Press : Campaign Creeps Into Issue of Racism
That, Regardless of the Topic

It is apparently not enough for some press folks just to boost the Obama campaign prospects. You get the real feeling that many journalists are just champing at the bit to accuse the McCain campaign of raising the issue of race in the Presidential campaign. They want a blow-out, not a squeaker.

The Obama apologists know that any plausible charge of racism, could easily turn the up-and-down race into a rout. So, a few of our helpful media elites have simply redefined almost any criticism of Obama, as somehow being racially charged.

Voila! You criticize Obama? You're a damned racist! It neatly dovetails with Obama having telegraphed, prior to the heating up of the general election, that his opponents would engage in racism, because, as Obama put it, he would only be tagged as risky, having a funny name, "and he doesn't look like all the Presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills."

In a recent speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ray Suarez, the senior correspondent for PBS, preposterously claimed that virtually any criticism of Obama, or even any discussion of certain topics with regard to Obama, -- e.g., religion -- is really just about race. He included on the list of suspect topics -- get this one -- any "opinions about Obama's inexperience." Well, that conclusion brands Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden -- among a host of others -- as racists. What bumptious nonsense, especially coming from a man like Suarez who has an ethical obligation to be neutral. PBS is dependent on taxpayer funds, after all!

Much of the material for Suarez' speech seemed to curiously and quite closely mirror a mid-September Nicholas Kristof column in the NYT, suggesting in strong terms, that virtually any criticism of Barack Obama is now officially conferring "otherness" on Obama. Kristoff said in his column that he felt obliged to write it in order to "make up" for having written a May 2007 column in which he noted that, having grown up as a Jakarta, Indonesia "street kid," that

Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

Kristof was apparently put off by others who had used that column to raise questions about Obama. The result was a claim that virtually any criticism, of Obama is racially charged because it is an appeal to his "otherness." Again, is overall theme is complete nonsense.

Anyway, several fellow travelers in the print media, have been marching along with the two of them, at least in general cadence, if not in lock-step. Dana Milbank and Anne Kornblut, both of the Washington Post, come to mind.

Last week was "hate" story week, launched by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, focusing on a pitifully thin number of supposedly "hateful" comments by attendees at McCain rallies. Never mind that a few such comments tend to punctuate any political rally in which thousands are gathered. Moreover, as Michelle Malkin points out, a steady stream of hateful actions (not just comments) have virtually characterized the politics from the left for a long time now!

Then too, they were unidentified individuals in the Milbanks story. Who knows? They may have been Obama campaign, or DNC plants, for all we know. Probably not, but who's to say? Certainly not Dana Milbank.

Milbank specifically reported that at a campaign event in Clearwater, FL, while Sara Palin was talking about Bill Ayers (the unrepentant domestic terrorist leader of the Weather Underground, later turned radicalizing "educator," and pal of Obama), some guy in the audience yelled, "Kill him."

(UPDATE: As reported, the Secret Service investigated and confirmed that no such statement was made about Senator Obama at Clearwater. Milbank told Politico that.

Nor, was any such statement at all made, as was falsely reported in a story by a reporter for the Scranton Times-Tribune at another Palin rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That story was picked up and re-reported by multiple major-media outlets. That "incident" looks suspiciously like a case of "fabulism." After a Secret Service investigation, the (Scranton) Times-Leader reports that the Times-Tribule reporter was the only person there who heard the alleged comment! Therefore, Senator Obama was likely lying about that claim when he brought it up in the last debate -- as he receives all such Secret Service investigative information.)

Now, during the 1990s, Bill Ayers was a close collaborator, for several years, with Barack Obama, presiding over a singularly unsuccessful "education project" in the troubled school system in Chicago, called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Obama was the President and Chairman of the Board, while Bill Ayers was the overall policy implementer. Together, the two of them oversaw the frittering away of as much as $160 million dollars on an attempt to "radicalize" the Chicago school system, even though Ayers had promised the foundations who gave them the money, that they would create "a renaissance in the classroom." That high-sounding promise was penned by Ayers, who wrote that in the original grant to the Annenberg Foundation. Other grantors, in reliance on the Annenberg gift of $50 million, ponied up as well. That is the way "challenge" grants work.

