Marathon Pundit

Monday, March 31, 2008

The timeline of Obama on Israel and Rev. Wright

Another post, another challenge of Barack Obama's credibility.

From an e-mail by Erick Erickson of Red State:

This whole story about Reverend Wright further demonstrates the fraud that is Barack Obama. Let's work the timeline on this:

Barack claims that he would have left the church in 2007 if Wright had not stepped down as an "active" pastor. (Note that he is still "senior" pastor and all sermons in the churrch bulletin are still copyright to Wright)

Of course in 2006, Barack gave his largest donation to the church ever, $22,500. That's 22,500 demonstrations of his support for the message and work of Rev. Wright when Barack would have us believe that he was struggling with Wright's words and leadership.

Of course, recall that when the Wright story broke Barack hadn't heard about these sermons. They didn't happen when he was there.

Let me offer another theory: we are watching a politician lie. Politicially, it is a convenient lie, because he is lying about his state of mind, something that it is very hard to disprove or corroborate.

This is the same kind of lie that Barack Obama told about his position on Israel. He used to support a radical liberal position on Israel, like the position taught be Rev. Wright. But then, in 2003 he pivots and suddenly becomes a fan of Israel. Why? When politicians change their position a year before an election, the most obvious theory is usually the correct one. They are, or were, lying.

On Israel and on Wright, Obama's stories don't work. And that is not the sort of change we can believe in.

Related post:

More Obama Israel problems

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democrats

elections

Obama fibs about 1996 liberal group survey

The ludicrously-misnamed Independent Voters of Illinois -- Independent Precinct Organization is in fact a far-left activist group which almost never endorses a Republican candidate in a general election.

Naturally it's a respected group among liberals, which is why Barack Obama in 1996 sought IVI-IPO's endorsement.

Three months ago Politico confronted the Obama campaign about the '96 questionnaire, and his aides replied that the the future junior senator from Illinois "never saw or approved" the IVI-IPO survey.

Politico has a different version of the story this morning.

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group's detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

More...

(Obama campaign staffers) asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who "unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position."

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama's own handwritten notes added to one answer.

More Audacity!

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Abraham Lincoln Museum financial suits finally settled

Only the idiots running Illinois can screw up something like the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library. Little Marathon Pundit and I visited the Springfield museum--it is nice--somewhat Disney-esque, which the scholars don't like, but it's an attraction I recommend to visit to anyone with even a slight interest in our 16th president.

From the Chicago Tribune, free registration may be required for the link:

A long and bitter fight about cost overruns at the $145.2 million Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has ended with the state collecting more than $3 million and refusing to pay millions of dollars that contractors contended they were owed.

All parties, state officials said, accepted some portion of the responsibility for overruns and delays that led to the festering financial dispute over construction of the project, which spanned three governors and cost millions of dollars more than anticipated.

Although early on state officials optimistically thought they could recover as much as $15 million, they negotiated a settlement worth slightly more than $3 million, including $2 million from the architect. Officials said they also deflected claims from contractors worth more than $7 million following three years of negotiations that led to the settlement.

The Lincoln complex—the museum, library, parking garage, visitors center and park in downtown Springfield—took longer to plan and build than it took Lincoln to lead the country through the Civil War.

Weather Underground's 1970 Declaration of War on "Amerika"

Now is as good a time as any to post the Weather Underground's Declaration of War against "Amerika." Hey, at least the transcript just put on "K" in the word.

The woman who read the statement over the radio airwaves was Bernardine Dohrn. She's no longer a terrorist--she married now to fellow ex-Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Both are among Barack Obama's earliest supporters.

As for the statement, wouldn't you know that the ubiquitous Ché Guevara, a brutal killer, just had to make a cameo appearance.

Hello. This is Bernardine Dohrn.

I'm going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.

This is the first communication from the Weatherman underground.

All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika's youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire.

Black people have been fighting almost alone for years. We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. We never intended to spend the next five or twenty-five years of our lives in jail. Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we've been trying to show how it is possible to overcome the frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.

Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Viet Cong and the urban guerrilla strategy of the Tupamaros to our own situation here in the most technically advanced country in the world.

Ché taught us that "revolutionaries move like fish in the sea." (My note--so do sharks.) The alienation and contempt that young people have for this country has created the ocean for this revolution.

The hundreds and thousands of young people who demonstrated in the Sixties against the war and for civil rights grew to hundreds of thousands in the past few weeks actively fighting Nixon's invasion of Cambodia and the attempted genocide against black people. The insanity of Amerikan "justice" has added to its list of atrocities six blacks killed in Augusta, two in Jackson and four white Kent State students, making thousands more into revolutionaries.

The parents of "privileged" kids have been saying for years that the revolution was a game for us. But the war and the racism of this society show that it is too f*cked-up. We will never live peaceably under this system.

This was totally true of those who died in the New York townhouse explosion. The third person who was killed there was Terry Robbins, who led the first rebellion at Kent State less than two years ago.

The twelve Weathermen who were indicted for leading last October's riots in Chicago have never left the country. Terry is dead, Linda was captured by a pig informer, but the rest of us move freely in and out of every city and youth scene in this country. We're not hiding out but we're invisible.

There are several hundred members of the Weatherman underground and some of us face more years in jail than the fifty thousand deserters and draft dodgers now in Canada. Already many of them are coming back to join us in the underground or to return to the Man's army and tear it up from inside along with those who never left.

We fight in many ways. Dope is one of our weapons. The laws against marijuana mean that millions of us are outlaws long before we actually split. Guns and grass are united in the youth underground.

Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks. If you want to find us, this is where we are. In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks and townhouse where kids are making love, smoking dope and loading guns—fugitives from Amerikan justice are free to go.

For Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, and for all the revolutionaries who are still on the move here, there has been no question for a long time now—we will never go back.

Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people.

Never again will they fight alone.

May 21, 1970

Both Ayers and Dohrn, who are tenured university professors, remain unrepentant about their terrorist pasts. Barack Obama has yet to explain to the media what his current relationship is to the pair.

Related posts:

Something in the Ayers last night for Obama
Bill Ayers Univ. of North Dakota appearance highlights college's hypocrisy
Obama's other radical friends: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
It was thirty eight years ago yesterday...
Weather Underground's 2008 Tragical History Tour
SDS' 1968 Tragical History Tour
Obama visited home of ex-Weather Underground terrorists in '90s
Obama's Bill Ayers problem
Jonah Goldberg: Left wing terrorists never have to say "sorry"
Axelrod throws Ayers ball on ex-terrorist
University of Illinois at Chicago's Bill Ayers: Not a jarhead
The Weather Underground and Ward Churchill-UPDATED!
Bernardine Dohrn watch
David Horowitz says you should know about Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers
Moron Professor Bill Ayers
More on Bill Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn
Update on another campus radical: Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground

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60s

Chicago Cubs approach ominous milestone--a century without a championship

Disclosure: I'm a lifetime Chicago White Sox fan.

It is a certainty. The Chicago Cubs will go 100 years without winning a World Series championships. In the 1908 fall classic, the Cubs bested the Detroit Tigers--the date was October 14, 2008. With the expanded playoffs used by Major League Baseball, this year's World Series won't end until shortly before Halloween.

The Cubs play in the woeful National League Central, which (from the Cubs' perspective) is blessed with three small market teams: the Milwaukee Brewers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Cincinnati Reds. So they have a good chance of making the playoffs. From there? Well, it's up to the Cubs.

But the Cubs will go more than a century without a World Series Championship.

The North Siders home opener is tomorrow, they play the Milwaukee Brewers.

Related post:

After 99 years, Cubs still snakebitten

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mlb