John McCain is a real leader of men and a real warrior (see video below:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wms2As61MYU
The most sacred responsibility vested in a president - the commander in chief - is to "preserve and protect" American citizens. John McCain has the necessary vision and unrivaled experience to command the United States armed forces and adapt our nation's defenses to the demands of a changing and dangerous world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysiSXWzzSGs&feature=related
McCain and Palin want economic freedom
A Harvard Trial Lawyer for McCain (By William A. Jacobson)
Endorsement 03 November 2008 By William A. Jacobson
A Harvard Trial Lawyer for McCain
"...Electing a President is a hiring decision, where the stakes are who will best preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. We forget that our legal system does not exist in a vacuum. Our constitutional and political rights can exist only if this nation is safe. Whether I agree with John McCain on each and every issue makes no difference to me. John McCain gets my vote as the person who will keep this country safe, so that we have the luxury of arguing with one another. "
First and foremost, John McCain is the real thing. He reminds me of many of the most effective lawyers I have dealt with in my career. He's not polished. "...But John McCain is a scrappy fighter. "
He's the opponent who just won't quit even when things look bleak. The guy who runs circles around the Harvard lawyers, who takes the seemingly impossible case, and through sheer determination brings home the verdict. He is the guy you want on your side in good times, and more importantly, in bad times. If I were on trial for my life, I would hire John McCain as my lawyer. And John McCain sticks around long enough to make a difference. He had a distinguished 22-year career in the Navy. He could have left the Hanoi Hilton early, but he didn't. I don't know if I would have had the strength to say no to early release from a prisoner of war camp, but John McCain did have that strength.
John McCain carried his fight to the United States Senate, where for over two decades he has fought battle after battle with both political parties on some of the hardest issues confronting the nation. John McCain put country before career in supporting the surge in Iraq. On some of these issues I have agreed with John McCain, and on others not. But what is important to me is that John McCain has proven over time that he is his own man. What you see is what you get, and he will be there for the long haul.
Barack Obama also reminds me of many lawyers I have dealt with in my career. He's the smooth talking lawyer on TV who will get you "the settlement you deserve." But he has no credibility where it counts because he hasn't beaten the insurance companies at trial. He is a paper lawyer who fools only his own clients. So Barack Obama can promise "tough diplomacy" with the likes of Iran, but he hasn't fought the tough fights that would cause dictators and tyrants to take him seriously.
Barack Obama also is the deep thinker who ponders great things. And the thing that Barack Obama seems to ponder most is his own greatness. He doesn't write biographies, he writes only autobiographies. He gives speeches which he declares to be historic. He recognizes his place in history long before he has created history. This nation is but a stage upon which Barack Obama creates his life story, and it's all about him.
Yet Barack Obama has never been in one place long enough to make a real difference, or to fight the hard fights. He was a community activist for a few years, then a law student, then in private practice for not too long, then a state senator for not too long, then a United States Senator for not too long. The paint was barely dry in his Senate office when he began running for President. Barack Obama's career is a series of not-too-long positions, each one more grand than the one before it.
Yet what great achievement has Barack Obama obtained other than his own political advancement?
What historic law did he author, what historic court case did he argue, what historic battle did he fight, what cause greater than himself warranted more than a passing interest in his historic life?
If my life were on the line, I wouldn't hire Barack Obama as my lawyer. I'd be concerned that he'd be up late at night working on a draft of his book about how my case affected his life.
Barack Obama loves this country, in his own words, because nowhere else could his story be possible.
John McCain loves this country just because. And that's why I'll vote for John McCain.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2123521/posts
VIDEO: Obama promises to gut the military and unilaterally disarm the United Stateshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sj91NH5fvw&NR=1
Monday, November 3, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
OBAMA SAID: HE WILL BANKRUPT THE COAL INDUSTRY!!! DON'T BELIEVE ME CHECK IT OUT YOURSELF
Obama Declares War on Coal: Early voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere wish they had known sooner.
ATTN: Coal states Virginia , Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Indiana, guess what Obama told San Francisco about you?OBAMA TELLS SAN FRANCISCO HE WILL BANKRUPT THE COAL INDUSTRY: If you work in the Coal Industry start looking for another job now. And for all of you who will celebrate getting a tax check from the spread the wealth program...Guess what! You will be using it to pay for heat to keep you warm and for higher costs of goods which will be passed onto you from companies being taxed to the hilt.http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/shocking-new-audio-obama-promises-to.html
Obama said: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Ohio Coal Association Says Obama Remarks Make It Clear: Obama Ticket Not Supportive of CoalCOLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire--USNewswire/ -- Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks from Senator Barack Obama about the nation's coal industry."Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it."These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like 'I haven't been some coal booster' and 'if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them' are extraordinarily misguided."It's evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state's voters."Senator Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short- sighted, inexperienced politician willing to say anything to get a vote. But today, the nation's coal industry and those who support it have a better understanding of his true mission, to 'bankrupt' our industry, put tens of thousands out of work and cause unprecedented increases in electricity prices."In addition to providing an affordable, reliable source of low-cost electricity, domestic coal holds the key to our nation's long-term energy security - a goal that cannot be overlooked during this time of international instability and economic uncertainty."Few policy areas are more important to our economic future than energy issues. As voters head to the polls tomorrow, it is essential they remember that access to reliable, affordable, domestic energy supplies is essential to economic growth and stability."The Ohio Coal Association (OCA) is a non-profit trade association representing the interests of Ohio's underground and surface coal mining producers. The OCA represents nearly 40 coal producing companies and more than 50 Associate Members, which include suppliers and consultants to the mining industry, coal sales agents and brokers and allied industries. The Ohio Coal Association is committed to advancing the development and utilization of Ohio coal as an abundant, economic and environmentally sound energy source.SOURCE Ohio Coal Association
Obama Declares War on Coal Early voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere wish they had known sooner.