Well, there never was any "renaissance," of course. The real victims of that enterprise were the school children of Chicago, who derived no academic "achievement" or "engagement" value from the Ayers/Obama project. That was the exact conclusion of the CAC's own evaluators, when they analyzed the CAC results back in 2003.

But back to Clearwater, Florida and the so-called "hate" comments. The Milbank story reported that, as Sarah Palin was specifically talking about Obama's pal, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. He indeed was the leader of a terror organization, the Weather Underground. They bombed the United States Pentagon, bombed the United States Capitol, bombed a few police stations, including one in New York City, bombed the home of Judge John Murtagh, a New York state trial judge overseeing a trial of radicals, and also plotted to bomb the Officers Club at Fort Dix, but were only prevented from doing so because the bomb they were assembling went off prematurely in an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York, killing three fellow terrorists. Hearing Sarah Palin talk about terrorist Bill Ayers, some guy in that Clearwater, FL crowd reacted thusly:

"'Kill him!' proposed one man in the audience."

That was it. No identification of the man, no age, no description or identification by race. Milbank did not say whether the man was 18 or 88, or anywhere in between. He did not say whether the was White, Black, Hispanic . . . whatever. Milbank obviously made no effort to in any way identify the person, or say whether the guy may have had an ironic smile on his face when he said it -- you know, like someone shouting, "Kill the Ump!" at a ballgame.

Nothing of the sort.

Thereafter, the Milbank meme got some limited traction, with copycat follow-up stories, but by week's end it seemed to backfire a bit with Congressman John Lewis' embarrassingly obnoxious over-reach statement, in which he charged in writing that John McCain and Sarah Palin "are sowing the seeds of hatred and division" and that it recalled the bad old George Wallace days, and, further, that it could result in the murder of another "four little girls" as occurred in Birmingham decades ago. Even the Obama campaign had to respectfully disagree with him on that one, and John Lewis himself backed away the next day as well.

But notably, the Obama campaign did not disagree with one thing. They said Lewis was correct to condemn what they called

"the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.' "

Now comes Joe Biden advancing the theme further, saying that John McCain will "regret for the rest of his life" mixing terrorism with race. Well, that's curious. When exactly did John McCain do that? He didn't. That's Joe trying to "mix" terrorism and race. That is their theme -- every criticism of Obama is really about race. It is not John McCain's theme, or Sarah Palin's.

Sarah Palin indeed did publicly say that Barack Obama was "palling around with terrorists" during his community organizer days back in Chicago. That's because he was. Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are both unrepentant domestic terrorists. They hosted a political gathering in their living room for him to launch Obama's political career back in the day. And Obama served on at least three different Boards with Ayers -- the Woods Fund, the CAC and the Joyce Foundation. They "palled around" together.

Back in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the Ayers/Dohrn pair ran the terrorist organization called the Weather Underground, which openly declared war on the United States. Dohrn was the person who publicly made that announcement. Both were indicted and became fugitives, going underground for several years and living with fake identities, to avoid capture and prosecution for their terrorist crimes. During that period, according to F.B.I. Director Hoover, Dohrn was "the most dangerous woman in America."

Fugitives from justice for several years during the 70s, Ayers and Dohrn eventually surrendered to federal authorities.

Bernadine Dohrn, by the way, was the person who personally took credit for the bombing at the Murtagh home, where a nine year old child was sleeping. That child, young John Murtagh fortunately escaped harm. Dohrn eventually went to jail for some of her activities, but Bill Ayers was acquitted because of the improper way the evidence was gathered against him. He got off on a technicality for his violent terrorist crimes. But to remove all doubt, he then mockingly shoved it in everyone's face by publicly proclaiming that he was, "Guilty as sin; free as a bird!"

Then comes Washington Post reporter, Anne Kornblut, also has offered her contribution. She wrote that, in spite of a reluctance on the part of both Presidential candidates to raise race as an issue, their surrogates and supporters seem to have other ideas, and that race has now suddenly become an issue in the Presidential campaign. She then falsely accused Sarah Palin of raising race when she said Obama was "palling around with terrorists" during his "community organizer days in Chicago.

Entitled "Issue of Race Creeps Into Campaign," her angle seems to be that suddenly the campaign for the White House has taken a racial turn.

One wonders . . . where has Anne been? Perhaps on some remote desert island, "discovering the internet" with Bill Curtis? What a load of hogwash!

