Obama’s International Socialist Connections

By Cliff Kincaid

Campaign workers for Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama are under fire for displaying a flag featuring communist hero Che Guevara. But Obama has his own controversial socialist connections. He is, in fact, an associate of a Chicago-based Marxist group with access to millions of labor union dollars and connections to expert political consultants, including a convicted swindler.

Obama's socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat. Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the "champions" of "Chicago's democratic left" and a long-time socialist activist.

Obama's stint as a "community organizer" in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored.

Blogger Steve Bartin, who has been following Obama's career and involvement with the Chicago socialists, has uncovered a fascinating video showing Obama campaigning for openly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Interestingly, Sanders, who won his seat in 2006, called Obama "one of the great leaders of the United States Senate," even though Obama had only been in the body for about two years.

In 2007, the National Journal said that Obama had established himself as "the most liberal Senator." More liberal than Sanders? That is quite a feat. Does this make Obama a socialist, too?

DSA describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. The Socialist International (SI) has what is called "consultative status" with the United Nations. In other words, it works hand-in-glove with the world body.

The international connection is important and significant because an Obama bill, "The Global Poverty Act," has just been rushed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the assistance of Democratic Senator Joe Biden, the chairman, and Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The legislation (S.2433) commits the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars more in foreign aid on the rest of the world, in order to comply with the "Millennium Goals" established by the United Nations.

Conservative members of the committee were largely caught off-guard by the move to pass the Obama bill but are putting a "hold" on it, in order to try to prevent the legislation, which also quickly passed the House, from being quickly brought up for a full Senate vote. But observers think that Senate Democrats may try to pass it quickly anyway, in order to give Obama a precious legislative "victory" that he could run on.

Another group associated with the SI is the Party of European Socialists (PES), which heard from Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, back in 2006. Dean's speech is posted on the official Democratic Party website, although the European socialist parties are referred to as "progressive."

Democrats, Dean said, want to be "good citizens of the world community."

He spoke at a session on "Global Challenges for Progressive Politics." Following up, in April 2007, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen reported that European socialists held a meeting "in the Democrats HQ in Washington," met with officials of the party and Democratic members of Congress, and agreed that "PES activist groups" in various U.S. cities would start working together.

The photos of the trip show Rasmussen meeting with such figures as Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bernie Sanders, officials of the Brookings Institution, Howard Dean, and AFL-CIO President John W. Sweeney, a member of the DSA. The Brookings Institution is headed by former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a proponent of world government who was recently identified in the book Comrade J as having been a pawn of the Russian intelligence service.

The socialist connections of Obama and the Democratic Party have certainly not been featured in the Washington Post columns of Harold Meyerson, who happens not only to be a member but a vice-chair of the DSA.

Meyerson, the subject of our 2005 column, "A Socialist at the Washington Post," has praised convicted inside-trader George Soros for manipulating campaign finance laws to benefit the far-left elements of the Democratic Party. Obama's success in the Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses is further evidence of Soros's success. Soros has financially contributed to the Obama campaign.

It is not surprising that the Chicago Democrat, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, has endorsed Obama. Schakowsky, who endorsed Howard Dean for president in 2004, was honored in 2000 at a dinner sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the DSA. Her husband, Robert Creamer, emerged from federal prison in November 2006 after serving five months for financial crimes. He pleaded guilty to ripping off financial institutions while running a non-profit group.

Before he was convicted but under indictment, Creamer was hired by the Soros-funded Open Society Policy Center to sabotage John Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the U.N.

After his release from prison, Creamer released a book, Listen to Your Mother: Stand up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, described by one blogger as the book that was "penned in the pen."

A blurb for the book declares, "Some people think that in order to win, Democrats need to move to the political center by adopting conservative values and splitting the difference between progressive and conservative positions. History shows they are wrong. To win the next election and to win in the long term, we need to redefine the political center."

