Same Same, but Different?

[Rascal]

Is that TC posting as Tigerman?

[Tigerman]

@Huang Guang Chen

So your main objection to the man is that other people like him?

Not at all.

But, I do think its pretty creepy that people sing about/to him like they sing to/about Jesus. That sorta freaks me out.

You don’t think that’s creepy? Makin’ little kids, who don’t have a clue, sing His praises?

That creeps me right out.

[Huang_Guang_Chen]

But surely that’s not Obama’s doing? I’d call that a strong sign America has had enough of what it’s been dealt in recent years and think, rightly or wrongly, Obama is going to bring about some positive change.

You want fruit cakes? There’s no shortage of them on both sides.

HG

[Chewycorns]

@Tigerman

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]So your main objection to the man is that other people like him?

Not at all.

But, I do think its pretty creepy that people sing about/to him like they sing to/about Jesus. That sorta freaks me out.

You don’t think that’s creepy? Makin’ little kids, who don’t have a clue, sing His praises?

That creeps me right out.[/quote]

Should we really be suprised that Obama and his compatriots are trying to indoctrinate kids? Considering the friends that Obama keeps, I am really not suprised at all.

@City Journal

Barack Obama complains that he’s been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city’s civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.

A Chicago native son, Ayers first went into combat with his Weatherman comrades during the “Days of Rage” in 1969, smashing storefront windows along the city’s Magnificent Mile and assaulting police officers and city officials. Chicago’s mayor at the time was the Democratic boss of bosses, Richard J. Daley. The city’s current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the public schools and consulted him on the city’s education-reform plans. Obama’s supporters can reasonably ask: If Daley fils can forgive Ayers for his past violence, why should Obama’s less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification? It’s hard to disagree. Chicago’s liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayers’s case, and Obama can’t be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers’s politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.” Ayers’s texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

Unfortunately, neither Obama nor his critics in the media seem to have a clue about Ayers’s current work and his widespread influence in the education schools. In his last debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama referred to Ayers as a “professor of English,” an error that the media then repeated. Would that Ayers were just another radical English professor. In that case, his poisonous anti-American teaching would be limited to a few hundred college students in the liberal arts. But through his indoctrination of future K–12 teachers, Ayers has been able to influence what happens in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of classrooms.

Ayers’s influence on what is taught in the nation’s public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation’s largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

AERA already does a great deal to advance the social-justice teaching agenda in the nation’s schools and has established a Social Justice Division with its own executive director. With Bill Ayers now part of the organization’s national leadership, you can be sure that it will encourage even more funding and support for research on how teachers can promote left-wing ideology in the nation’s classrooms—and correspondingly less support for research on such mundane subjects as the best methods for teaching underprivileged children to read.

The next time Obama—the candidate who purports to be our next “education president”—discusses education on the campaign trail, it would be nice to hear what he thinks of his Hyde Park neighbor’s vision for turning the nation’s schools into left-wing indoctrination centers. Indeed, it’s an appropriate question for all the presidential candidates.

city-journal.org/2008/eon0423ss.html

[Dr_McCoy]

youtube.com/watch?v=6GMww19uz4Y
Talk about creepy. Palin says the same things Bush did in 2000.
Same old, same old, but not undifferent.

[Tigerman]

@Huang Guang Chen

But surely that’s not Obama’s doing?

I don’t think its his doing.

@Huang Guang Chen

I’d call that a strong sign America has had enough of what it’s been dealt in recent years…

That doesn’t make it any less creepy.

@Huang Guang Chen

…and think, rightly or wrongly, Obama is going to bring about some positive change.

If he’s elected, perhaps he will. But, politics is an ugly business. Presidents don’t often get to do what they want to do.

@Huang Guang Chen

You want fruit cakes? There’s no shortage of them on both sides.

No argument there.

I just posted those vids as a reference to how some people are looking at Obama as the “Obamessiah” and how many others have a “teen girl crush” on him. A few people took issue with me for using those terms/phrases, but, I think they are good and funny descriptives of the way some people look at/to Obama.

That aspect of regard for Obama has got to be fair game for ridicule… it begs for it.

[Dr_McCoy]

So very creepy.

[quote]Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution.

Any president deserves a vice president who will be a sound adviser and trustworthy supporter. But the American people also deserve and need a vice president who understands and respects the balance of power – and the limits of his or her own power. That is fundamental to our democracy.

So far, Ms. Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong.[/quote]
Dick Cheney, Role Model
I just hope she’s gone by halloween. It’s scares me enough.

[Huang_Guang_Chen]

@Chewycorns

Should we really be suprised that Obama and his compatriots are trying to indoctrinate kids? Considering the friends that Obama keeps, I am really not suprised at all.