Just a reminder, Anne . . . You must recall back at the end of January when you wrote the blog post entitled, "So much for moving beyond race," about Bill Clinton making the Presidential campaign racial when he tried to minimize, Senator Obama's victory in the South Carolina primary this year, noting that Jesse Jackson had won the Presidential primaries there in both 1988 and 1992! And, for Bill Clinton, the issue would not go away.

Ed Rendell, Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, and a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton back in the primaries, did his part to make the campaign about race when he matter-of-factly signaled that white, small town and rural Democrats, those living in large numbers in smaller towns in central Pennsylvania, would not likely pull the lever for a black candidate, that is, once they got in the voting booth. At the time, his incredible implication seemed to be that voters should go for Hillary, at least in part because Obama was "unelectable."

Geraldine Ferraro and law professor Susan Estrich, both Hillary Clinton supporters, each made the Presidential primary campaign about race, with Ferraro bluntly saying Obama would not be in the position he was in if he was not black, and accusing Barack Obama of illegitimately raising the race card against her. At the same time she strongly waived the "sexist" card at Obama. She finally felt compelled to step down officially from Clinton's campaign, where she was on the finance committee. At one point, she even snapped to one newspaper,

"Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking
me because I'm white. How's that?"

"For her part, Estrich has repeatedly talked about the "Bradley effect," asserting that a black candidate may poll well going into election day, but lose as much as five points, simply because a statistically significant number of nominally supportive voters, will not end up pulling the lever for the black candidate. Hailing from California, Estrich was referring Tom Bradley, a black politician, and the former Mayor of Los Angeles, who later proved unsuccessful in pursuing the statewide office of Governor, even though every poll going in showed him winning.

Joe Biden also made this campaign about race when he maladroitly suggested that, among other qualities, Barack Obama was a "clean" black candidate. And then there was his strange 7-11and Dunkin' Donuts comment.

And finally, even Hillary Clinton made the campaign about race when she made her comment about the ultimate role of President Lyndon Johnson, and not Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights Act fight back in 1964.

At a minimum, racialism among Democrats, in other words, was an abiding and unmistakably common theme throughout the primary season. Notice I am not saying "racism." Racialism.

But Anne Kornblut seems to be pretending that all of that somehow never really happened, even though she wrote about Bill Clinton's comments the time! And she also appears to be eager to accuse the McCain campaign of raising race in a racist way. How? All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Kornblut asserted in her article that that Sarah Palin's stump statement -- that Barack Obama has been "palling around with terrorists," is really a race-based comment.

Here is exactly what Kornblut said about that:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said Obama was "palling around with terrorists," a reference to his association with the 1960s radical William Ayers, and a turn of phrase that critics said was racially loaded.

(my emphasis)

Notice . . . it is not even "some critics!" Just "critics." None are named by Anne, but they are gleefully given the final, unchallenged Kornblut word. Yet, it is an assertion that simply has no basis whatsoever to support it.

"How so, Anne?" should have been the obvious question of the editorial fact-checker at the Washington Post, the one who presumably examined that story before giving his or her "okay" for publication. Hey, maybe the "fact checker" had read the account of the speech by Suarez, and the September, 2008 Kristof column.

There is plenty of recent and well-researched material, from a variety of sources, including the different angles of conservative Stanley Kurtz and the Naderite analyst, Steve Diamond, that nevertheless clearly demonstrate that unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, grabbed control of, and pursued a radical agenda at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), which in the end, failed to produce any meaningful results for the school children of Chicago.

William Ayers was a white 1960s radical communist, a child of privilege who is married to another white 1960s radical communist, Bernadine Dohrn, also a rampaging former child of privilege. Dohrn had graduated from college, and then the prestigious University of Chicago Law School in 1967. By 1969, she and Ayers, and the other Weathermen, later Weather Underground really went on their terrorist toot, called the "Days of Rage." They were both fierce opponents of the War in Viet-Nam, as well as the American system of government.

Both freely chose to actively employ violent and terrorist means back in those days, by participating in the bombings of several public and private facilities. Those facilities included police stations, the United States Capitol building, and the Pentagon, as well as a personal attempt on the life (and family) of Judge John Murtagh, who oversaw the criminal trial of the radical Panther 21 group in New York. The Weather Underground, and specifically Beradine Dohrn, took credit for that bombing at the Murtagh home.

