From Little Green Footballs:

Obama started building the base years before. For instance, ACORN noticed him when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).

Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for STate Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.

112

 By Glenn McCoy

www.townhall.com/funnies  

 Burt Prelutski writes in Townhall about ACORN, the organization at the root of the subprime catastrophe:

It is those on the far left who have done everything in their power to corrupt the election process. One of their chief means of doing so has been through the activities of a group known as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). With approximately 175,000 dues-paying members, they own TV stations, businesses and periodicals, and have offices stretching from Canada to Peru, with over 80 offices in the U.S.

To give you some idea how all-encompassing the group is, they have schools where the children of leftists are trained in class-consciousness; they run boot camps for training street activists; and, like Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, they extort money from banks and other businesses by threatening racial violence and trumped-up civil rights charges. One can almost imagine Marx, Lenin and Stalin, shaking their heads in admiration and hoisting their glasses in toast.

Apparently, the members of ACORN have gained control of the New York City government, resulting in a rollback of welfare reform; the appointment of a politicized Civilian Review Board, empowered to prosecute police officers and ban racial and ethnic profiling in the city that experienced 9/11 firsthand; raise corporate taxes; and is attempting to prevent any corporation from fleeing the city without obtaining an “exit visa.” Even before Berkeley got around to having its own foreign policy, New York’s City Council, by a 31-17 vote, passed a resolution condemning the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For several years, the leadership covered up the fact that Dale Rathke, the brother of Wade Rathke, who co-founded ACORN, had embezzled nearly a million dollars from the organization. Once the theft finally came to light, the excuse given for not informing the authorities was that those of us on the right would use it as an excuse to attack the group. That of course is an obvious lie. Those of us on the right have far better reasons than financial skullduggery to attack ACORN. In fact, I, for one, regard Dale Rathke as something of a folk hero. I say it was far better that he squandered his ill-gotten gains on wine, women and song, than that the group got to spend it subverting the democratic process.

These people, self-proclaimed defenders of freedom, liberty and the working man – or, more often, non-working man – devote most of their energy and resources to making sure that they fix elections in much the same way that crooked gamblers fix fights. During the 2004 election cycle, ACORN ran a “voter mobilization drive” that resulted in countless allegations of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging and vote-for-pay scams. One of their specialties was registering convicted felons. Attorney generals in many states filed charges against several members of the group, charges that included voter-intimidation, vandalism and the destruction of voter registration forms.

What I have not been able to figure out is why the leaders of the group have not been indicted under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) for taking part in an ongoing criminal organization. The only logical reason that the feds have backed off is because of ACORN’s close ties to organized labor. Tragically, in 2008 America, it’s not only individuals who are easily intimidated, but the government itself.

It’s no surprise that Barack Obama is ACORN’s choice for the White House. ACORN, after all, was created by those who subscribed to Saul Alinsky’s left-wing belief that class warfare is the only war worth fighting and that in order to win it, the ends always justify the means. And however much the left has recently attempted to pass off “community organizer” as a Christ-like vocation, everyone in his right mind knows that these days it’s code for Communist activist. 

 

As the ‘mainstream media’ refused to publish facts about Barack Obama that might dissuade voters from voting for him, it  was up to the McCain Campaign to make them known. But apparently no one running the McCain Campaign thought of doing it until Sarah Palin came along and brought up the name of William Ayers in a speech that simply could not be ignored.

At last one of the clues to who and what Obama is, what the political opinions are of the man standing for the presidency of the United States actually are, was reaching the multitudes who knew nothing of him but his gift of the gab. That clue should have been followed by the rest. They’re all there, easy to find. His Kenyan father was a radical leftist. His mother, the 60s hippie, was a New Lefty. His grandfather got an ardent Communist named Frank Marshall Davis to mould the mind of young Barack, who went on eagerly to drink down the red ideology of Saul Alinsky. He sought a launch-pad for his political career among revolutionary leftists and America-haters (Ayers and Dohrn) in Chicago. When he attained the power to do so, he channeled funds to promote the activities and causes of the revolutionary left. He joined a church where revolutionary anti-American ideology was consistently preached. When he needed funds for his campaign in Illinois, they were raised for him in turn by his revolutionary leftist comrades. He trained ACORN staff in techniques of extortion, and ACORN is a radical red organization (see our posts on it) at the very root of the sub-prime meltdown.  

The old saying, ‘if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can bet it is a duck’  applies here. Obama grew up with red radicals, learnt from red radicals, mixed with red radicals, worked with red radicals, churched with red radicals, strives to achieve the objectives of red radicalism, so what is he?