By Deroy MurdockIn a November surprise, Barack Obama envisions bankrupting anyone who tries to open a new coal-powered electrical plant. This news should chill voters in coal-producing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. It also should worry Americans from coast to coast who rely on coal-fueled electricity far more than they may realize. They also will pay more for it than they do today. Talk about “change.”Obama openly discussed this with the San Francisco Chronicle. However, the piece that appeared last January 18 excluded these details which surfaced over the weekend, thanks to an audio tape of Obama’s appearance before the paper’s editorial board.Obama explained that under his cap-and-trade scheme he plans for fighting so-called global warming: “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”It truly is stunning to hear an American presidential candidate speak so casually and cavalierly about bankrupting U.S. businesses that wish to profit from lawful commercial activity.This attitude should give spinal tremors to voters in coal-producing states. One wonders how Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia would fare, given an Obama presidency’s anti-coal bias.As it happens, the coal industry employed 120,150 people last year. The bankruptcies that Obama threatens cannot bode well for their financial well-being.“So what?” Americans in Manhattan, Malibu, and Miami might think. “We ain’t got no stinkin’ coal mines.”Well, Americans happen to rely on coal for 48.7 percent of our electricity. If you are reading this by the light of a 100-watt bulb, Obama essentially wants to squeeze 49 of those watts. This means higher electricity bills for you and our countrymen.Right-wing alarmism? Don’t believe me. Listen to Obama. “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama told the Chronicle. “Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas…you name it…whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations. That will cost money . . . they will pass that money on to the consumers.”Obama wants Americans to pay more for electricity, not just from coal-powered plants, but even from those that burn natural gas, a far cleaner fuel. Previously hailed as an Earth-friendly alternative to oil and coal, Obama now targets natural gas for brand-new taxes. As Obama suggested in last February 19’s San Antonio Express-News: “What we ought to tax is dirty energy, like coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.” “Obama is repeating the very quiet but very firm mantra of the global-warming alarmist industry, to be chanted only among friends,” says Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner, author of the new book, Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Force, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. “The idea is to price electricity out of certain levels of use. Inherently, that means seniors and the poor, in addition to certain industries.” Obama supporters respond that Republican John McCain also wants a cap-and-trade system. True, but the more market-oriented McCain would give away carbon certificates and let them trade freely among energy companies and other carbon-dioxide producers. Obama would auction them off, which would require expensive up-front “bids” from those who would need such certificates in order to stay in business. Thus, Obama brags about his plan’s toughness.“We would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there,” he told the Chronicle.It’s a shame, but hardly surprising, that the pro-Obama Chronicle excluded these details from its January 18 article. Americans should have had all of 2008 to debate these radical policy proposals. Instead, this bombshell arrives after some 25 percent of Americans already have voted. (This is yet another example of the idiocy and perniciousness of commencing early voting in the fall campaign’s “7th inning.”) While this news may make some Obama supporters regret their already-cast votes, the rest of the electorate has but one day to ponder the idea of an American president who would boost their power bills, bankrupt U.S. businesses, and incinerate the jobs they would create.— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzBiYmIyNTI4NzNjMjhkMjRkY2U3YTY5ZWJkMWExNWI=
ATTN: Coal states Virginia , Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Indiana, guess what Obama told San Francisco about you?OBAMA TELLS SAN FRANCISCO HE WILL BANKRUPT THE COAL INDUSTRY: If you work in the Coal Industry start looking for another job now. And for all of you who will celebrate getting a tax check from the spread the wealth program...Guess what! You will be using it to pay for heat to keep you warm and for higher costs of goods which will be passed onto you from companies being taxed to the hilt.http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/shocking-new-audio-obama-promises-to.htmlObama said: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Ohio Coal Association Says Obama Remarks Make It Clear: Obama Ticket Not Supportive of CoalCOLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire--USNewswire/ -- Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks from Senator Barack Obama about the nation's coal industry."Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it."These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like 'I haven't been some coal booster' and 'if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them' are extraordinarily misguided."It's evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state's voters."Senator Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short- sighted, inexperienced politician willing to say anything to get a vote. But today, the nation's coal industry and those who support it have a better understanding of his true mission, to 'bankrupt' our industry, put tens of thousands out of work and cause unprecedented increases in electricity prices."In addition to providing an affordable, reliable source of low-cost electricity, domestic coal holds the key to our nation's long-term energy security - a goal that cannot be overlooked during this time of international instability and economic uncertainty."Few policy areas are more important to our economic future than energy issues. As voters head to the polls tomorrow, it is essential they remember that access to reliable, affordable, domestic energy supplies is essential to economic growth and stability."The Ohio Coal Association (OCA) is a non-profit trade association representing the interests of Ohio's underground and surface coal mining producers. The OCA represents nearly 40 coal producing companies and more than 50 Associate Members, which include suppliers and consultants to the mining industry, coal sales agents and brokers and allied industries. The Ohio Coal Association is committed to advancing the development and utilization of Ohio coal as an abundant, economic and environmentally sound energy source.SOURCE Ohio Coal Association
Obama Declares War on Coal Early voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere wish they had known sooner.
By Deroy MurdockIn a November surprise, Barack Obama envisions bankrupting anyone who tries to open a new coal-powered electrical plant. This news should chill voters in coal-producing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. It also should worry Americans from coast to coast who rely on coal-fueled electricity far more than they may realize. They also will pay more for it than they do today. Talk about “change.”Obama openly discussed this with the San Francisco Chronicle. However, the piece that appeared last January 18 excluded these details which surfaced over the weekend, thanks to an audio tape of Obama’s appearance before the paper’s editorial board.Obama explained that under his cap-and-trade scheme he plans for fighting so-called global warming: “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”It truly is stunning to hear an American presidential candidate speak so casually and cavalierly about bankrupting U.S. businesses that wish to profit from lawful commercial activity.This attitude should give spinal tremors to voters in coal-producing states. One wonders how Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia would fare, given an Obama presidency’s anti-coal bias.As it happens, the coal industry employed 120,150 people last year. The bankruptcies that Obama threatens cannot bode well for their financial well-being.“So what?” Americans in Manhattan, Malibu, and Miami might think. “We ain’t got no stinkin’ coal mines.”Well, Americans happen to rely on coal for 48.7 percent of our electricity. If you are reading this by the light of a 100-watt bulb, Obama essentially wants to squeeze 49 of those watts. This means higher electricity bills for you and our countrymen.Right-wing alarmism? Don’t believe me. Listen to Obama. “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama told the Chronicle. “Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas…you name it…whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations. That will cost money . . . they will pass that money on to the consumers.”Obama wants Americans to pay more for electricity, not just from coal-powered plants, but even from those that burn natural gas, a far cleaner fuel. Previously hailed as an Earth-friendly alternative to oil and coal, Obama now targets natural gas for brand-new taxes. As Obama suggested in last February 19’s San Antonio Express-News: “What we ought to tax is dirty energy, like coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.” “Obama is repeating the very quiet but very firm mantra of the global-warming alarmist industry, to be chanted only among friends,” says Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner, author of the new book, Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Force, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. “The idea is to price electricity out of certain levels of use. Inherently, that means seniors and the poor, in addition to certain industries.” Obama supporters respond that Republican John McCain also wants a cap-and-trade system. True, but the more market-oriented McCain would give away carbon certificates and let them trade freely among energy companies and other carbon-dioxide producers. Obama would auction them off, which would require expensive up-front “bids” from those who would need such certificates in order to stay in business. Thus, Obama brags about his plan’s toughness.“We would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there,” he told the Chronicle.It’s a shame, but hardly surprising, that the pro-Obama Chronicle excluded these details from its January 18 article. Americans should have had all of 2008 to debate these radical policy proposals. Instead, this bombshell arrives after some 25 percent of Americans already have voted. (This is yet another example of the idiocy and perniciousness of commencing early voting in the fall campaign’s “7th inning.”) While this news may make some Obama supporters regret their already-cast votes, the rest of the electorate has but one day to ponder the idea of an American president who would boost their power bills, bankrupt U.S. businesses, and incinerate the jobs they would create.— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzBiYmIyNTI4NzNjMjhkMjRkY2U3YTY5ZWJkMWExNWI=
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Da Gunny says: Vote McCain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wms2As61MYU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he6XsfDSJrA&feature=related
For God's Sake America: Vote for John McCain - our next Commander-in-Chief .
I served 22 years in the Marine Corps, and it would be an honor to stand up shoulder to shoulder with this warrior.
Signed: The Gunny
/////////////////////////
McCain Gets My Vote
I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
By Charles Krauthammer
Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago. McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq. McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed. The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic, soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere. Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the last year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign-policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign-policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory? There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on November 4 to invite that test? And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it, and — finally — deny its success. The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.© 2008, The Washington Post Writers Group
////////////////////////////////
From: Cory Miller
cory@centerlinemanufacturing.com
Send this on to others… Joe the plumber woke some people up as they putt a face on the people who are going to be taxed more. Here’s a real example…
Mr. Obama,
Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me “Cory the well driller”. I am a 54-year-old high school graduate. I didn’t go to college like you, I was too ready to go “conquer the world” when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80’s oil boom. I didn’t get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawnshop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start not a result of privilege. It is the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self-discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn’t afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10-year-old, ½-ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).
A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time… $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.
I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn’t work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night, as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.
2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.
A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.
Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so an employee and I (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers’ pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers’ product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that’s ok, I didn’t expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.
Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn’t it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our country’s’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn’t get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It’s funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.
You see, Mr. Obama, I’m the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I’m the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I’m the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and wouldn’t demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I’m the guy you characterize as “the Americans who can afford it the most” that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution “to spread the wealth” to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What’s worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.