At one point, the Weather Underground, openly declared war on the United States. Dohrn was the person who publicly made that announcement. Both were indicted and became fugitives, going underground for several years and living with fake identies, to avoid capture and prosecution for their terrorist crimes. During that period, according to F.B.I. Director Hoover, Dohrn was "the most dangerous woman in America."

Dohrn And Ayers eventually surrendered, and she was later convicted and went to jail for her crimes. But to this day, she remains defiant and unapologetic about those crimes, and still openly advocates the overthrow of the "capitalist" system.

Dohrn once even disgustingly declared her admiration for the Charles Manson "family" and the Tate-LaBianca Murders, saying,

"Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room
with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"

The "pigs" as Dohrn referred to them, were seven people who were all stabbed to death by Manson's followers, called his "family." They suddenly crashed a party where five of the murdered people were gathered in a home. And the other two were a couple who were murdered in their own home. Those in the first home included Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, who was over 8 months pregnant at the time she was murdered. She was found dead, with a rope around her neck, and a sign written in blood next to her, saying "Death to Pigs."

After Bill Ayers got off on the technicality, he eventually decided to pursued a higher education goal, and he obtained a PhD in education from Columbia University, which he secured back in the late 1980s. But his open contempt for the United States has simply never abated, even posing in 2001 for a photograph of himself stepping on the flag in a Chicago Alley.

Though she had graduated back in 1967 from the University of Chicago Law School, Dohrn was never admitted to the bar as a result of her criminal past. But she was enabled by being hired to work for a very large law firm based in Chicago, Sidley Austin. That was also where Barack Obama, coincidentally, once worked for a few months as a summer intern, and where he met his wife, Michelle, a then associate at the firm who was assigned to "mentor" him. There is no indication whether or not Dohrn ever met either one of them at Sidley.

On September 11, 2001, the very day of the bombing of World Trade Center, the New York Times carried a story about Bill Ayers and his fugitive life. He had just published a "memoir called "Fugitive Days." That 9/11 NYT article about him actually began with this exact quote:

"'I don't regret setting bombs,' Bill Ayers said. 'I feel we didn't do enough.'"

And in the same article, when asked if he would do it all over again, Ayers replied,

"I don't want to discount the possibility."

Back in the 1990s, Barack Obama chose to actually launch his political career in the living room of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, at their invitation. And, he also accepted a modest political donation from the unrepentant domestic terrorist couple sometime later.

But before launching his political career, by running on the Democrat, and as well as the socialist (New Party) lines, in the 1996 primary, Barack Obama had been workin as a "community organizer" in the South Side of Chicago.

Somehow -- he will not personally address exactly how -- this very recent Harvard Law School graduate was given the position of President and Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) in 1995. About one year before that (1994) Obama was appointed as well to the Board of the Woods Fund, where Bill Ayers also started serving about three years later. Both were serving together on the Woods Fund in 2001, when 9/11 occurred, a sharp point Hillary Clinton made in one of their debates.

The original CAC grant, for $49.2 million dollars, was obtained from the Annenberg Foundation, and was reportedly written by none other than Bill Ayers. As noted, it expressly promised "a renaissance in the classroom." It was a "challenge" grant, which meant that the initial grant was used to attract additional "matching" funds, and several foundations and others ponied up the additional dough.

Barack Obama oversaw the expenditure of those funds over an approximately five year period, from 1995 until 1999, during which approximately $150 - $160 million dollars were spent by the CAC. One of the grants given in 1998, for example, was:

$150,000 for leadership development to the Grassroots School Improvement Campaign, a partnership between Chicago Acorn, the Small Schools Workshop, the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform and eight Chicago schools, for parent and community participation in school improvement. The schools are Acorn Charter, Gage Park High, Robeson High, Collins High, O’Toole, Little Village Academy, Charles E. Hughes and Mason.

The Small Schools Workshop was the Mike Klonsky group, coordinating with ACORN, which was Madeline Talbott's group of street "activists," the very ones Obama was also training as street activists to, among other things, force banks into placing high numbers of subprime mortgages. He denies it, but recently re-discovered evidence very strongly suggests otherwise. Check the photo of Barack Obama mugging with the ACORN activists back in 1994!

