Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Obama 'admits' Kenyan birth?

Pennsylvania Democrat Philip J. Berg, who filed a lawsuit demanding Sen. Barack Obama present proof of his American citizenship, now says that by failing to respond Obama has legally "admitted" to the lawsuit's accusations, including the charge that the Democratic candidate was born in Mombosa, Kenya.

As WND reported, Berg filed suit in U.S. District Court in August, alleging Obama is not a natural-born citizen and is thus ineligible to serve as president of the United States. Though Obama has posted an image of a Hawaii birth certificate online, Berg demands that the court verify the original document, which the Obama campaign has not provided.

Now Berg cites Rule 36 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which states that unless the accused party provides written answer or objection to charges within 30 days, the accused legally admits the matter.

Since Obama has only filed motions to dismiss and has not actually answered the charges in the lawsuit, Berg claims, according to Rule 36, Obama has legally admitted he is not a natural-born citizen.

Now Berg is asking the court for a formal declaration of Obama's admission and asking the Democratic National Committee for another presidential candidate.

In a statement released today, Berg argues that he filed Requests for Admissions on Sept. 15, meaning Obama had until Oct. 15 to answer or face the consequences of Rule 36.

"Obama and the DNC 'admitted,' by way of failure to timely respond to Requests for Admissions, all of the numerous specific requests in the Federal lawsuit," Berg's statement reads. "Obama is 'not qualified' to be president and therefore Obama must immediately withdraw his candidacy for president and the DNC shall substitute a qualified candidate."

Berg's original lawsuit leveled several charges at both Obama and the DNC – accusing the former of lying about his place of birth, faking his birth certificate and fraudulently running for office; and accusing the latter of not properly vetting its candidate.

Though it hasn't given Berg the evidence he seeks, the Obama campaign has publicly answered allegations that the candidate was born in Kenya and faked his Hawaii birth certificate.

"Smears claiming Barack Obama doesn't have a birth certificate aren't actually about that piece of paper," says the "Fight the Smears" section of Obama's website, "they're about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen.

"The truth is, Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America," the campaign website states. It also includes images of a Hawaii birth certificate bearing the name Barack Hussein Obama II.

Berg has also taken the controversy public through his website and through repeated public offers to revoke the lawsuit if Obama will produce legal documents that establish his citizenship.

Without those documents, Berg has chosen to file two additional motions in district court in Philadelphia. The first asks the court to notify Obama and the DNC of what Berg understands they have now legally "admitted," and the second asks for an expedited ruling, given the quickly upcoming Nov. 4 election.

"It all comes down to the fact that there's nothing from the other side," Berg told Jeff Schreiber for his blog, America's Right. "The admissions are there. By not filing the answers or objections, the defense has admitted everything. He admits he was born in Kenya. He admits he was adopted in Indonesia. He admits that the documentation posted online is a phony. And he admits that he is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president of the United States."


Attorney Philip Berg appeals to Oprah to ask Obama to bow out

LAFAYETTE HILL, PA. – As a number of lawsuits challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as President of the United States are pending in state and federal courts, Attorney Philip Berg wrote a second letter to Oprah Winfrey on Monday as a follow up to the letter he sent her in November.

Berg said he hoped Winfrey, because of her close relationship to Obama and her significant role as a national leader, would review the information he sent her, then contact Berg to resolve the issue “before it gets ugly and hopefully, we can prevent rioting in the streets.”
Winfrey heartily promoted Obama to be elected President of the United States.

Berg has since provided Winfrey with ample documentation illustrating why Obama is not constitutionally qualified and asked that she urge Obama to step down, and said, “There is nothing more important than ‘our’ U.S. Constitution.”

Berg has repeatedly proclaimed Obama a fraud with evidence that his presidency is the biggest hoax ever to be pulled off on the citizens of the United States.

While Winfrey has taken responsibility for discredited books and authors she previously touted by removing them from her book list, issuing statements and/or apologies to her millions of viewers, Berg believes she also has a moral obligation to denounce a constitutionally ineligible president she previously “sold” to her viewers and the public as otherwise.

Winfrey is no stranger to rescinding endorsements and expressing disappointment over things she previously touted to the public.

Most recently, it was the story about how Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat met his wife Roma, who, as a young girl used to sneak him apples and bread through the barbed wire fence for seven months while he was a prisoner at a Nazi concentration camp, and how they met again by chance on a blind date many years later in New York.

Winfrey called it “the greatest love story … we’ve ever told on the air.”

As it turns out, that “greatest love story” was fabricated.

Although Rosenblat did actually survive the Buchenwald concentration camp, he embellished the story with the part about the girl bringing him apples and bread through the fence every day and accidentally running into her later in life when they fell in love and married, to create a fairy tale “Hollywood” ending.

Embellishing a story about the Hitler years created an uproar amongst fellow Holocaust survivors, historians and others who wanted to ensure this segment of history never repeats itself, as they worried fabrications involving a concentration camp story would only provide more ammo for the Holocaust deniers.

Berkley Books, which planned to publish his “Angel at the Fence” story in February, pulled the book, although a feature film is still scheduled for production.

Winfrey eventually mustered up a small disclaimer on her website about the story and issued a statement a week later saying she was “disappointed.”

In 2005, Winfrey chose James Frey’s book, “A Million Little Pieces,” a memoir about a recovering drug addict, for her book club, labeling it “a powerful story.”

Well, that too was subsequently discredited as fiction and Oprah, who first tried to defend the book for its message anyway, ended up having to tell millions of viewers, “I made a mistake. I left the impression that the truth does not matter, and I am deeply sorry about that because that is not what I believe.”

In 2007, Winfrey removed another book, “The Education of Little Tree” by Forrest Carter, from her book list site, which is considered one of the most influential book-selling sites in the world.

“Little Tree,” originally published in 1976, was supposedly the autobiography of an Indian boy who was raised by his grandparents.

The book was actually written by Asa Carter, a racist and member of the Ku Klux Klan who wrote speeches for George Wallace.

At the time this came to light in late 2007, Winfrey spokeswoman Angela DePaul stated, “The archived listing was posted in error and has been removed,” citing she had no idea how long “Little Tree” was listed on the website.

But it’s not just books Winfrey sells.