What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-determination, self-discipline, personal betterment, and hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach on every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn’t it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever-expanding dependence on government. What’s remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn’t need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.
You see, I know because I’ve had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.
Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I’ve seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce “politically motivated”); you averaged of less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you or Joe Biden (don’t you just hate goggle?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.
In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self-reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.
God help us…
Cory Miller
just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.
P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American… www.cmillerdrilling.com
Thank you Cory Miller the Well Driller; I am Joe the Plumber too!
http://www.eclecticwill.com/2008/10/open-letter-to-sen-obama-from-corey-miller-the-well-driller/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he6XsfDSJrA&feature=related
For God's Sake America: Vote for John McCain - our next Commander-in-Chief .
I served 22 years in the Marine Corps, and it would be an honor to stand up shoulder to shoulder with this warrior.
Signed: The Gunny
/////////////////////////
McCain Gets My Vote
I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
By Charles Krauthammer
Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago. McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq. McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed. The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic, soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere. Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the last year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign-policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign-policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory? There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on November 4 to invite that test? And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it, and — finally — deny its success. The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.© 2008, The Washington Post Writers Group
////////////////////////////////
From: Cory Miller
cory@centerlinemanufacturing.com
Send this on to others… Joe the plumber woke some people up as they putt a face on the people who are going to be taxed more. Here’s a real example…
Mr. Obama,
Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me “Cory the well driller”. I am a 54-year-old high school graduate. I didn’t go to college like you, I was too ready to go “conquer the world” when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80’s oil boom. I didn’t get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawnshop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start not a result of privilege. It is the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self-discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn’t afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10-year-old, ½-ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).
A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time… $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.
I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn’t work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night, as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.
2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.
A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.
Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so an employee and I (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers’ pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers’ product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that’s ok, I didn’t expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.
Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn’t it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our country’s’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn’t get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It’s funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.
You see, Mr. Obama, I’m the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I’m the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I’m the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and wouldn’t demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I’m the guy you characterize as “the Americans who can afford it the most” that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution “to spread the wealth” to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What’s worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.
What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-determination, self-discipline, personal betterment, and hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach on every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn’t it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever-expanding dependence on government. What’s remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn’t need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.
You see, I know because I’ve had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.
Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I’ve seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce “politically motivated”); you averaged of less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you or Joe Biden (don’t you just hate goggle?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.
In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self-reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.
God help us…
Cory Miller
just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.
P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American… www.cmillerdrilling.com
Thank you Cory Miller the Well Driller; I am Joe the Plumber too!
http://www.eclecticwill.com/2008/10/open-letter-to-sen-obama-from-corey-miller-the-well-driller/
Obama's broken promise list: Can you trust him not to raise everyone's taxes?
Let me take your money and give it away. But I will keep mine. (see how Obama has taken care of others)Obama: I won't tax you. Reality: He will.
Obama raises taxes on companies. Result: Prices on everything will be passed on to you. So.. everything you buy will cost more. Result: More money out of your pocket.
Limit $250,000, no wait $200,000, no wait $150,000, no wait $120,000, no wait... he is coming after your hard earned money.. Yes: We will all be paying for Obama even those who now think they now pay no taxes. Reality: You will... Why - it's time to spread the wealth around is it not? Don't wait: Vote McCain for no tax increases.
Who do you trust? A foreign country is set to invade a friendly nation. Obama says do not do it or else. Now does this man have the credability to be believed? My answer is no.
Let Joe keep his dough... Let all of us Joe's keep our dough!
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaAfrica.htm
He has failed to live up to the promise of assistance that he made to a school named in his honor in his father's village of Kogelo.
Obama's broken promise to African village In his father's village of Kogelo near the Equator in western Kenya conceals a troubling reality that, until now, has never been spoken about. Barack Obama, the Evening Standard can reveal, after we went to the village earlier this month, has failed to honour the pledges of assistance that he made to a school named in his honour when he visited here amid great fanfare two years ago.
At that historic homecoming in August 2006 Obama was greeted as a hero with thousands lining the dirt streets of Kogelo. He visited the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School built on land donated by his paternal grandfather. After addressing the pupils, a third of whom are orphans, and dancing with them as they sang songs in his honour, he was shown a school with four dilapidated classrooms that lacked even basic resources such as water, sanitation and electricity. He told the assembled press, local politicians (who included current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga), and students: "Hopefully I can provide some assistance in the future to this school and all that it can be." He then turned to the school's principal, Yuanita Obiero, and assured her and her teachers: "I know you are working very hard and struggling to bring up this school, but I have said I will assist the school and I will do so." Obiero says that although Obama did not explicitly use the word "financial" to qualify the nature of the assistance he was offering, "there was no doubt among us [teachers] that is what he meant. We interpreted his words as meaning he would help fund the school, either personally or by raising sponsors or both, in order to give our school desperately-needed modern facilities and a facelift." She added that 10 of the school's 144 pupils are Obama's relatives. Obiero was not the only one to think that the US Senator from Illinois, who had recently acquired a $1.65 million house in Chicago, would cough up. Obama's own grandmother Sarah confidently told reporters before his visit: "When he comes down here, he will change the face of the school and, believe me, our poverty in Kogelo will be a thing of the past." But the Evening Standard has heard that the promises he made to help the school as well as a local orphanage appear to have been empty. The letter Obiero refers to -- dated 22 June 2005, signed by Obama and addressed to her -- was written after his election to the US Senate in 2004 and hangs, framed, on the wall of her spartan office alongside photographs of Obama's visit to their school. It says: "I am honoured that you have decided to rename the Kogelo School in my name.osted on Sun, Jun. 22, 2008
The American Debate: Broken promise will probably benefit Obama
By Dick Polman
Inquirer National Political Columnist
Barack Obama wants to campaign on his ideals, but he also wants to win. Indeed, if you want to gauge the gap between his principles and his pragmatics, just follow the money.
Ideally, Obama would now be honoring a promise he made in 2007. He vowed that, if he became the Democratic nominee, he would run his autumn race in accordance with the federal reform rules that have guided presidential elections since 1976. He said he'd stop raising money from private donors, and instead finance his race with $85 million from the federal kitty, as long as his Republican opponent did the same. Hence, a level playing field. And John McCain agreed to those terms 15 months ago.
October 21, 2008
Obama's campaign built on liesBy Richard Baehr
There have been many lies by Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign that he has tried to mask by shifting his recollections over time. These include the extent of his relationship with Bill Ayers, what he heard Reverend Wright say during his near 20 year membership in Trinity Church, and his relationship with the vote fraud enterprise, otherwise known as ACORN. Barack Obama has made history and then "remade" it -- and he has done so numerous times.
But two lies in particular have been especially consequential: Obama's pledge not to run for President in 2008, and his commitment to participate in federal financing for his general election campaign, with its consequent spending limits. The news this past Sunday that Obama raised $150 million for his campaign in September shows the significance of the second lie.
The First Big Lie: Running For the Presidency
When Obama was elected a US Senator in 2004 he pledged to the voters of Illinois that he would not run for President in 2008. This is what Obama said on that subject in 2004:
"Look, I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years."Obama gave a similar response to a question from a reporter that he dismissed as "silly": "Guys, I'm a state senator. I was elected yesterday. I have never set foot in the U.S. Senate. I've never worked in Washington. And the notion that somehow I'm immediately going to start running for higher office, it just doesn't make sense."
This lie has not been given much currency in the media. There have been plenty of other politicians who have promised not to run for higher office and then decided otherwise. The same holds true for some elected officials who pledged to observe a term limit on their years in Congress or the Senate, but later decided "the people still needed them".