In addition to writing the book, Creamer is back in business, running his firm, Strategic Consulting Group, and advertising himself as "a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America's budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform."

His clients have included the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org. In fact, his client list is a virtual who's who of the Democratic Party, organized labor, and Democratic Party constituency groups. Creamer's list of testimonials comes from such figures as Democratic Senators Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Harold Meyerson, MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd, and David Axelrod, a "Democratic political consultant."

Axelrod, of course, is much more than just a "Democratic political consultant." He helped State Senator Barack Obama win his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 and currently serves as strategist and media advisor to Obama's presidential campaign.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

Sorry You Feel That Way, White Interloper and Bloodsucking Jew

Here are excerpts from Bill Levinson's Jan. 4 post on Israpundit about Barack Obama's stubborn loyalty to Jew-baiting race hustler Al Sharpton.

Obama Campaign Responds to Bigotry Complaint with Patronizing Insult
by Bill Levinson

Imagine the following interchange between an African-American voter and a candidate who has appeared with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan:

Voter: “It is impossible for me to support someone who promotes and endorses an individual who has called my people the N word, and who has at least indirectly incited a lynching and the firebombing of a Negro church. You should apologize and distance yourself from that Klan leader.”
Candidate: “I’m sorry you feel that way” (or “I’m sorry you’re a Negro.”)

If our readers think such an interchange is highly unlikely, we will now share the Barack Obama campaign’s official response to our complaints about Mr. Obama’s ongoing promotion of the prominent racist and anti-Semite Al Sharpton.

We began with the premise of a candidate associating with and openly promoting a Ku Klux Klan leader who has at least indirectly incited a lynching, and the firebombing of a Negro church in which people were killed.

Al Sharpton played at least an indirect role in fomenting the 1991 Crown Heights pogrom in which a mob yelling “Kill the Jews” did so: a rabbinical student named Yankel Rosenbaum. Sharpton personally called the Jews “diamond merchants” with the blood of innocent children on their hands....

In 1995, a mob from Al Sharpton’s National Action Network – the same organization that Barack Obama endorsed last April – paraded around a Jewish-owned store, Freddy’s Fashion Mart, in Harlem. This mob, under Sharpton’s personal supervision, chanted epithets like “bloodsucking Jew” and “cracker,” to which Sharpton personally added “white interloper.”

Like a Ku Klux Klansman who threatens to burn a Black-owned church or business in the “wrong” neighborhood, one of Sharpton’s people threatened to burn Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Another later put this threat into effect, just like a Kluxer who throws a firebomb into a Black-owned store or church, with the loss of seven innocent lives.

In 1988, Sharpton played a central role in the racist Tawana Brawley scandal, which did immense damage to the reputations of innocent people while costing Dutchess County something like half a million dollars.

We encourage our readers in New York to (ask) the people of Dutchess County, and especially Wappinger Falls, just how much damage Obama’s friend did to their community twenty years ago. Remember, many people now of voting age had not even been born at the time.

This April, Barack Obama appeared at a meeting of the National Action Network–the very same hate organization that shouted slogans like “bloodsucking Jew” and “cracker” at Freddy’s Fashion Mart–where he endorsed this ... organization and its proprietor.

Sen. Barack Obama: “Reverend Sharpton is a voice for the voiceless, and a voice for the dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.” In November, Obama made at least one more public appearance with (Sharpton), at the Apollo Theater.

We have, in response to numerous unsolicited e-mails from the Obama campaign, called (866) 675-2008 to complain about Mr. Obama’s open promotion of a vicious professional bigot who has built his career by promoting hatred of white people, and especially of Jews. Today, we received an official reply that we can construe only as a patronizing brush-off, if not a deliberate insult:

Dear Friend,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Senator Barack Obama and his candidacy for President. Senator Obama welcomes an open dialogue about America’s future, and hopes for the widest possible participation in a great nationwide discussion.