When Winfrey announced in late 2007 she “blew out” her thyroid, Kaayla Daniel, PhD, CCN and author of the book “The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food, said, “More than 70 years of studies link soy to thyroid disorders.”

Daniel said, “Oprah has long touted the health benefits of soy, but the myth that soy is a healthy food has had tragic consequences, especially for women in the throes of menopause. The phytoestrogens found in soy products are potent inhibitors of thyroid peroxidase, the enzyme the body needs to produce the essential thyroid hormones T3 and T4.”

She said many women “continue to flock to soy products due to popular books heavily marketed by Oprah …”

In conclusion, Daniel said, “Now that Oprah has joined the ranks of women suffering from thyroid disease, it is my hope she will alert her audience to the very real dangers of excess consumption of soy based products. The proven risks far outweigh the possible benefits.”

Immediately following Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday, Berg stated, “It is a sad day for America as Obama is not qualified to be President pursuant to ‘our’ United States Constitution. Today, unfortunately, a usurper, Obama, takes the oath of office as President and every law he signs and appointment he makes will be void,” adding, “We are headed for a constitutional crisis.”

Courtesy Photo: Attorney Philip Berg appealed to Oprah Winfrey on Monday, for the second time, requesting she ask Obama to withdraw in order to prevent a “constitutional crisis.”

Most covered-up of 2008: Natural-born citizen

Charges that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. and, therefore, constitutionally ineligible to serve as president top the list of the 10 most "spiked" or underreported stories of the last year, according to an annual WND survey.

At the end of each year, news organizations typically present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories in the previous 12 months.

WND's editors, however, have long considered it far more newsworthy to publicize the most important unreported or underreported news events of the year – to highlight perhaps for one last time major news stories that were undeservedly "spiked" by the establishment press.

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has sponsored "Operation Spike" every year since 1988, and since founding WorldNetDaily in May 1997, he has continued the annual tradition.


Here, with our readers' help, are WorldNetDaily editors' picks for the 10 most underreported stories of 2008:

1. Charges that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. and thus constitutionally ineligible to serve as president

More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed over Obama's eligibility to assume the presidency.

The cases have alleged the Illinois Democrat does not meet the "natural born citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution, which reads, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

WND launched a petition drive that has garnered some 200,000 signatories who demand that Obama simply provide documentation of his eligibility. But thus far, he has put up a legal defense to ensure his records remain sealed.

Some of the legal challenges have alleged Obama was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, and others have focused on his father's Kenyan citizenship.

Cases brought by Cort Wrotnowski and Leo Donofrio challenged Obama on allegations that dual citizenship – based on a father who was a British subject and a mother who was an American minor – disqualified him from office. Both, however, were turned down by the Supreme Court.

Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania Democrat, demanded that the courts verify Obama's original birth certificate and other documents proving his American citizenship. Berg's latest appeal, requesting an injunction to stop the Electoral College from selecting the 44th president, was denied. But the conference on the case is set for Jan. 9.

Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of claimants in a California suit that asked the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the until Obama verified his eligibility to hold office.

2. U.S. Senate committee report that hundreds of top scientists have testified they believe claims of man-caused global warming are fraudulent

The Republican minority of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee released a report with a growing list of more than 650 international experts who soundly debunk the claim of a "consensus" in science that human activity is causing a global warming.

The report noted the insistence of many in mainstream media that global warming skeptics are few and untrustworthy, including CNN's Miles O'Brien, who declared, "The scientific debate is over. We're done."

O'Brien, the Senate report noted, said in 2006 that scientific skeptics of man-made catastrophic global warming "are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually."

Andrew Dessler of the eco-publication Grist Magazine is quoted by the report stating, "While some people claim there are lots of skeptical climate scientists out there, if you actually try to find one, you keep turning up the same two dozen or so."

However, the ranking minority member of the Senate committee, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., pointed to a growing list of scientists his office has accumulated.

In fact, more than 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s, have signed a massive petition project that challenges belief in man-made global warming.

Cooling temperatures worldwide also didn't help the cause of global warming activism.

This year was officially the coolest year of the century, although that didn't keep U.N. climate change activists from sticking to their arguments.

Meanwhile, one of the most vocal scientists in the field of hurricane prediction has backed away from his earlier certainty of a link between global warming and stronger hurricanes after developing a new forecasting technique that suggests a moderate increase – or even decline – in storm activity over the next 200 years.

And a NASA scientist asserted alarming pronouncements about carbon dioxide emissions are unwarranted and overblown.

3. The true causes of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, which point directly to the Democratic Party


Obama housing adviser Franklin Raines

While many pundits pointed to corporate greed and a lack of government regulation as the cause for the American mortgage and financial crisis, some analysts contended it wasn't too little government intervention but too much, in the form of activists compelling the government to pressure Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into unsound, politically correct lending practices.

Stan J. Liebowitz, economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, contends the federal government over the last 20 years pushed the mortgage industry so hard to get minority homeownership up, that it undermined the country's financial foundation.

As Congress worked on a $700 billion bailout plan for the U.S. financial system, WND compiled an overview of the companies and executives under scrutiny for the meltdown.

WND reported two Barack Obama advisers, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, received preferential home loans as industry favors, apparently in deference to their executive positions heading Fannie Mae.

As WND reported, Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year at Fannie Mae, where he served as CEO from 1991 to 1998. Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004.

WND also reported Raines and two other top Fannie Mae executives agreed to pay $24.7 million, including a $2 million fine, to settle a civil lawsuit that accused them of manipulating Fannie Mae earnings, allowing executives to pocket hundreds of millions in bonuses.

4. Obama's ties to terrorists and extremists

William Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger and Tony Rezko are just a sampling of the radical and unseemly figures who have played a prominent role in Barack Obama's life.

WND recently reported an attorney for Rezko – a convicted felon who helped raise the money to give Obama his start in politics – is listed as the owner and taxpayer for Obama's Chicago mansion.

Late in the presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made an issue of Obama's relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. But Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, also a former prominent member of his terrorist group, the Weathermen, dismissed the strategy as a racist tactic meant to stoke fear among white people that they cannot trust a black man.