Barack Obama, since he first ran for office in 1996, has followed a pattern: he always looked-up for the next elected job to seek. One colleague from his Illinois State Senate days in Illinois said he saw "the positions he held as stepping stones to other things"
After election to the State Senate in 1996, Obama ran (and lost) a race for Congress in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush. In 2002, Obama began his run for the open US Senate seat in Illinois to be contested in 2004. In 2006, he began his run for President. In fact, for more than half of the time since he has held public office, Obama has been AWOL from the job to which he has been elected, instead campaigning for higher office. There must have been a "calling" which he heard. Or perhaps it is merely unbridled personal ambition.
It should have been no surprise when Obama broke his pledge to the voters of Illinois and ran for President. If Obama is elected, it will be a new experience for him to actually have to do the job for which he was elected, with no higher office available, at least in the temporal realm. Of course, he could begin his re-election campaign ( and the fundraising for it), on Inauguration Day. It is hard to imagine, after all, that there may be a day soon with no Obama ads on TV or radio.
One safe bet is that the same media which has been enthralled with Obama's candidacy will cover for him and serve as free public relations agents during his Presidency. When problems arise, the media will continue to blame George Bush for having created "intractable problems." With a Democrat-controlled Congress with big majorities in both the Senate and House backstopping a Democratic President, this excuse may wear thin with voters.
The Second Big Lie: Accepting Federal Funding For the General Election
The more consequential lie of the 2008 Obama campaign, and the one that may determine the outcome of the election, was Obama's promise to accept federal funds for the general election if his opponent did. It was a given that John McCain, the co-author of campaign finance reform legislation with liberal Democrat Russ Feingold, was going to observe the federal spending limit of $84 million that accompanied the funds. Obama, on the other hand, never had any intention of limiting his spending to that amount.
The contest for the Democratic nomination showed Obama's fundraising prowess; in several months he raised more than $50 million in that month alone. In September, Obama raised more than $150 million, a stunning amount, bringing his total fundraising for the year to $605 million. Obama has raised almost twice as much money in September as McCain received for his entire general election campaign.
Since federal financing of Presidential elections began in 1976, no candidate had ever opted out of the system before Barack Obama. Obama's excuse for doing so was, to put it gently, pretty lame. In reality, the rationale he provided for his action, was a lie. Obama argued that he feared an infusion of special interest group money paying for attack ads against him. Hence, Obama needed to be armed for battle, and $84 million in federal campaign money for the general election, was not enough.
This was hogwash. Ads by independent groups and so-called 527s this cycle have heavily favored Democrats, just as they did in 2004. Obama was advantaged on that front. Obama opted out because he knew it would pay off -- that he could raise much more than $84 million, and that he then could bury McCain by ratios of 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 in spending on ads and organizers down the stretch. That is exactly what is now occurring and a major reason why Obama has opened up leads in the key battleground states.
Not surprisingly, the mainstream media have been unconcerned about Obama's backtracking and dishonesty on his pledge to participate in federal financing of the general election campaign. For a day or two, some journalists and pundits made it sound like Obama had let them down. But shortly thereafter, the move was viewed as smart, strategic, and necessary -- the obvious thing to do when winning is everything. And of course, the coverage of this campaign by the national media (including late night "comedians") has shown that they believe Obama's winning is everything. Why should the media expect Obama to behave any differently than they have in their own reporting? They have delivered the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising for Obama with puff piece reporting on his campaign, and far less favorable coverage of the McCain campaign.
For the McCain Palin team, it really must seem like they are facing a campaign with all the money in the world. For all practical purposes, they are. And if you think Barack Obama would have had it any other way, then you don't understand Barack Obama. Do you think when Obama met with his advisors to discuss how to sell his breaking a pledge to participate in federal financing of the general election, that anyone said: "But Senator, you would be breaking your word"?Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/obamas_campaign_built_on_lies_1.html at November 01, 2008 - 11:16:14 AM EDT
George Hussein Onyango Obama, Another Long Lost Brother, Can you Spare Some "Change"
They certainly pop out of the woodwork, don't they. I can just see Ramadan Christmas at the White House. HOPE! CHANGE!
BARCK OBAMA'S LOST BROTHER FOUND IN KENYA Telegraph hat tip Cherrie
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender.
"No-one knows who I am," he told the magazine, before claiming: "I live here on less than a dollar a month."
According to Italy's Vanity Fair his two metre by three metre shack is decorated with football posters of the Italian football giants AC Milan and Inter, as well as a calendar showing exotic beaches of the world.
Vanity Fair also noted that he had a front page newspaper picture of his famous brother - born of the same father as him, Barack Hussein Obama, but to a different mother, named only as Jael.
He told the magazine: "I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist."
Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation.
"If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed," he said.
Wait there's more. Go here.
Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango Times Online hat tip Wolf
Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, have a contrasting American story.
Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.
A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a “sawed-off rifle” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court.
The US press has repeatedly rehearsed Mr Obama’s extraordinary odyssey, but the other side of the family’s American experience has only been revealed in parts. Just across town from where Mr Obama made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, some of his closest blood relatives have confronted the harshness of immigrant life in America.
In his book Mr Obama writes that “Uncle Omar” had gone missing after moving to Boston in the 1960s – a quarter-century before Mr Obama first visited his family in Kenya. Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew's presidential bid from a work address in the city.
Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.”
[..]
She worked six hours a week for a small stipend. Records show she used the housing authority’s address to make her campaign contribution.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Obama and Rashid Jew-bashing event suppressed by LA Times
LA Times Withholds Video of Obama Toasting Former PLO Operative at Jew Bashing Dinner
By John Stephenson (Bio Archive)
October 25, 2008 - 16:37 ET
The mainstream media are willfully ignoring many questionable ties and friendships of Barack Obama. The list does not end with the radical racist preacher Jeremiah Wright and unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. They have totally ignored Obama campaigning for the socialist revolutionary Raila Odinga in Kenya. http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obama-and-odinga/ They have also ignored his ties with radical Islamic extremist Khalid Al Masour.
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obama-and-khalid-al-masour/
LA Times takes things to the next level. They are going beyond the level of ignoring to the level of willfully witholding informative evidence from the public. The associate of Barack Obama in question this time is Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative and best friend of William Ayers. The LA times has a video of Barack Obama toasting this friend of his while attending a Jew bashing dinner, and they are refusing to release the video to the public.
Gateway Pundit has the scoop and what I summarize here is lifted from him.
Here is a video that explains his history and ties with Obama. http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obamas-ties-to-rashid-khalidi/ He is a long time friend of Obama and shares a mutual friend, Bill Ayers.
Barack Obama funnelled thousands of dollars of cash to Rashidi’s anti-Israel Foundation through his work on the Woods Fund.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-funneled-cash-to-former-plo.html
In 2000, Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative who justified Palestinian terrorism as contributing to “political enlightenment,” threw a fundraiser for his friend Barack Obama.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972901/posts
LA Times writer Peter Wallsten wrote about Barack Obama’s close association with former Palestinian operative Rashid Khalidi back in April.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,1780231,full.story
“During the dinner a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.”
One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”
….His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases… It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”
…The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) talked to Peter Wallsten from the Los Angeles Times about the article on Obama and Khalidi on Wednesday.
I asked him if he was planning on releasing this video of Obama toasting the radical Khalidi at this Jew-bash. He told me he was not releasing the video. He also would not comment on his source for the video. Wallston also said he did not know if Khalidi’s good friend Bill Ayers was at the event or not.
So, the LA Times has video of Obama attending a Jew bash and toasting a radical former PLO operative, and they are not sharing it with the public. I think we all know they would immediately release the tape if it were Sarah Palin making the toast.
If not for double standards the media would have no standards at all.