Mike Klonsky is an avowed Maoist hardliner communist pal of Ayers, Dohrn, Talbott and Obama who, until early this past summer, was even happily blogging away on Barack Obama's website, until, as was reported on Gateway Pundit and as well on Global Labor Klonsky was "outed" and suddenly "disappeared" from Obama's website -- without a trace.

So, the Barack Obama and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) gave Klonsky and ACORN at least one joint gift.

And even though the CAC had expressly promised the "renaissance in the classroom" in Chicago, they accomplished no such thing.

But the promises in the proposal had been used to weasel the money out of Annenberg, and thence to leverage matching donations from others. The CAC, which really was Barack Obama's only "professional" executive experience, frittered away the $150 - $160 million, much of it on leftist political "infighting" -- trying to take control of the Chicago Schools through Local School Councils (LSCs), and other questionable ventures, such as training for teachers in "social justice" seminars.

Suffice it to say that after operating for several years, it's own evaluation, contained in the Final Report that was issued in 2003, and that was conducted by the CAC's own Consortium of Chicago School Research, they had to admit that there were no academic achievement, or academic engagement benefits enuring to the Chicago school children in the Annenberg Schools.

The words in italics are copied directly from that Report:

(Re: Student Academic Achievement) -- "There were no statistically significant differences between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain."
. . .
(Re: Student Academic Engagement) -- "Like student academic achievement, there were no statistically significant differences in these outcomes between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools."

Oh, if you read the report, the CAC evaluators tried to "pretty it up" a little, and they even offered a few excuses why the CAC had failed. But the bottom line was clear -- they palled around, playing petty, lefty politics, and they utterly failed to accomplish anything of value for the children of Chicago.

Shame on them all!

And now comes the person who presided over that tragic mess, who wants us to elect him President of the United States! And one of his key issues is a massive education initiative.

So it would seem that far from being "racially loaded," Sarah Palin's comment that Barack Obama was "palling around with terrorists," is absolutely spot on. Obama has offered the laughably bogus excuse, through his spokesman, that he thought Ayers was rehabilitated. But as was pointed out at Little Green Footballs, the two of them -- Obama and Ayers -- were still serving on the Board of the Woods Fund on 9/11, the day Ayers was quoted in the Times saying they hadn't done enough bombing.

And, it is equally obvious that there was certainly nothing racial about Palin's comment, unless, you choose to flip it around to a classic liberal position, i.e., that the failure of Barack Obama as the head of the CAC, together with his terrorist pal William Ayers, to achieve anything of value for the children of Chicago, was racist.

You be the judge of that one. One thing, however, is for sure. It reinforces the conclusion that the man has a very strong left wing agenda, and that he, as the RNC has correctly pointed out, maintained associations with some very dangerous and ruthless people. The bottom line is that it also shows he simply lacks any experience whatsever, that qualifies him for executive office, especially for the Presidency, regardless of what nonsense Ray Suarez of PBS spouts!

Obama In the "Chicago School Wars"
-- A Failed Executive Experience

(Updated: 9/24 am)

In a devastating overview piece , "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools," in the Wall Street Journal today, Stanley Kurtz records many of the observations he has gleaned from his recent careful examination of the internal records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) -- the umbrella "school wars" organization he led for 5 years from 1995 to 1999, and remained on the Board of Directors of until 2001.

Kurtz incurred considerable hostility in his initial efforts to examine the records. His entire WSJ piece is well worth reading, including the further detailing of the disturbing relationship between the Democrat nominee for President, and the still unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers.

Tom McGuire at "Just One Minute," is still all over this Obama/Ayers relationship story as well. And Steve Diamond at Global Labor has been hotly pursuing the CAC story as well, also zeroing in on the question of what role Ayers had in the hiring of Obama.

In this piece in the Wall street Journal, Kurtz makes the following salient point, one that is too quickly glossed over by skeptics. It goes to the heart of the only professional executive position that Barack Obama has ever held, and to his judgment in fulfilling that role. Kurtz notes:

"CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement."

One would think that one observation ought to be at the heart of how people weigh the qualifications of Barack Obama to become the President of the United States. After all, his work as the Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) for those five years, constituted his only professional executive experience.

