Obama Aunt in Section 8 Housing

U.S. Senator Barack Obama--whose Senate salary was bolstered by an almost 2 million dollar book deal advance in 2005--has raised over $600 million dollars in his bid for the presidency. Part of his desire to be president is rooted in his goal to 'spread the wealth around.'

U.S. Senator Barack Obama has an Aunt who has been living in Public Housing in Boston for at least the past 5 years. 'Aunti Zeituni' is not some faceless charity he never got around to writing a check for, she might be his only remaining blood connection to his father.

How did this information appear? Don't get your hopes up MSM-denizens, it was due to a London newspaper which had the gall to do some reporting.

Does anyone see a problem with those two set of facts? If his positions and 'desires' are to be taken at face value, why shouldn't the above facts raise doubts about the candidate's sincerity?

One thing it does do, it takes the isolated fact that before his presidential run, the Obama's donated less than 1% of their earnings to charity and makes it a pattern of a lack of generosity. Which is not a big deal in it of itself, but it does make the 'caring leader' facade that much less believable.

It also gives his idea of 'spreading the wealth around' a more exact meaning, it clearly does not apply to his wealth. Otherwise, he would have done so outside of the presidential spotlight with charities and within his own family.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.
--------------------------------------------------------
Boston Housing Authority ‘flabbergastered’ Barack Obama’s aunt living in Southie

Jessica Fargen By Jessica Fargen
Friday, October 31, 2008 - Updated 16h ago

General Assignment Reporter

A Boston Housing Authority director says Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has lived in public housing for five years, is an “exemplary resident” and only recently did anyone know of her connection to the presidential contender.

Obama’s campaign spokesman Reid Cherlin confirmed to the Herald yesterday that Zeituni Onyango, 56, who lives on Flaherty Way in South Boston, is Obama’s aunt on his father’s side.

Onyango, a Kenyan native, is believed to be the “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”

It wasn’t until recently, when a London newspaper started making inquiries about Onyango, that Deputy Director Bill McGonagle learned of the link.

McGonagle said BHA employees were caught off guard.

“We were as surprised as anyone,” he said. “We were a little bit flabbergasted.”

Onyango has lived in Boston public housing for five years, McGonagle said.

“She has been an exemplary resident,” he said.

She received a small stipend over the past year for working six hours a week as a volunteer resident health advocate in her complex, he said.

Little else is known about her.

Onyango had conversations with several BHA employees in recent days about her blood ties to the senator, McGonagle said. She proudly displays photos of Obama, including some that appear as old as 25 years, inside her first-floor apartment, McGonagle said.

A message left at Onyango’s apartment was not returned.

McGonagle asked that the media respect Onyango’s privacy.

“She is feeling very put upon,” he said.
jfargen@bostonherald.com
------------------------------------------------------
Donation-heavy Obama on track to outspend McCain as campaign winds down
Obama raised $36 million in the first half of October, more evidence that he made the correct decision when he opted out of taking federal funds for the general election campaign.
By Dan Morain

October 24, 2008

Barack Obama disclosed Thursday that he raised $35.9 million in the first 15 days of October, after a jaw-dropping $150 million in September.

Although his fundraising pace slowed, Obama's September-October surge all but guarantees that he will outspend John McCain and the Republican National Committee in the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The latest fundraising numbers provide further evidence that Obama made the correct decision when he opted not to take federal funds for the general election campaign, instead relying on his ever-growing donor base of more than 3 million -- whose average donation size is $86.

McCain, by contrast, accepted a federal grant of $84.1 million. That money must last from the beginning of September through Nov. 4, although the RNC also can raise money and spend it on his behalf.

Obama and the Democratic National Committee are poised to outspend McCain by as much as a 3-2 margin, the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute concluded.

Obama and the DNC spent $134.1 million in September, far more than the $108.6 million spent by McCain and the RNC.

In the first 15 days of October, Obama and the DNC spent a combined $117.6 million. That compares with $67 million by McCain and the RNC.

Obama had $65.7million in the bank for the final three weeks of the campaign, plus a combined $30 million held by the DNC and a separate committee that Obama and the DNC control.

McCain and the RNC entered the campaign's final three weeks with a combined $84.4 million in the bank. The RNC raised what was, for it, a record $66 million in September, but failed to maintain that pace in the first half of October, when it raised $27 million.

McCain and Obama continued to use a legal loophole that allowed them to raise money for party committees far in excess of the $4,600 maximum that individual donors can give to their presidential accounts.

The RNC drew $2.6 million in donations of $10,000 or more, including $28,500 from Facundo and Elizabeth Bacardi, the rum producers.

Obama, using a so-called joint fundraising committee, raised more than $9.9 million in donations of $10,000 or more, including $30,800 each from Sam and Tillie Walton of the Wal-Mart fortune. Jerry Yang, head of Yahoo, also donated $30,800.

Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, wife Marilyn and their daughter, Laura, each donated $28,500. Producer Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, also donated $28,500 each.

Obama raised $18,500 from professional poker player Howard Lederer and the same amount from Lederer's wife, Susan, who listed her occupation as casino pit manager at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Morain is a Times staff writer.

dan.morain@latimes.com
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Alphonso Rachel

The best lines, and they're a lot of them, from Alphonso Rachel:

• [4:30] Democrats farming votes.
  
• [5:30] Why buckets of crabs don't have lids.
• [5:55] 'The price that John McCain paid for his country, Democrats can't even pay the taxes on that service.'
• [7:30] Hollywood liberals.
  

Video link Alphonso Rachel.

Read more!

Acorn and Voter Fraud

Both political parties have constituents which are less than ideal. Very broadly speaking, most racists vote Republican and most people willfully dependent on government vote Democratic. As a nation we are about to elect a president which employees prefer, in contrast to the desires of the owners of the businesses they work for, who prefer McCain.

'Letting the inmates run the asylum,' would be one crude way to describe this juxtaposition. But that would represent an attack on democracy's 'one man one vote' ideal, since you would always have more employees than owners. As such, our politics are designed to ensure broad appeal. But what happens when one side feels the other is systematically putting a finger [the middle one] on the scales of democracy? We may find out after this election.

