Ishtarmuz’s rebuttal to: Barack Obama’s Connections to Socialism, Communism and Racial Divisiveness

Ishtarmuz’s Rebuttal to: Barack Obama’s Connections to Socialism, Communism and Racial Divisiveness Original artical written by Dee Gerrish in http://colorfultimes.com/2010/06/society/politics/barack-obamas-connections-to-socialism-communism-and-racial-divisiveness/?ec3_listing=posts

There’s no need for a long introduction…this article will “speak” for itself. The following is a list of Barack Obama’s connections to socialism, communism, Marxism, racial divisiveness, and political corruption. If you can ignore this and still support the man who refuses to disclose much of his past, then you should not be voting in November.

Yes, it needs no introduction.  We all know that association is not evidence.  We all know that we are all free to associate as we please and that a diversity of associations, combined with an open mind that has been taught to think, leads to wisdom. Just as we know that any person that labels, fears and restricts associations as taught by those they believe unquestioningly has been led to ignorance and bigotry. The last I heard, socialists and communists have an equal right to speak and vote in this country.  I suppose the writer here is attempting to interfere with that process.  I would think that suggesting people with particular opinions should not vote suggests a cavalier attitude in regard to the infringement upon our liberty.  You might even say she was being authoritarian and dictatorial.

The Early Mentors and Influences

Barack Hussein Obama Sr. – Barack’s father was an African socialist. …

Yes, those African socialists, perhaps the most justifiably socialist peoples on Earth, are dangerous and perhaps it is in Barack’s genes. We don’t need to even consider the early influences of the bigots that make such statements even though it may seem to be logically justified to ask. However, we, unlike some people, understand the fallacy and contradiction of such arguments.  People make choices and are responsible for their thought, not matter how unthinkingly they may have adopted half baked ideas from others or that they consider it the norm that others do likewise.

Stanley Ann Dunham – Barack’s mother was a 60′s liberal feminist and an atheist – …

Oh My God.  His mother was one of those dirty fucking hippies!  She was one of those that eroded our values of lily white heterosexual couples marrying, no matter what, in the eyes of God.  Such an abomination of abominations. Give me a break.

Frank Marshall Davis – “Frank,” as Barack Obama refers to him in his book, Dreams From My Father, was a member of the Communist Party (USA). He was also a former community organizer in Chicago. As a youth, Barack was treated to many of Davis’ rants about white supremacy, white Christianity…

And what rants, and only those rants, have the bigoted Right, as our writer here, been exclusively been exposed to without the benefit of hearing and seeing both sides? I would bet none.  How do I know that this has to be true? Isn’t this very argument what I said was not evidence? The answer to both questions is no, because with exposure to both sides you could, at least, put up a reasonably believable straw man of an argument pretending that you understood the various side of the issue. I see only a one-sided coin here.

Saul Alinsky – Mr. Alinsky was an avid and open socialist and the king of social activism, commonly called the “father of community organizing.” He created many organizations that relied on street agitation tactics, such as the Industrial Areas Foundation, which trained Obama in organizing tactics. He wrote the book, Rules for Radicals, which outlined many of the tactics used today in community organizing campaigns. Barack Obama worked with the Developing Communities Project and the Gamaliel Foundation – both inspired by Saul Alinsky’s tactics and socialist philosophy. Barack even wrote a chapter on community organizing in the book, After Alinsky. …

Everyone knows our Universities are bastions of socialism and that is all they teach our constitutional lawyers.

John L. McKnight – Referred to as Obama’s “community organizer mentor,” McKnight taught Barack about community organizing while they were both working with the Gamaliel Foundation – a Saul Alinsky production. John McKnight is also a former ACLU director and sits on the board of the National People’s Action (NPA), another leftist community organizing group. He teaches at Northwestern University  and he wrote a letter of recommendation to Harvard for Obama.

I had to go get another copy of the Catcher in The Rye before I wrote this rebuttal. I am considering the number of self help books on the market and how they are written and marketed. The formula is pretty simple.  I am considering writing a self help book called Rules for Anarchists.  To do it I would need to read books like Rules for Altruists and Rules for Libertarians because they would read very much the same with a few word changes here and there even though they may be philosophic opposites. I am also considering having one of those radical universities like Harvard or NorthWestern publish it. I should be careful not to defame the Right too badly in it because the ACLU might defend them in an defamation suit against me as the ACLU has defended the rights of such Right wing groups even  as such groups continue to deny other people the same rights they demand and defame the ACLU itself. I am also considering writing a play version.  It would be in the Theatre of the Absurd genre.