Sen. Barack Obama with Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Another former member of the Weathermen, Mark Rudd, charged Obama was "feigning" a centrist position on some issues so he could ultimately push through a radical agenda, including universal health care and trimming the military.

The Weathermen declared "war" on the U.S. government, bombing U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s, including the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. Ayers infamously advocated, "Kill all the rich people. ... Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents." Dohrn once was on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List, and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America."

WND was the first to report Obama served on the board of the Wood's Fund, a liberal Chicago nonprofit, alongside Ayers from 1999 to 2002.

Obama resigned from his 20-year membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago after months of political damage from repeated alternative-media airings of video clips from sermons by his pastor and spiritual mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In March, after the video clips began to damage Obama's poll numbers, the senator gave a speech in Philadelphia in which he denounced the pastor's remarks but refused to "disown" him.

In a January 2006 sermon, Wright called America the "No. 1 killer in the world" and blamed the country for launching the AIDS virus to maintain affluence at the expense of the Third World. The pastor reportedly said in a sermon just after 9/11, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." In a 2003 sermon, Wright encouraged blacks to "damn America" in God's name and blamed the U.S. for provoking the 9/11 attacks by dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II and supporting Israel since 1947.

Obama's ties to Khalidi, the anti-Israel Palestinian professor, were first exposed by WND

According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, Obama first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."

Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran."

5. The campaigns of third-party presidential candidates, and Ron Paul's sensationally successful grass-roots campaign

"A lot of starvation out there for a different message" sparked a vigorous grass-roots effort by Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul that surprised pundits by sometimes outflanking leading candidates in fundraising.

The Texas congressman summed up his appeal in an interview with WND on the campaign trail: "Our focus on the Constitution, defending our borders and the whole idea of assuming responsibility for themselves appeals to millions of Americans who are not looking for government to take care of them."

Paul contended his campaign's success came from his message, not from mainstream media focus or campaign hype.


Rep. Ron Paul

Constitutional Party candidate Chuck Baldwin told WND 2008 was a different election year, because "the American people are extremely fed up with the two major parties."

"I think furthermore there is a deep distrust and suspicion among the American people that the two major parties have their best interests at heart," he said.

Ambassador Alan Keyes, who sought the GOP nomination and later ran on the America's Independent Party ticket, told WND his first priority in office would be to make sure the executive branch of the U.S. government recognizes the unalienable rights of U.S. citizens, as spelled out in the Constitution.

"My first priority would be to re-establish within the executive branch respect for and protection of the unalienable rights of the unborn children in the womb, to make sure nothing was done by the executive branch of the United States that violated the Constitution of the United States in his regard," he said.

Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, distinguished himself from both McCain and Obama on Supreme Court picks and sounded more like the Democratic nominee on foreign policy. He told WND he would nominate a Supreme Court justice in the mold of swing-voter Anthony Kennedy and would consider negotiating directly with the mullahs who run Iran's radical Islamic regime.

6. The stunning success of the Iraq war

Only a week ago, the Iraqi government formally recognized the Christian faith and the Christmas holiday.

It's just one result of the largely unacknowledged victory by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.

A rare Associated Press story on America's success revealed: "In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged."

Army Col. Tom James, a brigade commander on his third combat tour in Iraq, says: "We've put out the forest fire. Now we're dealing with pop-up fires.

Gen. David Petraeus' reports, "Attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and … Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once – something that was inconceivable a year ago."

Independent embedded journalist and former Green Beret Michael Yon, reporting from the front lines, says, "By my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won."

7. The sources of Obama's campaign contributions

Barack Obama's lax online donation form, in contrast with John McCain's, made it difficult to determine the source of his donations, opening up the possibility of fraud, including contributions from foreigners.

WND reported, for example, Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip were listed in government election filings as having donated some $30,000 to Obama's campaign.

One week after the report the Palestinian brothers contended their money had not been refunded.

8. Obama's far-left voting record

In its annual survey, the National Journal found Obama to be the most liberal U.S. senator, shifting even further to the left in 2007 after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.

The calculations ranked senators relative to each other based on 99 key votes and assigned scores in three areas: economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy. On foreign policy, for example, Obama's liberal score of 92 and conservative score of 7 indicate that he was more liberal in that issue area than 92 percent of the senators and more conservative than 7 percent.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, was more liberal than 83 percent of the senators on foreign policy and more conservative than 16 percent.

Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, ranked third, just ahead of Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist.

Obama's radical record as an Illinois state senator was highlighted by a TV ad featuring a 31-year-old woman who was born alive following her mother's botched abortion. The spot focused on Obama's votes and declarations against legislation that would protect infants born alive during an abortion procedure.

Obama insisted during the campaign he would have supported the Illinois law protecting born-alive infants if it contained a "neutrality" clause like the federal version, which states the law specifically is not intended to impact the status of babies before birth.

As WND reported, however, documentation uncovered by Doug Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee revealed Obama did vote against a version of the Illinois law that was the same as the federal law.

9. Bush's refusal to pardon imprisoned border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who were prosecuted by the president's friend, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton

As president, Bush has pardoned or commuted sentences for 32 drug dealers, 12 thieves, seven embezzlers, an arsonist, an armed bank robber and eight Thanksgiving turkeys, among others – but U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean remained in prison this Christmas, praying for their release.


Monica Ramos embraces her husband, former U.S. Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos, two days before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison (Courtesy El Paso Times)

Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year prison sentences, respectively, for shooting an illegal alien drug dealer while he smuggled nearly 750 pounds of marijuana across the border. They were convicted of assault, discharge of a weapon in the commission of a crime of violence and deprivation of civil rights.

WND initiated a letter campaign to persuade Bush of the urgency and moral rightness of showing clemency to the two jailed law enforcement officers.

WND reported many Border Patrol agents have held their fire in border incidents, fearing they could their lose jobs or end up behind bars like Ramos and Compean.

In July, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the major counts against the former agent, reversing only a minor obstruction of justice count.

A Christian pastor, in May, filed an ethics complaint with the Texas Bar Association seeking an investigation into U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's "willfully misleading" statements in the case against former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

In April, the nonpartisan Project 21 renewed a call to Bush to pardon Ramos and Compean, saying, "It is time to prove that [Bush] places the welfare of American communities and those men and women who risk their lives to protect them over the welfare of lying illicit drug smugglers."