John Fund of the WSJ covers issues of voter fraud extensively. Below is an excerpt of his column on a former Acorn strategic consultant, Anita MonCrief, who testified before a Pennsylvania state court:

Ms. MonCrief testified that in November 2007 Project Vote development director Karyn Gillette told her she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. Ms. MonCrief also testified she was given a spreadsheet to use in cultivating Obama donors who had maxed out on donations to the candidate, but who could contribute to voter registration efforts. Project Vote calls the allegation "absolutely false."

She says that when she had trouble with what appeared to be duplicate names on the list, Ms. Gillette told her she would talk with the Obama campaign and get a better version. Ms. MonCrief has given me copies of the donor lists she says were obtained from other Democratic campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists.

In her testimony, Ms. MonCrief says she was upset by Acorn's "Muscle for Money" program, which she said intimidated businesses Acorn opposed into paying "protection" money in the form of grants. Acorn's Brian Kettering says the group only wants to change corporate behavior: "Acorn is proud of its corporate campaigns to stop abuses of working families."

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

--------------------------------------------------------
An Acorn Whistleblower Testifies in Court
The group's ties to Obama are extensive.

OCTOBER 30, 2008

By JOHN FUND

Acorn, the liberal "community organizing" group that claims it will deploy 15,000 get-out-the-vote workers on Election Day, can't stay out of the news.

The FBI is investigating its voter registration efforts in several states, amid allegations that almost a third of the 1.3 million cards it turned in are invalid. And yesterday, a former employee of Acorn testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group's quality-control efforts were "minimal or nonexistent" and largely window dressing. Anita MonCrief also says that Acorn was given lists of potential donors by several Democratic presidential campaigns, including that of Barack Obama, to troll for contributions.

The Obama campaign denies it "has any ties" to Acorn, but Mr. Obama's ties are extensive. In 1992 he headed a registration effort for Project Vote, an Acorn partner at the time. He did so well that he was made a top trainer for Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he represented Acorn in a key case upholding the constitutionality of the new Motor Voter Act -- the first law passed by the Clinton administration -- which created the mandated, nationwide postcard voter registration system that Acorn workers are using to flood election offices with bogus registrations.

Ms. MonCrief testified that in November 2007 Project Vote development director Karyn Gillette told her she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. Ms. MonCrief also testified she was given a spreadsheet to use in cultivating Obama donors who had maxed out on donations to the candidate, but who could contribute to voter registration efforts. Project Vote calls the allegation "absolutely false."

She says that when she had trouble with what appeared to be duplicate names on the list, Ms. Gillette told her she would talk with the Obama campaign and get a better version. Ms. MonCrief has given me copies of the donor lists she says were obtained from other Democratic campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists.

In her testimony, Ms. MonCrief says she was upset by Acorn's "Muscle for Money" program, which she said intimidated businesses Acorn opposed into paying "protection" money in the form of grants. Acorn's Brian Kettering says the group only wants to change corporate behavior: "Acorn is proud of its corporate campaigns to stop abuses of working families."

Ms. MonCrief, 29, never expected to testify in a case brought by the state's Republican Party seeking the local Acorn affiliate's voter registration lists. An idealistic graduate of the University of Alabama, she joined Project Vote in 2005 because she thought it was empowering poor people. A strategic consultant for Acorn and a development associate with its Project Vote voter registration affiliate, Ms. MonCrief sat in on policy-making meetings with the national staff. She was fired early this year over personal expenses she had put on the group's credit card.

She says she became disillusioned because she saw that Acorn was run as the personal fiefdom of Wade Rathke, who founded the group in 1970 and ran it until he stepped down to take over its international operations this summer. Mr. Rathke's departure as head of Acorn came after revelations he'd employed his brother Dale for a decade while keeping from almost all of Acorn's board members the fact that Dale had embezzled over $1 million from the group a decade ago. (The embezzlement was confirmed to me by an Acorn official.)

"Anyone who questioned what was going on was viewed as the enemy," Ms. MonCrief told me. "Just like the mob, no one leaves Acorn happily." She believes the organization does some good but hopes its current leadership is replaced. She may not be alone.

Last August two of Acorn's eight dissident board members, Marcel Reed and Karen Inman, filed suit demanding access to financial records of Citizens Consulting Inc., the umbrella group through which most of Acorn's money flows. Ms. Inman told a news conference this month Mr. Rathke still exercises power over CCI and Acorn against the board's wishes. Bertha Lewis, the interim head of Acorn, told me Mr. Rathke has no ties to Acorn and that the dissident board members were "obsessed" and "confused."

According to public records, the IRS filed three tax liens totaling almost $1 million against Acorn this spring. Also this spring, CCI was paid $832,000 by the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote efforts in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.

"Acorn needs a full forensic audit," Ms. MonCrief says, though she doesn't think that's likely. "Everyone wants to paper things over until later," she says. "But it may be too late to reform Acorn then." She strongly supports Barack Obama and hopes his allies can be helpful in cleaning up the group "after the heat of the election is gone."

Acorn's Mr. Kettering says the GOP lawsuit "is designed to suppress legitimate voters," and he says Ms. MonCrief isn't credible, given that she was fired for cause. Ms. MonCrief admits that she left after she began paying back some $3,000 in personal expenses she charged on an Acorn credit card. "I was very sorry, and I was paying it back," she says, but "suddenly Acorn decided that . . . I had to go. Since then I have gotten warnings to 'back off' from people at Acorn."

Acorn insists it operates with strict quality controls, turning in, as required by law, all registration forms "even if the name on them was Donald Duck," as Wade Rathke told me two years ago. Acorn whistleblowers tell a different story.

"There's no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances," says Nate Toler, who worked until 2006 as the head organizer of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California. And Ms. MonCrief says it is longstanding practice to blame bogus registrations on lower-level employees who then often face criminal charges, a practice she says Acorn internally calls "throwing folks under the bus."

