been a big fan of John McCain, but has been enthusiastic about Palin, particularly because of her strong anti-abortion views. He praised the GOP platform's principles on abortion.
Palin vouched for McCain's fealty to that platform. "I do from the bottom of my heart," he said.
Palin talked about praying for strength during her latest pregnancy, when she found out that son Trig had Down syndrome. She said she was blessed for the opportunity for "walking the walk" on her pro-life views, and not just talking about them.
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor October 22, 2008 11:59 AM
Sarah Palin told a high-profile conservative Christian leader that she isn't discouraged by the Republican ticket's sagging poll numbers because she and running mate John McCain have been underdogs all their lives.
"I know at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4," the GOP vice presidential nominee told James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, who interviewed Palin by phone Monday in Colorado. The audio of the interview was posted online today.
"To me it motivates us. I'm not discouraged at all," she said.
During the interview, Dobson declared himself a "big fan" of Palin and said he was praying for her. "I've never seen such hatred," he said of what he called personal attacks on her and her family.
Asked what lessons she's learned, she replied, "You can't pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful." She said she has faith that the message will get out to voters, without the media filtering it.
Dobson has not been a big fan of John McCain, but has been enthusiastic about Palin, particularly because of her strong anti-abortion views. He praised the GOP platform's principles on abortion.
Palin vouched for McCain's fealty to that platform. "I do from the bottom of my heart," he said.
Palin talked about praying for strength during her latest pregnancy, when she found out that son Trig had Down syndrome. She said she was blessed for the opportunity for "walking the walk" on her pro-life views, and not just talking about them.
Another Bay of Pigs Invasion? Cuban Missile Crisis? Really?
by Kathy Gill http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/10/21/another-bay-of-pigs-invasion-cuban-missile-crisis-really.htm
Tuesday October 21, 2008
What do we make of Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's weekend comparison of Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy? At a fundraiser in Seattle on Sunday, Biden said: (tip)
It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
Whether we are talking about the Bay of Pigs (three months after Kennedy's inauguration) or the Cuban Missile Crisis (October the following year), the implied comparison with either event is troublesome on many levels. Even if it was a gaffe (which I think it was), it's still troublesome because of what the anecdote says about Biden.
One level is this: "They" didn't do it. We did it. Perhaps Biden is trusting to America's well-known aversion to history. Or maybe he believes we get our history from Hollywood. What you need to know is this: America was the aggressor in the Bay of Pigs, and America's aggression arguably pushed the Soviet Union to defend its ally, Cuba, and itself which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That alone should be enough to give pause. Is Biden saying that Obama will take actions that cause an international incident or two? That he's just as much a hawk as President Bush?
What Was The Bay of Pigs? The U.S. wanted to overthrow Fidel Castro. To that end, the Eisenhower Administration trained Cuban exiles with the goal of helping them invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, with "anticipated ... support from the Cuban people." (Anything here sound familiar, circa 2002-2003?). From the John F. Kennedy library:
In Miami, Jose Miro Cardona, leader of the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the United States, became head of the United Revolutionary Front, poised to take over the provisional presidency of Cuba upon the successful invasion. Despite efforts of the [U.S.] government to keep the invasion plans covert, it became common knowledge in Miami. The press reported widely on events as they unfolded, and Castro soon learned of the guerrilla training camps in Guatemala. Shortly after his inauguration, in February of 1961, Kennedy authorized the Cuban invasion plans on the condition that US support be sufficiently disguised. As a result of this decision, the landing point for the invasion was moved to the Bay of Pigs, an obscure area on the southern coast of Cuba, more than 80 miles from possible refuge in Cuba's Escambray mountains.
So what about this crisis is imposed from an exterior agent ("they") and designed to test Kennedy's "mettle"? Nothing. Kennedy executes a plan put in place by his predecessor, a Republican. Nothing "they" did so far.
Was the Bay of Pigs a success? No.
Why not? For one thing, on 15 April 1961, "eight B-26 bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields" but they failed to succeed at their mission, "leaving most of Castro's air force intact." So the CIA screwed up. Once the world knew that the U.S. was behind the air strike, Kennedy canceled the second one. Again, no externally fabricated crisis, no "they" there.