10. Suppression of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders' film, "Fitna," which exposes the worldwide threat from Islam

Defying the wishes of the government of the Netherlands, a courageous Dutch MP posted online a 17-minute documentary on the Quran, juxtaposing images of Islam's holy book with terror attacks and bombings by Muslim extremists.


Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherlands' Freedom Party, released "Fitna," an Arabic word meaning strife, on the political party's website.

A critic of the "Islamization" of the West, Wilders released the film after weeks of debate couched in terms of free speech and religious bigotry. Many opponents feared the kind of violence that arose following the Danish publication of cartoons depicting Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

Wilders said he understood Muslims could be upset by the film but said that was not his purpose in producing it.

The film later was removed from a British video-sharing website, LiveLeak.com, after the organization reported "serious" threats to its staff members.

"This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else," the site said. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realized LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one."

Early critics had expressed fears Wilder would show a copy of the Quran being destroyed in his film, but the ending offered a slight surprise.

As someone leafs through the Quran, a sound of tearing is heard.

"The sound you heard was from a page [being torn out] of the phone book. It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Quran," the screen text read. "Stop Islamization. Defend our freedom," it concluded.

'Smears' About Obama Largely True



The Obama campaign says its candidate is a victim of “smears” — and has even created a Web site to fight such attacks.

But a Newsmax investigation finds many of the so-called smears are largely based in truth — and the Obama campaign uses half-truths, clever language, and ad hominem attacks to spin the facts.

Obama’s www.FightTheSmears.com focuses mainly on anti-Obama messages being repeated on the Internet and talk radio, the only media where Obama's ideological allies are not dominant.

These "smears" and the Obama rebuttals are often framed in lawyerly language that leaves much wiggle room in the candidate’s answers.

FightTheSmears.com also makes no attempt at objectivity, describing Obama’s critics as “pushing misleading research and distorted claims” because they are “ideologues” busy “spreading a ‘pack of lies’ about Barack.”

In a section of the site titled, “Who’s Behind the Smears?” visitors can see a chart naming seven groups and six individuals with lines that suggest multiple, sinister connections between them.

The people and groups named are real and are members of Washington’s small but conservative sphere of power and influence. The Obama conspiracy chart links all of these conservative individuals and groups back to the critics who dogged the “Clinton 1992 Campaign.”

This may come as something as a surprise to Hillary Clinton, as many of the “smears” against Obama first surfaced during her heated primary contest with him.

Newsmax reviewed 10 random claims and related rebuttals posted on Obama’s ever-changing FightTheSmears.com to gauge their veracity. Here’s what we found:

Claim No. 1: Obama's campaign is funded by the rich, big corporations and foreigners.

“Barack Obama was the only major presidential candidate this year to completely reject contributions from The Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs that have dominated our politics for years,” the Obama site says of the persistent online criticisms of its fundraising.

“Instead, this campaign has been owned by the more than 3.1 million everyday Americans who have donated in small amounts.”

Not so, according to campaign finance records. Nearly half of the $600 million raised by Obama to date has come from wealthy donors and special interests. Obama's allies months ago dropped their ad linking Republican rival “Exxon John” McCain to Big Oil after it came to light that Obama had taken far more money from Exxon-Mobil than McCain.

“The Obama campaign has complied fully with federal election law,” claims the Obama site, “including donor eligibility and contribution disclosure requirements.”

However, one giant loophole the politicians wrote into the law allows contributions in amounts of $200 or less with no donor identification. Obama claims that $300 million in campaign funds was given by these small donors, and he won’t release their names and addresses.

McCain has released his whole donor database, including those who have contributed less than $200.

Critics argue that the other half of Obama’s campaign haul — the part not raised from big corporate donors and special interests — came in a small flood of anonymous donations that might be foreign or corrupt, or both.

Claim No. 2: Obama has had a close, ongoing relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

The Obama site acknowledges that its candidate and Ayers ”served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990s,” but maintains most stories about the links between Obama and Ayers are phony or exaggerated.

It does not mention that Obama and Ayers worked together on the board distributing millions of dollars with the aim of radicalizing Chicago schoolchildren.

Nor does the site acknowledge that Obama kicked off his first political campaign in the living room of Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader. (Obama is currently saying it was not the first event. There is no dispute that one of Obama’s first political events in his first run for public office was held in Ayers’ home.)

There is also no dispute the Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon the Capitol, the home of a New York Supreme Court justice, and a police station, among other targets. FBI agent Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the group, has recounted Ayers teaching him how to make bombs and saying, “In the revolution, some innocent people need to die.”

“Smear groups and now a desperate McCain campaign are trying to connect Barack to William Ayers using age-old guilt by association techniques . . .” says the Obama Web site.

Actually, McCain and Obama critics are questioning why Obama would continue to associate with a man who, as recently as 2001, said he did not do enough and wished he had bombed more.

Conservatives also note that if Ayers had bombed abortion clinics, the liberal media would brand him a pariah forever. What does it tell us about the liberal media’s and Obama’s judgment and values that they see nothing wrong with embracing unrepentant terrorist Ayers today?

Claim No. 3: Obama takes advice from executives of troubled mortgage backer Fannie Mae.

“John McCain started smearing Obama about non-existent ties to Fannie Mae in some of his deceptive attack ads,” says FightTheSmears.com. The site downplays connections between Obama and two former heads of the giant mortgage-backing institution — James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines — whose corruption played a key role in the current financial crisis.

But an editorial in the Aug. 27, 2008, Washington Post described Johnson and Raines, as “members of Mr. Obama’s political circle.”

Raines advised the Obama campaign on housing matters. Obama chose Johnson to select his vice presidential running mate. But because neither are advising Obama today, this Web site’s present-tense claim that he “doesn’t [not didn’t] take advice from Fannie Mae execs” is technically, if deceptively, true.

Johnson also reportedly helped raise as much as $500,000 for Obama’s campaign.

And despite Obama’s lack of seniority in the U.S. Senate, he pocketed more than $105,000 in political contributions, the third-highest amount given to any lawmaker, directly from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama’s Web site leaves all this unmentioned.

Claim No. 4: Obama has close ties with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group suspected of massive voter registration fraud.