Hearing and exploring different positions and ways of thinking furthers this discussion. It challenges our reasoning, sharpens our analysis of issues, and leads to new solutions. We appreciate having the benefit of your perspective.

One of Senator Obama’s mentors was the late Senator Paul Simon, a man of great ability and integrity. He believed that people could disagree without being disagreeable, and Senator Obama has taken that guiding principle as his own.

Thank you again for contacting Senator Obama.

Sincerely,
Obama for America

The operative statement appears to be, “people can disagree without being disagreeable.” In other words, “We’re sorry you feel that way about our candidate’s public and ongoing promotion of a racist and anti-Semitic hate monger, but we don’t care because we own the Jewish vote anyway.”

It is therefore vital for us to spread the word as widely as possible that Barack Obama has so little respect for common decency that he consorts openly with the (equivalent) of the Ku Klux Klan and the Stormfront White Nationalist Community.

It is ... clear that Obama feels that he can be everything to everybody, and that he does not have to take a principled stand on anything....

Perhaps Obama (can) understand the following: (1) You can’t appear at a tribute to Michael Vick today and at an SPCA meeting tomorrow, and expect the SPCA people to believe that you are really against dog fighting and other forms of animal abuse. (2) You can’t appear at the Ku Klux Klan today and the NAACP tomorrow, and expect African-Americans to believe that you support civil rights. (3) You can’t appear arm in arm with Al Sharpton today and at AIPAC tomorrow, and expect Jewish voters to think you have anything but total contempt for them as well as for common decency.

Rupert Murdoch's New York Post Endorses Obama!

Here, from Charles Warner of the Huffington Post, is an analysis of the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama:

The New York Post has surprised many readers with its unexpected endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying he “represents a fresh start.”

Rupert Murdoch’s Post also opined that Hillary Clinton and her husband “stand for déjà vu all over again — a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency.”

But the Obama endorsement “was not about politics or Billary hating as much as it was about business,” Charles Warner observes on The Huffington Post.


Murdoch wants to use his newly acquired Wall Street Journal to challenge the New York Times and his Post to drive the New York Daily News out of business, observes Warner, who speculates on what Murdoch might have been thinking:


“I hate The New York Times and want to position the Post as its opposite, especially after the Times endorsed Billary. By endorsing Obama I appeal to many of my core readers, especially younger ones, which advertisers love.

“By endorsing Obama before the Daily News does, I get a nice little circulation pump and I put the News in a bind — a strategic dilemma. If it endorses Billary” it will perturb many of its readers “and look like it is taking a cue from the Times. If the News endorses Obama, that’s good because it might help defeat Billary, plus it will make it look like it is following the Post — a win/win in either case for me.”


By endorsing Obama, Murdoch “has achieved another edge on the Daily News,” Warner concludes, “even if he had to get under the political bedcovers with liberal Ted Kennedy.”

Is Obama Really a Uniter?

In the tradition of Yasir Arafat, he speaks one way to his core followers on the street, and another to the public at large. If he is not yet a full-blown media darling, he is fast becoming one. Reporters get a kick out of him, finding him exciting, personable, and a joy to quote. As the liberal New York Post columnist Jack Newfield has pointed out, he is 'dangerous because he is so likable.' And only rarely is (he) held accountable for his offenses, both past and ongoing. The tendency to forget, or to brush aside, is close to overpowering.

No, the National Review's Jay Nordlinger is not writing about Barak Obama here, but about race hustler Al Sharpton, in an essay over seven years old. But it is as much a description of our credulous talking heads and newspapermen as of Sharpton.

How does Sharpton rate identification (only in the mass media) as a "civil rights leader" when he has made his living as a political shakedown artist?

His "Chappaquiddick," as columnist Nat Hentoff called it, was the Tawana Brawley hoax. After staying away from home for several days, young Tawana smeared herself with dog feces, wrote racial epithets on her body, climbed into a garbage bag, and waited to be discovered. Then she claimed she was abducted, raped and otherwise abused by six white men, including a police officer and an assistant district attorney, practicing Irish Republican Army rituals.

