One of the vague, fuzzy areas of Barack Obama’s resume is his time on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, both as a member and as its chairman. Given the charge that Obama lacks the executive experience to be…

Again, if there’s evidence that I missed that shows that the program instructs teachers to “instruct against against oppression” or attempt to indoctrinate school children with any political philosophy, please point it out.

Go read it, dickeater.

It seems Ed and Kurtz just assume this must have happened.

Tom_Shipley on September 23, 2008 at 7:40 PM

I am not certain what Ed is specifically referring to, but obviously he’s right, and everything else we know about Ayers supports his suggestion.

Your suggestion, on the other hand, that in the absence of video of Ayers directing a group of teachers to follow an anti-oppression curriculum we must all assume that he was emphasizing classic literature, mathematics and proper English is just stupid, as is your wont.

As I pointed out in my last post, there’s no evidence to show that some of Ayer’s more radical ideas expressed prior to his work on the project made it into the project.

Again, Ed writes this:

Ayers wanted teachers trained to instruct against “oppression” and to push schoolchildren towards political beliefs Ayers valued — apparently valuing them higher than actual education. Barack Obama agreed, and for several years worked in close partnership with Ayers to implement that educational policy.

But I have seen no evidence that this program trained teachers to “instruct against oppression” or attempted to impart any political views onto children.

There’s no evidence to show this occurred in Kurtz’ op-ed or the other article I read that he wrote about the program. It seems Ed and Kurtz just assume this must have happened.

If I missed evidence to show this occurred, please point it out to me.

“Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school,” he said. “They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

As it turned out, their kids did not go to school together, but Obama was the chairman of a $150 million effort spearheaded by Ayers on the important issue of public education, which funded “awful” projects and “had little impact on student outcomes.”

You would think Axelrod would have some ’splainin’ to do. But you would be wrong.

As the CAC story emerged, Ben Smith’s blase reaction clearly communicated that he did not care that he was misled by Camp Obama about the Ayers relationship, let alone that Obama’s biggest claim to executive experience (and a reform credential to boot) was judged to be a failure, even by the CAC. Indeed, Smith took the story as evidence of how mainstream Ayers is — as opposed to how dysfunctional the political culture of Chicago is.

In contrast, Smith felt compelled to nitpick statements by John McCain’s campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, about the Ayers relationship. Smith added in a separate blog post that Schmidt’s comments were “‘Hey, look over here’ politics” — the campaign’s urgent attempt to change the subject from the economy. That was the daily talking point at the Huffington Post, too — even though McCain was making headlines talking about the economy the same day.

Perhaps those who read Ben Smith will stop thinking that he is “in the tank” for Obama when he stops doing the breaststroke through Obama’s Kool-Aid. And the same could be said for any number of Smith’s pals in the media.

http://patterico.com/2008/09/23/barack-obama-bill-ayers-and-ben-smith/

Answer: Yes.

There has been a hush among the MSM about Obama’s relationship with Weather Underground member William Ayers.  The most that’s ever mentioned (if at all) is that “he served on a board with him,” as if they bumped into each othe…

Tom_Shipley on September 23, 2008 at 4:06 PM

Ayers was not just trying to help parents educate their children! He was trying to indoctrinate them, using subjects like science and math to teach “Social Justice”. Lots of articles are out there that pre-date Obama’s presidential run about Ayers education ideas, and they are radical, far left ideas, which is what one would expect from an unrepentent terrorist.

Here’s a very thorough expose’, by Sol Stern. Here’s a more recent update.

There is no way that Barry was unacquainted with Ayer’s ideas, and highly unlikely he didn’t actually support most of them considering the fact that they were in charge of doling out dollars.

With all the reports we see about wrongdoing by ACORN, remind me again why ACORN isn’t subject to RICO prosecution, why it’s still in existence?

Is it just a case where authorities just aren’t feeling up to it? Taking a little time off, a little me time?

If these bastards really do the things they are reputed to do, they ought to be shut down. Or did we just as a nation sort of decide to start cutting anarchists more slack these days?

jeff_from_mpls on September 23, 2008 at 9:19 AM

Jeff, are you aware that our tax dollars underwrite ACORN and that the community reinvestment acts that led to providing mortgages for fiscally risky clients has provisions to further support ACORN?

These documents were released on August 26.

Obama was part of this program… I don’t know too much about it, but on the surface it seems like an attempt to get parents and the community more involved in the education of their children.

It doesn’t seem to have been a success, but not really an outright failure either. Now, this editorial seems to make a leap in a few cases that I don’t think is reflected in reality:

CAC also funded programs designed to promote “leadership” among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children’s education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama’s alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda.

I don’t see any evidence that Ayers or Obama tried to push political beliefs or agenda.

There was concern from one board member that Ayers actions may be political or perceived as political and Obama stepped into to moderate a meeting to ease those fears… and it seems to have worked.

That’s the only “evidence” shown that Obama and Ayers were pushing their political views on people. Pretty weak. It seems to me that rather than trying to push political views, the program was set up to empower parents and communities to become more involved in their childrens’ education.

This program went on for years. If this was some sort of political indoctrination process, I would suspect there would have been more complaints or notice of it. But I couldn’t find any.

Also:

Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with “external partners,” which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

As I understand it, there were 45 “external partners” in the program ACORN and the other two mentions in his article are just three of them. He call all of them “various far-left organizations.” I’m very doubtful of that claim. It seems like a gross over-generalization to me.

Kurtz brings up some of Ayers more radical views, then kind of infers that they were reflected in this program and that Obama agreed with them. But I don’t really see evidence of that.

There seems to be a lot of loose facts, associations and implications in this piece. Ed says this:

Ayers wanted teachers trained to instruct against “oppression” and to push schoolchildren towards political beliefs Ayers valued — apparently valuing them higher than actual education. Barack Obama agreed, and for several years worked in close partnership with Ayers to implement that educational policy.

Again, something like this is implied in the piece, but I don’t think it’s really shown. Just looking at the bare facts Kurtz laid out without make inferences, I don’t think Ed’s statement is a accurate statement. It’s all very mushy and doesn’t, to me, seem to reflect the reality of the situation.

Much has been said on the blogosphere (although little in the Drive-by Media) about Obama’s associations with William Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist who planted bombs at the Pentagon in the late 60s.  Obama has stated that their association w…