Obama’s site says the candidate was never an ACORN employee and that ACORN “was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive [Obama] ran in 1992.”

In defending Obama, the site resorts to smearing former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell — calling him a “discredited Republican voter-suppression guru” — for daring to fight the vote fraud so often associated with operatives of ACORN, among the largest radical groups in the United States.

As Newsmax has documented in ["Clever Obama Tries To Bury ACORN Past,"] Obama’s Web site is attempting to deceive when it says Obama was never “hired” to work as a trainer for ACORN’s leaders. In fact, he did the work for free from at least 1993 until 2003.

ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg acknowledges in the Oct. 11, 2008, New York Times that Obama trained ACORN leaders. And Obama worked as a lawyer for ACORN.

As to heading up Project Vote in Illinois, Obama said during a speech to ACORN leaders last November, "[When] I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack-dab in the middle of it.”

Veteran journalist Karen Tumulty described Project Vote in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of Time magazine as “a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” after interviewing its national director.

The co-founder of ACORN, former Students for a Democratic Society official Wade Rathke, described Project Vote as one of ACORN’s “family of organizations.”

Over the years, ACORN and its front groups, like the one Obama ran in Illinois, have registered more than 4 million voters. When authorities in Virginia checked ACORN registrations, it found that 83 percent were fraudulent or had problems. This, in theory, could mean ACORN may have created the opportunity for stealing more than 3.3 million votes in this November’s election, a margin far wider than that by which Obama is likely to win.

Claim No. 5: Obama has shown only wavering support for individual gun-ownership rights.

“During Barack’s career in the Illinois and United States Senates, he proudly stood to defend the rights of hunters and sportsmen,” says Obama’s Web site, “while doing everything he could to protect children — including his own two daughters — from illegal gun violence.”

But the National Rifle Association, it continues, “is distributing a dishonest and cowardly flyer that makes confrontational accusations and runs away from verifying them.”

Actually, the NRA does a meticulous job of laying out documentation, as Newsmax reported in September ["NRA to Fight Obama Over Gun Rights Flip-Flops,"] to show that Obama has supported handgun confiscation; the handgun ban in Washington, D.C.; a virtual ban on high-powered rifle ammunition; and many other draconian restrictions on Second Amendment rights.

If elected, wrote the NRA, Obama “would be the most anti-gun president in American history.”

Claim No. 6: A fervent supporter of abortion rights, Obama supports late-term and partial-birth abortions.

The Obama Web site dismisses such criticism as the work of “radical anti-abortion ideologues running ads against Barack.”

But as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted repeatedly against legislation to protect infants who, during a late-term abortion, were “born alive.” Such protection, he has argued, already exists in Illinois; it does, but is subject to the abortionist’s decision whether such an infant has a good likelihood of survival.

Nurses have reported instances in which surviving aborted babies were left by abortionists to die without water, food, or warmth.

Obama’s Web site notes that even the Republican author of one of these bills, former state Sen. Rick Winkel, has written that “none of those who voted against [his bill] favored infanticide.”

True, but Obama’s site does not quote the rest of Winkel’s statement: “[T]heir zeal for pro-choice dogma was clearly the overriding force behind their negative votes rather than concern that my bill would protect babies who are born alive.”

Obama has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record according to NARAL Pro-Choice America; his rating from the National Right to Life Committee is zero.

How extreme is Obama on this issue? In the U.S. Senate, he has voted against bills that would prohibit minors from crossing state lines for abortion without parental notification.

"Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” Obama has said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

Claim No. 7: Obama showed little interest or support for American combat troops during his overseas visits.

Doubts about Obama’s true support for the military cropped up during a campaign trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Europe.

A widely circulated e-mail, penned by Army Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, described Obama's visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan: “As the Soldiers lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off . . . He again shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service . . . I swear we got more thanks from the NBA basketball players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from [Obama].”

Porter later recanted, sending a follow-up e-mail that said, in part: “After checking my sources, information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong.” He did not specify which information was wrong, leading Obama skeptics to suspect that this officer has been disciplined by his superiors.

Heading home, Obama touched down in Germany, where he “was scheduled to visit the American hospitals at Ramstein and Landstuhl.” But as The Washington Post reported, Obama “canceled the trips after being told by Pentagon officials that he could only visit in his official capacity as a senator, not as a candidate” and could not have his visits with hospitalized soldiers videotaped by the media.

Prominent liberal mainstream media reporters such as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell rushed to defend Obama, saying that the press had never planned to cover his visits to military sickbeds. But Obama canceled both visits and used his free time instead to shoot hoops, with the media recording his best shots.

Claim No. 8: Barack Obama is a Muslim.

FightTheSmears.com states bluntly that Obama is a Christian, not a follower of Islam.

In fact, Barack Hussein Obama’s Kenyan father was raised Muslim, though he reportedly was not religious.

His mother divorced and remarried another man, a Muslim from Indonesia. As a youngster in Indonesia, Barack Obama attended two schools and was registered at both as a Muslim. He received religious instruction in both schools as a Muslim, including studying the Quran. According to a childhood friend, Obama occasionally attended services at a local mosque.

Obama’s Muslim upbringing has been detailed in a 2007 Los Angeles Times report (reprinted in The Baltimore Sun) headlined "Islam an Unknown Factor in Obama Bid." Middle East expert Daniel Pipes has studied the question of Obama’s Muslim faith and says he is “lying” when he says he was never a Muslim.

It’s important to note that Obama’s Web site does not say he was never a Muslim. But in the past, Obama’s site and FightTheSmears.com did make the claim Obama was never a Muslim. Since that claim is obviously false, it is no longer used.

Obama says he became a Christian in his late 20s. He now describes himself as Christian. Until recently, he spent two decades as a member of a Chicago United Church of Christ congregation that embraces Black Liberation theology. Somewhat like the Roman Catholic liberation theology of Latin America, the Chicago UCC church preaches elements of neo-Marxist class warfare. It combines these radical socialist elements with black racialism.

Claim No. 9: As president, Obama would raise taxes dramatically for most Americans.

Millions of Americans recognize that Obama is likely to raise taxes. But like a good conjurer, who tricks you into watching his right hand while doing things with his left, the Obama Web site assures readers with a red herring.

