Keep your eye on the ball: Obama is the issue

By Wes Vernon

The number one issue in this presidential campaign is Barack Obama and whether his ascension to the Oval Office in January will be good for the United States. That is the question. And the perfect documentation comes in the form of a New York Times bestseller The Obama Nation.

The Obama campaign is trying to distract us by ridiculing John McCain for not doing e-mail. (His war injuries prevent him from typing.)

Similarly, Obama's stooges in Alaska want the campaign to turn on whether Sarah Palin overstepped her authority in firing a public safety commissioner out of concern that her ex-brother-in-law trooper (accused of child abuse, wife-beating, and threatening to kill her father) might not have the ideal temperament for an officer of the law. The "impartial" Obama-supporting leader of that probe promises to make a he-said she-said circus out of that, and in his "impartial" non pre-judgmental way, promises an "October surprise" for the governor.

Back to the Issue: Barack Obama

The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality is authored by Jerome Corsi — a name familiar to regular readers of this column. We have interviewed and quoted him here regarding his investigations on the effort to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into one North American Union — in much the same manner that many quiet and seemingly innocuous treaties, agreements, and other collaborations over four decades ultimately created the European Union. Corsi outlined that scenario last year in The Late Great USA. We will no doubt revisit that in the future.

What follows here are issues pinpointed in The Obama Nation.

Issue #1: Kenya, Odinga, Communism, and Islam

Senator Barack Obama took a taxpayer-funded trip to Kenya wherein he plunged into that African nation's internal politics. He supported the presidential candidacy of Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo tribe of which the Illinois senator's father and grandfather were also members.

More to the point, as Corsi points out, "We have to ask whether Obama, by supporting [the Communist East Germany-educated] Odinga openly in Kenya, lent his name also to endorse Odinga's leftist politics [with 'well-known Communist roots'] and Odinga's alliance with radical Muslims pushing Islam in Kenya."

Issue #2: "Change" — the origin of a slogan

The Obama slogan of "change" was not invented out of thin air. It was derived from his experiences as an organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) on Chicago's South Side. Long before Obama was on the scene in the windy city, the late iconic socialist agitator Saul Alinsky set the tone for community "organizing" methodology for generations. Obama was hired for the job by one Jerry Keller, an Alinsky disciple.

As Corsi reports, "'Change' for Alinsky invoked radical socialism and meant the redistribution of wealth. Obama means the same, but by hiding the reference, he avoids having to be explicit about the radical goal behind the theme."

Alinsky, whose code is summed up by Corsi as "ethics is doing what works," fashioned himself a modern-day Machiavelli.

A direct quote from Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals: "Let us not forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where the mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."

Issue #3: Bernadine Dohrn — Bill Ayers (recent new information)

Corsi reviews the Obama friendship with communist terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers and documents that "connections between Obama and Ayers/Dohrn have actively continued since Obama launched his political career in their living room."

The (now husband-wife) duo had been on the run for years when accused in sixties/early seventies bombings of the Pentagon, the Capitol, police stations, and other public edifices.

They escaped due punishment because of prosecutorial misconduct. But they remain unrepentant. In fact, Ayers has said, "We didn't do enough."

Recent information A: Still revolutionaries

Now "respected" academics, the two were caught on tape in November, 2007 at a reunion of old Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) radical activists. Corsi cites statements from Ayers favorably quoting communist revolutionary heroes such as Chou En Lai, and Dohrn as saying living in America is living in "the belly of the beast" and "the heart of the monster."

The author also notes Chicago's City Paper editor Sol Stern as arguing that Dohrn and Ayers even today remain radicals intent on inflicting harm on the nation's schoolchildren "by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today."

Recent information B: A case of murder — she doesn't deny it

After outlining in this column "Obama's Communist connections" (5/26/08), this writer was contacted by a witness to Dohrn's appearance before a 1982 student gathering at the University of Kansas, where she was quoted by the student newspaper as saying, "Those of us who participated in the [Vietnam] anti-war movement were not drastic enough."

Our contact was John B. Barrett (now a practicing attorney in Goddard, Kansas, and a student at the university when Dohrn spoke there). He used the question/answer period to comment on the writings and congressional testimony of Larry Grathwohl, FBI undercover informant. Grathwohl had testified under oath that he had been informed by Ayers that Dohrn had to "plan, develop, and carry out" the bombing of a police station in San Francisco that killed a young officer.

Dohrn's comment — several times: "Larry is a pig." As Barrett told me, "Dohrn never said that Grathwohl had lied or denied that she had planned and carried out the bombing that killed the officer in San Francisco."

Issue #4: Tony Rezko

Obama Nation pinpoints Chicago slumlord Tony Rezko as having "helped to bankroll Obama in five election runs."

"Without Rezko's fundraising," writes Corsi, "Obama would not have been elected to the Illinois senate, or the U.S. Senate."

The author cites a thorough investigation by Wall Street Journal reporter John Fund, who concludes Obama will have a hard time explaining that he didn't know that Rezko was involved "with money laundering, attempted extortion, fraud, and aiding bribery in an alleged multimillion dollar scheme shaking down companies."

For that matter, Corsi offers this: "A small army of Chicago investigative reporters have dug into the story in the last two years, producing a mountain of [complex, but] incriminating evidence against Barack Obama that the mainstream media have failed to make known to the public."

So, why isn't he "in the dock" instead of running for president?

Obama Nation opines, "Perhaps the cover of that complexity is what Obama has been relying upon to give him enough wiggle room that the voting public will not hold him culpable."

Rezko helped Obama buy his dream home property in one of Chicago's tony neighborhoods.

The Chicago Sun-Times bluntly asked the senator: "Why didn't alarm bells go off when you agreed to buy a 10-foot strip of property to buffer your home at the same time reports were coming in that he [Rezko] was being investigated for alleged influence-peddling?"

Obama's answer was that he "made a mistake," that it was "a bonehead deal," and that "I trusted Rezko."

On June 4, 2008, a federal jury found Rezko guilty on 16 out of 24 counts of political influence peddling. It is interesting to speculate whom Obama will trust if and when he's in the White House.

Issues #5, 6, and 7: Wright, Farrakhan, and Davis

Jerome Corsi adds fascinating details to the well-publicized doings of Obama associates Rev. Jeremiah Wright (radical America-hating pastor), Louis Farrakhan (anti-Semite/supreme demagogue), and Frank Marshall Davis (Hawaiian Communist and early mentor). Space precludes elaboration here.

And BTW: Corsi has no connection with the McCain campaign or any other GOP or Democrat entity. He plans to vote for a third party candidate — Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. But the book is not a brief for that, either. This is an independent investigation. It must be effective, judging by the squeals from Obama operatives. The author has written a lengthy rebuttal to their rebuttal. To say he doesn't shy from battle would be an understatement.

Obama Nation: a must read for the informed voter.

© Wes Vernon