Nevertheless, two days later the CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed. They faced 20,000 Cuban troops as well as the Cuban Air Force. Kennedy relented and released "six unmarked American fighter planes to help defend the Brigade's B-26 aircraft flying from Nicaragua." The B-26s arrived late and were gunned down. Thus the U.S.-sponsored invasion failed, with 100 exiles killed and another 1,200 surrendering. These men would not be released until two months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
What Was The Cuban Missile Crisis?This has to be what Biden was referencing, as it's easy to put the Soviet Union in the villain's seat ("they"). Let the record show that this occurred near the end of the second year of Kennedy's Administration, not the first six months. A quibble, perhaps, but I'm not the person who guaranteed a crisis within six months of Obama's inauguration.
The short story is that in October 1962 the U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites in Cuba. In response, Kennedy imposed a naval blockade around Cuba. The world held its breath, sitting on the brink of nuclear war. In the end, the Soviets said that they wouldn't build the missiles; the U.S. gave up its plans to invade Cuba and agreed to withdraw U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey. (More on the quid pro quo, which I'm pretty certain you're never heard of unless you are a Cold War geek!)
Did the Cubans (and their ally, the Soviets) have a valid concern about a U.S. invasion? Given the Bay of Pigs debacle, what do you think?
Let's add some fuel to that fire of paranoia: Kennedy had initiated "the largest expansion of peacetime U.S. military power despite the acknowledgment by Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric that U.S. strategic forces far surpassed Soviet capabilities... [And] one of the five approved strategic plans at the time... called for a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union."
Does the U.S. escalating the arms race justify the Soviet Union publicly saying that they would not put missiles in Cuba although secretly they were doing just that? I don't know. Maybe, if the Soviets thought our military buildup might lead to a first strike against them.
While the Soviet placement nuclear missiles ninety miles from the United States may have been an absurdly risky and dangerous way to discourage both U.S. aggression against Cuba and a U.S. first-strike against the Soviet Union, it is an understandable reaction to the circumstances. The lesson we should learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis is that foreign leaders will act in seemingly irrational ways when their national security is threatened. Therefore, the United States should be more prudent in trying to overthrow or threaten other governments.
One last quotation from another essay, "Declassified History," that explains the efforts required by the National Archives to get documents unsealed. It also describes what subsequently happened to the official narrative about these events: much of it has been canned.
The very definition of the missile crisis has changed. Rather than a sudden episode, the crisis now emerges as the culmination of deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and between the United States and Cuba.... New revelations about the missile crisis have also undermined its image as a paradigm of successful crisis management. For years Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s description of President Kennedy's decision-making as "so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated" reflected a mythology that the successful outcome of the missile crisis derived from Kennedy's masterful management of both the making and implementation of U.S. policy. In reality, as Robert McNamara notes, the decision-making process in Washington, as well as in Moscow and Havana, was characterized by "misinformation, miscalculation, and misjudgment." Despite management efforts, according to Theodore Sorensen, the crisis "came close to spinning out of control before it was ended."
Foot In Mouth Disease?Let me ask my opening question again: is the Cuban Missile Crisis what Joe Biden meant by his cryptic "testing the mettle" comment? And was he doing a Biden and shooting off at the mouth or was this a campaign-crafted message?
I'm inclined to think the former, and not just because of this (telling?) comment from Biden's Seattle fundraising stop: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know." Seems to me he's "forgotten" a lot about the first two years of the Kennedy Administration.
Here's another reason. The campaign is trying to downplay Biden's remarks: "With our nation facing two wars and 21st-century threats abroad, Senator Biden referenced the simple fact that history shows presidents face challenges from day one." Ummm ... no, that's not even close to what Biden was saying.
Blogosphere ResponseThe final troubling issue is this. As others have noted, Biden's comment is eerily similar to Joe Lieberman's assertion in June that “our enemies will test the new president early."
That comment was treated with derision by Obama supporters. For example, the Huffington Post called it fearmongering. What is it, now that it comes from the campaign? It's nothing to talk about, at least according to Memorandum tracking.
Of course, the red state blogosphere is rolling on the virtual floor, laughing. Laughing for the wrong reasons, I believe, but laughing none-the-less.