The Illinois senator will not tax your water, as claimed in some fringe e-mails, FightTheSmears.com maintains.

What Obama will do, however, is tax businesses and capital gains more heavily, even though America already has the world’s second-highest business taxes.

“Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases” said former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson at the 2008 Republican National Convention. “They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No, they’re just going to tax businesses! So unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline . . . or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small business, don’t worry. It’s not going to affect you.”

During his campaign, Obama has promised to raise various taxes that will fall on most economic classes, including the dividend tax, the FICA tax cap, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, and new taxes on gasoline.

He also called for the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, which will automatically raise taxes on most Americans. By letting the Bush cuts expire, Obama would produce a $2 trillion tax increase that some economists predict will rumble through the already weakened economy like an earthquake.

Claim No. 10: Obama was born outside the United States and is ineligible for the presidency.

The Obama Web site dismisses the claim that the candidate was born anywhere but in the United States as “completely false” and “groundless.”

As proof, the Obama’s campaign has produced a “certificate of live birth” from Hawaii indicating that Barack Hussein Obama II was born Aug. 4, 1961. Critics, however say the document could have easily been forged and is not a substitute for a certified birth certificate.

No reporter has been allowed to see the original certificate of live birth or its certificate number, which is blacked out on copies of it on the Obama site.

Skeptics note that Obama’s “Father’s Race” is identified on this document as “African,” a geographic and modern politically correct term rather than a 1961 racial designation. The standard term used on American birth certificates until the U.S. Census changed it in 1980 would have been “Negro.”

Former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, Philip J. Berg, a Democrat with mixed credibility (he has supported conspiracy theories involving 9/11), has filed a lawsuit to force Obama to produce a certified copy of his birth certificate. According to Berg, Obama’s paternal grandmother has said she was present at his birth in Kenya, after which his mother promptly returned with her baby to the United States.

If that is true, Obama could be constitutionally ineligible to be president.

See it with your own eyes: Obama's book blurb for Ayers





WND Exclusive
ELECTION 2008
See it with your own eyes:
Obama's book blurb for Ayers

As state senator, presidential candidate praised
work of former leader of Weather Underground


Posted: October 20, 2008
8:43 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wrote a review of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers' book in 1997, calling it "searing" and "timely," according to a blogger who tracked down the original printed version of the endorsement since that was before the publication in which it appeared was digitized.

According to the blogger at Zombietime.com, Obama, who was an up-and-coming state senator at the time, endorsed Ayers' book called "A Kind and Just Parent: Children of Juvenile Court."

In the short review on Dec. 21, 1997, Obama in the Chicago Tribune calls Ayers' book, "A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair."

The documentation calls into question Obama's repeated efforts to distance himself from Ayers, who boasted as recently as 2001 of trying to bomb various federal buildings such as the Pentagon and wishing he had done more.


Obama has described Ayers and someone who lived in his neighborhood and with whom in worked on a school project, but he's denied any close link.

"I find it very hard — no, make that impossible — to believe that Barack Obama had 'no idea' who William Ayers really was, or that he had a past as a notorious domestic terrorist (as Obama's campaign has claimed) while serving on panels with Ayers and simultaneously praising Ayers' book in a major newspaper," the blogger wrote.


Sen. Obama's review of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers' book in 1997

The blogger described tracking down the book endorsement.

"I had seen mentions of the existence of this review in a very few media outlets, including CNN, National Review, American Spectator, and a handful of others. But because the review was published before the Chicago Tribune began digitizing and archiving its articles online, there was no direct Web link to the review itself — only citations of it. So, out of curiosity, I took it upon myself to visit a library in San Francisco, and using the library's Lexis-Nexis access and its archive of microfilm versions of major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, I finally tracked down a copy of the actual review itself," Zombietime said.

The endorsement came in part of the Chicago Tribune column called "Mark My Word," where Chicago leaders praised their favorite current books.

Ayers book had just recently been published by Beacon Press.

The blogger noted that Ayers, in his book, also mentioned Obama.

Ayers' wrote: "Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of 'safe neighborhood watch': the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day."


The full page that featured the Obama review of Ayers' book

"So there's no question they knew each other," the blogger wrote.

On the Zombietime forum page, one participant wrote, "Obama is not running to change government he's running for overthrow government. Ayers wins."

"The more time that passes, the more obvious it becomes that the links between Ayers and Obama are multiple, and that Obama had to know about Ayers' criminal past," said another. "It certainly looks like he's hiding something."

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On a Boston Globe forums page, the readers were concerned not so much about the relationship with Ayers, but Obama's repeated efforts to distance himself from Ayers.

"Personally I don't care too much about him associating with Ayers, the 60s were a turbulent time though bombing your own country is despicable; it bothers me a great deal that a presidential candidate can flat out lie and get away with it," wrote one contributor. "Just because many Americans are tired of Bush shouldn't mean we accept old style politics and deceit, but it seems to be the case this election."

The review came about the time, as WND reported, Obama's wife, Michelle, organized a university event in which she invited her husband and former radical Ayers to serve on a panel discussion about whether child murderers should be tried as adults.

Both Barack Obama and Ayers served on the side that opposed treating offending minors as adults.

Michelle Obama at the time was the University of Chicago's associate dean of student services and director of the college's Community Service Center, which sponsored the juvenile detention discussion Nov. 20, 1997.

She told the university's student newspaper she hoped the panel discussion would open a dialogue between members of the college and the broader Chicago community.

"We know that issues like juvenile justice impact the city of Chicago, this nation and – directly or indirectly – this campus. This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it," she said.

Panel leaders invited by Michelle Obama included her husband, who taught law at the university; Ayers, who was a university education professor; and four other speakers who had experience with Chicago's juvenile detention system.

Barack Obama was billed as a leader "who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system."

Ayers, promoting the panel event, told the student newspaper, "We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn't suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?"

During his Weathermen days, Ayers once famously commented, "Kill all the rich people. ... Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents."

In an ABC News interview, Obama described Ayers as "guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

But several other blogs earlier raised questions about the links between the two men. The Sweetness and Light blog, which first reported on Michelle Obama's panel event, commented "we all must be mistaken, since we have been repeatedly reassured that Mr. Ayers 'was just a guy who lived in the Obamas' neighborhood.'"