Sharpton became the family's press spokesman. Bill Cosby offered a large cash reward for information leading to arrests and convictions, but Sharpton told the family not to cooperate with New York Attorney General Robert Abrams. To cooperate with him, Sharpton said, would be "to sit down with Mr. Hitler."

One of Sharpton's assistants was quoted telling him "Robert Abrams, you are no longer going to masturbate looking at Tawana Brawley's picture."

It was a total, absolute hoax. Sharpton never apologized. Over a decade later, he said "If I had it to do again, I'd do it in the same way." He taunted one of the falsely accused men to sue him if he was innocent, and when the man did, he was subjected to death threats and menacing encounters that can only be attributed to Sharpton.

In the Central Park "wilding" case, a young white woman was set upon by a group of young Black males, who raped and beat her near death. Sharpton came to the rapists' defense, describing them as the equivalent of the "Scottsboro Boys." When the case went to trial, Sharpton brought his group to the courthouse steps where they shouted "whore" at the victim and chanted "the boyfriend did it."

Sharpton brought Tawana Brawley to the courthouse, where she and the jogger's attackers greeted one another warmly. Ever the ready provider of quotable zingers for the media, he said he had brought her there "to see the difference between white justice and Black justice."

When a Hasidic Jew lost control of his car, jumped the curb and killed a Black child, Sharpton decided to throw gasoline on the fire by denouncing a Jewish diamond company that bought South African diamonds, routed them through Tel Aviv and wholesaled them out of a Hasidic neighborhood in New York City. Rioters injured 100 Jews and lynched a rabbinical student.

"All we want to say is what Jesus said: if you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. You got to pay for your deeds. It's no accident that we know we should not be run over. We are the royal family on this planet. We are the original man."

When a Jewish retailer revoked a Black subtenant's lease in Harlem, Sharpton's National Action Network mounted a series of rallies to intimidate the Jew. Picketers screamed "bloodsucking Jews" and "Jew bastards," and threatened to burn the store down. They taunted a Black security guard as a "cracker lover."

At one of the rallies, Sharpton declared that "we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."

A Sharpton associate said "we're going to see that this cracker suffers. Reverend Sharpton is on it."

After weeks of escalating rhetoric, one of the overwrought partisans shouted "it's on," rushed into the store with a drawn firearm, and ordered all Blacks out of the store. He shot three whites and a Pakistani, whom he apparently mistook for a Jew, then set the store on fire, which killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese and the Black security guard.

Sharpton never took responsibility for inciting hatred against the Jewish retailer. At first he denied that he ever spoke at the rallies. When tapes proved he had, he was dismissive.

"What's wrong with denouncing white interlopers?" Sharpton asked.

What's Al Sharpton got to do with Barak H. Obama?

Well, the two have appeared together and been photographed together on several occasions. I don't think Obama would pose for photos with David Duke. And Obama has endorsed the activities of the man Richard Brookhiser called "an impresario of hatreds."

"Reverend Sharpton is a voice for the voiceless, and a voice for the dispossessed. What the National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up."

If I've taken Obama out of context, I'm willing to be corrected. If you know of any instance where he has expressed disapproval of the way Al Sharpton handled the Tawana Brawley lie, the Central Park wilding, the Jew-lynching Crown Heights riots or the racially motivated shootings and arson on 125th Street, please post them in the Comments section below. I don't want to be unfair to Sen. Obama. But please supply a citation so that readers can look it up and independently verify it.

How would JFK have handled an endorsement by the Provisional Irish Republican Army?

It's safe to say that, despite his sentimental loyalty to Ireland, he would have distanced himself from violent Irish activists at least as emphatically as he distanced himself from the peace-loving bishops of the Catholic church.