Gregory Hall, a former Acorn employee, says he was told on his very first day in 2006 to engage in deceptive fund-raising tactics. Mr. Hall has founded a group called Speaking Truth to Power to push for a full airing of Acorn's problems "so the group can heal itself from within."

To date, Mr. Obama has declined to criticize Acorn, telling reporters this month he is happy with his own get-out-the-vote efforts and that "we don't need Acorn's help." That may be true. But there is no denying his ties with Acorn helped turbocharge his political career.

Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Classic Only for Posterity MSM Maneuver

Watch for this tactic over the last week of the presidential campaign. After operating as an extension of the Obama camp for months and now believing that victory is secure, the MSM can now safely criticize the Democratic nominee. This way they won't look so bad when studies about the coverage are done later.

First CNN criticizes Obama's 4 month-old broken promise by not accepting federal funds. Then the Washington Post actually does reporting on the record high donations received by the Obama campaign. The next miracle would occur if some liberal editorial board would put those two facts together.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.
--------------------------------------------------------
Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations Contributions Reviewed After Deposits

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2008; A02

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

"They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. "I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront."

The Obama campaign has shattered presidential fundraising records, in part by capitalizing on the ease of online giving. Of the $150 million the senator from Illinois raised in September, nearly $100 million came in over the Internet.

Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their "extensive back-end review" has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation's war chest. "I'm pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit, you'd find we're doing very well," said Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the campaign. "I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud."

The Obama team's disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama's FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. "That's an error," she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor's name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama's campaign replied in an e-mail: "Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.

"Instead, the campaign does a rigorous comprehensive analysis of online contributions on the back end of the transaction to determine whether a contribution is legitimate."

Juan Proaño, whose technology firm handled online contributions for John Edwards's presidential primary campaign, and for John F. Kerry's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2004, said it is possible to require donors' names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. But, he said, some campaigns are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security.

"Honestly, you want to have the least amount of hurdles in processing contributions quickly," Proaño said.

Sen. John McCain's campaign has also had questionable donations slip through.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's communication's director, said that "no organization can fully insulate itself from these problems. The McCain campaign has accepted contributions from fraudulent contributors like 'A for You,' 'Adorable Manabat,' 'The Gun Shop,' and 'Jesus II' and hundreds of anonymous donors."

But R. Rebecca Donatelli, who handles online contributions for the McCain operation and the RNC, said security measures have been standard in the GOP nominee's fundraising efforts throughout the campaign. She said she was "flabbergasted" to learn that the Obama campaign accepts prepaid cards.

"Yes, a gift card would go through the same process as a regular credit card and be subject to our same back-end review," the Obama campaign said in its response to questions about the use of such cards.

Campaign finance lawyers said there is a long history of debate within the FEC about how to ensure that donors use their own credit cards.

Election lawyer Brett Kappel said the FEC has never grappled with the question of cash cards. "The whole system is set up for them to accept the payment, then determine whether it is legal or not. And if it's not, send it back. That's what the statute requires," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commentary: Obama breaks promise on campaign finance

* Story Highlights
* Campbell Brown: Obama pledged to accept public financing last year
* But, she says, he switched when he realized he could earn more on his own
* He's rolling in dough earned on a broken promise, Brown says

By Campbell Brown
CNN

Editor's note: Campbell Brown anchors CNN's "Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull" at 8 p.m. ET Mondays through Fridays. She delivered this commentary during the "Cutting through the Bull" segment of Tuesday night's broadcast.

(CNN) -- You may have heard that Wednesday night Barack Obama will be on five different TV networks speaking directly to the American people.

He bought 30 minutes of airtime from the different networks, a very expensive purchase. But hey, he can afford it. Barack Obama is loaded, way more loaded than John McCain, way more loaded than any presidential candidate has ever been at this stage of the campaign.

Just to throw a number out: He has raised well over $600 million since the start of his campaign, close to what George Bush and John Kerry raised combined in 2004.

Without question, Obama has set the bar at new height with a truly staggering sum of cash. And that is why as we approach this November, it is worth reminding ourselves what Barack Obama said last November.

One year ago, he made a promise. He pledged to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits.

Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word.

He broke his promise and he explained it by arguing that the system is broken and that Republicans know how to work the system to their advantage. He argued he would need all that cash to fight the ruthless attacks of 527s, those independent groups like the Swift Boat Veterans. It's funny though, those attacks never really materialized.

The Washington Post pointed out recently that the bad economy has meant a cash shortage among the 527s and that this election year they have been far less influential.

The courageous among Obama's own supporters concede this decision was really made for one reason, simply because it was to Obama's financial advantage.

On this issue today, former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, an Obama supporter, writes in The New York Post, "a hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue -- who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. And that, it seems to me, is what we are doing now."

For this last week, Sen. Obama will be rolling in dough. His commercials, his get-out-the-vote effort will, as the pundits have said, dwarf the McCain campaign's final push. But in fairness, you have to admit, he is getting there in part on a broken promise.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Campbell Brown.
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!

A Break in the Ranks

An ABC news tech columnist, Michael Malone has gone public with his disgust at the bias in the MSM in favor of Barack Obama. Whenever there is a 'break in the ranks,' the person gets disproportionate attention given the nature of the endorsement or criticism, i.e. Geraldine Ferraro, Christopher Buckley. Mr Malone does not just criticize, he names the group most responsible [editors] and identifies a possible motivation--a 'revived fairness doctrine.'

There is another word for reviving the 'fairness doctrine,' censorship. An excerpt from Mr Malone's column:

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher [nonentity], who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Well said, including when he notes that the Obama campaign is just doing it's job. It's the MSM which has failed the public in this election by taking sides. Adjustment are already ongoing to mitigate their future influence. On the print side, the New York Times--the alpha-dog of bleeding heart liberals--have been bleeding enough red ink to supply a Las Vegas-type convention of vampires over a holiday weekend. The decline in viewers for the broadcast network's news divisions have been ongoing for a while - see the graph below:


From a conservative's perspective, it represents a victory of sorts that no one seriously pretends to be impartial in their coverage. We have never believed that to be the case, now at least allegiances are out in the open. Given choices, our politics naturally dictate which networks and journals we patronize.