—John Stephenson is editor of Stop The ACLU
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/10/25/la-times-witholds-video-obama-toasting-former-plo-operative-jew-bas
////////////////
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/10/reader_eli_was.html
Reader Eli Was First To Push L.A. Times to Release Obama/Khalidi Video Back In April; No Dice Then, Either
By Debbie Schlussel
Yesterday, I noted that I was unsure why Jim Hoft/Gateway Pundit only just contacted Los Angeles Times plagiarist/"reporter" Peter Wallsten about releasing the video of Barack Obama at a dinner with Rashid Khalidi, William Ayers, and Bernadine Dorn, where anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements were made. I figured he only just thought of it.
But if I had not missed an e-mail in April that I received, I guess I could have made the story happen and the pressure build sooner. My bad. And I'm glad Jim/Gateway Pundit got to it at all.
In searching my inbox today, I discovered that back in April, reader Eli (whose surname I am redacting) contacted the Los Angeles Times, asking Wallsten to release the video, at which time Wallsten declined. Eli sent me his correspondence, and unfortunately I forgot about it.
Here is the interchange:
From: Eli
Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 3:47 AM
Subject: FW: CHECK THIS OUT!!!!
To: writedebbie@gmail.com
Hi Debbie:
I have attached a article from the Los Angeles Times and my correspondence with Mr Peter Wallsten. Mr Wallsten replied to me:
Thanks for your note. We have no plans to post the video.
All best,
Peter Wallsten
the rest is up to you..... my hands are tied. I am only a reader of newspapers. A powerful Video is in the hands of the Los Angeles Times... you decide if it is worth to pursue.
The ball is in your court,
Eli
***
From: Eli
To: peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Sent: 4/11/2008 10:39:47 PM
Subject: LETS RELEASE THE VIDEO!!!!!
Hi Mr Wallsten,
Lets release the Video your holding..... you write you have a Video.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times (exact words in your article)
Your exact words in your article.... lets see the video. Release it to CNN.. or do you even have a Video!!!
or release it on Latimes.com
Thanks,
Eli
Dear Mr Wallsten,
I enjoyed your article "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama". I found it very interesting.. and what I found what most of interest was the fact you have "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times". Peter, I am really interested in you sharing that video especially the part of the celebration with Senator Obama in attendance and "At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace.'"
"One speaker likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology.'" Also in the same Video that you possess, "At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. 'You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,' Khalidi said."
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Peter, lets release this video.... lets not suppress the NEWS... Lets release the video to CNN, ABC,CBS, NBC AND FOXNEWS.
Lets do the what's right...
Thanks,
Eli
***
From: Eli
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 12:40 AM
To: peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Subject: STILL WAITING!!!!
The job of a Journalist is not to suppress the news.... if you have a story... you let your readers view and make up there own minds. If your holding on to a video that is of interest you should release it. Peter you were the one who said you have a video of the evening in Question.... how else would you have quoted the participants so accurate!!! You have a video that is of value... I can only imagine if it was a video Of Senator McCain or Senator Clinton the Video would be released... but for some reason you are giving Senator Obama Prefential Treatment. This Election is to important to play favors.
***
From: Wallsten, Peter
To: Eli
Sent: 4/14/2008 3:47:12 PM
Subject: RE: STILL WAITING!!!!
Thanks for your note. We have no plans to post the video.
All best,
Peter Wallsten
The Obama protection machine started early.
Posted by Debbie at October 30, 2008 03:11 PM
////////////////////////////////////////
Middle East studies in the News
Allies of Palestinians See an Ally in Obama [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
by Peter Wallsten
The Los Angeles Times
April 10, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,5826085.story
CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.
And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.
"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.
"That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."
Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.
Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.
"Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.
Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."
Looking for clues
But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.
And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.
Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.
Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.
Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.
Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."
The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.
Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.
Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.
Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.
Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified.
"In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."
In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.
In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.
He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.
While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.
In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.
"He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."
Ties with Israel
Even as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.
In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."
In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.
As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.
One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright.
"In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.
By John Stephenson (Bio Archive)
October 25, 2008 - 16:37 ET
The mainstream media are willfully ignoring many questionable ties and friendships of Barack Obama. The list does not end with the radical racist preacher Jeremiah Wright and unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. They have totally ignored Obama campaigning for the socialist revolutionary Raila Odinga in Kenya. http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obama-and-odinga/ They have also ignored his ties with radical Islamic extremist Khalid Al Masour.
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obama-and-khalid-al-masour/
LA Times takes things to the next level. They are going beyond the level of ignoring to the level of willfully witholding informative evidence from the public. The associate of Barack Obama in question this time is Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative and best friend of William Ayers. The LA times has a video of Barack Obama toasting this friend of his while attending a Jew bashing dinner, and they are refusing to release the video to the public.
Gateway Pundit has the scoop and what I summarize here is lifted from him.
Here is a video that explains his history and ties with Obama. http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obamas-ties-to-rashid-khalidi/ He is a long time friend of Obama and shares a mutual friend, Bill Ayers.
Barack Obama funnelled thousands of dollars of cash to Rashidi’s anti-Israel Foundation through his work on the Woods Fund.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-funneled-cash-to-former-plo.html
In 2000, Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative who justified Palestinian terrorism as contributing to “political enlightenment,” threw a fundraiser for his friend Barack Obama.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972901/posts
LA Times writer Peter Wallsten wrote about Barack Obama’s close association with former Palestinian operative Rashid Khalidi back in April.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,1780231,full.story
“During the dinner a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.”
One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”
….His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases… It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”
…The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) talked to Peter Wallsten from the Los Angeles Times about the article on Obama and Khalidi on Wednesday.
I asked him if he was planning on releasing this video of Obama toasting the radical Khalidi at this Jew-bash. He told me he was not releasing the video. He also would not comment on his source for the video. Wallston also said he did not know if Khalidi’s good friend Bill Ayers was at the event or not.
So, the LA Times has video of Obama attending a Jew bash and toasting a radical former PLO operative, and they are not sharing it with the public. I think we all know they would immediately release the tape if it were Sarah Palin making the toast.
If not for double standards the media would have no standards at all.
—John Stephenson is editor of Stop The ACLU
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/10/25/la-times-witholds-video-obama-toasting-former-plo-operative-jew-bas
////////////////
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/10/reader_eli_was.html
Reader Eli Was First To Push L.A. Times to Release Obama/Khalidi Video Back In April; No Dice Then, Either
By Debbie Schlussel
Yesterday, I noted that I was unsure why Jim Hoft/Gateway Pundit only just contacted Los Angeles Times plagiarist/"reporter" Peter Wallsten about releasing the video of Barack Obama at a dinner with Rashid Khalidi, William Ayers, and Bernadine Dorn, where anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements were made. I figured he only just thought of it.
But if I had not missed an e-mail in April that I received, I guess I could have made the story happen and the pressure build sooner. My bad. And I'm glad Jim/Gateway Pundit got to it at all.
In searching my inbox today, I discovered that back in April, reader Eli (whose surname I am redacting) contacted the Los Angeles Times, asking Wallsten to release the video, at which time Wallsten declined. Eli sent me his correspondence, and unfortunately I forgot about it.
Here is the interchange:
From: Eli
Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 3:47 AM
Subject: FW: CHECK THIS OUT!!!!
To: writedebbie@gmail.com
Hi Debbie:
I have attached a article from the Los Angeles Times and my correspondence with Mr Peter Wallsten. Mr Wallsten replied to me:
Thanks for your note. We have no plans to post the video.
All best,
Peter Wallsten
the rest is up to you..... my hands are tied. I am only a reader of newspapers. A powerful Video is in the hands of the Los Angeles Times... you decide if it is worth to pursue.
The ball is in your court,
Eli
***
From: Eli
To: peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Sent: 4/11/2008 10:39:47 PM
Subject: LETS RELEASE THE VIDEO!!!!!
