Did CBS Anchor Katie Couric Get Pwned By Bloomberg?
Either way, I Want That 25 Cents, Mayor!

(Updates: below)
05/04/2010 -- Just on face value, it is difficult to figure out who was the biggest public fool leading up to the identity of the Times Square car bomber.

Consider Nominee Number One: Mayor Bloomberg of New York, late last evening, engaged in some idle and off-the-air conjecture with CBS News anchor, Katie Couric, telling her that the person who attempted to set off a car bomb in the middle of the Times Square area this past Saturday night, could well be a domestic terrorist, a loner, someone who was likely angry at the government, maybe even someone who opposed the health care bill!

Apparently the only thing Bloomberg did NOT quite tell Katie Couric was that the guy could just as well have been on his way back from a Tea Party rally when he decided to park his vehicle and detonate the propane, gasoline and firecracker car bomb right at the curb outside a Viacom building on 45th Street in New York City. But he certainly implied it!

Consider Nominee Number Two: That would be CBS ace anchor, Katie Couric, who breathlessly lapped up all of the Mayor’s idle chatter, and then quickly contributed to the CBS News reporting about this so-called "domestic loner" nonsense late yesterday evening.

The CBS story was filed at 8:50 pm. Of course, two and a half hours later, at 11:30 pm, the feds instead picked up a 30 year old Pakistani-born individual named Faisal Shahzad by literally plucking him off a flight at JFK, a man, by the way, with strong family and other ties in Pakistan, who was apparently attempting to flee the country and return there, via Dubai.

In the case of Couric, also consider the fact that the car bomb, the one that thankfully did NOT go off and kill or injure scores of Americans, had been intentionally parked right on the south side of 45th Street, next to the corner of Broadway. Indeed, it was parked at the curb, just outside of a Viacom building!

Viacom, of course, is the parent company of CBS News. One might think that CBS would have had a special interest in wanting to get that story right, no? Well, guess again! There are several false "money lines" from yesterday evening’s CBS story, the one entitled, "Mayor: Times Square Suspect Acted Alone." Here are a few of them:

Bloomberg later told CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric that the suspect behind the bombing attempt could be a domestic terrorist angry at the government who acted alone.

"If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything," he said.

"There is no evidence here of a conspiracy, there is no evidence that it's tied into anything else. It looks like an amateurish job done by at least one person," he told Couric.

As of this morning, we all NOW know, the actual suspect in the case is one Faisal Shahzad, who was residing in an apartment in Bridgeport, Connecticut, who, as now reported by the AP, only this past year (in April 2009) became a U.S. citizen, per a story filed today by Tom Hays and Colleen Long. He was born in Pakistan, and still has strong family ties (including his wife) in the City of Karachi, Pakistan. In fact, he apparently had just last year returned from a five month trip to Pakistan, according to several reports.

As indicated above, late yesterday night, Shahzad was caught fleeing this country. Just caught, too . . . reportedly, he had actually already boarded a flight to Dubai at JFK when he was nabbed last evening. His eventual flight destination was apparently Pakistan.

Not exactly your garden variety Tea Party participant, as Mayor Bloomberg and Couric would have had us believing last night! Of course, we don’t know all the facts in the case yet, as the Washington Post failed to report any specifics on what international ties Shahzad had, and to what organizations, religious or otherwise.

Was he tied to any known Islamist terror groups, for example? Time Magazine is now reporting, based on Pakistani anonymous sources, that he may well have been and that he may have even attended terror training just last spring, right around the time his U.S. citizenship was coming through! Was he, accordingly, on anyone's radar? The fact that he got on the plane last night suggests that he was not on a "no fly list" though we know that may certainly not be dispositive! Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "Christmas Bomber" was on the "no fly list."

But earlier this morning the Washington Post did report facts directly contradicting the CBS fantasy . . . i.e., lots of clues suggesting a possible terror plot:

Officials located Shahzad after a sweeping two-day investigation that yielded what senior Obama administration officials described as a flood of international and domestic clues suggesting a plot involving more than one person.

So, they apparently were not keeping Mike Bloomberg in the loop on any level! But that still would not account for Bloomberg having firmly come to the exact opposite conclusion –- i.e., that the guy was a loner, that there was absolutely no evidence of a conspiracy, and that -- who knows -- it might be related to opposition to the healthcare bill!

But Mike Allen at Politico is also reporting today that the top Obama officials had identified and were specifically hot on the trail of Mr. Shahzad by early afternoon (2:30 pm) yesterday, at least six hours prior to the CBS report, when Bloomberg implied to Couric that it might well be a loner opponent of the healthcare bill! Politico also suggested how the bomber had tried to cover his tracks.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from the bomb-laden 1993 Nissan Pathfinder left in Times Square. But investigators were able to lift it from a second location on the vehicle, and used that to track down a Connecticut man who said he had sold the Pathfinder for cash about three weeks ago.

The man had offered the vehicle on Craigslist, and FBI agents were able to recover the number from a disposable cellphone that had been used by the buyer.

The suspect didn't still have the phone. But using a lot of technology and access to database, agents located the suspect.

(Gee, that last sentence certainly could cover a multitude of possibilities, now couldn't it?)

Anyway, if pressed to pick the biggest fool here, I'd have to go with Couric. Why? Because there is at least a possibility Bloomberg was intentionally feeding her this bogus information so that it would signal Faisal Shahzad, and maybe any possible confederates, that the cops were still hot on a false trail. Possible.

That would clearly place Bloomberg in a category significantly different than "fool" . . . not a nice category, to be sure. But different.

If so, he should explain that, and immediately apologize to all opponents of the healthcare bill.

If not, he should explain that, and immediately apologize to all opponents of the healthcare bill.

And, while the investigators are at it, they should certainly all apologize to the poor white guy they targeted with the video clip, the one who fortuitously decided to remove his outer shirt on the street in New York because it was too hot!

There are probably still some Obamabot posse types still out there still reviewing that taped clip and trying to hunt that guy down!

The supporters of the Administration certainly cannot be happy with this latest turn of events -- yet another possible instance of undetected terrorism, one with possible foreign ties, unfolding right within our shores during the Obama Administration. And again --as back in December -- only quick action by local citizens may have avoided a disaster. Here was the WaPo description:

Administration officials said President Obama had been repeatedly briefed on the incident -- which authorities said could have led to significant casualties if the explosives had detonated properly -- since it began unfolding Saturday night. It bore some resemblance to the attempted bombing of an airliner in Detroit last Christmas, with citizen watchdogs earning much of the credit for averting the crisis and the White House scrambling to discover clues about a young male suspect with apparent ties that stretched beyond the United States.

And -- they might have added -- this time the Administration must really feel come heat because the terrorists have apparently headed back to downtown New York!

As for Mayor Bloomberg, the AP story specifically reports he is now right back out there busily protecting the reputation of all Muslims today.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the arrest should not be as used as an excuse for anti-Muslim actions. "We will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers," he said.

Of course, as for Tea Party members or any other opponents of the healthcare bill . . . well, not so much!

So, if Mayor Bloomberg was not the biggest fool over this incident, he is certainly proving to be the biggest jerk about it!

Update: Newsbusters is onto the Bloomberg/Couric angle of the story as well, with both audio and video.

Update : II Newsbusters is also reporting that Contessa Brewer is publicly lamenting that the Times Square Car Bomber is someone who was originally from an Islamic country. Is she trying to become Nominee Number Three for fool of the day? That really has to be a separate category, because she actually made that stupid comment after the identification was made! She wasn't just publicly hoping it was a healthcare opponent!

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!