But even now that one of the clues has been outed with the name of William Ayers, Obama escapes being identified by the company he keeps. He says he just happens to live in the same neighborhood as this terrorist guy. He pretends to be hurt by unfair  ‘guilt by association’. Or if you won’t swallow the ‘just a neighbor’ line, then okay, at worst he  happened to have been washed up by coincidence on the same committees – which just happened to promote the indoctrination of the young with red revolutionary ideology. 

And the McCain people are letting him get away with it!

When they are asked: ‘What does it say about Obama that he associated with the terrorist William Ayers?’  – ‘It shows he has bad judgment,’ comes the reply.

No, it doesn’t. It shows that birds of a red revolutionary feather flock together.

It isn’t only that William Ayers was a terrorist; it’s what he was using terrorism for that needs to be taken notice of.  What was he trying to achieve with it? What was – and is – his ideology?  (Clues: He’s pally with Hugo Chavez; he admires Fidel Castro.)  

So it isn’t just that Barack Obama associates with red revolutionary radicals. Red revolutionary radicalism is his provenance. It’s where he comes from. It’s where he chose to put down his political roots.  It’s what formed his mind. It’s what lies behind his redistributionist, collectivist policies. 

Is it really possible that Americans could vote into power a red revolutionary radical without realizing what they’re doing?  It looks all too possible now, with Obama way ahead in the polls.

How many Americans would knowingly vote for a red revolutionary radical?  How can they be warned in time that that is what Obama is?

The only source of such information is the McCain Campaign, since the MSM – whose job it is – have iniquitously decided to conceal it.

But the McCain Campaign doesn’t seem to get it!

Hello over there! Anybody in the McCain Campaign doing any thinking?

It’s a poor choice for America between a man who thinks like a red revolutionary and a man who doesn’t seem to think at all. 

But – Oh dear! – better the boring guy who’s not too smart than the smart guy who will take America down the long hard slope into the socialist ditch where Europe now lies dying.   

 The moment of decision has arrived.

Crunch time.

Is the economic crisis to be solved by a capitalist free-market solution, or made worse by a socialist ‘solution’?

Make no mistake about it – it was caused by socialism: by political correctness, by multiculturalism, by government interference in the market.

It was NOT caused by the Bush administration, by the Republican Party, by capitalism, as the Democrats who did cause it are now alleging to cover their guilt.

Among the most guilty men are Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Harry Reid.   

Jimmy Carter.  1977. The Community Reinvestment Act. Banks must make loans to high-risk borrowers.  Opened door for ACORN (see earlier posts) to force banks to make sub-prime loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.

Barack Obama.  Trained staff for Madeline Talbott, ‘key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime racket’ as Stanley Kurtz calls her, to run her ‘subprime-loan shakedown racket’.  ACORN employed him as its lawyer. And he funded it through the Woods Fund and indirectly through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In three years in the Senate, Obama received more contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than anyone else save Dodd, who got his contributions from them over eleven years.   He appointed two Fannie Mae CEOs as advisors to his campaign.  

Bill Clinton, devotee of multiculturalism, pressed for more home-ownership by those who could not afford it, minorities and in effect even illegal immigrants, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac responded, buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of the bad loans and sellng them on the world markets. 

Harry Reid. In 2005 when John McCain sponsored a Fannie-Freddie reform bill,  he led the  Democrats in crushing it.  Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats and Democrats are most responsible for their failure.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who ran Congress’s banking panels, vigorously and persistently opposed Republican Party efforts to regulate Fannie and Freddie.

McCain has repeatedly called for reforming Fannie and Freddie. President Bush – whose administration is being blamed for the crisis by Frank, Dodd, Reid etc – urged their reform 17  times this year. The irony of Bush and the Republicans being blamed now for the catastrophe the Democrats’  so insistently brought about!   

The cure now is not more socialism, not more government control of the market, not the election of the most socialist-minded candidate for the presidency ever – Barack Obama. 

If America elects Obama, it will be choosing socialism, and socialism has failed wherever it has been tried.

America needs to choose capitalism at this moment in history, to save itself and to give hope to the wider world. Otherwise this crisis will be turned into an American and world-wide disaster from which there may be no foreseeable return. 

 What do ‘community organizers’ do? What did Obama do as a ‘community organizer’? What is ACORN? How has it been funded?

Stanley Kurtz  writes in a must-read article in the New York Post:

To understand the roots of the subprime-mortgage crisis, look to ACORN’s Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Then you’ll truly know what community organizers do.

 

 Here is the lowdown on ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which has a significant share in culpability for the sub-prime disaster – as mentioned in the preceding post.

The report explains that Acorn is:

 Implicated in numerous reports of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams during the 2004 election. 

Answer: A criminal outfit subsidized by tax dollars.

Read about it here.