Thanks for punctuating my point about fruitcakes on both sides. Not you of course, I mean you don’t really believe this shit you post, I mean the author of this ridiculous drivel you keep linking to.

HG

[Chewycorns]

@Huang Guang Chen

[quote=“Chewycorns”]Should we really be suprised that Obama and his compatriots are trying to indoctrinate kids? Considering the friends that Obama keeps, I am really not suprised at all.

Thanks for punctuating my point about fruitcakes on both sides. Not you of course, I mean you don’t really believe this shit you post, I mean the author of this ridiculous drivel you keep linking to.

HG[/quote]

The City Journal is published by the Manhattan Institute. You think the trustees and notable contributors are fruitcakes?

manhattan-institute.org/html/trustees.htm

[Huang_Guang_Chen]

If this is the sort of crap they’re peddling, then yes, fruitcakes. Smear peddling fruitcakes, but fruitcakes nonetheless. And frankly, right now, these let the markets decide “believers” should be too busy wiping egg off their faces after the nationalisations and government bailouts their man Bush has enacted. as he desperately tries to rectify the worst financial crisis in 80 years . . . all under his watch!

Privatise the profit, socialise the loss. Go sell that to the folks on Struggle Street! Nobody gives a toss when the bankers lose their rich toys, but that’s just the start of this process, and before a year is out, the electorate are going to be screaming for blood as unemployment and the financial pain really begin to bite. Like it or lump it, the global mood is heading decidedly left.

Seems Palin’s jumped on the institute’s bandwagon, pretty much echoing the claims in your link above.

[quote]Governor Palin’s comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign’s statement this morning that they would be launching Swiftboat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills,’’ said Obama-Biden spokesman Hari Sevugan.

"What’s clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy.’’ [/quote]

It’s all about the economy, stupid!

HG

[Rascal]

Do you want a real fruitcake? Here is one:

Palin makes Obama terrorist claim

[Dragonbones]

Wow. Talk about desperate.

And an utter lack of scruples.

[Tigerman]

[quote=“Rascal”]Do you want a real fruitcake? Here is one:

Palin makes Obama terrorist claim
[/quote]

That’s kind of a crap title, even if you did just borrow it from the Guardian.

Palin simply stated that Obama is hanging out with terrorists. Is that statement false?

[MikeN]

[quote=“Tigerman”][quote=“Rascal”]Do you want a real fruitcake? Here is one:

Palin makes Obama terrorist claim
[/quote]

That’s kind of a crap title, even if you did just borrow it from the Guardian.

Palin simply stated that Obama is hanging out with terrorists. Is that statement false?[/quote]

Yes

This has been part of the shorter answers to stupid questions series.

[Rascal]

@Tigerman

That’s kind of a crap title, even if you did just borrow it from the Guardian.

Use Google, the Guardian is not the only one that uses that kind of ‘crap title’, which IMHO is spot on.

Palin simply stated that Obama is hanging out with terrorists. Is that statement false?

Yes. She is simply lying.

BTW: Palin’s accusation itself is not commented on at factcheck.org, so I guess we are talking opinion only, eh?

[maoman]

@Tigerman

Palin simply stated that Obama is hanging out with terrorists. Is that statement false?

Yes.

[quote]“Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” She referred to an article in Saturday’s New York Times about Obama’s relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that “the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called ‘somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.’”

Several other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have debunked the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship.

…CNN’s review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said the two had not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005. He said they last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in a Chicago neighborhood where both live.[/quote]
I’m satisfied that Obama isn’t a terrorist and doesn’t hang out with them or sympathize with them. I’m also convinced that the Republican Party is desperate. They’re going to be routed in November, and I will be drinking champagne.

[marboulette]

@Maoman

I’m also convinced that the Republican Party is desperate. They’re going to be routed in November, and I will be drinking champagne.

I wouldn’t count my chickens so fast. A few things up them sleeves just yet. But yes, I’ll drink to that.

marboulette

[Chewycorns]

Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called ‘somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.’"…CNN’s review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

I wouldn’t trust CNN reviews of records. See how they fudged up their review of records this week when they reported that Steve Jobs had a massive heart attack. Shoddy journalism indeed.

Obama may have been young when Ayers committed these acts, but they were buddies on the Woods Fund when Ayers said he “had no regrets” for his violent actions with the Weathermen and desecrated the American flag for the NYT article. On the board together?

@Little Green Footballs

Barack Obama was much older than 8 when William Ayers was photographed stepping on a US flag in 2001, for an article in which Ayers said he had “No Regrets” for his violent actions in the Weather Underground.