For example, I used to enjoy Chris Matthews, but I just can't watch MSNBC without having fantasies about taking a Terminator-like stroll through 30 Rock. This from a guy whose last fight was on a school bus headed to Booker T. in the 9th grade. For now, Fox is alone on the right of the political spectrum, but there is a real opening for another network to grab a share of a market which is about to get a serious boost.

One more thing, after the election, when there is complaining about a lack of a 'honeymoon period,' it should be noted that this year the honeymoon period was the campaign. On Nov 5th, the battle to find out whom we've elected should begin in earnest. Damndest thing though, often buried in winning election strategies, are the lies and half-truths which haunt their time in office. Like the old saying goes, revenge is a dish best served gradually, relentlessly and unforgivingly. OK, so that's not the old saying, just something I read in an ACORN manual. Anyways, round 1 to the radicals. In the words of Michael Buffer ...

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

--------------------------------------------------------

Media's Presidential Bias and Decline
Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE

Oct. 24, 2008 —

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.

But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.

Reporting Bias

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.

Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.

I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense & indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.

I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.

The Presidential Campaign

But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Joe the Plumber

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Bad Editors

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country &

This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Glen Johnson

Miami Herald Boxing article by Santos Perez on Glen Johnson.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crucial bout for two boxers

Posted on Mon, Oct. 27, 2008

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

Glen Johnson's disappointment dealt with disputed scorecards. Edison Miranda's discontent proved more painful than judges' verdicts.

Coming off losses in their previous fights, Johnson and Miranda look to erase recent frustration and resume their respective careers in South Florida's next local boxing card.

Johnson and Miranda will fight in separate bouts of the Warriors Boxing show Nov. 11 at Hard Rock Live Arena.

Johnson (47-12-2, 34 KOs) will face Tiwon Taylor in a scheduled 10-round light-heavyweight match; Miranda will fight Manuel Esparza in a light-heavyweight match scheduled for eight rounds.

The bout will be Johnson's first since losing a controversial unanimous decision against Chad Dawson on April 12. Although Johnson was the aggressor for most of the bout and nearly had Dawson knocked out in the 10th round, all three judges scored the bout for Dawson by a four-point margin.

Miranda's ring return comes after a five-month layoff.

The outspoken Miranda loudly pursued a rematch against Artur Abraham for nearly two years. Miranda (30-3, 26 KOs) talked of punishing and defeating Abraham when they finally met in their second bout June 21 at Hard Rock Live.

But Abraham, who won a decision against Miranda in the first bout, overwhelmed the Colombia native with a fourth-round technical knockout victory.

The Nov. 11 Hard Rock Live card also will feature James McGirt Jr., son of the current trainer and former welterweight champion. McGirt Jr. will fight Marcus Upshaw in a scheduled 10-round super-middleweight bout.

TITLE SHOT SET

After seven years of preliminary bouts and eventual contending status, Miami resident Joel Julio will finally fight for a world title Saturday night in Germany.

Julio (34-1, 31 KOs) will face World Boxing Organization junior-middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk.

''All my life I have waited for this opportunity,'' said Julio, 23. ``I am more than ready. Come Nov. 1, I am not only going to become a world champion but also a superstar in this sport.''

Julio will not have an easy task. A native of Ukraine, Dzinziruk is unbeaten in 35 fights and has made four successful defenses since his victory against former champion Daniel Santos in December 2005.

FIGHT HYPE BEGINS

Vic Darchinyan never has been faulted for concealing his thoughts, and the reigning 115-pound title-holder remained true to form in a recent conference call hyping his title unification bout against Mexico's Cristian Mijares on Saturday night in Carson, Calif.

''I'm going to make him look like a very silly fighter and I'm going to knock him out,'' Darchinyan said of Mijares. ``He's going to be punished.

``Make sure what I'm saying now you will put on the website and put everywhere what I'm saying and believing. I'm very focused on this fight. I'm going to destroy him badly.''

A native of Armenia and Australia resident, Darchinyan won the International Boxing Federation junior-bantamweight title with a fifth-round technical knockout against Dimitri Kirilov on Aug. 2. Darchinyan (30-1-1, 24 KOs) also had a 30-month run as IBF flyweight champion earlier in the decade.

Mijares (36-3, 15 KOs) won the World Boxing Council super-flyweight crown in January 2007 and captured the World Boxing Association belt with a victory against Alexander Muñoz in a title unification bout May 17.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

If That's Lloyd, Ari Gold Can't Be Far Behind

Ted Stevens being found guilty was expected. But I was shocked to see him accompanied by Lloyd from Entourage. That show is taking realism too far.

Read more!

Jeopardy Answer: America Suffers to ThisDay Fom a Lack of Wealth Redistribution

Jeopardy contestant: 'What is something we'll never hear directly from a candidate during a campaign? Alex, can I add that I don't think comments made when Obama was only 40 years old should play a role in this election.'

Alex Trebeck: 'Your initial response was correct for $400, dear willfully ignorant voter.'

Jeopardy contestant: Alex, I'm not willfully ignorant.

Alex Trebeck: Oh really [while turning with a look of disbelief towards audience]?

Jeopardy contestant: No, I just prefer to be taken care of. I see people around me doing better than I do. They can and should pay more, pay for me, hell pay me.

Alex Trebeck: Aren't you embarrassed to think that way?

Jeopardy contestant: 'Nah, shame and guilt are just ways the Man has always used to keep us down, we're beyond that now. I'd like to move on to another category now.

Alex Trebeck: Very well.

Jeopardy contestant: Jobs which represent enslavement for $200...

