Showing posts with label dereliction of duty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dereliction of duty. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Weather Underground, ACORN and Obama: From Pitching Bombs to Pitching Policy



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"...Weathermen advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States and the system of capitalism; toward that end, they carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots."
--From Weather Underground


Bring the War Home


EX-WEATHER UNDERGROUND: What Are They Doing Today?
BILL AYERS, BERNADINE DORHN, ZACH POLLET, WADE RATHKE, DRUMMOND PIKE:
MAKING THE TRANSITION FROM VIOLENT OVERTHROW TO TAKEOVER from WITHIN





What do you do if you're a spoiled rich poser with time on your hands in the 1960s and 1970s?

For some, that question was answered by joining the Weather Underground--The Weathermen.

"...Weathermen advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States and the system of capitalism; toward that end, they carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots."

Since armed overthrow of the US government and capitalism is so passe, so 1960s, the Weathermen moved on to other pursuits.

Perhaps, like the overthrow of the US government and capitalism by other means?

Keep in mind, ACORN is founded by these former Weather Underground. Even Progressives for Obama is Ayers and Dohrn founded. Project vote was founded by Zach Pollett. Tom Hayden ,Senator, founder of MoveOn.org, former husband of Jane Fonds, is former Weather Underground. Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, is another one. So is Drummond Pike. Pike founded Tides.
--FBI Agent Talking About Bill Ayers. (video).


More to the point, how did the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, come to be surrounded and influenced by members of an organization that declared war on the United States of America in the 1960s?




WHERE ARE THEY TODAY?

Where are the former brothers-in-arms of the Weather Underground and what are they doing today? Let's take a look.

  1. Bill Ayers was the son of Commonwealth Edison Chairman and CEO Tom Ayers.

    Much has been written (see links below) about the relationship between former Weather Underground leader, Bill Ayers, and President Barack Obama. Much of what the mainstream press wrote before the 2008 US election was apologia, often using the famous Obama quote that Ayers was "just some guy from my neighborhood".

    * Obama, Bill Ayers: Mainstream Media Explain Away Obama Ties to Terrorists
    * Obama, Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers: The ‘Tangential’ Bill Ayers
    * Obama’s Ties to 1970’s Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers: Disassociation and Little Condemnation
    * Barack Obama, Bill Ayers: NY Times Continues to Whitewash Obama-Ayers Connection




    The big question unasked by the media is if Barack Obama met Bill Ayers during the time both were in the Columbia University community at the same time that a splinter group of the Weathermen was still actively planting bombs. While the possibility has been suggested in blogs, there does not appear to be any record of any media directly asking Obama if he met Ayers in New York and if such a relationship spurred Obama to travel to Chicago to begin his career as a community organizer.
    ---Bob Owen, Ayers-Dohrn-Obama Tie Shouldn’t Be Dismissed; Oct. 6, 2008



  2. BERNADINE DORHN

    Bernadette Dorhn
    [ABOVE: Bernadine Dorhn, former Weather Underground terrorist, Michelle Obama colleague and Obama babysitter.]

    From Wikipedia: "Bernadine Ohrnstein in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1942 and grew up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, an upper-middle-class suburb of Milwaukee.

    1995: Barack Obama launches his political career in a "coming out" party held in the home of Bernadette Dorhn and husband, Bill Ayers.
    March 2009: Law authorities in San Francisco hold a press conference indicating that Dorhn was responsible for planting a pipe bomb that killed a SF police officer in 1970.
    March 2009: Obama's Justice Department, tells SFPD not to comment on the case.

    ALSO:
    * Eric Holder, Justice Department Investigating William Ayers for 1970 Cop Killing Bombing?
    * Time Bomb


    It was on Feb. 16, 1970, Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell of the San Francisco Police Department was killed by shrapnel from an anti-personnel bomb planted on a window ledge at the force's Park Station. The pipe bomb was filled with heavy metal staples and lead bullet projectiles. Another officer, Robert Fogarty, received serious wounds to his face and legs, and was partially blinded in the attack.

    WND reported just months ago when top law enforcement officers in San Francisco signed a letter accusing Ayers and Dorhn of being directly behind the bombing, but the Obama Justice Department then told them not to comment on the case.