Hi Mr Wallsten,
Lets release the Video your holding..... you write you have a Video.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times (exact words in your article)
Your exact words in your article.... lets see the video. Release it to CNN.. or do you even have a Video!!!
or release it on Latimes.com
Thanks,
Eli
Dear Mr Wallsten,
I enjoyed your article "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama". I found it very interesting.. and what I found what most of interest was the fact you have "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times". Peter, I am really interested in you sharing that video especially the part of the celebration with Senator Obama in attendance and "At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace.'"
"One speaker likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology.'" Also in the same Video that you possess, "At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. 'You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,' Khalidi said."
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Peter, lets release this video.... lets not suppress the NEWS... Lets release the video to CNN, ABC,CBS, NBC AND FOXNEWS.
Lets do the what's right...
Thanks,
Eli
***
From: Eli
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 12:40 AM
To: peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Subject: STILL WAITING!!!!
The job of a Journalist is not to suppress the news.... if you have a story... you let your readers view and make up there own minds. If your holding on to a video that is of interest you should release it. Peter you were the one who said you have a video of the evening in Question.... how else would you have quoted the participants so accurate!!! You have a video that is of value... I can only imagine if it was a video Of Senator McCain or Senator Clinton the Video would be released... but for some reason you are giving Senator Obama Prefential Treatment. This Election is to important to play favors.
***
From: Wallsten, Peter
To: Eli
Sent: 4/14/2008 3:47:12 PM
Subject: RE: STILL WAITING!!!!
Thanks for your note. We have no plans to post the video.
All best,
Peter Wallsten
The Obama protection machine started early.
Posted by Debbie at October 30, 2008 03:11 PM
////////////////////////////////////////
Middle East studies in the News
Allies of Palestinians See an Ally in Obama [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
by Peter Wallsten
The Los Angeles Times
April 10, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,5826085.story
CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.
And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.
"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.
"That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."
Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.
Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.
"Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.
Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."
Looking for clues
But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.
And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.
Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.
Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.
Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.
Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."
The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.
Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.
Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.
Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.
Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified.
"In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."
In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.
In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.
He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.
While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.
In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.
"He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."
Ties with Israel
Even as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.
In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."
In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.
As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.
One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright.
"In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Rashid Khalidi, Obama's Palestinian pal
Rashid Khalidi Referred to Arafat’s PLO As ‘We’Wednesday, October 29, 2008By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, seen here in one of his final TV interviews. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University professor whose friendship with Sen. Barack Obama is raising questions, says he was never a spokesman for the PLO, but his strong PLO leanings were evident at a time when Yasser Arafat’s group was mounting terror attacks in Israel and causing mayhem in Lebanon. And while Khalidi may not have been speaking on behalf of the PLO, during interviews he occasionally used the word “we” when speaking of the organization. In one 1981 interview, Khalidi referred to the exiled PLO’s growing standing among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, saying “we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services … we’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Sen. John McCain’s campaign has urged the Los Angeles Times to release a video reportedly showing Obama speaking at an event in Chicago about his friendship with Khalidi. The newspaper last April reported on the 2003 event, which took place when Khalidi was leaving Chicago for a new job, a professorship of Arab studies, at Columbia University. “Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking,” the LA Times said. “His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been ‘consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases … It’s for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation – a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,’ but around ‘this entire world.’” The newspaper said Khalidi had praised Obama, “telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat.” The report also mentioned that the event had been filmed and said that “a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.” After conservative bloggers raised questions about the unaired videotape, the McCain campaign issued a statement Tuesday. “A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi,” said campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. “The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job – make information public.” LA Times editor Russ Stanton in a statement said that paper had not published the video “because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources.” Attacks, atrocities Obama’s relationship with Khalidi has become an issue because during his campaign for president, the Illinois senator has portrayed himself as strongly pro-Israel. Khalidi has denied being a spokesman for the PLO during his years in Lebanon, when he taught political studies at the American University of Beirut in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s. During that period, the PLO was based in the Lebanese capital, having been expelled from Jordan after an abortive attempt to topple King Hussein. In Beirut Arafat’s group established a “state within a state” taking over entire residential areas, setting up roadblocks, and extorting protection taxes. The PLO became a party to Lebanon’s civil war, backing Muslims against Maronite Christians. PLO atrocities against Christians reached a climax in early 1976, when PLO fighters killed 582 inhabitants of the Christian town of Damour, south of Beirut, before turning it into a stronghold. According to published accounts, the terrorists pillaged and ransacked the town and its churches, desecrated a Maronite cemetery by digging up and robbing corpses, and used the interior of the St. Elias Church for a shooting range and a garage for PLO vehicles. From its Lebanon stronghold, the PLO mounted cross-border terrorist attacks against Israel, culminating in a deadly assault that cost the lives of 35 Israeli civilians. Israel retaliated by sending in the army in 1978, pushing the PLO out of southern Lebanon. PLO shelling of northern Israel continued until Israel’s invasion in 1982 led to the PLO’s final expulsion from Lebanon, and it relocated to Tunisia. Khalidi began teaching in Beirut in 1976, the year of the Damour massacre.
Excerpt from New York Times report published on June 11, 1979.
Over the following years, he was quoted a number of times in media reports, giving a Palestinian perspective on events. On June 11, 1979, a New York Times report assessed Palestinian views of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed that March, following the Camp David accord the previous year. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was the first of Israel’s enemies to sign a peace deal with the Jewish state, officially recognizing Israel, and many Palestinians worried about the implications for the PLO’s armed campaign. The New York Times story, by Youssef Ibrahim quoted Khalidi – whom it called “a professor of political science who is close to [Arafat’s faction] Fatah” – as saying, “We are in a make-it-or-break-it period.” “If we don’t turn the tide, if what Sadat is doing is not decisively repudiated, if the idea that Sadat has brought peace is allowed to stick without regard to Palestinian rights, then we are done in,” Khalidi said. ‘We’ve never been stronger’ On January 6, 1981 the Christian Science Monitor quoted Khalidi – a professor of political science “with good access to the PLO leadership” – in a report examining the incoming Reagan administration’s Mideast options. If a “hard-line anti-Palestinian view” dominated the Reagan administration, he said, then “[t]he PLO will probably perceive the new administration as basically hostile – possibly more hostile than the Carter administration.” Khalidi in the story appeared at least highly supportive of the PLO, if not actually speaking on its behalf. He also seemed to refer to the PLO as “we” on occasion. “All you’ll see during the coming period of stalemate, which is all you can attain without the PLO, is the PLO getting stronger and stronger internally,” he said. “It is already happening. When was the last time people inside the Palestinian movement solved their differences with guns? A long time ago – apart from executing traitors. We are much more mature these days – the most sophisticated political constituency in the Arab world.” Arguing that the PLO’s standing among Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza had grown, he said, “Quite apart from the politics of it, we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services, often through our compatriots in the West, that King Hussein, for example, could never match. We’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Another Christian Science Monitor story, on June 2, 1981, referred to “Rashid Khalidi of the Institute of Palestinian Studies” (apparently a reference to the Institute for Palestine Studies, an institution set up in Lebanon in the 1960s. In 1971 it launched its Journal of Palestine Studies, a publication Khalidi has written for on occasion since then. He is its current editor.) Khalidi was quoted again by the New York Times in April 26, 1982 – two months before Israel invaded Lebanon – when a report by Thomas L. Friedman described him as “a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut.” At the time the PLO was under pressure from the Lebanese government not to provoke an Israeli reaction to its attacks. Khalidi commented on PLO strategies, again using the word “we.” “If we break the cease-fire now it would not only play into Israel’s hands but would also divert world attention away from the popular uprising on the West Bank, which is equally important to the PLO’s long-term objectives,” Khalidi said. On June 9, 1982, three days after Israel invaded, another Friedman report for the New York Times described Khalidi as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa,” and quoted him as saying the Israelis were out to “crush the PLO.”