Now we know why the Joe the Plumber 'redistributing wealth' remark was not a slip. Here are the basic points made by Barack Obama on a radio show in 2001:

• Civil Rights movement [CRM] succeded in vesting formal rights
• CRM too courts focused
• CRM failed to establish the type of power by which you can redistribute wealth
• Warren court was not radical enough
• We still suffer from the failure of the courts to mandate the redistribution of wealth

The entire transcript is copied at end of my post. Beginning at the 40 second mark of a 4 minute clip, see if you can spot any errors in my 'unscrubbed' version of the transcript:

... ugh, but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth ugh, and sort of more basic issues of political and, and eh, economic justice in this society. And ugh, eh, to that extent as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court, ugh, it wasn’t that radical. It, it didn’t break free from, the, essential constraints that were placed ugh, ugh, by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren court interpreted it in the same way that, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, [It] says what the states can’t do to you, [it] says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government, must do, on your behalf, ugh, and that hasn’t shifted. And one of the, ugh, I think, ugh, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was um, because the civil rights movement became so, court focused, ugh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of, the political and community organizing and and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed ugh, change ugh, and eh, in some ways we still suffer from that.

Americans will soon 'suffer no more' from the Founder's failures. Does anybody have a Red Dawn DVD I can borrow? You can listen to another 30 second version clip from that radio program. The raw transcript was copied from a Free Republic web site.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

--------------------------------------------------------
Obama on Public Radio in 2001
Here’s the transcript from 2001. -

MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to Odyssey on WBEZ Chicago 91.5 FM and we’re joined by Barack Obama who is Illinois State Senator from the 13th district and senior lecturer in the law school at the University of Chicago.

OBAMA: ... you know if if you look at, um, the the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, um, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to, vest formal rights, ugh, in ugh, previously previously dispossessed peoples. So that eh, I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at [the] lunch counter and and, order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay. Ugh, but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth ugh, and sort of more basic issues of political and, and eh, economic justice in this society. And ugh, to that extent as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court, ugh, it wasn’t that radical. It, it didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by ugh, ugh, the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren court interpreted it in the same way that, generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, [It] says what the states can’t do to you, [it] says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government, must do, on your behalf, ugh, and that hasn’t shifted. One of the, I ugh, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was um, because the civil rights movement became so, court focused, ugh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of, the political and community organizing and, and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed ugh, change ugh, and eh, in some ways we still suffer from that.

MODERATOR: Let’s talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you’re on Chicago Public Radio.

KAREN: Hi. The gentleman made the point that the Warren court wasn’t terribly radical with economic changes. My question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place – the court – or would it be legislation at this point?

OBAMA: yeah ah ah, you know maybe I’m showing my bias here as a, as a legislator as well as a law professor, but ugh, eh ah, I’m not optimistic about bringing ugh, about ugh, major ugh, redistributive ugh ugh, change ugh, through the courts um, you know, the institution just isn’t structured that way ugh....

... um you you know you just look at very rare examples where in, during the desegregation era the court was willing to, for example order ugh, ugh, you know changes that cost money to a local school district and the court was very uncomfortable with it, it was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. Ugh, you start getting into all sorts of eh, separations of powers issues ugh, you know in terms of eh, the court ugh, monitoring or or, engaging in a process ah, that essentially is administrative and and, takes a lot of time um....

... um, you know eh, the court’s just not very good at it and politically it’s just it's, very hard to legitimize opinions from the co.. ugh, from the court in that regard. So I think that although ah, you can craft, theoretical justifications for it legally, um, you know I think you can any any, three of us sitting here could, could come up, with ugh, a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Lies That We Hope Don't Matter

Start the revolution without me.

I came across a blog from a former co-worker of Obama during the mid 80's. Please do yourself the favor of reading his short post about what he thought of Obama's book, as well as the introduction to his blog. The guy is not a hater. He concludes the following:

Barack’s story may be true, but many of the facts are not. His larger narrative purpose requires him to embellish his role. I don’t buy it. Just as I can’t be inspired by Steve Jobs now that I know how dishonest he is, I can’t listen uncritically to Barack Obama now that I know he’s willing to bend the facts to his purpose.

That was written in 2005. Look, I understand that Obama will likely be elected on Nov 4th. I really wish him well, it is our country after all. Unfortunately, while he seems like a reasonable and intelligent person, I now know that he feels he needs to lie and cover up a number of things about his past. The best case scenario is that his past alliances and influences don't really reflect what he believes and intends to do as president. OK, let's hope so. But it sure seems like quite a risk for our country.

So on Nov 5th, I see my 'citizen job' as requiring that I am well-informed about about his past lies as a way of not missing potential future lies. Past is prologue, no? I intend to be ready with names, facts, and a searchable on-line database, this blog--most of my linked articles are copied in full at end of post. So let's continue; Who is Rashid Khalidi?

Rashid Khalidi is Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. He is a supporter of the PLO and a friend of Barack Obama. It was reported by the LA Times that Obama spoke warmly of Khalidi and their friendship at a Chicago dinner in 2003.

Obama would lose the Jewish vote if he were seen as a friend to a PLO sympathizer. So for the umpteenth time this campaign, Obama has apparently successfully made the case that a former alliance will not impact his decisions as president and do not reflect his views. On its own, no big deal, nice political damage control.

But in the case of Rashid Khalidi, the common desires of many Americans and the MSM bias has crossed over into blatant act of partisanship by a major news organization. The LA Times has a video of Obama at that 2003 dinner for Rashid Khalidi which they won't release. News organizations are normally suing this to obtain this kind of news. Why would they do this? Think of the Rev Wright. While people may have been aware of his views, having it on video tape makes a visceral impression, especially on people who don't follow the news closely.

Rashid Khalidi, Rev Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Tony Rezko, Larry Walsh, James Johnson, Michael Klonsky, Frank Marshall Davis, Danny Davis, Edward Said--stop me when you see a pattern.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

--------------------------------------------------------
Barack Obama Embellishes His Resume

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a big fan of Barack Obama, the Illinois freshman senator and hot young Democratic Party star. But after reading his autobiography, I have to say that Barack engages in some serious exaggeration when he describes a job that he held in the mid-1980s.I know because I sat down the hall from him, in the same department, and worked closely with his boss. I can’t say I was particularly close to Barack - he was reserved and distant towards all of his co-workers - but I was probably as close to him as anyone. I certainly know what he did there, and it bears only a loose resemblance to what he wrote in his book.

Here’s Barack’s account:

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool.

First, it wasn’t a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I’m sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.