    At that press conference March 12, directed by activist Cliff Kincaid of America's Survival Inc, the leaders of the San Francisco Police Officers' Association made public a letter pointing a finger at Ayers and Dohrn that demanded those responsible for the bombing be brought to justice.
    --New report adds to evidence against Dohrn


    It's not known how much influence the Obama's former babysitter has these days. Probably, as has been the case with other associations, no more than the president is publicly willing to admit.


  3. Zach Pollet

    Former Weatherman, Zach Pollet, became ACORN's political director and the head of ACORN's Project Vote, now embroiled in voter fraud investigations in several states.

    Zach Pollett, for instance, was Project Vote’s executive director and Acorn’s political director, until July, when he relinquished the former title. Mr. Pollett continues to work as a consultant for Project Vote through another Acorn affiliate.
    --ACORN: Who Funds the Weather Underground’s Little Brother? by Matthew Vadum



    Obama has admitted to working for Project Vote in 1992 when he ran a “successful voter registration drive”. He claims on his Fight The Smears website, “ACORN was not part of Project Vote”.

    He was technically right: ACORN was not a part of Project Vote. Project Vote was a part of ACORN.
    --ACORN/New Party/Project Vote Shared SAME OFFICE


    ALSO:
    ACORN Watch: Project Vote, partisan antics, and illegality

    Is Project Vote another example of "taking over the US government by other means?"


  4. Wade Rathke

    Former Weatherman Rathke is the founder of Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).

    The group has had its federal funding cut within the last several days over charges of widespread corruption among many of its affiliate offices across the country. The organization was captured on video advising a pair of undercover journalists from Big Government.com on how to evade taxes and set up a brothel featuring underage child sex slaves.

    Rathke and brother, Dale, have left ACORN after a nearly-$1 million embezzlement scandal. He then founded--surprise--ACORN International.


    FOR MORE:
    For Acorn Sting information: Big Government Exclusives
    Google "Wade Rathke" and "Big Government.com" and you'll turn up hundreds of references.

  5. Drummond Pike

    Pike, the director of the Tides Foundation, a George Soros-sponsored distributor of financial support to ACORN and its affiliates, among others.

    Son of a wealthy investment banker, Pike is another child of privilege who sought to bring down that system so that community-unapproved 'others' couldn't duplicate his family's feat of creating wealth.

    For more, see Drummond Pike at Undue Influence.

    Like most of the other Weathermen, Pike makes a killing in his pursuit of helping the poor--in Pike's case, somewhere between $400,000-500,000/year.




SO HOW DID THE PRESIDENT GET INVOLVED WITH SO MANY MEMBERS OF THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND?

Question

How did the president come to be surrounded by this web of 1960s radicals who advocated violent overthrow of the US government, the "re-education" of capitalists and the "elimination" of 25 million Americans when they took over? [Obama, Bill Ayers: Ayers Wanted to Kill 25 Million Die-Hard Capitalists]

One clue: he's worked with many of them in the past.

Just look for the union label
In the mid 1990s, ACORN and the SEIU partnered with other leftist groups to help form the Marxist New Party, a political coalition. In 1995, Obama sought out their nomination. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement and used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.


ALSO: Barack Obama, Socialist: Obama a Member of Socialist New Party.

This particular part of Obama's past was studiously ignored by a media that traded its traditional vetting responsibilities for a chance to elect "one of their own". In addition, the media attacked any (read: Sarah Palin) who had the bad taste to bring this past to the attention of the public.

Big Media was largely successful in this task. That Obama had been a member of the Socialist New Party and ran under their banner was practically impossible to find anywhere except on the Internet.

Whenever one of these associations becomes more than the traditional Mouthpiece Media can bear and the president is asked about them, he usually responds in one of two ways.

1. He blames his staff.

From Obama's Inability to Hire Good Help Rears Its Head … Again:

We started covering Sen. Barack Obama's inability to hire good staffers in June 2007, when he blamed staffers for some opposition research trying to link Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, to outsourcing in India; for injecting some venom in the David Geffen/Hillary Clinton fight; and for missing an event with firefighters in New Hampshire.

In December, we noted again that Obama was blaming the answers on a 1996 questionnaire on a staffer; and was blaming his touring with "cured" ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin (which antagonized gays and lesbians) on bad vetting by his staff.


Those five buck-passing incidents were apparently not enough.

