Terrorist Ayers-Obama Connection Uncovered

[libertyworld]

September 24, 2008

Michael Barone

Stanley Kurtz has been investigating the Chicago Annenberg Challenge files in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle, and he has reported on his results in the Wall Street Journal. I have written before on Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber, who claims to have set bombs at the U.S. Capitol, and Kurtz notes that Obama has tried to play down his long and close association with Ayers. Ayers was the cofounder of the CAC, and Obama was chairman of the board; Kurtz makes it clear that Obama worked more closely with Ayers than previously suggested. But mostly Kurtz concentrates on what the CAC actually did. There are two serious issues here: Mainstream media have shown an almost complete lack of interest in both of them.

One is the closeness of Obama's relationship with an unrepentant terrorist bomber. The second is Obama's own record at the CAC. This was one of the few executive positions Obama has held, and his record on education is undoubtedly a legitimate political issue. From what Kurtz has unearthed, the "reforms" Obama sought to advance were misguided and the CAC largely unsuccessful. I'm open to evidence that the CAC was more successful, and Obama could quite reasonably claim that he has changed the views on education he apparently held when he headed the CAC board. People can learn from experience, and we want a president willing to make changes when policies fail.

But it's interesting that Obama, in his two autobiographies and in his campaign, has said almost nothing about the one executive position he has held and his one major effort on education. If you don't have anything positive to say, it's a good idea to say nothing and hope that nobody else will say anything either.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/barone/2008/9/...o-william-ayers

Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

By STANLEY KURTZ

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice...

...The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

[MasterPo]

There is a lot of stuff in Obama's past no one in the main media is even bothering to look at. Whole years of his life, life-long associations, business and political connections (like him being the #2 receiver of contributions from Freddie/Fannie in a mere 3 years in office, etc) that are just being passed over by the media at large.

[InHuman]

Wow this again? Guess what, Mccain was "associated" with racists, and POW guards who torture people. OMG.

[MasterPo]

There's "associated" and then there's associated.

Not trying to split hairs, but do you know all the political, social and economic POV for every single person you work/play/hang with?

And sometimes you have little choice. If I were to find out my boss was a racist all I could do was leave my job. Not a smart move in this day and age. But that doesn't mean I agree and support his POV if I stay either.

[InHuman]

^^^^

Um exactly. Obama worked with the guy, but it dosn't mean he supports everything he did 20 years ago..

[MasterPo]

Um exactly. Obama worked with the guy, but it dosn't mean he supports everything he did 20 years ago..

I wouldn't work with Charles Manson today because of what he did 20+ years ago.

You are known by the company you keep. It's that simple.

[Lt_Ripley]

try reading what FOX news fact check has to say - so stop the misinformed con rhetoric.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/04/17/fa...-william-ayers/

Heck even the Catholic Church has utilized Ayers ....... for the same reason - education . schools , restructure.

Edited September 25, 2008 by Lt_Ripley

[pendora]

It's the whole Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Search anyone's path and you'll find relationships...near or distant, to unsavory people.

[MasterPo]

It's the whole Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Search anyone's path and you'll find relationships...near or distant, to unsavory people.

With Obama you only have to go 1 degree.

[InHuman]

With Obama you only have to go 1 degree.

So he's married, related to, or a CLOSE friend of Ayers?