What Obama, along with the assistance of Bill Ayers, chose as their agenda to pursue in fulfilling his executive role, was to carry on a radical left-wing political fight for control of the Chicago schools, one that by and large ignored the academic needs of the children.

Instead, they spent all the money and energy on their "democratization," or "small schools" agenda, concentrating their efforts on promoting the power of Local School Councils (LSCs), rather that pursuing any real or measurable educational benefits for the students, whose very lives and fortunes were at stake.

That speaks volumes about his bad judgment.

We noted some of this in general sense in our prior post, but it is well worth repeating, as now much more fully documented and elaborated on by Kurtz.

Bear in mind that the original grant proposal to obtain the $49.2 million dollars from the Annenberg Foundation, a proposal that was predominantly written by Bill Ayers, specifically promised "a Renaissance in the classroom."

They produced no such thing.

But based on the promises contained in that original grant, they were able to attract considerable additional grant moneys. Yet, what they delivered over the next several years while he was in charge -- between 1995 and 2000 -- was essentially an unbelievably expensive and ongoing internal City fight over who would "control" the Chicago School system, and a pile of money for radical groups such as Acorn.

Indeed, they were paying for such things as "training" candidates for these local political campaigns, and for teachers, in such "substantive" topics as "social justice." And, in pursuit of that agenda, they were forking over boodles of money for a variety of projects proposed by leftist radicals, such as former SDS radical and known Maoist, Mike Klonsky.

At the same time, they turned down academically-oriented proposals, such as ones for the improvement of the math skills of minority Hispanic students.

As Kurtz notes:

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education.

In 2003, the conclusion by CAC evaluators, was that the CAC had produced absolutely nothing of value for students -- there were no measurable improvement in student skills or performance that were attributable to the project.

That was the conclusion (pdf) from the 2003 Report of the Consortium of Chicago School Research (CCSR), whose sole purpose was to evaluate the success of the CAC funding over the years.

Here are a few choice tidbits quoted directly from their evaluation report, which can be found right up front in the Executive Summary. The language and tone of the Report are both charitable, even "understanding" of the possible whys and wherefores of the CAC's lack of success. But the bottom line is disturbingly clear.

(Re: Student Academic Achievement) -- "There were no statistically significant differences between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain."
. . .

(Re: Student Academic Engagement) -- "Like student academic achievement, there were no statistically significant differences in these outcomes between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools."

In other words, the Annenberg evaluators themselves conceded in their study that any educational improvements occurred across the board and, therefore, had nothing to do with the CAC, or the Annenberg project.

As recently noted here, the evaluation simply stated that there was "no Annenberg effect on achievement" in the Chicago schools under the leadership of Barack Obama.

It is also becoming more and more obvious that there has been a significant, long-term Bill Ayers effect on the political career, and on the political thinking of Barack Obama.

Let's just hope that there will not be be a corresponding Ayers/Obama effect on our nation's educational system!

New Obama Tactic -- Fight Your Friends & Neighbors!
"I want you to argue with them and get in their face."
-- Barack Obama, September 16, 2008

Update: (Iowahawk take, below)

An AP story today featured the new and aggressive Barack Obama yakking away in a sarcastic snit, and reportedly "mocking" John McCain, at least according to the lede. It liberally quotes Barack Obama actually encouraging a large crowd of supporters to become his personal argumentative surrogates for the remainder of the campaign.

He is now spouting pure Saul Alinsky-style agitation, which, by the way, Obama actually taught back in his "community organizer" days.

Now, I am sure the AP reporter, Kathleen Hennessey, did not intend for her story, as was printed in the San Francisco Chronicle today (ht Drudge), to be received that way by so many of us. But it sounds a bit like the wheels are coming loose on the Obama Bus. Either that, or the new confrontational tactic will somehow succeed and we are all in for a very bumpy ride for years to come!

As was reported in the story, Obama actually told a group of his Democrat supporters in Elko, Nevada, to single out their Republican and Independent friends and neighbors, and to confront them point-by-point, to actually try to verbally intimidate them!

Folks, here come Obama's Brazen, Obnoxious, Mouthy, Belligerent Surrogates. We could call them "O-BOMBS" for short. Look out!

From the story:

In Elko, Obama tried to anticipate his critics and called on the crowd of about 1,500 to sharpen their elbows, too.

