Ponderstorm My Brainstorm on Life & Politics

Compared to John McCain, we know very little about Barack Obama’s past. (For example, how many know that Obama has smoked cigarettes this year on the campaign trail? Watch his own admission.)  He seems to have simply burst upon the scene with a well-branded, well-funded and carefully honed message of change. It seems highly strange, though, that somebody could make it past the massive Clinton Machine and to the Democratic nomination without some kind of backing. Who is really behind Barack Obama and why do we know so little about him?

This collective ignorance is partly because he has refused to release his medical records, college transcripts, birth certificate and many other basic details that could clue us in on his character, experience and judgment. This collective ignorance is also because the mainstream media has been incredibly uninterested in Barack Obama’s past and has simply not investigated or even seemed interested. (They are very interested in Sarah Palin and ‘Joe the Plumber’ though and have dug and dug — in some cases perhaps illegally.)

Here are a few things we know about Barack Obama. I’m quoting from a report by Maxim Lott entitled “Obama’s Education Groups Funded Controversial Organizations in the ’90s, Tax Returns Show“:

The Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund of Chicago funded numerous controversial groups while Barack Obama served on their boards between 1995 and 2002, an analysis of their tax returns shows.

In 2001, when Obama was a part-time director of The Woods Fund of Chicago, it gave $75,000 to ACORN, the voter registration group now under investigation for voter fraud in 12 states.

The Woods Fund also gave $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attended. The reason for the donation to the church is unclear — it is simply listed as “for special purposes” in the group’s IRS tax form.

It gave a further $60,000 to the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, which was founded and run by Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of domestic terrorist William Ayers and, with her husband, a former member of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground.

Other controversial donations that year included $50,000 to the Small Schools Network — which was founded by Ayers and run by Michael Klonsky, a friend of Ayers’ and the former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an offshoot of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society — and $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, which critics have accused of being anti-Semitic.

There’s more:

When Obama co-chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which calls itself “a public-private partnership improving education for 1.5 million urban and rural public school students,” it gave to some of the same groups — partnering with ACORN to manage funding for schools and giving over $1 million to the Small Schools Network.

It also gave nearly $1 million to a group called the South Shore African Village Collaborative, whose goals, according to Annenberg’s archived Web site, are “to develop more Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama

This post was written by PonderstormMike on October 27, 2008

Tags: ACORN, Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama, media bias, radical associations, Woods Fund of Chicago

As I noted in my polling post yesterday, we are witnessing an unprecedented amount of pro-Obama bias in the mainstream media. The bias is so widespread that in many circles it has become politically incorrect to even voice support for John McCain. This peculiar political scenario reminds me of the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen.

As the story goes, the emperor cares about little more than clothing and always wants to wear the best in the land. One day he is approached by two swindlers who promise him the finest suit from the most beautiful and amazing fabric in the world. This fabric, the emperor is told, is visible to only the wise. In short, anyone who is either stupid or unfit will not be able to see the fabric.

The weak-minded emperor is flattered by the swindlers and, when shown the magical “fabric” does not want to admit he cannot see it. So, to not appear stupid or unfit as emperor, he vainly pretends the fabric is beautiful and authorizes the suit be made at once. Similarly, none of the emperor’s ministers want to appear unfit or stupid so they also pretend to see the fabric and proclaim their admiration.

After much supposed labor, the swindlers tell the emperor that the suit is finished. The emperor, still not admitting he cannot see a stitch of clothing, is “dressed” in the suit. Those around him applaud and gush over the tailors’ workmanship and how good it looks on the emperor. The emperor in his vanity enjoys the attention and proceeds to parade through the capital in a special procession to show off his new “clothes” that only the wise can see. Everyone in the kingdom succumbs to the pressure to not appear stupid. They lavish admiration for the beautiful “clothing” that is fit only for the emperor.

During the parade, however, a small child cries out, “But he has nothing on!” At that moment the crowd no longer withholds their better judgment and admits that the child told the truth — the emperor really is wearing no clothes! The emperor, though, not admitting his foolishness, holds his head high and continues to proceed through the town without clothing.

I feel this nearly 200-year old fairy tale fits our times very well. I offer the following analogy: The emperor is Barack Obama who has been swindled into thinking he is “the change we can believe in” and a few other foolish, empty campaign slogans.