ABC's Jake Tapper eventually lists 14 incidents where the President, when caught or confronted with an unpleasant fact, blamed his staff for the problem.

Memo to President Obama: order a plaque to hang in the Oval Office:
"Good help is really really hard to find. Really."


2. He didn't know.
From DBKP's Barack Obama: Senator I-Didnt-Know, Nov 2 2008:
There have been other instances of Barack Obama pleading ignorance about unpleasant information once its reported (Father Michael Pfleger, for one).

Which may lead some to affectionately refer to Barack Obama as “Senator I-Didn’t-Know.”
On his release of medical, college and university records, Obama’s answer is silence.
When speaking of the future and his plans, Obama’s rhetoric is precise.

On information unearthed about his past, his response has many times been, “I didn’t know.”




MORE on the I-Don't-Know meme: Acorn Who?

Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.

Mr. Obama's success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.





Many in the country and a few in the media are starting to wonder the president's push for rapid passage of bills that would fundamentally change the country. Changes that would not only limit individual freedom in the name of the "collective good", but also, some say, destroy capitialism.

If only the ones in the media had been more curious in 2008, the rest of the country wouldn't be so puzzled now.


by Mondo Frazier
Images: DBKP file
video: The Conservative Monster




Wednesday, July 23, 2008

John Edward, Rielle Hunter Affair: Love Child Update!

One Major Network Reportedly Ready
to Finally Report on the Edwards Love Child Scandal

Is Mainstream Media Blackout Ready to End?



UPDATE: DBKP has learned that "one major news network" is reportedly "ready to go" with a report on the Edwards' hotel meeting with the National Enquirer's reporters and photographers. The Enquirer reportedly had a team of seven reporters at the Beverly Hilton when Edwards arrived.

Will just one mainstream media reporter ask Edwards what he was doing at the hotel in the early AM? Does any MSM reporter have the balls to risk having his access to ask softball questions of Edwards cut off?

We'll see.

More details continue to emerge from the National Enquirer's Love Child Scandal Update.

The Enquirer has released the identity of the man who drove Edwards to the meeting that the Enquirer's reporters caught wind of and recorded. He's Bob McGovern, the very same man who drove Rielle Hunter to the tryst at the Beverly Hilton.

ALSO at DBKP.com:
Over 35 stories on the Scandal from 2007 to present.



From National Enquirer: John Edwards Love child Update

We can now reveal that the man who drove Edwards was Bob McGovern, the same man who drove Rielle to the hotel from Santa Barbara and rented her room in his name.

He was driving a 1999 four-door midnight blue BMW.

Said Butterfield: "The car had a baby seat in the back for Rielle's infant. He pulled into the parking lot, took a ticket from the automated machine, pulled forward, and stopped right after the parking gate lowered. Edwards got out of the passenger side, walked around the front of the car and went in a side entrance near the swimming pool.

"McGovern parked the car and then slowly walked back inside the hotel and went upstair
s."

The Enquirer also released more information--no doubt pouring in from the same interested parties that have kept DBKP's Email-box full of tips--on the Edwards camp's reaction and possible mainstream press interest.

Finally.

The Enquirer drops a few more tid-bits about the fall-out from the confrontation, which according to one source, was caught on the hotel's video surveillance system. Another source has already confirmed to DBKP that pictures of Edward's run-in with the Enquirer's reporters were caught on film and will be released in the near future.

* Edwards' advisers are "spitting mad and furious" that his late-night escapades have made international headlines because it could derail his chances of becoming Barack Obama's running mate.

* Edwards has not explained his whereabouts to any members of other news media outlets who have been trying to follow up on the story.

* His mistress, blonde divorcee Rielle, meanwhile, has returned to her home in Santa Barbara, Calif., and sources say she is "in despair" that Edwards might cut off contact with her because their latest rendezvous has been exposed in the media.


The meeting of Edwards and his advisers was, reportedly, not pretty.

After we posted the details of Edwards shocking meeting with Rielle, political sources close to Edwards revealed how he was candidly scolded by his advisors hours later.

One political source divulged: "His advisors told him they were furious that this had been brought out by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER right when Obama is considering whether he's V.P. material with the Democratic National Convention (Aug. 25-28 in Denver) only weeks away.

"From what I hear, John was read the riot act by his people. The fallout from this could cost him the job of running mate. They told him Obama doesn't want to pick someone and be embarrassed by the choice. This 'bimbo eruption' at this critical time will do him absolutely no good.