I, on the other hand, am saddened. I'm saddened by Biden's blatant appeal to the Kennedy legacy. I'm saddened that Biden picked such an horribly inaccurate (and inappropriate) event on which to hang that appeal. And I'm saddened that I seem to be alone in my concern that Biden's comparison is flawed.
Tuesday October 21, 2008
What do we make of Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's weekend comparison of Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy? At a fundraiser in Seattle on Sunday, Biden said: (tip)
It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
Whether we are talking about the Bay of Pigs (three months after Kennedy's inauguration) or the Cuban Missile Crisis (October the following year), the implied comparison with either event is troublesome on many levels. Even if it was a gaffe (which I think it was), it's still troublesome because of what the anecdote says about Biden.
One level is this: "They" didn't do it. We did it. Perhaps Biden is trusting to America's well-known aversion to history. Or maybe he believes we get our history from Hollywood. What you need to know is this: America was the aggressor in the Bay of Pigs, and America's aggression arguably pushed the Soviet Union to defend its ally, Cuba, and itself which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That alone should be enough to give pause. Is Biden saying that Obama will take actions that cause an international incident or two? That he's just as much a hawk as President Bush?
What Was The Bay of Pigs? The U.S. wanted to overthrow Fidel Castro. To that end, the Eisenhower Administration trained Cuban exiles with the goal of helping them invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, with "anticipated ... support from the Cuban people." (Anything here sound familiar, circa 2002-2003?). From the John F. Kennedy library:
In Miami, Jose Miro Cardona, leader of the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the United States, became head of the United Revolutionary Front, poised to take over the provisional presidency of Cuba upon the successful invasion. Despite efforts of the [U.S.] government to keep the invasion plans covert, it became common knowledge in Miami. The press reported widely on events as they unfolded, and Castro soon learned of the guerrilla training camps in Guatemala. Shortly after his inauguration, in February of 1961, Kennedy authorized the Cuban invasion plans on the condition that US support be sufficiently disguised. As a result of this decision, the landing point for the invasion was moved to the Bay of Pigs, an obscure area on the southern coast of Cuba, more than 80 miles from possible refuge in Cuba's Escambray mountains.
So what about this crisis is imposed from an exterior agent ("they") and designed to test Kennedy's "mettle"? Nothing. Kennedy executes a plan put in place by his predecessor, a Republican. Nothing "they" did so far.
Was the Bay of Pigs a success? No.
Why not? For one thing, on 15 April 1961, "eight B-26 bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields" but they failed to succeed at their mission, "leaving most of Castro's air force intact." So the CIA screwed up. Once the world knew that the U.S. was behind the air strike, Kennedy canceled the second one. Again, no externally fabricated crisis, no "they" there.
Nevertheless, two days later the CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed. They faced 20,000 Cuban troops as well as the Cuban Air Force. Kennedy relented and released "six unmarked American fighter planes to help defend the Brigade's B-26 aircraft flying from Nicaragua." The B-26s arrived late and were gunned down. Thus the U.S.-sponsored invasion failed, with 100 exiles killed and another 1,200 surrendering. These men would not be released until two months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
What Was The Cuban Missile Crisis?This has to be what Biden was referencing, as it's easy to put the Soviet Union in the villain's seat ("they"). Let the record show that this occurred near the end of the second year of Kennedy's Administration, not the first six months. A quibble, perhaps, but I'm not the person who guaranteed a crisis within six months of Obama's inauguration.
The short story is that in October 1962 the U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites in Cuba. In response, Kennedy imposed a naval blockade around Cuba. The world held its breath, sitting on the brink of nuclear war. In the end, the Soviets said that they wouldn't build the missiles; the U.S. gave up its plans to invade Cuba and agreed to withdraw U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey. (More on the quid pro quo, which I'm pretty certain you're never heard of unless you are a Cold War geek!)
Did the Cubans (and their ally, the Soviets) have a valid concern about a U.S. invasion? Given the Bay of Pigs debacle, what do you think?
Let's add some fuel to that fire of paranoia: Kennedy had initiated "the largest expansion of peacetime U.S. military power despite the acknowledgment by Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric that U.S. strategic forces far surpassed Soviet capabilities... [And] one of the five approved strategic plans at the time... called for a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union."