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said. (my emphasis)

Say what? Isn't that just a bit much? Now, we not only have to listen to the daily invasion of our personal spaces within our homes -- from the incessant ads, to the media TV talking heads who are predominantly in the tank for this guy? But now we also have to expect some of our neighbors "getting into our faces" on the street, or in the supermarket? Perhaps they'll even start knocking on our doors to try and bully us into voting for this boob?

Is there to be no sanctuary anywhere?

Personally, I am really so over this guy! Yet, here comes Barack Obama and his plan to turn some of my acquaintances and neighbors into a merry band of voluble intimidators! Let's break this down a bit.

THE ONE says: "I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors."

Sure he does. That's because what he says is not convincing anyone with any sense! The public is increasingly on to his scam. Only now are they learning, for example, the details of his 5 years of work at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) as a "community organizer," during which he and his band of Chicago-based ultra-leftie pals -- unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Maoist Mike Klonsky -- frittered away $150 million bucks or more, running their foundation-supported school "improvement" project.

In the original grant proposal, which was written by Bill Ayers, they had promised to create "a Renaissance in the classroom." But instead they produced absolutely nothing of value for students -- no measurable improvement in student skills or performance attributable to the project. That was the conclusion (pdf) from the 2003 Report of the Consortium of Chicago School Research (CCSR), whose sole purpose was to evaluate the success of the CAC funding over the years. Here are a few choice tidbits.

Re: Student Academic Achievement -- "There were no statistically significant differences between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain."
. . .

Re: Student Academic Engagement -- "Like student academic achievement, there were no statistically significant differences in these outcomes between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools."

In other words, any improvements occurred across the board and, therefore, had nothing to do with the CAC, or Annenberg project.

As one writer recently put it, there was no "Annenberg effect" on student achievement in Chicago.

Basically, the CAC project consisted of little more than an expensive, and thinly disguised left-wing political organizing operation intended to shift power in the Chicago school system into the hands of "LSCs" or local school councils, including the active training and recruiting of candidates, and even running their campaigns.

THE ONE then said in this new story: "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican."

I'll be frank about this. Too many "active" Democrats I personally know -- from having worked next to many of them in State government -- were often pathetic party hacks who couldn't convince a sandbag to lay still! They will not talk me or anyone else into anything. I really do wish they would try, though. For the most part, it is hard to have much intellectual respect, given what they are currently promoting this year! When it comes to politics, they usually tend to be either group-think junkies, or, they have some financial iron in the fire that depends on Democrat rule for their continued success, i.e., they are in it for the dough.

FINALLY, THE ONE SAYS: "I want you to argue with them and get in their face."

Sure. That is just what your average sensible, law-abiding, taxpaying, patriotic American citizen wants . . . some wild-eyed or dim-witted do-nothing, a pugnacious, true-believer, nanny-state loving, demi-socialist getting "in their face" and trying to convince him or her to participate in just turning over the reins of the federal government -- and the entire future of the United States of America -- to an inexperienced, gutter-ball throwing, first term U.S. Senator, who spent several years agitating for "change" to no good effect in Chicago, and who is now running on an empty promise of change for the entire nation! THAT is chump change we do not need!

Now, that was grant money in Chicago. But if we foolishly put this lefty and his newly recruited "scream in your face pals" in charge of the federal government, consider the likelihood that there will be exponentially larger amounts of your tax dollars that will spill right down into that bottomless pit.

Given this new "get in their face" tactic you really have to wonder whatever happened to the guy who just last spring was "post-partisan" . . . somehow, above politics as usual. The answer seems to be that he is going back to his community organizer roots. Or, in the words of the "master,"

"In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt."
--- Saul Alinsky, Community Organizer and Agitator

Update: Iowahawk posts an hilarious response to the AP story -- the Clockwork O-Rage retort -- to the Barack Obama vae victis declaration in Nevada. A sample:

"Me fine droogies, what we are after now is the old surprise visit," explained Obama. "A real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultracampaigning. Stomp some hope and change into their filthy little rassoodocks for a nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts."

They're not going to like it!

"Lets make things nice and sparkling clear. This sarcasm - if I may call it such, is very unbecoming of you oh my brothers."
-- Alex, from A Clockwork Orange