Despite his stated ambition to be a uniter, Barak Obama has, thus far, lacked the steel or the inclination to renounce his most bigoted supporters. To date, this has been an asymmetrical factor in his favor. In South Carolina, for example, prominent Black Democrats openly acknowledged their racial motivation in voting for Obama. However, when former President Clinton noted that Jesse Jackson had won the South Carolina primary, he was accused of attempting to "marginalize" Obama by racial subtext.

This advantage is likely to hold as long as the generally left-leaning mass media keep message discipline. If significant media outlets break ranks to hold Obama as accountable as they held George Bush for speaking at Bob Jones University or Trent Lott for praising former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, the pressure could reach critical mass, at which point Obama may have to denounce his most fanatical supporters or forego outreach to independents and undecideds.

Comparing Barak Hussein Obama and John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Anybody of my generation (old enough to remember JFK) who watched that riveting scene at American University a week ago had to be affected, if only because it's been so long since we saw a quorum of Kennedys all in one place without a funeral or a criminal proceeding involved. Chris Matthews of MSN's Hardball called Ted Kennedy a "King Arthur" figure.

The associations came fast and randomly. When I saw Caroline, I thought of John John reminiscing that they had played under the Monica Lewinsky desk.

I thought of all the Kennedys missing from that campaign dais, and how they should have set up empty stools for Bobby, murdered by an immigrant who brought his Old World grudges to America with him, JFK, murdered by a Communist for God knows what reason, Jackie, felled by cancer, and John Jr., who lost his way in bad weather and fatally crashed his plane. I wondered how each of them would have felt about endorsing Obama in a contested primary.

Any time I think of John Jr., I remember his quip in Chicago several years ago that he had come to visit the scene of two of the Kennedy family's most important purchases: Merchandise Mart and the 1960 presidential election.

Any time I think of Jackie, I remember Gorbachev's reply to a Western reporter, filtered through a translator, when the reporter asked him "what effect do you think it would have had on history if, in 1963, President Krushchev had been assassinated instead of President Kennedy?"

"It's very difficult to say," Gorbachev stammered, and did as much as he could to excuse his obvious unpreparedness for the question, then brightened and delivered the immortal retort: "However, it's probably safe to say that Onassis would not have married Mrs. Krushchev."

Okay, now down to the business at hand, which is comparing and contrasting Sen. Obama and the late President Kennedy. I will alternate comparisons and contrasts in this post, but you can use any format you like in Comments. Parallel columns, paragraphs, whatever. Have some fun with it, if you like. Anything from the prosaic to the picaresque. Just no racism, no profanity, and no flaming, please.

Comparison

Both are big-city ethnic politicians with Old Country family connections.

Contrast

Kennedy was born into a large, stable family under the same roof, provided by parents who stayed married for life. Obama's father abandoned the family when Barak was two. He had an Indonesian stepfather briefly, and a younger half-sister was born of that marriage. He was raised by his grandparents after his mother died. His father produced African half-siblings to Barak after he abandoned his American family and returned to his native Kenya.

Comparison

Neither man has ever been poor.

Contrast

As a junior Naval officer in World War II, Kennedy served in the South Pacific campaign against the Japanese. The hero of P.T. 109, he was awarded the Navy Cross and Montgomery Clift later portrayed him in a feature biopic. Obama has never served.

Comparison

Both were extraordinarily "green" on foreign policy, despite spending part of their childhoods overseas. Kennedy was quickly tested by the Soviet Union, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis nuclear brinksmanship. Obama's bravado about a hypothetical invasion of Pakistan, followed by a flip-flop, certainly attracted attention from our adversaries. He will be "tried."

Contrast

Obama appears to be a solid husband. Kennedy was a "hound," a serial adulterer whose personal staff and secretary procured suitable women for his afternoon delight, and occasionally had to detain Jackie outside the Oval Office when she arrived unexpectedly.

