More Media Bias

If you Google "Rick Perry Drunk" you get over 13,000,000 results.

This is, in part I suppose, to his latest speech in New Hampshire and the viral video that was compiled of it.  Personally, I'd rather have a little more relaxed Perry than the guy I've seen at the debates.

I don't know if he was under the influence of anything or not.  I just want to know where were all the questions by the same media about Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers when Barack Obama was a candidate, outside of conservative blogs?

The same media who now vilifies Herman Cain over an incident 15 years ago did not have any questions for Obama and his alliances.  No questions about his college thesis.  No questions about anything, really.

Valid questions or not, it's still hypocrisy. 

Wright Reappears from Under Rock

Jeremiah Wright has crawled out from under his rock:

Wright said that when he went to the polls, he did not hold any grudge against Obama.

"Of course I voted for him; he's my son. I'm proud of him," Wright said. "I've got five biological kids. They all make mistakes and bad choices. I haven't stopped loving any of them.

"He made mistakes. He made bad choices. I've got kids who listen to their friends. He listened to those around him. I did not disown him."

Asked if he had spoken to the President, Wright said: "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ...

"They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

Wright also said Obama should have sent a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, but that the president did not do so for fear of offending Jews and Israel.

"Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing of the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.

"Them Jews" - especially vile.

Allahpundit wonders to whom Wright might be referring - Emanuel? Axelrod?

Wright also pointed out that it's all been pretty good for him, this notoriety that is. The media "went back five, seven, 10 years and spent $4,000 buying 20 years worth of sermons to hear what I've been preaching for 20 years" and mind you, Obama, in all those years, never heard anything vile.

Incredible.

(More at Memeorandum)

Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Education Reform

Stanley Kurtz, writing for National Review Online, has written a detailed and well researched article on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation led by Obama and William Ayers in the late 1990s. It should be required reading. Mr. Kurtz had to overcome denials and challenges for his right to see the documents of the Foundation (after receiving permission, he was denied permission, etc.) and this article is part of his findings.

He attempts to make clear the connection between Rev. Wright, Ayers, and Obama as well as to study exactly what kind of education reform the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was funding.

In short:

• Winter 1996 - Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago's] South Shore (CIESS) receives $200,000 grant from Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The group teaches Afrocentric "rites of passage...designed to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society." It asserts that American socialization has "proven to be dysfunctional and genocidal to the African American community."

• One of the presentors at a CIESS conference was Jacob Carruthers. Carruthers wrote a book entitled Intellectual Warfare in which he takes as his mission the need to "dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples."

• According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers's training session was a huge hit. It "received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey...". These teacher training workshops were funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
  

• Carruthers and other prominent thinkers from his Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations spoke often at Trinity United Church of Christ, Wright's church where Obama was a member.
  

• Asa Hilliard was another Afrocentric speaker funded by Annenberg; Hilliard had accepted an appointment to Wright's new elementary school where Wright said, "We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy." Wright's own educational philosophy, then, is "mirrored at the Annengberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard's and Carruthers's counsel to construct its curriculum.

• Bill Ayers worked with Obama to fund these groups. Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dorn have book coming out next year entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy.
  

• In 1995, the same year "Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected 'the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation'"

• If Obama read the Annenberg proposals of SSAVC he could not be ignorant of what they were about.

• In 1995 all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board; he would have read the proposals. He voted to keep funding these endeavors.
  

It should also be noted that the Chicago Anneberg Challenge's own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores.

So what's the point of all this? Why even bring it up? Because this is the man who half of the country wants to put in charge of education reform. Is this the kind of education reform we want? Is this what's best for American children? Radical education of ANY kind? Of course that's not what's in his platform! But what kind of judgment does this man display here?

A Case of Judgment

Update: Obama was a registered socialist in 1996.

Obama was a member of the New Party in 1996.

I'm going to reiterate what I have said here before (and likely invite the ire of all my democratic friends), but Mr. Obama has displayed poor judgment in his association with Mr. Ayers, Mr. Rezko, Mr. Wright, Mr. Farrakhan, etc.

The current spin by his campaign that he "didn't know the history" about Ayers is hogwash.

As it has been pointed out to me before, just because you have crazy friends does not make you crazy; it does not make you like them. But I see a pattern here in Mr. Obama's associations and I do not trust him. I do not.

Yes, it is true that Mr. Obama was eight when Ayers was blowing things up but he was 40 when Ayers said he "didn't do enough" with regard to the bombings. Obama also served on boards with Ayers and knew who and what he was. Ayers launched Obama's senatorial campaign in Chicago in his home, and Obama knew who and what he was. Did he think Ayers was repentant? Surely not. Or was he just doing what he had to do to get introduced into the machine that is Chicago politics? Maybe. Ayers posed for this picture in 2001 while he and Obama served on the Woods board together. Do I hold Obama responsible for the actions of Mr. Ayers? No, but I think as an ambitious politician you should probably pick your associates a little better.

Do I think Obama listened to Wright for TWENTY YEARS and didn't know the man was full of vile hatred? Do I think he was that clueless? No. I think he finally left Trinity Church because it was politically expedient to do so. I think he likely joined there in the first place because it was a political benefit as well.

Poor judgment. That is all. Poor character. Poor leader. Poor choice.