Jodie Evans: Code Pink founder, Obama bundler, Osama apologist

Politico reports that Jodie Evans, the founder of Code Pink, has joined Team Obama as a bundler. She has pledged to raise at least $50,000 to elect Barack Obama to the White House. However, she has a long history of making controversial statements that may overshadow the campaign itself — including some apologetics for 9/11:

According to research being circulated by GOP sources, Evans has a record of inflammatory statements such as saying that women were better off in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, “Men are dying in their Hummers in Iraq so you can drive around in yours” and, my favorite, that the invasion of Iraq amounted to “global testosterone poisoning.”

Evans, though, is not just a single-issue crusader. She’s worked in politics and liberal causes for decades, including stints working for Jerry Brown during his years as governor and in his 1992 White House run.

That an activist liberal is raising money for Obama isn’t all that surprising. But in a campaign that has been dominated as much by the associates of candidates as the candidates themselves (Jeremiah Wright, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush), Evans is a reminder that what may not have mattered much in a primary has the potential to be resonant in the general.

Evans may have made controversial statements in the past, but that won’t hold a candle to the statements she made on a radio show called “The Conscience of Kansas”. Paul Ibbetson spoke with Evans about the 9/11 attacks, and …. well, listen for yourself:

Ibbetson tries to explain that we hadn’t done anything to provoke the 9/11 attacks by saying we hadn’t invaded Afghanistan. Evans replies that we were in Saudi Arabia, which to her gave al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden a rational reason to kill thousands of Americans in terrorist attacks. Note that she says, “I don’t think any terrorist attack is justified,” and then says we should listen to Osama bin Laden and change our policies because — “Sometimes, it would be a good idea to listen to why someone is trying to blow you up”.

Q: Do you think that’s a valid argument?

A: Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East?

Does Barack Obama share these views with his new bundler and the founder of Code Pink? Does he also feel that we should heed Osama bin Laden’s speeches and adjust our policies in the Middle East accordingly? If Evans represents the kind of people Obama wants to attract to his campaign, that says quite a bit about his approach to terrorism and the defense of American interests in the Middle East.

Sweetness & Light has a primer on Jodie Evans:

Jodie Evans is a radical activist and Democratic fundraiser best known as the co-founder (along with Diane Wilson, a Wiccan calling herself Starhawk, and Global Exchange’s Medea Benjamin) of Code Pink for Peace. Evans also works closely with Leslie Cagan, the pro-Castro leader of United For Peace and Justice.

And from Front Page Magazine:

Throughout the 1990s, in fact, many of the Marxists currently working for Code Pink were busy organizing anti-free trade protests – some of them violent – and filing numerous high-profile lawsuits that forced American corporations to spend enormous sums of money to defend themselves…

Jodie Evans… sits on the board of directors of the Rain Forest Action Network (RAN), a coalition of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate environmentalist groups. RAN’s co-founder Michael Roselle also founded the Earth Liberation Front, which the FBI ranks alongside the Animal Liberation Front as the foremost domestic terrorism threats in the United States. According to the FBI, during the past seven years those two groups have been responsible for more than 600 criminal acts and $43 million in damages…

As the photo on this post indicates, Evan also felt comfortable putting her arm around Hugo Chavez. So, surprise surprise, Obama has decided to associate himself once more with a radical associated with violent radicals, tinpot dictators — a woman who thinks Osama had a point on 9/11. What does this say about judgment?

Melanie Morgan and Redstate have more.

Update: Evans, not Davis.  I didn’t even like the Cubs.  (See comments for the joke.)

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