Does the U.S. escalating the arms race justify the Soviet Union publicly saying that they would not put missiles in Cuba although secretly they were doing just that? I don't know. Maybe, if the Soviets thought our military buildup might lead to a first strike against them.
While the Soviet placement nuclear missiles ninety miles from the United States may have been an absurdly risky and dangerous way to discourage both U.S. aggression against Cuba and a U.S. first-strike against the Soviet Union, it is an understandable reaction to the circumstances. The lesson we should learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis is that foreign leaders will act in seemingly irrational ways when their national security is threatened. Therefore, the United States should be more prudent in trying to overthrow or threaten other governments.
One last quotation from another essay, "Declassified History," that explains the efforts required by the National Archives to get documents unsealed. It also describes what subsequently happened to the official narrative about these events: much of it has been canned.
The very definition of the missile crisis has changed. Rather than a sudden episode, the crisis now emerges as the culmination of deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and between the United States and Cuba.... New revelations about the missile crisis have also undermined its image as a paradigm of successful crisis management. For years Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s description of President Kennedy's decision-making as "so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated" reflected a mythology that the successful outcome of the missile crisis derived from Kennedy's masterful management of both the making and implementation of U.S. policy. In reality, as Robert McNamara notes, the decision-making process in Washington, as well as in Moscow and Havana, was characterized by "misinformation, miscalculation, and misjudgment." Despite management efforts, according to Theodore Sorensen, the crisis "came close to spinning out of control before it was ended."
Foot In Mouth Disease?Let me ask my opening question again: is the Cuban Missile Crisis what Joe Biden meant by his cryptic "testing the mettle" comment? And was he doing a Biden and shooting off at the mouth or was this a campaign-crafted message?
I'm inclined to think the former, and not just because of this (telling?) comment from Biden's Seattle fundraising stop: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know." Seems to me he's "forgotten" a lot about the first two years of the Kennedy Administration.
Here's another reason. The campaign is trying to downplay Biden's remarks: "With our nation facing two wars and 21st-century threats abroad, Senator Biden referenced the simple fact that history shows presidents face challenges from day one." Ummm ... no, that's not even close to what Biden was saying.
Blogosphere ResponseThe final troubling issue is this. As others have noted, Biden's comment is eerily similar to Joe Lieberman's assertion in June that “our enemies will test the new president early."
That comment was treated with derision by Obama supporters. For example, the Huffington Post called it fearmongering. What is it, now that it comes from the campaign? It's nothing to talk about, at least according to Memorandum tracking.
Of course, the red state blogosphere is rolling on the virtual floor, laughing. Laughing for the wrong reasons, I believe, but laughing none-the-less.
I, on the other hand, am saddened. I'm saddened by Biden's blatant appeal to the Kennedy legacy. I'm saddened that Biden picked such an horribly inaccurate (and inappropriate) event on which to hang that appeal. And I'm saddened that I seem to be alone in my concern that Biden's comparison is flawed.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren
Rudy Giuliani 'On the Record' on Biden's Obama 'Test' Comment
VAN SUSTEREN: So, mayor, Senator Biden, who's the vice-presidential candidate, of course, had some predictions.
GIULIANI: Senator Biden yesterday, if I'm quoting him correctly, says that he predicts -- he says, "Mark my words, that within six months there will be a major incident testing the mettle of Barack Obama if he's elected president, like there was John Kennedy."
And it seems to me that what Joe Biden is saying is that there are people throughout this world who believe that Barack Obama may not be ready to be president, as Joe Biden said himself a few months ago.
And the reality is that when we elected Ronald Reagan, we didn't have anybody test Ronald Reagan's mettle because the world was convinced that he was ready to handle it.
It would seem to me that John McCain is a lot closer to being like Ronald Reagan, having been tested in crisis. I don't think anybody is going to test John McCain's mettle. I think they know what John McCain is made of.
VAN SUSTEREN: There are two issues--one is the political issue about why he would say that, but the other is sort of like does he know something.
I take it that this was just sort of a campaign thought, that he is not privy to anything that should scare the rest of us, at least, any more than we should be on the alert.
GIULIANI: Well, Joe Biden is allowed to say the most extraordinary things and not questioned about it. It seems to me someone should be required to hold a press conference and explain what he meant.