Barack worked on one of the company’s reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack’s job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don’t send exactly what you ask for, and you can’t always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.

It’s also not true that Barack was the only black man in the company. He was the only black professional man. Fred was an African-American who worked in the mailroom with his son. My boss and I used to join them on Friday afternoons to drink beer behind the stacks of office supplies. That’s not the kind of thing that Barack would do. Like I said, he was somewhat aloof.

…as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary; money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors—see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand—and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve.

If Barack was promoted, his new job responsibilities were more of the same - rewriting other people’s copy. As far as I know, he always had a small office, and the idea that he had a secretary is laughable. Only the company president had a secretary. Barack never left the office, never wore a tie, and had neither reason nor opportunity to interview Japanese financiers or German bond traders.

Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened. Auma called. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently. …[several pages on his suffering half-sister] …a few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job.

What Barack means here is that he got copy from a correspondent who didn’t understand interest rate swaps, and he was trying to make sense out of it.

All of Barack’s embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ’s temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks. Luckily, an angel calls, awakens his conscience, and helps him choose instead to fight for the people.

Like I said, I’m a fan. His famous keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention moved me to tears. The Democrats - not to mention America - need a mixed-race spokesperson who can connect to both urban blacks and rural whites, who has the credibility to challenge the status quo on issues ranging from misogynistic rap to unfair school funding.

And yet I’m disappointed. Barack’s story may be true, but many of the facts are not. His larger narrative purpose requires him to embellish his role. I don’t buy it. Just as I can’t be inspired by Steve Jobs now that I know how dishonest he is, I can’t listen uncritically to Barack Obama now that I know he’s willing to bend the facts to his purpose.

Once, when I applied for a marketing job at a big accounting firm, my then-supervisor called HR to say that I had exaggerated something on my resume. I didn’t agree, but I also didn’t get the job. But when Barack Obama invents facts in a book ranked No. 8 on the NY Times nonfiction list, it not only fails to be noticed but it helps elevate him into the national political pantheon.

Posted: July 9th, 2005
Comments: 54
------------------------------------------------------------
National Review
October 07, 2008, 3:30 p.m.

Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?
The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned.

Why? I suspect it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.

You might think the Times would be more curious. After all, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has already lied to the Gray Lady about the origins of his relationship with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Back in May, in a cheery profile of Obama’s early Chicago days, the Times claimed (emphasis is mine):

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Now look, anyone who gave five seconds of thought to that passage smelled a rat. Ayers and Dohrn are passionate radical activists who lived as fugitives for a decade. There’s no way they held a political coming-out party for someone who was unknown to them. Obviously, they already knew him well enough by then to feel very comfortable. They might have been sympathetic to a relative stranger, but sponsoring such a gathering in one’s living room is a strong endorsement.

And now, even the Times now knows it’s been had. In this past weekend’s transparent whitewashing of the Obama/Ayers tie, the paper claimed that the pair first met earlier in 1995, “at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper[.]” That storyline is preposterous too, but it is also a marked revision of the paper’s prior account (which, naturally, reporter Scott Shane fails to mention).

Why the change? The tacit concession was forced by Stanley Kurtz and Steve Diamond — whom the Times chooses not to acknowledge but who hover over Shane’s sunny narrative like a dark cloud.

Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers. As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”

Be clear on that much: Whether clothed as a terrorist or an academic, Ayers has made abundantly clear in his public statements, both before and after he established a working relationship and mutual admiration society with Obama, that he remains a revolutionary fueled by hatred of the United States. And while Obama now ludicrously pleads ignorance about Ayers’s terrorism — the terrorism that made the unabashed Ayers an icon of the Left — understand that this rabid anti-Americanism is the common denominator running through Obama’s orbit of influences.

Yes, Ayers is blunter than Obama. As he so delicately told the Times, America makes him “want to puke.” The smoother Obama is content to say our society needs fundamental “change.” But what they’re talking about is not materially different.

Such sentiments should make Obama unelectable. So, when it comes to his own radical moorings, Obama is engaged in classic liar behavior. He changes his story as the facts change — and the burden is always on you to dig up the facts, not on him to come clean. Yesterday, asked to comment on the Ayers relationship, David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, hilariously chirped, “There’s no evidence that they’re close.” Translation: Get back to us when you can prove more damaging information — until then, we don’t need to further refine our perjury.

And then Axelrod gave us still more lies: “There’s no evidence that Obama in any way subscribed to any of Ayers’ views.”

Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Axelrod, how do you explain Obama’s breathless endorsement of Ayers’s 1997 Leftist polemic on the criminal-justice system, A Kind and Just Parent? As Stanley Kurtz has recounted, Ayers’s book is a radical indictment of American society: We, not the criminals, are responsible for the violent crime that plagues our cities; even the most vicious juvenile offenders should not be tried as adults; prisons should eventually be replaced by home detention; American justice is comparable to South Africa under Apartheid. Obama’s reaction? He described the book as “a searing and timely account” — a take even the Times concedes was a “rave review.”

Obama and Ayers shared all kinds of views. That is why they worked so well together at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), funding the likes of Mike Klonsky, a fellow SDS and Maoist associate of Ayers who, as Steve Diamond relates, used to host a “social justice” blog on Obama’s campaign website. With Obama heading the board of directors that approved expenditures and Ayers, the mastermind running its operational arm, hundreds of thousands of CAC dollars poured into the “Small Schools Workshop” — a project begun by Ayers and run by Klonsky to spur the revolution from the ground up.

Precisely because they shared the same views, Obama and Ayers also worked comfortably together on the board of the Woods Fund. There, they doled out thousands of dollars to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church to promote its Marxist “black liberation theology.” Moreover, they underwrote the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by Rashid Khalidi, a top apologist for Yasser Arafat. As National Review’s David Pryce-Jones notes, Khalidi once directed WAFA, the terrorist PLO’s news agency. Then, like Ayers, he repackaged himself as an academic who rails at American policy. The AAAN, which supports driver’s licenses and public welfare benefits for illegal aliens, holds that the establishment of Israel was an illegitimate “catastrophe.”