In fact, at the same time Ayers was in a Chicago alley desecrating the flag, he and Barack Obama were serving on the board of the Woods Fund together: PolitiFact | Obama served on board with Ayers.

Deborah Harrington, president of the Woods Fund, a philanthropic organization in Chicago, said Obama was a director from 1994 through 2001. That overlaps Ayers’ time as a director by three years. It also means Obama served with Ayers for the final months of 2001, after Ayers made his comments to the New York Times.

littlegreenfootballs.com/article … ed_on_Flag

@Maoman

I’m satisfied that Obama isn’t a terrorist [/quote]

But aren’t you a little concerned about the lack of character and morals and the shady pasts of his financial backers, associates, and spiritual mentors? I mean, let’s look at what we do know. Obama’s first financial backer is a “slumlord” that has been convicted of 16 counts of corruption, his associate (Ayers) bombed the Pentagon and said “he didn’t do enough”, and his pastor blamed America for the 9/11 attacks. What does this say about his judgement?
youtube.com/watch?v=49eJhVriy9w

[quote=“National Review”] In 1970, three of [Ayers’] confederates, including his then girlfriend Diana Oughton, were accidentally killed when the explosive they were building to Ayers specifications (Ayers was a bomb designer) went off during construction. Back when Ayers was being more honest about his intentions, he admitted that the purpose of that bomb had been to murder United States soldiers:

That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, “tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too.”

In fact, Ayers was a founder of the Weatherman terror group and he defined its purpose as carrying out murder. Again, from Discover the Networks:

Characterizing Weatherman as “an American Red Army,” Ayers summed up the organization’s ideology as follows: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.”

Now he wants you to think they just wanted to break a few dishes. But in his book Fugitive Days, in which he boasts that he “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972,” he says of the day that he bombed the Pentagon: “Everything was absolutely ideal. … The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

And he wasn’t singular. As I noted back in April in this article about Obama’s motley collection of radical friends, at the Weatherman “War Council” meeting in 1969, Ayers’ fellow terrorist and now-wife, Bernadine Dohrn, famously gushed over the barbaric Manson Family murders of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three others: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” And as Jonah recalled yesterday, “In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered ‘fork’ gesture its official salute.” They weren’t talking about scratching up the wall-paper.

Obama’s got a lot of explaining to do for keeping this kind of company (among some of his other notorious, America-hating company). Maybe some day the McCain campaign will press for that explanation — hopefully before Inauguration Day.

corner.nationalreview.com/post/? … VjZTY1ZGY=

[quote=“Maoman”]
Republican Party is desperate. They’re going to be routed in November, and I will be drinking champagne.[/quote]

Don’t think so. I think the Conservatives in Canada will win a majority in mid October and McCain will win in a close one in November. In both instances, I’ll be drinking Chewy’s punch–Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, Bombay Sapphire Gin, 2 types of powdered Koolaid, a little bit of sugar, and 5 lemons. :beatnik: It will be highly entertaining to see the whining on here in both instances.

[sjcma]

[quote=“Chewycorns”][quote=“Maoman”]
Republican Party is desperate. They’re going to be routed in November, and I will be drinking champagne.[/quote]

Don’t think so. I think the Conservatives in Canada will win a majority in mid October and McCain will win in a close one in November.[/quote]

I predict the Conservatives in Canada will win a minority and McCain will lose to Obama.

How about a friendly wager for both contests? Let’s say, the monetary worth of a nice vacuum pack of Taiwanese high-mountain oolong tea per contest + postage. I could use some refills as the two packs I won from Mer last year (hockey bet) has already run out.

[Huang_Guang_Chen]

The conventional wisdom on last night’s debate is that by not losing, Sarah Palin won. I have the opposite view. By not winning Sarah Palin lost.

I find it hilarious that the conventional view is indeed that by not losing appallingly, Palin somehow won that debate. it’s kind of like a retard handicap for the special Olympics. But more astounding, is how willing partisan supporters are to prop up this fallacy, in most cases by attempting to deflect the key points, just like Chewy has done above.

With the British Forces commander in Afghanistan coming out over the weekend and saying a decisive victory in that country was unrealistic, and amid the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in 80 years, there should be plenty of substance to discuss. Alas no, fiction is the preferred realm of the Repubs, and one can well understand why they’re desperate - and that’s the word - to switch the debate to scurrilous rubbish rather than discussing the real headlines! Let’s hope the voters aren’t also afflicted with this ostrich disease.

So to commandeer Tigerman’s thread title. While the Repubs desperately resort to their same, same dirty swiftboating, the world hopes the outcome will be different this time.

HG