"While his people are not trying to tell him how to live his personal life, this baggage isn't going to help him convince Obama that he's the right guy to be his veep."

A day after the incident, Edwards traveled to Denver for an appearance at the University of Denver in support of the anti-poverty campaign, called Half in Ten. The very first question put to him at the event was about whether he'd become Obama's running mate.

Edwards was quoted as saying: "I'm not seeking the job. I don't expect to be asked…but anything that Sen. Obama would ask me to do, whether it's in his campaign or in his presidency, I would consider seriously."

But Edwards made no official comment on our bombshell disclosure about his late-night antics less than 24 hours earlier.

Said another source: "He's going out of his way to avoid discussing it - he knows whatever he says will come back to haunt him. If he denies being there, he doesn't want to be found out to be a liar."


"Liar"?

At the moment, that seems to be the least of John Edwards' several problems.

[Further updates to follow later on Wednesday]
by Mondoreb
Source: national enquirer: Love Child Scandal Update

image: fotosearch

John Edwards, Rielle Hunter Love Child: What if they Gave a Scandal and Nobody Came?



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The Dereliction of Duty
of the Mainstream Press




The John Edwards-Rielle Hunter episodes highlight what is, increasingly, a clear case of dereliction of duty in the Mainstream press.

The media mavens at all the old places people used to turn to for news (Time, Newsweek, NY Times, CNN, CBS, etc.) are not only silent, they have--and are--aggressively protecting John Edwards from any PR fallout of his affair with Rielle Hunter.

To paraphrase the age-old question, "If a scandal breaks and the Mainstream Media doesn't report it, does anyone hear about it?"

The answer these days, is "Yes"--thanks to the Internet. Bloggers are the favorite whipping boy of major media apologists in academia--most who spend their time flacking for former employers and castigating the Blogosphere as "irresponsible".

What label should be applied to news organizations who, during the Edwards affair, have strict observance of omerta would have made any Mafia chieftain proud?

Would "irresponsible" be appropriate?

Mickey Kaus is looking for signs that big media organizations, having accepted John Edwards' elaborate denials of the mistress/baby story, might now be interested in the latest developments. He speculates, correctly I'm sure, that the Obama campaign has noticed the news. But as far as the mainstream is concerned, nothing yet.
--Byron York, National Review: Edwards, Cont'd


When the Enquirer first broke the Edwards story in October 2007, the details at that time were sketchy. A generous person will forgive the lack of attention it received at that time in the mainstream press. Curious details escaped the press then: such as why a then-obscure Rielle Hunter would come forward to denounce the Enquirer's story on a small blog--when the Enquirer hadn't named the "other woman" in October. [Why Did Rielle Hunter Denounce the National Enquirer NINE WEEKS Before the Paper Would Name Her as the “Other Woman?]

When next the Enquirer returned to the Edwards-Hunter affair in December, it named Rielle Hunter--formerly known as Lisa Druck--as his companion. It also reported a number of verifiable facts that were also ignored by the MSM: Hunter was now settled in a gated community 5 miles from the Edwards campaign HQ; she was driving around in a BMW registered to Edwards' former Director of Finance; and, she was living in a multi-million dollar house owned by a Edwards' backer.

The press remained curious un-curious. [Curious Circumstances Excite No Curiosity in the Mainstream Media].

Even the fact that Elizabeth Edwards--a campaign mainstay up to that point--suddenly disappeared from the campaign trail after the second story, broke brought no interest.

NOT ONE question was put to Edwards on the campaign trail by the members of our "adversarial" press.

Part of the blogosphere picked up on the story and another half screamed because of that attention. [The Edwards Scandal, The Press, The Enquirer and the Blogosphere]

Bob Schieffer of CBS News revealed the new MSM standard of proof in play when one of their "chosen" are threatened.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you know I saw that this morning. I believe that — I believe that’s a story that we will be avoiding, because it appears to me that there’s absolutely nothing to it. I’m told that another — a man says that the child is his. I’m told that the woman who seems to be pregnant says it’s not his. So I guess — I guess we’re going to pass on that. Unless you come up with some new information on this, Don.
–When asked about the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter story On the Don Imus show


“I said I need back-up!! NOW!!
I got Bob Schieffer’s sense of curiosity here!”

