From small acorns

The complete article with links documenting its facts is taken from Commentary Magazine here

From Small Acorns . . .
Jennifer Rubin – 10.09.2008 – 7:08 PM

The Bill Ayers connection continues to percolate. John McCain expresses the view that it is about truthfulness. He has a new ad. And so does the RNC. An Ayers victim pops up to tell his story.

Meanwhile, considerable evidence surfaces that as late as 1996 Barack Obama was a member of the New Party, a local Chicago branch of the Socialist Party. Relevant documents have been scrubbed from the New Party website but not before they were snatched by the Internet Archive Association. It seems someone really doesn’t want anyone poking around in Obama’s past. (If you spot similarities to the fight for disclosure of the Annenberg Challenge documents you are not alone.)

And more comes out about ACORN’s massive voter fraud activities. The latter gets some attention from Rep. John Boehner and from McCain . Obama seems to deny involvement with ACORN but the facts are fairly clear: he worked as a trainer, served as a lawyer and sat on the Woods Fund which gave them nearly $200K in funding up through 2002. Oh, and his presidential campaign has paid them $800,000 in voter registration efforts.

The media yawns. That’s expected but becoming increasingly hard to justify unless you beleive the mission of the media requires them to ignore any information harmful to Obama. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that McCain was the member of the John Birch Society up until 1996. Let’s say McCain worked for a group accused of diluting African America votes through vote fraud and sat on a board which doled out money to this group. But that’s not all: let’s say McCain attended a church where white separatism was preached. To top off our hypothetical, McCain started his career in the home of an abortion clinic bomber, sat on his foundation, appeared on panels with him and favorably reviewed his book.

Would any of that be a “distraction“? It seems clear that any one of those facts, let alone all of them, would be disqualifying. And if McCain in the Right Wing Nut hypothetical refused to talk about it, or lied about whether his bomber friend was “just” a guy in the neighborhood, would the media say “Oh gosh, too late in the campaign to discuss that“?

What is becoming inescapable is that Obama until his U.S. Senate run openly identified with and closely associated himself with a cast of far Left characters. Maybe he didn’t buy their philosophy or he was never around when they were spouting hatred of the United States. Maybe he grew out of them and now views them as fringe characters. We don’t know because he continues to deny that he was even part of this circle.

Some voters won’t care. Others will get nervous that he’s a closet radical. But the real concern for him and his supporters is that voters who matter in key swing states will get the sense that Obama has shown a peculiar tendency to associate with a bizarre crowd and now is lying. As Rudy Giuliani put it “It’s called judgment or lack thereof.” Whether ordinary voters finally get the sense that something is troubling in all this remains to be seen. But the danger is that at the very least, they might get the sense that he’s not being honest with them about who he is and what he believes, or at least believed until very recently.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Comments

  1. Your posts are always thoughtful and well written. I appreciate you posting things that concern you about Obama. It does make me think. In the interest of truth, are there things that concern you about McCain or Palin? It is always helpful to air all the concerns about the candidates so that an informed choice can be made. When the concerns are consistently logged for one candidate and none for the other I begin to feel that the goal is not full disclosure but making a case for a particular candidate. I’ve heard concerns about McCain’s age, role in the Keating five scandal, his erratic temperment and Palin’s fundamentalist church that invites Jews for Jesus, her possible abuse of power as governer and her lack of intellectual curiousity- none of which are logged on your blog. What about those concerns?