The two men also worked in 1994 on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, founded by Ayers.

Also in 1995, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state senatorial campaign reportedly was held in Ayers's apartment. In a widely circulated article, WND first reported Obama served on the board of the Wood's Fund, a liberal Chicago nonprofit, alongside Ayers from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. Tax filings showed Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000.

Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, also has served on panels with Obama. Dohrn, once on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List, was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left four people dead.

As WND reported, an FBI report claims Dohrn built and planted the bomb that killed a San Francisco police officer in 1970.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. The charges against him were dropped in 1974, however, because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

But Ayers told the New York Times in an interview released Sept. 11, 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

Obama a Muslim who studied in Islamic schools

JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim of Kenyan origins who studied in Islamic schools and whose campaign may have been financed by people in the Islamic and African worlds, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said during a recent televised national rally.

"There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama," said Gadhafi in little-noticed remarks he made at a rally marking the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. air raid on his country.

The remarks, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, MEMRI, were aired on Al Jazeera in June.

The video also has been posted on YouTube and can be seen here:

"All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man," continued Gadhafi. "They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.

"We are hoping that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that [he will know] that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well with other peoples, especially the Arabs," Gadhafi said.


Gadhafi went on to lament statements Obama made at a June 4 address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in which the presidential candidate stated if he is elected president, "Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."

But it seems Gadhafi was not aware that the next day, during a CNN appearance, Obama explained he meant Jerusalem shouldn't be physically divided with a partition and was not referring to the city remaining in exclusively Jewish hands.

Stated Gadhafi: "But we were taken by surprise when our African Kenyan brother [Obama], who is an American national, made statements (about Jerusalem) that shocked all his supporters in the Arab world, in Africa, and in the Islamic world.

"We hope that this is merely an elections 'clearance sale,' as they say in Egypt - in other words, merely an elections lie. As you know, this is the farce of elections - a person lies and lies to people, just so that they will vote for him, and afterwards, when they say to him, 'You promised this and that,' he says: 'No, this was just elections propaganda.' This is the farce of democracy for you. He says: 'This was propaganda, and you thought I was being serious. I was fooling you to get your votes.'

"Allah willing, it will turn out that this was merely elections propaganda. Obama said he would turn Jerusalem into the eternal capital of the Israelis. This indicates that our brother Obama is ignorant of international politics, and is not familiar with the Middle East conflict," Gadhafi said.

Gadhafi went on to express his hope if elected Obama will implement a "one state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning Israel would be flooded with millions of Palestinian Arabs who would terminate the country's Jewish nationality.

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He said he was worried Obama may have a "black inferiority complex" whereby he may enact "white men" policies to prove he is no different from "white" America.

"The thing we fear most is that the black man suffers from an inferiority complex. This is dangerous. If our brother Obama feels that because he is black he doesn't have the right to rule America, this would be a disaster, because such a feeling would make him act whiter than the white, and go to an extreme in his persecution and degradation of the blacks.

"We say to him: Brother, the whites and blacks in America are equal. They are all immigrants. America belongs neither to the whites nor to the blacks. America belongs to its original inhabitants, the Indians. Both the whites and the blacks immigrated to America, and so they are equal, and Obama has the right to hold his head high, and say: 'I am a partner in America. This is my land as much as it is yours. If it is not my land, it is not yours either. It is the land of the Indians. You are immigrants, and so are we.'"

Obama was 'quite religious in Islam'

Obama repeatedly has denied he is a Muslim. His campaign site states: "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

But as WND has reported, public records in Indonesia listed Obama as a Muslim during his early years, and a number of childhood friends claimed to the media Obama was once a mosque-attending Muslim.

Obama's campaign several times has wavered in response to reporters queries regarding the senator's childhood faith.

Commenting on a recent Los Angeles Times report quoting a childhood friend stating Obama prayed in a mosque "something the presidential candidate said he never did," Obama's campaign released a statement explaining the senator "has never been a practicing Muslim."

Widely distributed reports have noted that in January 1968, Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as "L Soetoro Ma," worked for the topography department of the Indonesian Army.

Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students but exempt them from studying religion. Obama's school documents, though, wrongly list him as being Indonesian.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled "also as a Muslim, according to documents" in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta.

Laotze blog, run by an American expatriate in Southeast Asia who visited the Besuki school, noted: "All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school, and a young 'Barry Soetoro,' being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school. He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam."

Indeed, in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," he acknowledged studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."

"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies," wrote Obama.

The Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama's childhood Islamic studies, some describing him as a religious Muslim.

Speaking to the country's Kaltim Post, Tine Hahiyary, who was principal of Obama's school while he was enrolled there, said she recalls he studied the Quran in Arabic.

"At that time, I was not Barry's teacher, but he is still in my memory" claimed Tine, who is 80 years old.

The Kaltim Post said Obama's teacher, named Hendri, died.

"I remember that he studied 'mengaji (recitation of the Quran)," Tine said, according to an English translation by Loatze.

Mengaji, or the act of reading the Quran with its correct Arabic punctuation, is usually taught to more religious pupils and is not known as a secular study.

Also, Loatze documented the Indonesian daily Banjarmasin Post interviewed Rony Amir, an Obama classmate and Muslim, who described Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."

"We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong (waist fabric worn for religious or casual occasions) he looked funny," Amir said.

The Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Jakarta, quoted Zulfin Adi, who identified himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends, stating the presidential candidate prayed in a mosque, something Obama's campaign claimed he never did.

"We prayed, but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played," said Adi.

Friday prayers

Aside from a new website to fight purported smears, Obama's official campaign site has a page titled "Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian." The page states, "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ."

But the campaign changed its tune when it issued a "practicing Muslim" clarification to the Los Angeles Times.

An article in March by the Chicago Tribune apparently disputes Adi's statements to the L.A. paper. The Tribune caught up with Obama's declared childhood friend, who now describes himself as only knowing Obama for a few months in 1970 when his family moved to the neighborhood. Adi said he was unsure about his recollections of Obama.

But the Tribune found Obama did attend mosque.

"Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia," states the Tribune article.

It quotes the presidential candidate's former neighbors and third-grade teacher recalling Obama "occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers."