Radical Faith Testimonials

Reverend Jeremiah Wright – “Uncle J” was Barack’s former pastor and mentor at Trinity United Church of Christ. The philosophy of the Church is based on the teachings of James Cone’s black liberation theology. Cone admits that his theology is a mix of “black religion and Marxist philosophy.” Wright’s fiery anti-white, anti-capitalist, and anti-United States sermons landed him in a media controversy that eventually led to Barack’s denouncement of him in the spring of 2008, after 20 years of friendship. Wright had married Barack and Michelle and had baptized their two children. The pastor has also worked with Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, and his church’s magazine, Trumpet, has given Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award with praise coming from Wright.

Have you ever noticed that the bricks of religion are made from the brothel? If history told a story that excluded me, then upon reading the subtext, the deconstruction might say that those that exclude me are practicing an evil which needs to be overcome. If I say God Damn America, if I believe God Damn America, I may even be right in the context I say it. Blacks were lynched up to 50 per year up until the 1930s in this country.  If my grandfather was lynched by a group of black men in hoods for looking at a black woman, then I might have a pretty jaundiced view of blacks due to trauma alone.  If I saw the same irrationality in the grandchildren of these black men, even in minor matters, then I can understand clearly how such words, feeling and beliefs are triggered.  The writer of this article is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy with her language and thought process here. I will not debate her long.  To do so would foment the very entrenchment of hatred that I am explaining.

…

Domestic Terrorism and Social “Reform”

William Ayers – Mr. Ayers is an unrepentant domestic terrorist and an anti-capitalist. He was a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960′s and one of the militant spin-offs, the terrorist Weather Underground organization. These organizations were comprised of communist (“small ‘c’”) and anti-capitalist radicals. Part of Ayers’ Weather Underground strategy was to align with black revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party because among other things, they felt “white America” exploited black people and they were taken to the military-like discipline exhibited by those groups. Their activities included bombing police stations, the Capitol Building, and the Pentagon….

When I watched the events on the Danziger Bridge during Katrina, I wondered if the weathermen had done enough myself.  Since it has taken this many years and federal intervention to make a case speaks volumes. I did not have a jaundiced view then or now, I saw reality.

Bill Ayers served for six years on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) with Barack Obama. Both men headed up separate branches of the CAC that worked together on project funding. He also served on the board of the Woods Fund with Obama for three years. In 1995, Ayers hosted the event at his house which would become the kick-start to Obama’s political career. In that “meet-and-greet,” Alice Palmer handed over her Illinois State Senate reins to Barack (more on that later). Ayers wrote a book on the juvenile justice  system which Barack endorsed warmly, then the two were on a panel set up by Michelle Obama to discuss the merits of the book and current (at the time) legislation on the subject – which both Ayers and Obama opposed, as well as Bernardine Dohrn. Barack also taught classes at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where Ayers is a faculty member. In 2002, the Black Radical Congress (BRC) hosted a panel discussion at the University of Illinois-Chicago called “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis.” Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and three endorsers of the BRC were on this panel. Contrary to the protestations by the Obama campaign, Bill Ayers is more than “just a guy” who lives in Barack’s neighborhood.

Hitler was considered Man of the Year in 1938 in Time magazine. He was able to so influence history with lots of help from those around him. It suggests to me that rigid bigoted thinking can lead to authoritarian personalities that could help elect a demagogue to exercise absolute authority over subservient blind followers to influence even those that know better to blindly obey changes in laws that in more rational times would be considered unconstitutional.  This sounds much more to me like George W. Bush than Barack Obama.  The first step in this process of facistization is to label those abuses as those in the mouths of your opponent until you can unquestionably argue that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I will grant you this, Barack Obama needs to dismantle many more of the Bush policies than he has, to the degree has not, we are still trampling on too many peoples’ rights. Most of the socialist style democracies around the world developed in reaction to dictatorial fascism which backed corporate profits to drive economies to fund wars. Such dictatorships used with equal ease such terms as communism as socialism to mask what they were, but they never were either in form or reality.  To the degree that this country appears to be moving in such fascist directions, the quicker the likes of our author will drive our country into a system she most fears. Lay on, Macduff.

Bernardine Dohrn – She is the wife of Bill Ayers and a former radical herself. Dohrn was the leader of the Revolutionary Youth Movement of the SDS and the Weather Underground. … Dohrn is now an adjunct professor at Northwestern.

