This is part II in a series of two posts that detail some of the more troubling associations of Presidential candidate Barack Obama. In my previous post I highlighted his relationships with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the activist group known as ACORN.
Interestingly enough, in the day since I published the first post, news has broken that ACORN voter fraud may have occurred in yet another state. In what I hope is an isolated incident, a 7 year old girl has shown up on the voter registration rolls in Connecticut. The form that registered the girl to vote was fraudulently submitted by ACORN workers.
It is very clear that Senator Obama cultivated his associations with Wright and ACORN in order to gain acceptance and trust in the local community in Chicago. Entry into Chicago politics required further assistance and more money. Senator Obama was able to find the assistance he needed, financial and otherwise, via friendships with Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers.
Tony Rezko
Tony Rezko is a very powerful man in the world of Chicago politics with the ability to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for political campaigns. Tony Rezko has been a longtime friend and associate of Barack Obama. In a story published today by the Associated Press the link between Obama and Rezko is confirmed.
"Rezko also was friendly with Obama -- offering him a job when he finished law school, funding his earliest political campaigns and purchasing a lot next to his house."
Mr. Rezko did a little more than just purchase the lot next to Senator Obama's house. When Senator Obama purchased his million dollar mansion in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, the sale price was for $300,000 less than the asking price. The lot next door was purchased by Tony Rezko's wife at full asking price. Later on Senator Obama purchased a parcel of the lot next door back from Mrs. Rezko in order to expand his own yard. Call the situation what you like, but the whole deal looks like a favor. This favor occurred while Mr. Rezko was under investigation for the crimes he would eventually be convicted for.
Tony Rezko is now a convicted felon. He was convicted in June 2008 of fraud in attempting to get millions of dollars in kickbacks on state funded real estate deals. Tony Rezko is also a slumlord. And Barack Obama was connected to some of the housing deals whose costs were forced onto the backs of taxpayers when Mr. Rezko stopped making payments on the projects.
An investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times titled, "Obama and His Rezko Ties" makes the connection between Obama and Rezko's real estate deals.
"Obama was an attorney with a small Chicago law firm -- Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland -- that helped Rezmar get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 of their 30 apartment buildings for the poor."
The same Sun-Times report also reveals that while residents of Rezko's buildings were freezing without heat in the winter of 1997, Tony Rezko somehow scraped up $1000 to donate to the campaign fund of a new State Senator named Barack Obama.
Another report by the Sun-Times titled, "8 Things You Need To Know About Obama and Rezko," details a relationship between Obama and Rezko that lasted for years, long after everyone knew Tony Rezko was using state money to refurbish and then neglect Chicago housing for the poor for his own personal gain.
How could someone with good judgment maintain such a long relationship with an individual who not only wasted taxpayer money but also engaged in criminal behavior? How could a U.S. Senator do a real estate deal with a man under deep investigation for crimes that were well known in the Chicago community? It's a question of judgment.
I think it's more accurate to say that it's a reflection of poor judgment by Senator Obama who aligned himself with a slumlord that wasted the state taxpayers money in order to forward his own political career. Senator Obama should have denounced Tony Rezko and demanded that he make restitution to the citizens of Rezko's slums as well as to the taxpayers of the state. Instead, after years of devastating results in Rezko's housing projects, Senator Obama allowed Rezko to raise funds for his campaign for U.S. Senate.
As always, Obama claims ignorance, telling the Chicago Sun-Times the following.
"While I was a state senator, he had buildings in my district that apparently were not managed properly. I had no knowledge of that at the time.''
Bill Ayers
Bill Ayers is a friend to Barack Obama. He's the kind of friend that you need to get ahead in the world of Chicago politics. And Bill Ayers indeed helped Barack Obama get ahead by appointing him to serve on foundation boards and hosting Obama's political coming out party.
Mr. Ayers comes from a powerful family. Bill Ayers' father Tom Ayers was the head of the power company Commonwealth Edison. According to a blog post by Tom Ayers' grandaughter, Tom Ayers was extremely influential in the world of business and politics in Chicago.
And while Tom Ayers performed his work in the light of day his son Bill preferred to lurk in the shadows. Today people will call Bill Ayers many things. He's called an educator. He's called an activist. He's called a radical or ex-radical. Many would also call Bill Ayers a terrorist.
The young Mr. Murtaugh's father was a judge involved in the Panther 21 trial. No one doubts that the Weather Underground was behind the bombing of Mr. Murtaugh's house. They were very active in the area. A few weeks later, on the morning of March 6, 1970, a townhouse in Greenwich Village was reduced to rubble. The New York Times reported the following item years later.
"Mr. Ayers headed Commonwealth Edison for seven years, ending in 1980. Before assuming the top job, he helped negotiate the first labor contract between the energy giant and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He served on many boards, including that of G.D. Searle, Chicago Pacific Corp., Zenith Corp., Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago and Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, his family said."