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, notes the Tribune article "cited by liberal blogs as refuting claims Obama is Muslim" actually implies Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim and twice confirms Obama attended mosque services.

In a free-ranging interview with the New York Times, Obama described the Muslim call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

The Times' Nicholos Kristof wrote Obama recited, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent," the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer.

The first few lines of the call to prayer state:

Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet ...

Some attention also has been paid to Obama's paternal side of the family, including his father and his brother, Roy.

Writing in a chapter of his book describing his 1992 wedding, the presidential candidate stated: "The person who made me proudest of all was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."

Still, Obama says he was raised by his Christian mother and repeatedly has labeled as "smears" several reports attempting to paint him as a Muslim.

"Let's make clear what the facts are: I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance [to the American flag] and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the United States Senate when I'm presiding," he told the Times of London earlier this year.

Obama and Ayers Shared an Office (Update: For Three Years)

It’s nice to be the guy getting tips for once instead of the guy sending them. Yesterday I got two great tips from Morgen, a reader who had found my earlier posts digging into the Obama Ayers connection. Both tips appear to check out and the second one is, I think, big news.

First, the smaller one…

This Chicago Annenberg Challenge website from 2002 shows the total amount of funds given to Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop from 1995 to 2001. The amount is not the $175K I had reported earlier. According to this page, the total given under Barack Obama’s direct supervision was $1,056,162. Adding that amount to the money given by the Joyce Foundation and Woods Fund during Obama’s tenure brings the grand total to $1,968,718. Just shy of two million dollars! That’s a lot of scratch, to put it bluntly. And don’t forget, this doesn’t count the 3/4 million that went to John Ayers during the same time period.

Now here’s the second and bigger break, again big hat tip to Morgen for his work on this…

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money to is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website]. Here’s a screen grab from the website’s footer:

In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address:

The CAC moved to a new address sometime in 1999 or 2000, but the shared office probably persisted for at least three years. I can’t say for sure because 1998 is the earliest tax information available online. [Correction: I can say for sure that they shared the same building for the years 1995-1998. Here is a 1995 progress report from the CAC with the same address.]

Now remember, the NY Times described Obama and Ayers as having “crossed paths.” Ben LaBolt, Obama’s spokesman said:

Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood.

I’m going to suggest that two guys working in the same building for a period of years probably crossed paths pretty often. For all we know, they had lunch together on a daily basis. Maybe, in an effort at conservation, they were even carpool buddies. After all, Ayers is a guy from Obama’s neighborhood.

Would someone at the Times like to contact Mr. LaBolt for a follow-up?

Update: Made the correction above. Also, Obama was a state senator from 1996-2004. However, he still likely spent some significant time at the Sangamon street address, especially in 1995. But even after his election he would presumably be working on his CAC duties at the Sangamon office, not from some other location.

According to this letter dated 1995, Obama’s office was on the 3rd floor:

And according to this memo dated 1996, Small Schools Workshop was also on the 3rd floor:

Do you think maybe Obama and Bill Ayers ran into each other once in a while?

Update 10/19: There’s been a lot of effort to identify the building in question. A tipster from Chicago told me he thought it had been demolished, but apparently one of Ace’s commenters drove by the area today and identified this as the bulding:

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Obama's signature campaign slogan, Yes We Can, has been replicated by the Iranian president in a promotional video

April 28, 2009
Categories: Barack Obama

'Yes We Can,' Farsi edition

From the Guardian:

Obama's signature campaign slogan, Yes We Can, has been replicated by the Iranian president in a promotional video issued for Iran's presidential poll on 12 June, when Ahmadinejad is seeking reelection.

The video features a cover picture of Ahmadinejad wearing his trademark white jacket and pointing to the Farsi phrase Ma Mitavanim (We Can) on a blackboard. The film is aimed at students and capitalises on his former status as a university lecturer.

If anybody knows where the video is, send it my way.

UPDATE: The Guardian's Robert Tait points me to stills from the film.

UPDATE: Or was it the other way around? Christian Rocca reminds me that Ahmadinejad's slogan on his 2005 campaign was, "It's doable -- and we can do it!"

UPDATE: No, wait, Obama had it in 2004.

Which is to say that some cliches are universal.

Obama’s liberal arrogance will be his undoing

The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama's first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.

There's no denying that this is liberalism's greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limits of their imaginations.

"The world has changed," Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. "The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes ... [in] traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over."

Right. "Family values" and a "strong foreign policy" belong next to the "free silver" movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.

No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on him that anybody watching might see it differently.

When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg came out with a book arguing that "our nation's political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before." One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided? Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.

During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that 600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political assassinations, riots and bombings punctuated our political discourse.

It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that they can overlook domestic dissent when they're at the wheel. When the GOP is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work of the sort of cranks Obama's Department of Homeland Security needs to monitor.

If liberals thought so fondly of social peace and consensus, they would look more favorably on the 1920s and 1950s. Instead, their political idylls are the tumultuous '30s and '60s, when liberalism, if not necessarily liberals, rode high in the saddle.

Sure, America was divided under Bush. And it's still divided under Obama (just look at the recent Minnesota Senate race and the New York congressional special election). According to the polls, America is a bit less divided under Obama than it was at the end of Bush's 100 days. But not as much less as you would expect, given Obama's victory margin and the rally-around-the-president effect of the financial crisis (not to mention the disarray of the GOP).

Meanwhile, circulation for the conservative National Review (where I work) is soaring. More people watch Fox News (where I am a contributor) in prime time than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. The "tea parties" may not have been as big as your typical union-organized "spontaneous" demonstration, but they were far more significant than any protests this early in Bush's tenure.

And yet, according to Democrats and liberal pundits, America is enjoying unprecedented unity, and conservatives are going the way of the dodo.

Obama has surely helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris. In his effort to reprise the sort of expansion of liberal power we saw in the '30s and '60s, Obama has -- without a whiff of self-doubt -- committed America to $6.5 trillion in extra debt, $65 billion for each one of his first 100 days, and that's based on an impossibly rosy forecast of the economy. No wonder congressional Democrats clamor to take over corporations, tax the air we breathe and set wages for everybody.

On social issues such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research, Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.

I'm not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They're not. But American politics didn't come to an end with Obama's election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama's first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.