She does go on. Here we have one of those radicals that shaped the attitudes of modern America, one that turned the country against the Viet Nam War just to see it return with a differnt face with the same weak pretexts, one of those that is responsible for all the regulatory agencies that were emasculated by the Right for everyone to see the return of pollution, depression and death, one of those radicals for whom human values trumps corporate values.  Dirty fucking hippie.

Mike Klonsky – He was a Maoist, a former SDS national chairman (1968), and formed the “October League” when the SDS broke into several factions. The October League later became the Beijing-recognized U.S. Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), of which Klonsky became a leader in the 70′s, traveling to China and praising the Maoist leadership. He took over the Small Schools Workshop which was created by Ayers, when Ayers headed up the CAC in 1995. The CAC, with Barack as one of its chairs, continued to fund the Workshop throughout the CAC’s existence. Klonsky was also an official blogger for the Obama presidential campaign website in 2008.

Marilyn Katz – She oversaw security for the SDS, where she met Ayers. She was part of the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which organized the 2002 anti-war speech in Chicago where Barack Obama famously spoke out against the Iraq War…

Carl Davidson – He was a former leader of the SDS and a Maoist, like Klonsky. He was also one of the organizers for the 2002 anti-war speech. Davidson is the webmaster for the website, Progressives for Obama, which posts blogs from other 60′s radicals like Tom Hayden and Bill Fletcher, who created the website and its agenda.

Bill Fletcher – As mentioned, he was a 60′s radical (a Maoist) and is one of the creators of the Progressives for Obama website. While there is no evidence of a direct connection to the Obama campaign, he has endorsed the call of the Black Radical Congress along with Obama advisor Cornel West and has connections to others that are directly involved with Obama and his campaign.

Incestuous Relationships and Friendly Donations

Woods Fund – In 1993, Barack Obama became a board member with the Woods Fund. A man named Ken Rolling was a program officer with the fund at the time. During the late 80′s the Woods Fund gave grants to the Developing Communities Project, where Obama had worked as a community organizer. At the time, the Woods Fund was supporting the Chicago Local School Councils (LSC’s) which were created from the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. …

She still goes on.  The author probably would not want to talk about the incestuous sources of her information and the conservative astroturf front groups that support activity such as hers. Although as an authoritarian personality toadie she need receive not a dime.

Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) – Bill Ayers played a seminal role in the creation of the CAC. One of the main goals of the Challenge was to build on the 1988 Reform Act and the LSC’s, which he supported and in which his brother was involved. In 1995, the CAC began its operations with Barack Obama as Chairman of the Board. Bill Ayers was co-chair of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one of three branches of the CAC – the Board being another. Ken Rolling was brought in from the Woods Fund as Executive Director. In the first year a 5,000 grant was awarded to the Small Schools Workshop which was founded by Ayers but control was turned over to fellow radical, Mike Klonsky, once Ayers began the CAC. Obama and Ayers worked together in the CAC from 1995 until its end in 2001. That year, the CAC came to an end but handed startup funds over to Penny Pritzker and the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF). Pritzker is now part of the fundraising operation in the Obama campaign. In 2003, the CAC’s own report admitted that the ultimate goal of the CAC – to improve academic achievement – was a failure. …

Sidley & Austin – This is the Chicago law firm that brought in Obama as a summer associate in 1989. It’s also the firm where Michelle Obama worked and reportedly met Barack for the first time. Sidley had been outside counsel to Tom Ayers’ company, Commonwealth Edison. Howard Trienens, the partner that handled Commonwealth Edison, hired Bernardine Dohrn at Sidley. Trienens was on the board of trustees at Northwestern with Tom Ayers, Dohrn’s father-in-law, and Newton Minow, another Sidley partner.

ACORN – Obama has extensive ties to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, as do his two prominent spiritual influences, Wright and Pfleger. Obama’s Developing Communities Project and his “Project VOTE” campaign worked closely with ACORN. Both the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation – where Obama sat on both boards – gave frequent donations to ACORN. …

Yes, get involved to show the inanity of writers like this one, and put them back on the fringes where they belong. Don’t just register to vote, bring your neighbors and get involved in community building.  Radical stuff.