Khalidi, who regards Israel as a “racist” “apartheid” state, supports Palestinian terror strikes against Israeli military targets. It’s little surprise that he should be such a favorite of Ayers, the terrorist for whom “racism” and “apartheid” trip off the tongue as easily as “pass the salt.”

And it’s no surprise that the like-minded Obama would be a fan. Khalidi, after all, has mastered the Arafat art of posing as a moderate before credulous Westerners while (as Martin Kramer documents) scalding America’s “Zionist lobby” when addressing Arabic audiences. The Obama who decries “bitter” Americans “cling[ing] to guns or religion” when he’s in San Francisco but morphs into a God-fearing Second Amendment enthusiast when he’s in Pennsylvania — like the Obama who pummels NAFTA before labor union supporters but has advisers quietly assure the Canadians not to worry about such campaign cant — surely appreciates the craft.

Obama and Ayers not only demonstrated their shared view of Khalidi by funding him. They also gave glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia’s greener pastures. That would be the same Columbia from which Obama graduated in 1983.

Khalidi was leaving to become director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, assuming a professorship endowed in honor of another Arafat devotee, the late Edward Said. A hero of the Left who consulted with terrorist leaders (including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah) and was once photographed hurling rocks at Israelis from the Lebanese border, Said was exposed by researcher Justus Reid Weiner as a fraud who had created a fictional account of his childhood, the rock on which he built his Palestinian grievance mythology.

We know precious little about Obama’s Columbia years, but the Los Angeles Times has reported that he studied under Said. In and of itself, that is meaningless: Said was a hotshot prof and hundreds of students took his comparative-lit courses. But Obama plainly maintained some sort of tie with Said — a photo making the Internet rounds shows Obama conversing with the great man himself at a 1998 Arab American community dinner in Chicago, where the Obamas and Saids were seated together.

Said had a wide circle of radical acquaintances. That circle clearly included Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. When they came out of hiding in the early 1980s (while Obama was attending Columbia), Ayers took education courses at Bank Street College, adjacent to Columbia in Morningside Heights — before earning his doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College in 1987.

Said was so enamored of Ayers that he commended the unrepentant terrorist’s 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days — the book in which the haughty Ayers brags about his Weatherman past — with this glowing dust-jacket blurb:

What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers's America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or “second thinking.” For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading.

Sorry mess, indeed. For his part, Ayers is at least equally enthralled by Said, of whom, even in death, Ayers says “[t]here is no one better positioned … to offer advice on the conduct of intellectual life[,]” than the man who was “over the last thirty-five years, the most passionate, eloquent, and clear-eyed advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people.”

After they left Columbia, both Obama and Ayers went to Chicago: Obama to become a “community organizer” (the director of the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Gamaliel Foundation dedicated to Saul Alinsky’s principles for radicalizing society); Ayers, two years later, to teach at the University of Illinois. Diamond details how they both became embroiled in a major education controversy that resulted in 1988 reform legislation.

Ayers’s father, Tom Ayers, a prominent Chicago businessman, was also deeply involved in the reform effort. Interestingly, in 1988, while Obama and Ayers toiled on the same education agenda, Bernadine Dohrn worked as an intern at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin — even though she could not be admitted to the bar due to her contempt conviction for refusing to cooperate in a terrorist investigation. How could that happen? It turns out that Sidley was the longtime outside counsel for Tom Ayers’s company, Commonwealth Edison. That is, Ayers’ father had pull at the firm and successfully pressed for the hiring of his daughter-in-law.

The next summer, though he had gone off to Harvard Law School (another impressive accomplishment he prefers not to discuss), Obama returned to the Windy City to work as an intern at Sidley. Dohrn was gone by then to teach at Northwestern. A coincidence? Maybe (Diamond doesn’t think so), but that’s an awful lot of coincidences — and a long trail of common people, places and experiences — for people who purportedly didn’t know each other yet managed to end up as partners in significant financial and political ventures.

In short, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama moved in the same circles, were driven by the same cause, and admired the same radicals all the way from Morningside Heights to Hyde Park. They ended up publicly admiring each other, promoting each other’s work, sitting on the same boards, and funding the same Leftist agitators.

You could conclude, as I do, that it all goes back to a formative time in his life that Obama refuses to discuss. Or you could buy the fairy tale that Bill Ayers first encountered an unknown, inexperienced, third-year associate from a small Chicago law-firm over coffee in 1995 and suddenly decided Barack Obama was the perfect fit to oversee the $150 million pot of gold Ayers hoped would underwrite his revolution.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,1780231,full.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama
They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel.
By Peter Wallsten
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 10, 2008

CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.

"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.

"That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."

Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.

Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.

"Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.

Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."

Looking for clues

But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.

And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.

Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.

Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.

Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.

Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."

The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.

Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.

Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.

Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified.

"In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."

In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.

In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.

He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.

While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.

In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.

At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.

In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.

Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.

"He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."

Ties with Israel

Even as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.

In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."

In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.

As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.

One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright.

"In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.

peter.wallsten@latimes.com
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!

The Gamble of Increasing Tax Rates

The gamble is that increasing tax rates on the wealthy will not cause them to alter their behavior to avoid the increased tax expense and as a result, will result in much greater tax receipts. I think most Americans assume that the wealthy are paying less taxes under Bush.


But that's not the reality. While Bush did cut their rates, the effect was to increase the their share of federal tax receipts. In fact, the top 5% are paying a greater share of taxes now under Bush than under Clinton.

Hard to believe right. To paraphrase AMEX commercials, 'populism' [lying to the willfully ignorant], has its rewards. If you still want to believe in Santa, you might want to avoid these US House of Representatives reports on who actually pays federal taxes - top 1% and progressivity of tax system. Also, check out the Bloomberg.com article which also documents how progressive the actual tax system is, as opposed to the populist perception.

Markets are not politically correct. What they care about are the likely tax and spending policies for the next American president. No serious person believes the Obama campaign claim about excluding 95% of Americans from tax increases. So among the many negative factors affecting the market, are the expectations of widespread increases in taxes, which during a recession is considered a mistake. Unfortunately, campaign tactics hold no sway here, i.e. ACORN can't recruit citizen-prostitutes to enhance or alter market results, George Soros notwithstanding.