This is a very extraordinary statement. He actually says, "Mark my words, there will be some terrible international incident." He says he can think of five or six places it can come, and then he mentions the Middle East and Russia. He only mentions two of them.
And he also then suggests that people won't be pleased with Barack Obama and people should stick with him.
So this is a very big thought that he has, and I think he should explain what he's talking about. But the reality is that if he has this kind of concern, that people are going to test Barack Obama's mettle, maybe he was right in the first place when he said that Barack Obama isn't ready to be commander in chief at this stage of his career.
John McCain is certainly ready to be commander in chief. And I don't think there will be any concern that anyone is going to test John McCain's mettle.
VAN SUSTEREN: To the extent that conventional wisdom would--actually, I'm always a little funny about conventional wisdom, whether I should put any credence into it or not. But conventional wisdom is if there's an economic crisis, that it will go with Senator Obama, if there's a terrorism crisis, that it will go with Senator McCain.
So it seems almost like a peculiar statement, like a political gaffe if he's putting it out there that something bad is going to happen. I imagine he'd like to take that one back.
GIULIANI: He said it with great certitude. "Mark my words." I think he said, "gird your loins."
So he prefaced this and surrounded it with very some strong language. "Mark my words, there will be an incident within six months testing Barack Obama's mettle." He predicted parts of the world it might come from, Russia, Middle East, left out the others that he was referring to. And then he said, "gird your loins."
So I don't know what he's talking about, but I think he should be required to have to explain what he's talking about.
And I do suggest that you don't need to have this kind of concern with John McCain. I don't think you'd have the same concern that anyone in the world would want to test John McCain's mettle. John McCain's mettle has been tested, and he's shown that he can handle crisis.
VAN SUSTEREN: We'll ask him. We'll see if we can't track him down.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.
GIULIANI: Thank you.
VAN SUSTEREN: So, mayor, Senator Biden, who's the vice-presidential candidate, of course, had some predictions.
GIULIANI: Senator Biden yesterday, if I'm quoting him correctly, says that he predicts -- he says, "Mark my words, that within six months there will be a major incident testing the mettle of Barack Obama if he's elected president, like there was John Kennedy."
And it seems to me that what Joe Biden is saying is that there are people throughout this world who believe that Barack Obama may not be ready to be president, as Joe Biden said himself a few months ago.
And the reality is that when we elected Ronald Reagan, we didn't have anybody test Ronald Reagan's mettle because the world was convinced that he was ready to handle it.
It would seem to me that John McCain is a lot closer to being like Ronald Reagan, having been tested in crisis. I don't think anybody is going to test John McCain's mettle. I think they know what John McCain is made of.
VAN SUSTEREN: There are two issues--one is the political issue about why he would say that, but the other is sort of like does he know something.
I take it that this was just sort of a campaign thought, that he is not privy to anything that should scare the rest of us, at least, any more than we should be on the alert.
GIULIANI: Well, Joe Biden is allowed to say the most extraordinary things and not questioned about it. It seems to me someone should be required to hold a press conference and explain what he meant.
This is a very extraordinary statement. He actually says, "Mark my words, there will be some terrible international incident." He says he can think of five or six places it can come, and then he mentions the Middle East and Russia. He only mentions two of them.
And he also then suggests that people won't be pleased with Barack Obama and people should stick with him.
So this is a very big thought that he has, and I think he should explain what he's talking about. But the reality is that if he has this kind of concern, that people are going to test Barack Obama's mettle, maybe he was right in the first place when he said that Barack Obama isn't ready to be commander in chief at this stage of his career.
John McCain is certainly ready to be commander in chief. And I don't think there will be any concern that anyone is going to test John McCain's mettle.
VAN SUSTEREN: To the extent that conventional wisdom would--actually, I'm always a little funny about conventional wisdom, whether I should put any credence into it or not. But conventional wisdom is if there's an economic crisis, that it will go with Senator Obama, if there's a terrorism crisis, that it will go with Senator McCain.
So it seems almost like a peculiar statement, like a political gaffe if he's putting it out there that something bad is going to happen. I imagine he'd like to take that one back.
GIULIANI: He said it with great certitude. "Mark my words." I think he said, "gird your loins."