Scandal? Well, Edwards denied it so there's no story. Right, Bob?

Mickey Kaus of Slate followed the events that happened--and was constantly under attack for having done so. Kaus now wonders, rightly, about what the MSM will do now that Edwards was caught visiting Hunter in LA yesterday by the Enquirer:

P.P.S.: Will this be the first presidential-contender level scandal to occur completely in the undernews, without ever being reported in the cautious, respectable MSM? That's always seemed an interesting theoretical possibility--a prominent politician just disappears from the scene, after blogs and tabloids dig up dirt on him, but nobody who relies on the Times, Post, network news or Mark Halperin has the faintest idea why.
--Mickey Kaus, Slate: Edwards Busted


Perhaps, the MSM found it difficult to tear themselves away from their PR duty on the Obama Magical Mystery Tour?

Again, Byron York, wonders:

On the John Edwards story, I do wonder how much, if any, coverage this report will receive. Edwards is, after all, in the pool for the Democratic vice presidential nomination; after first seeming to take himself out of the running, he put himself back in the race two weeks ago, telling NPR, "I'm prepared to seriously consider anything, anything [Obama] aske me to do for our country."

Of course, there's the question of whether the big media outlets will want to pick up a National Enquirer story. If I remember correctly, the Rush Limbaugh oxycontin story was broken by the Enquirer, and the press ran with that one.

Byron York: RE: Edwards


Of course, the MSM and the shrinking few who depend on them for "news" had their stock answer: "It's in the Enquirer".

Roger Simon had a ready answer:

...Oh, one last thing, for those of you who say it’s The National Enquirer, how do we know it’s true? I suggest you Google the “National Enquirer and OJ Simpson.” They broke most of the important stories on that case. In general, these days they’re vastly more reliable than The New York Times.
Roger Simon, John Edwards in a Feydeau Farce at the Beverly Hilton


The Enquirer may have been a tainted news source (John Edwards Love Child Scandal: Source Too Tainted for MSM?], but at the scandal game, they proved much more reliable than the New York Times during their sad attempt: the John McCain-Vicki Iseman story.

Doug Ross, in Enquirer: John Edwards Visits Rielle Hunter and their Love Child provides a complete recap of the Edwards-Hunter story--and the original lack of interest by the MSM in a Democrat cheating on his cancer-stricken wife.

Pareene, at Gawker, has an excellent take on the media coverage:

The National Enquirer spent months chasing John Edwards and digging into his relationship with Rielle Hunter before busting him spending the night in a hotel with the woman and the former Democratic presidential candidate's alleged love child. It was impressive and quintessential tabloid work. But there's no reason the paper should have had the scandal all to itself. Isn't this the sort of thing traditional newspaper tabs like the Post used to cover? And even starchy broadsheets should have had some interest — it was the Miami Herald that busted Gary Hart in 1988 (when his mistress left his townhouse — shades of the Edwards affair) and the Times that broke the story of Eliot Spitzer's whoring earlier this year.

Don't forget, also, that Newsweek's Michael Isikoff had the initial dirt on Monica Lewinsky a decade ago. A reputable magazine could have broken this story, as well!

In fact, the media had a full nine months to get the goods on VP hopeful Edwards following an October Enquirer story and coverage in the Huffington Post and Slate, and even longer if they were paying attention. According to the Enquirer, Edwards met secretly with Hunter "several times" after the fall coverage, so there was dirt there for an enterprising reporter to find.


Of course.

Gawker then asked several questions: "When is an affair a political career killer? Bill Clinton was able to stump effectively for his wife despite the Monica Lewinsky mess; San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is said to be eyeing a run for California governor despite sleeping with an aide's wife and people have already begun talking about Spitzer's rehabilitation.

"More to the point: When is an affair while your wife is dying of cancer NOT a political career killer? Is there a "he needed to get through the pain" angle? Or is it more "he needs to not show his face around here again, ever" situation?"

Perhaps the emphasis on this story will shift much more quickly this time around. From John Edwards comically taking refuge in a mens room, it will move to the MSM's retreat into omerta.

If the role of the press--especially during election time--wasn't so important, their dereliction of duty would be fodder for a hilarious reality show.

by Mondoreb
Sources:
Gawker: How Did Edwards Affair Stay Hidden?

image: blue roof