  2. Sandy,

    I appreciate your writing. I was beginning to think that this election was separating me from people I really care about. As to only looking at one side, well, this is my blog, my kingdom, and I get to make the decisions 🙂 , but I am happy to discuss these issues. McCain’s involvement with the Keating five was examined and found to be non-criminal. His erratic temperament is something the Democrats talk about, but in fact in all of these months of high intensity campaigning, I have not seen or heard reports of one incident and being that the main stream media are not in his pocket, I would imagine they would catch such an occurrence. I had not heard of Palin’s church inviting Jews for Jesus, but considering the Jewish population of Wasilla (is there a Jew in the town???) I don’t see it as a big problem– not compared to 20 years of vitriolic anti-Semitism and anti-white and anti-American sermons that Obama was listening to but not hearing. If you check out Reverend Wright on YouTube, it’s clear that no one could sit in that church and not hear what he was saying. The man was not speaking,; he was screaming his hate-filled rhetoric and Obama didn’t have to worry about a Church being in walking distance of his home… he could have gone anywhere, but apparently he didn’t find this kind of talk unacceptable enough to change churches. I am concerned with a man who shimmies out of every question. His associations with all sorts of unsavory people, with ACORN- were mere coincidences? How did he get so unlucky? I love the United States of America. I believe it is the most powerful human force for good in the world. For me, past behavior is the best predictor of future judgment and frankly, Obama scares me. So do the tactics of his supporters who have screamed about raping Sarah Palin, who have carried signs calling Bush a terrorist, who have attacked the homes of McCain supporters– and nary a word from the campaign about how inappropriate those actions are. I am worried. And yes, Sarah Palin’s possibly being president of the US doesn’t worry me a bit. Both Obama and Biden worry me more. No matter who wins, I pray that the country will flourish and be a force for good in the world, but yes, I am worried.

  3. rachel-blog says

    hello … Just trying to learn more about Jewish people outside of the American context, especially in Israel. As an American Jew, I am used to Jewish therapists being liberal types. 🙂 Your writings are very interesting. Do you feel a conservative administration is more pro-Israel than a liberal one? Do you agree with the conservative agenda on the domestic side as well (e.g. prayer in school?)Perhaps it doesn’t matter if your grandchildren in America don’t attend public schools. I hope i don’t seem belligerent, not trying to be. But am honestly curious.

  4. Rachel,
    There are both liberal and conservative therapists. As you read through writings of famous therapists, you will see a majority are liberal, but there are a lot of conservative ones as well. In fact, in recent years, there has been a backlash to the “do your own thing” school of therapy that implied that whatever feels good for the individual is good. Now, more therapists are likely to explore with their clients the implications of clients’ decisions on the people they love and particularly on the people who count on them. So no longer are women or men encouraged to leave unsatisfying marriages without at least discussing and considering the relative benefits versus losses of their children.

    As to whether conservatives or liberals will be more pro-Israel, I don’t really know. I do know that when Obama spoke to AIPAC and supported an undivided Jerusalem as capital of Israel, he corrected himself within hours saying that’s not really what he met. Today’s article by Jesse Jackson in the New York Post http://www.nypost.com/seven/10142008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_o_jesse_knows_133450.htm further enunciates Obama’s plans as to the treatment of Israel.

    As to prayer in school, no one is advocating it, so I don’t know why you bring it up. However, when I was in elementary through junior high school, we had Bible reading at the beginning of each day, and to tell you the truth, even when it was readings from the Christian Bible, I felt as if it was a nice way to start the day. I was a child of a family that identified itself as Jewish, but was not ritually observant. I don’t think that prayer hurts anyone. However, please be careful about buying the scare tactics of the liberals. They talk about subjects such as reproductive choice and prayer in school that are not anywhere on the agenda of the Republicans. That’s called “creating a straw man.”

    And to clear up one more thing: all of my grandchildren are living in Israel. That is the major reason for my wanting to have the candidate most committed to the ongoing survival of Israel elected. Iran is not just an insignificant little country. It is a huge country with a maniacal leader who is building nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. And if you don’t believe me, read his speeches.

  5. rachel_blog says

    I have been a lifelong liberal and have thought long and hard about the issues, so I don’t think most of my opinions will change. I do have political differences with conservatives. I’m married to a conservative so luckily we get along in other ways!!

    I’m sure the political life in Israel is endlessly fascinating. I’ve never visited but hope to one day.