The mainstream news media, much like the emperor’s ministers, don’t want to appear foolish in front of the emperor since he has a rock star-like following among the young and the elite. Instead of researching the fabric (and noting its flaws, including lack of executive experience, radical associations, ACORN fraud, “spread the wealth around” socialism, give 95% a tax cut when only 65% pay any income taxes lie, etc.), the media swoons over the emperor’s fabric and overlooks the obvious. Meanwhile, they busy themselves microscopically researching the fabric worn by John McCain, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and others not associated with the emperor.

The American people, not wanting to appear stupid, feel compelled to go along with the adoring ministers (mainstream media) and likewise admire the fabric. In droves they also overlook its obvious flaws and enthusiastically proclaim its greatness. When asked, however, few can explain why they like the fabric. Instead they loudly proclaim that we need the emperor because he talks so well and looks so good to the world. Besides, what he is wearing doesn’t matter.

The rest of this analogy will be written on November 4th. Hopefully a child will step forward and tell the voting crowds that the emperor has no clothes on. When the crowds hear that child will they open their self-imposed blinded eyes and admit that Obama is an empty suit and unfit to serve as President? Only then, when voters realize the emperor is naked, will it be politically correct to oppose Barack Obama.

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign

There is such an incredible level of bias in most mainstream news media coverage in favor of Barack Obama that even the Clintons complained about not getting a fair shake during the Democratic Primary. You know it must be way out of balance when the smooth-talking Bill Clinton, the darling of the 1990s, is thrown under the bus in favor of somebody even more smooth-talking.

Howard Kurtz reported (Oct. 22) on a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that showed that “media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama.” In all, 57% of print and broadcast stories about John McCain were “decidedly negative” while only 14% were positive. Contrast that with Barack Obama’s coverage during that period: “36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative.”

Kurtz continues:

The Wall Street meltdown appears to have been a turning point for both candidates. Thirty-four percent of the stories about Obama’s reaction to the crisis were positive, while 18 percent were negative. McCain’s coverage, though, went into a free fall after he initially declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” By the following week, more than half the stories about McCain were negative and only 11 percent positive, just as Obama’s coverage was turning positive by a margin of more than 5 to 1.

Kurtz’s concluding paragraph offers this statement:

While some will seize on these findings as evidence that the media are pro-Obama, the study says they actually contain “a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls . . .”

I will go a step further and state that many in the media are pro-Obama and clearly so. I feel that their pro-Obama enthusiasm carries over to the mechanics of polls and the interpretation of polling data.

Michael Barone wrote an intriguing article (Oct. 22) entitled “Are the Polls Accurate?” with a subtitle “Reading them right is more art than science.” Barone maintains that we can trust polls but “with qualifications.” He then points out several inherent imperfections in political polling that can cause under-representation for some candidates and over-representation for others. Sampling errors can be introduced by cell phone-only households, pollsters not calling back, and respondents refusing to answer questions. These factors can skew results. Also, it seems that during the Democratic Primary, some people didn’t want to admit they did not vote for the rock star-like Obama and so exit polling was higher than actual results.

That brings me to my final point in this article. Most people are probably familiar with the polls that show a large Obama lead over McCain; however, two polls (AP-Ipsos and AP-Gfk) released on October 22 suggest that the Presidential race is essentially tied with Obama at 44% and McCain at 43%. These polls showed that the race tightened after the third debate (which is something I predicted would happen).

Key takeaways from the AP-Ipsos poll are these: Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign, John McCain

US Weekly is in hot water over a misleading magazine cover about Sarah Palin titled “Babies, Lies & Scandal.” Megyn Kelly of FoxNews talks to senior US Weekly editor Bradley Jacobs about this story and why it sounds like an attack instead of a fair and balanced article. She asks him what “lies” they are talking about.  Watch and tell me if that’s now how a news reporter should hold a biased reporter’s feet to the fire. Way to go, Ms. Kelly!

Posted under Politics, Video

It seems to me that there is no shortage of outrage over Michael Vick’s abuse of dogs. Everyday it seems that more people are coming out of the woodwork to add their voice to the uproar against him.

Frankly, I’m glad to see people outraged by wrong. However, I’d rather see this collective outrage focused on different areas of abuse right now. For example, why is there not massive outrage over terrorists who kill our soldiers in Iraq? Why is there not a public outpouring of outrage over child molesters and porn pushers? Read More…

Posted under Life