What is ACORN’s record? In St. Louis, eight local ACORN workers were indicted on charges related to voter fraud from fake information on registration forms in 2006. One of the eight pleaded guilty in March. Seven workers were indicted on felony charges in Seattle because of phony registration forms and some of the workers already had criminal records. Three workers pleaded guilty in 2007 and ACORN eventually settled the largest case of voter fraud in Washington State history, paying ,000 in restitutions. Similar problems are being investigated in at least twelve other states. ACORN’s political action committee (PAC) has endorsed Barack Obama for president.

The writer doesn’t have a clue what voter fraud is and may even have less of a clue of what is the real source of her information.

Notable Friends and Advisors

Linda Darling-Hammond – Currently an education advisor to the Obama presidential campaign, Darling-Hammond has some less obvious connections to the leftist agenda, so it will take a little longer to define them. She has writings and has supported the notion of an “education debt” which is said to plague minority communities. This concept is a product of another educator, Gloria Ladson-Billings. Ladson-Billings is one of the pioneers of the phrase “education debt,” which is apparently the by-product (at least in part) of a reparations agenda pushed by people like the factually-incorrect and racist, Randall Robinson and books like, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. In 2006, Ladson-Billings gave her Presidential Address to the leftist-tainted American Educational Research Association (AERA) in which she spoke about repaying the “education debt.” She also announced the selection of Darling-Hammond to the Association’s governing council that same week. As it turns out, Bill Ayers was recently elected as an AERA vice-president (but for some reason, he no longer appears on their website as a VP of curriculum studies.)

Yet, Bill Ayers does seem to put out newsletters.

Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings also appear together in two different liberal education programs, the Forum for Education and Democracy (FED) and the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) “Bold Approach.” Both of these programs preach the concept of “social justice,” which seems to be code for socialist redistribution programs. …

You tell me what part of public education in a public school is not socialist?  More bogeymen under the bed, duck and cover.

Laurence Tribe – Mr. Tribe was one of Barack’s professors/mentors at Harvard. He co-founded and is on the board of advisors of the American Constitution Society (ACS), a leftist counter to the Federalist Society. …

Charles Ogletree – He is another one of Barack’s Harvard professors/mentors and an advocate for reparations for slavery, despite the fact that he believes reparations could cost the government trillions of dollars – and the fact that those trillions would come from the taxpayers, including other black people. He has also been accused of plagiarizing, like his colleague Laurence Tribe, and is currently an advisor to the Obama campaign.

Cornel West – Mr. West defines his political ideology as “non-Marxist socialist.” He is an anti-capitalist and honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is a contributor/signatory to the Progressives for Obama website and has endorsed the Black Radical Congress’ (BRC) call for a “renewed struggle.” He … has many other connections to the racist and anti-Israeli, Louis Farrakhan.

Alice Palmer – She is a former executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council (a communist front group), which is an affiliate of the World Peace Council (a Soviet front group). In 1983, she attended the World Peace Council’s Prague Assembly. Palmer wrote an article in the People’s Daily World – a CPUSA newspaper – describing how impressive the Soviet system was when she attended the 27th Congress of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. When she decided to give up her Illinois Senate seat in an effort to win an election for U.S. Representative, she identified Barack Obama as her successor in the State Senate. She held a “meet-and-greet” at the home of Bill Ayers for Obama’s introduction into the Illinois political arena.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko – The relationship between Obama and Rezko goes back to 1990. That year, Tony Rezko offered Obama a job with his housing development business, but Obama declined. They remained friends ever since and Rezko became one of Obama’s biggest campaign contributors. … Tony Rezko was recently convicted of several felonies involving corruption and kickbacks to various Chicago politicians.

In June 2005, Barack Obama and Tony Rezko purchased adjacent properties on the same day and from the same owner in Chicago. Obama paid 0,000 below the asking price while Rezko paid full price. At the time, it was already known that Rezko was under investigation for criminal charges. In January of 2006, Mrs. Rezko sold a ten foot strip of property to Obama. When asked about the questionable circumstances surrounding the purchase of the two properties, Obama apologized and said his actions were “boneheaded.”

Rashid Khalidi – Mr. Khalidi is a Palestinian political activist and a professor at Columbia University. For six years in Beirut, he was the director of WAFA, the official Palestinian press agency where his wife had also worked as chief editor of the English section. … Khalidi has also held fundraisers for Obama and the Obama’s have had many dinners at the Khalidi’s home in Chicago. Khalidi also started the website Electronic Intifada – an anti-Israeli site – with Ali Abunimah, another Obama associate. Both Khalidi and Abunimah have considered Obama a friend and ally to their cause.