So he prefaced this and surrounded it with very some strong language. "Mark my words, there will be an incident within six months testing Barack Obama's mettle." He predicted parts of the world it might come from, Russia, Middle East, left out the others that he was referring to. And then he said, "gird your loins."
So I don't know what he's talking about, but I think he should be required to have to explain what he's talking about.
And I do suggest that you don't need to have this kind of concern with John McCain. I don't think you'd have the same concern that anyone in the world would want to test John McCain's mettle. John McCain's mettle has been tested, and he's shown that he can handle crisis.
VAN SUSTEREN: We'll ask him. We'll see if we can't track him down.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.
GIULIANI: Thank you.
Commentary: Why we need Joe the plumber's dream
By Carl J. SchrammSpecial to CNN
Editor's Note: Carl Schramm is president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on the training and education of entrepreneurs and on promoting an environment that lowers the hurdles for their success. Schramm is the co-author of "Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism."
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (CNN) -- What appeals to me most about Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio -- better known today as "Joe the plumber" -- is his dream. He speaks for men and women we all know, who want to own their own business, who want to make a job, not take a job.
Joe wants to join the nearly 600,000 other Americans who launch their own companies each year. The proposed solutions to our current economic crisis (and it seems there's a new one almost every day) inevitably tilt toward the government as the answer.
Yet, today, more than ever, government is not the answer, and a recent telephone survey of 816 registered voters, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, shows that a majority of Americans agree. iReport.com: Do you support "Joe the plumber"
In the survey, which was conducted late last month, 70 percent of respondents said the success and health of the U.S. economy depends on the success of entrepreneurs. More than 60 percent said they had the most faith and confidence in the American people and the small business owner to guide the U.S. economy.
None of what America has achieved, or what we have given the world, could have happened had we not been first and foremost a nation that believed in entrepreneurs, a nation that could create wealth faster and with more predictability than any other place on Earth.
We create wealth by inventing -- automobiles, airplanes, air conditioners, personal computers and their operating systems, and, most recently, many of the leading Internet-based business models -- and then turning these inventions into viable products sold by American companies.
There are concrete risks if we veer from this tradition of deliberate risk-taking. Today, roughly one-third of our GDP growth is attributable to about 1,000 high-growth firms created every year. Even though there are fewer than 30,000 such firms, they account for nearly all the job growth in our economy. Whatever we do, we cannot afford to scare off those who would start these companies.
Yet that may be what's happening. Nearly half of our survey respondents reported seeing entrepreneurial opportunities in the current economy, but only a little more than one-quarter said they would consider seizing them within the next five years, down from 35 percent when we asked this question in December.
Seventy-one percent said that in today's economic climate, it has become more difficult to start a business. That's a statistic we should all worry about.
Here's why: If, instead of 1,000 new high-growth firms starting next year, we only start 500 or 250, the lost gain from this shortfall will never be retrieved.
Our tax regimes, our regulatory structures, our emerging view of risk and the obligations of individuals to commit to the market's success by advancing their own self-interest are all parts of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that is precious to our future.
They cannot be turned into blunt instruments that choke off entrepreneurs when the real target is the leadership of financial institutions. Congress and all policymakers need to be a bit more reflective and a little less reflexive.
That means focusing on the measures that will support and advance the success of entrepreneurs in America: building a more skilled workforce (especially in the areas of math, science and engineering), welcoming highly skilled immigrants, creating a more balanced system of intellectual property rights, reducing regulatory burden and unwarranted liability threats for small businesses, continuing to pursue open trading markets and reforming the employer-based health-care system.
Both politically and economically, the United States must treat entrepreneurship as its central comparative advantage. We must take that which we have perfected since our founding -- our economy's entrepreneurial ecosystem -- and exploit it for all it's worth.
We either nurture and support increasingly entrepreneurial activities in all aspects of American society -- and help export this perspective around the globe -- or run the very real risk of becoming progressively irrelevant on the world stage and suffering economically at home.
The most important people are not the politicians, nor the big businessmen, nor the bankers on Wall Street. They are important to our recovery but not central to it.
The most important people are average, everyday citizens, as they are the ones who overcome challenges to do what it is that entrepreneurs do: launch businesses, create jobs, and generate the wealth that will be more necessary than ever to purchase a future worth living.