Read more!

Hard Jobs and Few Willing Workers

Some articles are so useful, you wish you could 'drag and drop' them to a more prominent position in the paper. I found one in Wednesday's Miami Herald's Business section about Perdue Farms coming to Broward County to recruit poultry workers for its Delaware plant. The company was planning to fly 10 people back to Delaware so that they can observe the plant and their possible new home. The jobs pay approximately $10/hour and have no language requirements.

First some unemployment statistics as of Sept 2008 for the two states are as follows:

• Delaware 4.8%
• Florida 6.6%

Delaware is probably a good example of 'full employment,' despite the 4.8% unemployment rate. The term 'structural unemployment' means that those 4.8% are probably not really looking for jobs.

How revealing about the unemployed between Delaware and Broward County. Think about it, Perdue didn't come to South Florida looking for Spanish-speaking workers. They came looking for people who were willing to do hard jobs with little pay. They had to travel 910 miles to find the type of people desperate enough to work those jobs. More exactly, they had to travel 910 miles to find people probably not eligible for public assistance.

During a debate many years ago, William F Buckley was asked if he could imagine what it would be like if there was no unemployment insurance. His response, 'there would be less unemployment.' If any politician ever said that, they would be destroyed as being insensitive. But 99% of us are not running for office, so we can afford to think out loud. Leaving aside compassion, Buckley's answer goes to the heart of the economic problem associated with government assistance. It's not the actual monies expended, it's the type of behavior they encourage.

If someone will be paid $1,000 per month in unemployment insurance and they could earn $1,200 working at a full-time job, few, if any, would take the job. That decision does not make them lazy, it makes them rational, absent a strong work ethic. A work ethic is usually by developed by observing it practiced up close by family. Many lower-income people have never had that example. An aptly named poverty cycle ensues, as the absence of work [or purpose], leads to other social pathologies. It is hard to imagine an improvement in America's 'work ethic' in the current environment, all in the name of compassion.

When the next 'Perdue' is looking for workers, I can't help but think that they will go right past South Florida into South America. Things will get much worse, before or if, they get better. Step up and see the show while you can. It was an amazing show. By the way, how did that goose and those monthly eggs story end?

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

--------------------------------------------------------
Miami Herald

Posted on Wed, Oct. 22, 2008
Perdue Farms lures South Florida workers
BY PATRICK DANNER

Perdue Farms is so hungry for workers at its Delaware poultry-processing plant it came all the way to Broward County.

This week, the company interviewed about 30 candidates at the county's Refugee Services office in Oakland Park for openings in the company's cutting and deboning operations, positions with starting pay of $9.10 an hour.

Among those who applied on Tuesday was Kenson Agenor, 21-year-old refugee from Haiti living in Lauderhill. he has been out of work for six months after he was laid off from a warehouse job at a Miami bathtub maker.

''It is very difficult to find a job'' in South Florida, Agenor said through an interpreter. ``Since there is no job here and they are giving a lot of opportunity, it will be perfect for [me] to move completely over there.''

Agenor has never been to Georgetown, Del., but the prospect of relocating 910 miles away doesn't scare him.

Maryland-based Perdue is going to a lot of trouble to find workers under the pilot program: It will fly 10 of the candidates to Delaware so they can see the plant and the town, company spokeswoman Julie DeYoung said.

PILOT PROGRAM

''It is a high-cost way to recruit,'' DeYoung said. ''That's why we are piloting it. If this works, we would be looking to hire substantially more numbers'' for the Georgetown plant and its other facilities.

Perdue likely will initially offer jobs to five of the candidates.

New hires will be put up in a hotel for 30 days with transportation to and from the plant and one meal a day. They also will receive company assistance in finding permanent housing and transportation.

Perdue employs about 1,420 people at the Georgetown plant. About three-quarters of the work force are either immigrants or children of immigrants.

Most are from Guatemala or Mexico, said Eddie Lambden, Georgetown's mayor.

Two years ago, The Philadelphia Inquirer chronicled how immigrants from Latin America working in poultry processing have transformed the southern Delaware community.

BROWARD SITE

Perdue chose to recruit in Broward because of the size of the pool of applicants. Other cities, including Philadelphia and Bowling Green, Ky., just didn't have a large number of applicants to interview, DeYoung said.

Work-site enforcements targeting illegal immigration have become a priority for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, particularly at meatpacking and poultry-processing plants.

DeYoung said she had no information on whether ICE's efforts have affected Perdue.

ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said he wasn't aware of any large-scale enforcement operations at Perdue's Georgetown plant in the last two years.

New recruits at Perdue's Georgetown plant can earn $10.20 an hour after a 90-day probation period.

Once a worker becomes certified as a cutter, the pay increases to $11.20 an hour, DeYoung said.

The recruitment event in Broward also was unusual for Refugee Services, which generally doesn't place people in jobs outside of the county.

Betty De Soto, a Refugee Services case manager for Haitian refugees, called her 40 or so clients as many as four times to make sure they attended this week's recruitment event.

''They told me, a chance like that, they won't let it go because some of them are working here for $7 an hour,'' De Soto said. ``They see the opportunity.''

Finding work for refugees in Broward has been difficult with the downturn in the economy, De Soto added.

Perdue needs workers because turnover in its processing plants is high -- more than 50 percent, DeYoung said.

The work is hard. Workers are dealing with perishable food; the environment is cold and Perdue uses a lot of water for sanitation.

`TOUGH JOBS'

''They are tough jobs, but they're the kind of jobs that refugees do,'' said Leland Dale Wilson, a manager for Refugee Services.

``They are willing to start somewhere and move up.''

Felix Rodriguez, 27, of Fort Lauderdale, who is originally from Puerto Rico, filled out an application along with his father.

Rodriguez lost a maintenance job at an apartment complex and has been working part-time as a cook.

''You got a family and not working here, you just got to try another opportunity,'' Rodriguez said in broken English. ``It's about your family.''
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!