Robert Malley – This former “informal” foreign policy advisor to the Obama campaign resigned in May 2008 due to allegations that he was meeting with members of the terrorist organization, Hamas. Malley dismissed his meetings with these contacts as simply being part of his job. But he is also anti-Israeli with a long list of op-ed articles – … Not surprisingly, Malley’s father was a fervent anti-Western, “Third-Worldist” who wrote about liberation “struggle” – leftist code for anti-capitalism and pro-socialist/communist movements.

Other Supporters of Obama and/or His Policies

Hugo Chavez – Venezuelan dictator
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – President of Iran
Fidel Castro – Cuban dictator
Party of European Socialists
Louis Farrakhan – Supreme Minister, Nation of Islam
Democratic Socialists of America
Communist Party USA (CPUSA)
Frank Chapman – Member of U.S. Peace Council Executive Committee (an FBI-identified communist front group)
Mark Solomon – National co-chair, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Joel Wendland – Managing editor of CPUSA online magazine Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online
Pepe Lozano – Leader in the Chicago Youth Communist League and editorial board member of CPUSA newspaper, People’s World Weekly

Closing Thoughts

These are not just associations. All of these connections are family members, close friends and “mentors,” and affiliations/organizations that Obama willingly participated with and in – and financially supported. If Barack doesn’t know about their past and their political ideologies, then he is oblivious to his surroundings and does not belong in the White House as the leader of our country. If he knew about these things but didn’t think they mattered, then he is beyond naïve and does not belong in the White House. If he knew about these things and openly welcomed it, then he’s just downright dangerous and does not belong on a local school board, let alone in the White House.

I once sat in the middle of a Texas Barbecue and listened to the son of a Grand Dragon of the KKK explain proudly how his daddy hung niggers off a particular bridge up the road.  On the way to this event we saw a quote from Revelations on the walls of a junk yard.  If we were drinking we could have had an open container in the car with the loaded shotgun hanging from the back window of the trunk.  I could relay more such stories, but suffice to say that the same colonial spirit of God, Guns and Glory that made this country great in the distant past using tobacco, alcohol and slaves, thrived in the heartland in the not too distant past.  This author would have to do much more than give the details she has listed, which I am not even going to trouble myself much to question, to convince me that Barack Obama is unqualified for anything. Anyone with open eyes can see the words do not fit the facts.  For my money Barack Obama should have held to his more progressive principles and not embraced the fascist ones inherited from the previous administration.

All of these incestuous relationships directly place Barack Obama deep inside the socialist/communist movements in Chicago. His plans and policies are radical and his associations and partners are mostly on the very far left of politics. Socialism and communism are not – and shouldn’t be – acceptable philosophies in this country, especially from a person running for president. …

So she is concluding that we can elect fascist turning Republicans, but socialist leaning Democrats should be barred from running.  Think much?

Is this guilt by association? Not at all. These associations demonstrate a pattern of relationships with leftist radicals, criminally corrupt developers, and racially divisive activists. These relationships are not a matter of happenstance either. Barack sought out these groups from his early days. He did not grow up in Chicago – he chose to live there. His associations are a direct result of his decision-making and his chosen path to political power. He willingly participated in socialist-minded groups and worked with radicals and unrepentant criminals. He is beyond dangerous to this republic of ours and his policies are beyond destructive.

And when nothing but good comes from his policies are you going to rewrite this article or are you just going to say we were lucky?  Either he is going to bring down this county with his evil socialist plans or what he does will work.  If you want him to be responsible for the destruction, then when he averts all the destruction created by the previous administration, he will also be responsible for saving the country with those nasty socialist policies, no less.

For all of the voters going to the polls in November to vote for change:

You have been warned.

Yes, you have been warned.

Dee Gerrish has been writing articles since 1996. She is the author of the original article appearing in colorfultimes.com 06/26/10 as can be seen here: http://colorfultimes.com/2010/06/society/politics/barack-obamas-connections-to-socialism-communism-and-racial-divisiveness/?ec3_listing=posts

I have quoted more than I would usually and more than I really wished, but i do believe it is fair use and properly linked and credited. The reason for so much of the authors long article being quoted here, even without comment, is that I, like her, believe that the same words speak for themselves and should be read as she intended, but to opposite effect.  She has only demonstrated to me a narrow sheltered parochial view and that more reasonable people would not draw the conclusions she thinks are so obvious.

Ishtarmuz