In the end, the challenge for policymakers is not to create special programs that tilt the playing field in favor of entrepreneurs and against other types of businesses.
What's really needed is to create an environment where citizens from all walks of life -- spanning from plumbing to public relations to plastic surgery -- have the opportunity to become more entrepreneurial, as this will foster the dynamism and vitality that's at the heart of a vibrant, growing economy
Editor's Note: Carl Schramm is president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on the training and education of entrepreneurs and on promoting an environment that lowers the hurdles for their success. Schramm is the co-author of "Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism."
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (CNN) -- What appeals to me most about Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio -- better known today as "Joe the plumber" -- is his dream. He speaks for men and women we all know, who want to own their own business, who want to make a job, not take a job.
Joe wants to join the nearly 600,000 other Americans who launch their own companies each year. The proposed solutions to our current economic crisis (and it seems there's a new one almost every day) inevitably tilt toward the government as the answer.
Yet, today, more than ever, government is not the answer, and a recent telephone survey of 816 registered voters, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, shows that a majority of Americans agree. iReport.com: Do you support "Joe the plumber"
In the survey, which was conducted late last month, 70 percent of respondents said the success and health of the U.S. economy depends on the success of entrepreneurs. More than 60 percent said they had the most faith and confidence in the American people and the small business owner to guide the U.S. economy.
None of what America has achieved, or what we have given the world, could have happened had we not been first and foremost a nation that believed in entrepreneurs, a nation that could create wealth faster and with more predictability than any other place on Earth.
We create wealth by inventing -- automobiles, airplanes, air conditioners, personal computers and their operating systems, and, most recently, many of the leading Internet-based business models -- and then turning these inventions into viable products sold by American companies.
There are concrete risks if we veer from this tradition of deliberate risk-taking. Today, roughly one-third of our GDP growth is attributable to about 1,000 high-growth firms created every year. Even though there are fewer than 30,000 such firms, they account for nearly all the job growth in our economy. Whatever we do, we cannot afford to scare off those who would start these companies.
Yet that may be what's happening. Nearly half of our survey respondents reported seeing entrepreneurial opportunities in the current economy, but only a little more than one-quarter said they would consider seizing them within the next five years, down from 35 percent when we asked this question in December.
Seventy-one percent said that in today's economic climate, it has become more difficult to start a business. That's a statistic we should all worry about.
Here's why: If, instead of 1,000 new high-growth firms starting next year, we only start 500 or 250, the lost gain from this shortfall will never be retrieved.
Our tax regimes, our regulatory structures, our emerging view of risk and the obligations of individuals to commit to the market's success by advancing their own self-interest are all parts of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that is precious to our future.
They cannot be turned into blunt instruments that choke off entrepreneurs when the real target is the leadership of financial institutions. Congress and all policymakers need to be a bit more reflective and a little less reflexive.
That means focusing on the measures that will support and advance the success of entrepreneurs in America: building a more skilled workforce (especially in the areas of math, science and engineering), welcoming highly skilled immigrants, creating a more balanced system of intellectual property rights, reducing regulatory burden and unwarranted liability threats for small businesses, continuing to pursue open trading markets and reforming the employer-based health-care system.
Both politically and economically, the United States must treat entrepreneurship as its central comparative advantage. We must take that which we have perfected since our founding -- our economy's entrepreneurial ecosystem -- and exploit it for all it's worth.
We either nurture and support increasingly entrepreneurial activities in all aspects of American society -- and help export this perspective around the globe -- or run the very real risk of becoming progressively irrelevant on the world stage and suffering economically at home.
The most important people are not the politicians, nor the big businessmen, nor the bankers on Wall Street. They are important to our recovery but not central to it.
The most important people are average, everyday citizens, as they are the ones who overcome challenges to do what it is that entrepreneurs do: launch businesses, create jobs, and generate the wealth that will be more necessary than ever to purchase a future worth living.
In the end, the challenge for policymakers is not to create special programs that tilt the playing field in favor of entrepreneurs and against other types of businesses.
What's really needed is to create an environment where citizens from all walks of life -- spanning from plumbing to public relations to plastic surgery -- have the opportunity to become more entrepreneurial, as this will foster the dynamism and vitality that's at the heart of a vibrant, growing economy
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