Comparison

Both men attended elite prep schools and had stellar academic careers at Harvard.

Contrast

Obama criticizes President Bush's decision to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Kennedy criticized President Truman's failure to support Chiang Kai-shek in China.

Comparison

Both men are sharp dressers.

Contrast

Kennedy's Irish-American identity was obvious and inescapable. His Boston pronunciation was authentic. Obama's biracial multicultural heritage is ambiguous, and his self-identification as a Black American is a conscious act of will. The Hawaii-raised Harvard lawyer's Black American speech patterns are affected and intentional.

Comparison

Both men are portrayed as athletic by the media. Obama is reported to play basketball with staffers; Kennedy was often photographed playing touch football with extended family.

Contrast

The Catholic Kennedy would almost certainly have objected to abortion on demand. Obama has never met an abortion he didn't like, including partial-birth abortion, in which a viable human baby is partially delivered through the birth canal, then stabbed in the skull with scissors, which are then opened to create a hole in which a suction catheter is inserted to suck out the brains and collapse the skull, at the mother's request.

Comparison

Both ran against and debated more experienced, accomplished legislators in the primary. Kennedy ran against Lyndon B. Johnson, Senate Majority Leader and peerless master of the legislative process. Obama is running against Hillary R. Clinton, generally regarded as a hard-working, capable journeyman in the U.S. Senate. Both Johnson and Clinton pointedly remarked on their junior opponents' respective experience deficits.

Contrast

Kennedy was an avid amateur sailor; Obama was a surfer.

Comparison

Both men are assured of winning Cook County (Chicago), Illinois.

Contrast

Obama can win Cook County fair and square, without electoral fraud by the Daly machine.

Comparison

Both men had bases of solid, almost tribal bloc support. In Kennedy's case, it was Catholics, in Obama's, it is Black Americans. Media elites raised no objections to this, but were highly sensitive to tribalism among white Protestants in 1960 and among white males in 2008, describing it as bigotry.

Contrast

Obama appears to be in good health, aside from his cigarette habit. Kennedy was a medical wreck who was hospitalized 36 times and received last rites three times.

Comparison

Both men are considered charismatic, and experienced "Rock Star" adulation from people who are generally uninterested in issue politics. Their emphasis is on image and youth. Kennedy felt he represented the generation "born in this (20th) century."

Contrast

Kennedy was born into the Catholic Church. Obama opted into the United Church of Christ.

Comparison

Both men polled well among professional academics.

Contrast

Obama's mother died young. Kennedy's mother survived him and lived to 100.

Comparison

Both men's religion became an issue during national elections.

Contrast

Kennedy was pressured to distance himself from the Catholic Church. Obama was pressured to swear devotion to his church.

Comparison

Both men claimed a Christian spiritual confidante.

Contrast

Kennedy's Catholic family confessor was theologically orthodox (small o) Cardinal Francis Spellman. Obama's confidante is Afrocentric Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the United Church of Christ, which ordains gay ministers, favors gay marriage and is hostile to Israel. The website of Obama's congregation in Chicago says "We are an African people, and remain 'true to our native land,' the mother continent, the cradle of civilization." It lists a 10-point Vision, #4 of which is "a congregation with a non-negotiable commitment to Africa." It is a congregation 10) "working towards economic parity" and committed to 7) "the historical education of African people in diaspora," 8) "liberation" and 9) "restoration." Rev. Wright, who appears to be preoccupied with Black grandeur, has issued a grandiloquent paean to Nation of Islam jew-baiter Louis Farrakhan.

Comparison

Both men wrote bestselling books. Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, a memoir. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage.

Contrast

Obama's father, lamentably, lacked the "juice" (connections) to arrange a Pulitzer prize for his book. Kennedy was better blessed in this respect.

ALRIGHTY THEN...

Time for you to contribute your comparisons and contrasts in Comments. Remember, no racist stuff and no flaming. Have fun.