Wafa was a PLO-owned and PLO-funded news agency. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, worked for Wafa when they lived in Beirut. She currently works for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Wafa remains today the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority, the self-rule administration set up by Arafat after the Oslo Accords enabled him to return to the disputed territories.
The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, seen here in one of his final TV interviews. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University professor whose friendship with Sen. Barack Obama is raising questions, says he was never a spokesman for the PLO, but his strong PLO leanings were evident at a time when Yasser Arafat’s group was mounting terror attacks in Israel and causing mayhem in Lebanon. And while Khalidi may not have been speaking on behalf of the PLO, during interviews he occasionally used the word “we” when speaking of the organization. In one 1981 interview, Khalidi referred to the exiled PLO’s growing standing among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, saying “we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services … we’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Sen. John McCain’s campaign has urged the Los Angeles Times to release a video reportedly showing Obama speaking at an event in Chicago about his friendship with Khalidi. The newspaper last April reported on the 2003 event, which took place when Khalidi was leaving Chicago for a new job, a professorship of Arab studies, at Columbia University. “Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking,” the LA Times said. “His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been ‘consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases … It’s for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation – a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,’ but around ‘this entire world.’” The newspaper said Khalidi had praised Obama, “telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat.” The report also mentioned that the event had been filmed and said that “a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.” After conservative bloggers raised questions about the unaired videotape, the McCain campaign issued a statement Tuesday. “A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi,” said campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. “The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job – make information public.” LA Times editor Russ Stanton in a statement said that paper had not published the video “because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources.” Attacks, atrocities Obama’s relationship with Khalidi has become an issue because during his campaign for president, the Illinois senator has portrayed himself as strongly pro-Israel. Khalidi has denied being a spokesman for the PLO during his years in Lebanon, when he taught political studies at the American University of Beirut in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s. During that period, the PLO was based in the Lebanese capital, having been expelled from Jordan after an abortive attempt to topple King Hussein. In Beirut Arafat’s group established a “state within a state” taking over entire residential areas, setting up roadblocks, and extorting protection taxes. The PLO became a party to Lebanon’s civil war, backing Muslims against Maronite Christians. PLO atrocities against Christians reached a climax in early 1976, when PLO fighters killed 582 inhabitants of the Christian town of Damour, south of Beirut, before turning it into a stronghold. According to published accounts, the terrorists pillaged and ransacked the town and its churches, desecrated a Maronite cemetery by digging up and robbing corpses, and used the interior of the St. Elias Church for a shooting range and a garage for PLO vehicles. From its Lebanon stronghold, the PLO mounted cross-border terrorist attacks against Israel, culminating in a deadly assault that cost the lives of 35 Israeli civilians. Israel retaliated by sending in the army in 1978, pushing the PLO out of southern Lebanon. PLO shelling of northern Israel continued until Israel’s invasion in 1982 led to the PLO’s final expulsion from Lebanon, and it relocated to Tunisia. Khalidi began teaching in Beirut in 1976, the year of the Damour massacre.
Excerpt from New York Times report published on June 11, 1979.
Over the following years, he was quoted a number of times in media reports, giving a Palestinian perspective on events. On June 11, 1979, a New York Times report assessed Palestinian views of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed that March, following the Camp David accord the previous year. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was the first of Israel’s enemies to sign a peace deal with the Jewish state, officially recognizing Israel, and many Palestinians worried about the implications for the PLO’s armed campaign. The New York Times story, by Youssef Ibrahim quoted Khalidi – whom it called “a professor of political science who is close to [Arafat’s faction] Fatah” – as saying, “We are in a make-it-or-break-it period.” “If we don’t turn the tide, if what Sadat is doing is not decisively repudiated, if the idea that Sadat has brought peace is allowed to stick without regard to Palestinian rights, then we are done in,” Khalidi said. ‘We’ve never been stronger’ On January 6, 1981 the Christian Science Monitor quoted Khalidi – a professor of political science “with good access to the PLO leadership” – in a report examining the incoming Reagan administration’s Mideast options. If a “hard-line anti-Palestinian view” dominated the Reagan administration, he said, then “[t]he PLO will probably perceive the new administration as basically hostile – possibly more hostile than the Carter administration.” Khalidi in the story appeared at least highly supportive of the PLO, if not actually speaking on its behalf. He also seemed to refer to the PLO as “we” on occasion. “All you’ll see during the coming period of stalemate, which is all you can attain without the PLO, is the PLO getting stronger and stronger internally,” he said. “It is already happening. When was the last time people inside the Palestinian movement solved their differences with guns? A long time ago – apart from executing traitors. We are much more mature these days – the most sophisticated political constituency in the Arab world.” Arguing that the PLO’s standing among Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza had grown, he said, “Quite apart from the politics of it, we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services, often through our compatriots in the West, that King Hussein, for example, could never match. We’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Another Christian Science Monitor story, on June 2, 1981, referred to “Rashid Khalidi of the Institute of Palestinian Studies” (apparently a reference to the Institute for Palestine Studies, an institution set up in Lebanon in the 1960s. In 1971 it launched its Journal of Palestine Studies, a publication Khalidi has written for on occasion since then. He is its current editor.) Khalidi was quoted again by the New York Times in April 26, 1982 – two months before Israel invaded Lebanon – when a report by Thomas L. Friedman described him as “a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut.” At the time the PLO was under pressure from the Lebanese government not to provoke an Israeli reaction to its attacks. Khalidi commented on PLO strategies, again using the word “we.” “If we break the cease-fire now it would not only play into Israel’s hands but would also divert world attention away from the popular uprising on the West Bank, which is equally important to the PLO’s long-term objectives,” Khalidi said. On June 9, 1982, three days after Israel invaded, another Friedman report for the New York Times described Khalidi as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa,” and quoted him as saying the Israelis were out to “crush the PLO.”
Wafa was a PLO-owned and PLO-funded news agency. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, worked for Wafa when they lived in Beirut. She currently works for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Wafa remains today the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority, the self-rule administration set up by Arafat after the Oslo Accords enabled him to return to the disputed territories.Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits
posted Thursday, 30 October 2008
"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell. That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant. For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.") Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could just as readily have spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi. Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.) Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:
This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.
This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.) Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986. The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.
posted Thursday, 30 October 2008
"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell. That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant. For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.") Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could just as readily have spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi. Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.) Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:
This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.
This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.) Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986. The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.
Jewish Voters: Obama and Khalidi plan a one state soulution: Palestine and no Israel
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/eme073108.pdf
Professor Rashid Khalidi, "A Palestinian Who Wouldn't Harm the Cause"
March 12, 2005
Rashid Khalidi’s impressive résumé – he’s the Edward Said Professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and the director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute – suggests a disinterested and objective scholar, who goes where the facts take him. A more realistic assessment of Khalidi comes from the Palestine Liberation Organization, which, according to press reports, regards the professor as a reliable partisan who "wouldn’t harm the cause": Khalidi enjoys the confidence of the PLO and has access to its leaders that stems from the ties he forged while teaching in Beirut from 1974 to 1985, when the PLO maintained its headquarters there.
“He became close to the leadership and gained their confidence,” said Suhail Miari, executive director of the United Holy Land Fund.
For Khalidi’s book, Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made the organizations archives available to him, for the first time.
He was given access because he’s a serious scholar and a Palestinian who wouldn’t harm the cause," said Hassan Abdul Rahman, director of the Palestine Affairs Center in Washington ...(Chicago Tribune, Oct. 31, 1991; emphasis added.)