In the 1960s Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn founded a violent organized crime syndicate known as the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground positioned themselves as a group of people who were against the Vietnam war. But the Weather Underground didn't make their case via peaceful protests and legal action. They made their case via violence, intimidation and terror.
Bill Ayers had the means and the opportunity to conduct reasonable, peaceful dissent against the war. He simply chose another direction. And that direction included setting bombs at the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, New York Police Headquarters and the home of a judge in New York City.
John Murtaugh was nine years old on February 21, 1970 when woke to a frantic household that was on fire. Mr. Murtuagh recounted the tale earlier this year in an article titled, "Fire In The Night."
"I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother's pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS."
"On the morning of March 6, 1970, Cathy Wilkerson stumbled onto 11th Street in tatters, bleeding and her clothes all but ripped off her body. Her father's town house, 18 West 11th Street, which she had borrowed on a ruse, had just been blown to pieces, killing three members of the Weatherman group who were building bombs in the basement."
These are but two of the many stories from across the country that involved acts of violence by the members of the Weather Underground. The New York Times reports that, "Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings..." Actions of members of the Weather Underground continued until 1981, when members of the organization robbed an armored car in Rockland County, NY. Two Brinks guards and a police officer were killed.
For many years Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn were fugitives from the law. Bernardine Dohrn was supsected of involvement in a murder in San Francisco while on the run and was on the FBI's ten most wanted list. Ayers and Dohrn eventually turned themselves in. Afforded the best legal counsel money could buy Ayers and Dohrn were able to escape the most serious charges against then. It's not that they weren't guilty. They were guilty. They just had the means and political muscle behind them to kill the case.
In an August 2001 Chicago Magazine article titled No Regrets, Bill Ayers proudly proclaimed himself, "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country."
Today Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are respected members of society in Chicago. They are very well off, living in a mansion in Barack Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood. Assimilation back into society was relatively easy for a couple whose family was one of the most powerful in the Midwest. They champion the social cause of education and hobnob with respected world leaders such as Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
There are no regrets and no repentance from the people who killed, maimed and otherwise terrorized Americans on their own soil. Ayers presented his attitude in an article titled "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives," that appeared in the New York Times on September 11, 2001.
"I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough."
These revelations beg the following question. Are these the sort of people that any reasonable person would want supporting them in a quest for political office? I say no. Barack Obama felt differently. Bill Ayers was (and still is I believe) Barack's kind of guy. Bill gets things done after all, and he's got a lot of money to boot.
The connections between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers are well documented. A Chicago Sun-Times report titled, "Who Is Bill Ayers," documents the Obama-Ayers relationship.
"In the mid-1990s, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a meet-and-greet at their house to introduce Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's campaign. Ayers also served alongside Obama between December 1999 and December 2002 on the board of the not-for-profit Woods Fund of Chicago. That board met four times a year, and members would see each other at occasional dinners the group hosted."
The questions that have lingered throughout Senator Obama's Presidential Campaign are these. What did Barack Obama know about Bill Ayers' violent past? When did he know about Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and the Weather Underground? How does Senator Obama feel about the fact that Ayers and Dohrn have never expressed an ounce of remorse for what they did?
The only real answers we've ever gotten from Senator Obama came in the debate footage embedded below. Senator Obama describes Ayers as,"... guy who lives in my neighborhood who is a professor of English in Chicago." Senator Obama also categorizes the relationship between himself and Mr. Ayers as "flimsy" in his response.
But we know that the relationship between Obama and Ayers was more than flimsy. It was more than two guys saying hi to each other while walking their strollers down the street. Bill Ayers and Barack Obama are friends, were business associates and partners in Obama's political ambitions.
The question I ask myself is this one. If I knew someone that was trying to help me had committed anything close to the acts of Bill Ayers, what would I do? I tell you what I would do. I would say, "No thanks." Because if I'm going to get ahead in this life it's not going to be with the support of people who disavow themselves of the rule of law and common decency. And it won't be with help from people who fail to realize the pain and anguish they chose to cause people via their acts of terror.
It's a question of judgment. And Barack Obama's judgment in aligning himself with the Ayers family was very poor. More very chilling questions should be asked. What favors did Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn do for Senator Obama? How will Senator Obama repay those favors when he is President? The American people deserve answers before electing Barack Obama to be President.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?
- Mark 8:36
Too Many Questionable Associations
As I stated in the first post in this series I don't agree with Senator Obama on any issue. But even without the issues there exists too many questionable associations with people who have done harm to the people of the United States. Reverend Jeremiah Wright, ACORN, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers. These are opportunistic associations which reveal values that a person will bring with them to higher office.
In his rise to political power Senator Obama was not the change agent that he professes to be. He went with the flow. He befriended those who were in power. He championed their causes. He did not question their motives or challenge their beliefs. That's not change. That's more of the same.
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