Not harming the cause, in Khalidi’s case, means using his academic credentials to give credibility to the most extreme anti-Israel canards, such as the fabrication that non-Jews are barred from most land in Israel:
... non-Jews are barred by law from purchasing or leasing most properties (Jewish National Fund property, "state land," and land under control of the Custodian of "Absentee" Property – ie., stolen Arab land) and are barred from renting in segregated Jewish-only neighborhoods. Where is the racism in this picture? (Washington Post, Oct. 1, 1997)
In fact, half the land used by Israeli-Arab farmers is state land leased from the Israeli government, and the only segregated towns in Israel are Arab localities such as Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm, where no Jews are allowed to live. In contrast, the “Jewish” town of Upper Nazareth is now more than 17 percent Arab.
Khalidi also served as president of the so-called American Committee on Jerusalem (now known as the American Task Force on Palestine), a Washington-based non-profit that regularly disseminates crude anti-Israel propaganda. Khalidi, for example, more than once signed fund-raising letters for the ACJ claiming that Israel engages in "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem:
... forcing out its Muslim and Christian Arab population, and making Jerusalem an exclusively Israeli city. Israel is attempting to reach its stated goal of a 70% Jewish majority in all of Jerusalem by the year 2020. (ACJ fund raising letter, dated December 1998 and signed by Dr. Rashid Khalidi)
Khalidi’s claim is arrant nonsense. The fact is that Jerusalem’s population in 1967, after reunification, was 74.2 percent Jewish and 25.8 percent Arab, and since then the Jewish proportion has declined and the Arab proportion grown, so that today Jerusalem’s population is 32 percent Arab. That is, the city has become less Jewish and more Arab! Some ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps Khalidi’s most shocking fabrication, however, was his "Remembrance" for the PLO terrorist mastermind known as Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf). Khalaf was notorious for his plots to assassinate King Hussein, and for his leadership of the so-called "Black September" organization, the PLO group that slaughtered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and in 1973 murdered US diplomats in Khartoum. The assassination of the US Ambassador to Lebanon in 1976 was also carried out under Khalaf’s orders. (For details on Khalaf see entry in An Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Greenwood Press.)
Incredibly, Khalidi remembers not one word about any of these bloody terrorist attacks in his “Remembrance.” Instead he credits Khalaf with pioneering the PLO’s “diplomatic strategy” in 1988, with his “eloquent speeches and his back room political skills.”
According to Khalidi, “Abu Iyad will be sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life” (Middle East Report, March-April 1991).
No wonder the PLO places so much trust in Khalidi.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=923
Before coming to the U.S. and assuming his current role at Columbia, Rashid Khalidi
was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – then headed by
Yasser Arafat.294 He served on the PLO “guidance committee” at the 1991
Palestinian/Israel Madrid Conference295 and is on record praising the late-Arafat296 and
his second-in-command, PLO terrorist mastermind Abu Iyad (a.k.a. Salah Khalaf).297
Iyad is said to have been behind the plots to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan and to
attack Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich (“Black September”).298
Aside from his clearly troubling connections and sympathetic stance toward violent
terrorists, Khalidi also maintains his own extreme views. In an article penned for the
Journal of Palestine Studies, Khalidi places the responsibility of conflict in the Middle
East solely on Israel’s shoulders. To him, violence will continue so long as Israel refuses
to relinquish its status as a Jewish State by allowing a full “right of return” for
Palestinians. According to Khalidi, such an action would “ensure a final resolution of an
issue which will always haunt Israel if it is not finally laid to rest in a mutually
satisfactory manner.”299 http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/eme073108.pdf
Professor Rashid Khalidi, "A Palestinian Who Wouldn't Harm the Cause"
March 12, 2005
Rashid Khalidi’s impressive résumé – he’s the Edward Said Professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and the director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute – suggests a disinterested and objective scholar, who goes where the facts take him. A more realistic assessment of Khalidi comes from the Palestine Liberation Organization, which, according to press reports, regards the professor as a reliable partisan who "wouldn’t harm the cause": Khalidi enjoys the confidence of the PLO and has access to its leaders that stems from the ties he forged while teaching in Beirut from 1974 to 1985, when the PLO maintained its headquarters there.
“He became close to the leadership and gained their confidence,” said Suhail Miari, executive director of the United Holy Land Fund.
For Khalidi’s book, Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made the organizations archives available to him, for the first time.
He was given access because he’s a serious scholar and a Palestinian who wouldn’t harm the cause," said Hassan Abdul Rahman, director of the Palestine Affairs Center in Washington ...(Chicago Tribune, Oct. 31, 1991; emphasis added.)
Not harming the cause, in Khalidi’s case, means using his academic credentials to give credibility to the most extreme anti-Israel canards, such as the fabrication that non-Jews are barred from most land in Israel:
... non-Jews are barred by law from purchasing or leasing most properties (Jewish National Fund property, "state land," and land under control of the Custodian of "Absentee" Property – ie., stolen Arab land) and are barred from renting in segregated Jewish-only neighborhoods. Where is the racism in this picture? (Washington Post, Oct. 1, 1997)
In fact, half the land used by Israeli-Arab farmers is state land leased from the Israeli government, and the only segregated towns in Israel are Arab localities such as Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm, where no Jews are allowed to live. In contrast, the “Jewish” town of Upper Nazareth is now more than 17 percent Arab.
Khalidi also served as president of the so-called American Committee on Jerusalem (now known as the American Task Force on Palestine), a Washington-based non-profit that regularly disseminates crude anti-Israel propaganda. Khalidi, for example, more than once signed fund-raising letters for the ACJ claiming that Israel engages in "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem:
... forcing out its Muslim and Christian Arab population, and making Jerusalem an exclusively Israeli city. Israel is attempting to reach its stated goal of a 70% Jewish majority in all of Jerusalem by the year 2020. (ACJ fund raising letter, dated December 1998 and signed by Dr. Rashid Khalidi)
Khalidi’s claim is arrant nonsense. The fact is that Jerusalem’s population in 1967, after reunification, was 74.2 percent Jewish and 25.8 percent Arab, and since then the Jewish proportion has declined and the Arab proportion grown, so that today Jerusalem’s population is 32 percent Arab. That is, the city has become less Jewish and more Arab! Some ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps Khalidi’s most shocking fabrication, however, was his "Remembrance" for the PLO terrorist mastermind known as Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf). Khalaf was notorious for his plots to assassinate King Hussein, and for his leadership of the so-called "Black September" organization, the PLO group that slaughtered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and in 1973 murdered US diplomats in Khartoum. The assassination of the US Ambassador to Lebanon in 1976 was also carried out under Khalaf’s orders. (For details on Khalaf see entry in An Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Greenwood Press.)
Incredibly, Khalidi remembers not one word about any of these bloody terrorist attacks in his “Remembrance.” Instead he credits Khalaf with pioneering the PLO’s “diplomatic strategy” in 1988, with his “eloquent speeches and his back room political skills.”
According to Khalidi, “Abu Iyad will be sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life” (Middle East Report, March-April 1991).
No wonder the PLO places so much trust in Khalidi.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=923
Before coming to the U.S. and assuming his current role at Columbia, Rashid Khalidi
was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – then headed by
Yasser Arafat.294 He served on the PLO “guidance committee” at the 1991
Palestinian/Israel Madrid Conference295 and is on record praising the late-Arafat296 and
his second-in-command, PLO terrorist mastermind Abu Iyad (a.k.a. Salah Khalaf).297
Iyad is said to have been behind the plots to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan and to
attack Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich (“Black September”).298
Aside from his clearly troubling connections and sympathetic stance toward violent
terrorists, Khalidi also maintains his own extreme views. In an article penned for the
Journal of Palestine Studies, Khalidi places the responsibility of conflict in the Middle
East solely on Israel’s shoulders. To him, violence will continue so long as Israel refuses
to relinquish its status as a Jewish State by allowing a full “right of return” for
Palestinians. According to Khalidi, such an action would “ensure a final resolution of an
issue which will always haunt Israel if it is not finally laid to rest in a mutually
satisfactory manner.”299 http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/eme073108.pdf
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