Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign website has removed several videos that pitched alarmist messages to African-American voters, following reporting by The Daily Caller and the Fox News Channel. In one video that the campaign yanked from the “African-Americans for Obama” section of its website Tuesday, actress Tatyana Ali seemed to predict that a second Obama term would bring a host of benefits to African-Americans once the president no longer had to concern himself with campaigning.

[Snippets -- read it ALL] ....Born in 1909, Alinsky was a left-wing activist with a streak of ruthless political realism. After studying criminology at the University of Chicago, he went into union organizing, and found it too tame. His “approach to social justice,” in the words of the Washington Post, would come to rely instead on “generating conflict to mobilize the dispossessed.”.... ....His most enduring influence may have been to inspire the National Education Association to become a political powerhouse. Sam Lambert, the executive secretary of the NEA in 1967, when it hired Alinsky as a political trainer, boasted that...

Imagine you come upon a child under 10 years old who, along with his friends, is in obvious distress. Now imagine, when you ask that child what you can do to help him, he turns to you and says, with all seriousness, “It is better if you can kill us…” What in the name of all that is holy could cause a child that young so much stress and fear in his life, that given a choice, he would have you kill him as an act of kindness? Meet Jacob, the unsuspecting star of Youtube’s most viral video to date...

Here is the link to the just-issued-warning to Japanese residents and visitors in New York City by their Consulate to stay away from those "Occupy" people. LINK

Learn who Alinsky was and why he matters. Expanded coverage of how to counteract each of the tactics. Should you use these methods? Why the most popular tactics are not the most effective. General tips to make you better on twitter and Facebook along with methods to combat Alinsky tactics in social media. Methods to win arguments with Liberals, ways to drive them nuts, and how to keep them from driving you nuts. How to spot Obama for America (OFA) and not waste your time with them. Recognizing the Left’s big players and how they influence others. A full chapter...

Ten Septembers have come and gone since that awful morning. But on this 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are summoned once more to honor those we lost by keeping our country strong and true to their memory. Over the coming days, we will remember nearly 3,000 innocent victims — fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters who were simply going about their daily lives on a beautiful Tuesday morning. And we'll talk to our children about what happened on that day, and what's happened since. Like every American, I'll never forget how I heard the terrible...

<p>Supposed to commemorate this?</p>

Says it was mistake to mock community organizing background

As families around the country get together to celebrate fathers today, I'm thinking about dads like Alex. Alex is the father of two boys and two girls, ages six to 13. During the week, he works the 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift as a front-desk supervisor at a Seattle hotel. After work and on the weekends, he devotes his time to a summer organizing program that's giving more than 1,500 first-time organizers the training they need to help build this movement in their communities. He says he hopes this organizing work will help teach his kids the power one...

America has become the despised superhero Among nations, we really are a superhero.  We assimilate immigrants like no other nation, we come to the aid of everybody, destroy dictators and kill bad guys...  Our frightful military prowess is unrivaled. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished We've earned nothing but hatred for our efforts.  We are Batman, fighting nihilistic Jokers but pissing everybody off in the process.  They level charges of torture, illegal prisons and habitually bombing Muslim wedding parties and killing innocent civilians. We are excoriated for invading Iraq and Afghanistan...  by the same crowd that urges us to kill Khadaffi...

“The Tea Party is the most exciting political movement of my lifetime,” Bellow recently told CNN. “I say that as someone who was around during the 60s and was in many ways a product of that decade.” The mission of “Voices of the Tea Party,” in the words of Broadside Books’ website, is to connect readers and writers to those “citizen activists” Bellow mentioned: Readers and writers alike can thereby join important national discussion within this ever-expanding community of citizen activists who have dedicated themselves to securing the movements’ core values of constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets....

As the world watches Egypt crumble into chaos, with over 100 dead and 2000 injured, the Obama administration continues to be somewhat and rather curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, on Friday, Vice President Biden came to the defense of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying that he shouldn’t step aside. Yet, on the same day, the Telegraph (ala Wikileaks) reported that the U.S. had planned "regime change" for the "past three years" while both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton demand that internet be restored to the Egyptian protesters. This morning, Secretary of State Clinton again clarified the United...

Looks like all those years of performing for Democratic candidates has paid off: President Obama is tapping rocker Jon Bon Jovi to serve on a new presidential advisory council. The White House announced Tuesday that Bon Jovi (or is it just Jovi?) will join the new 25-member White House Council for Community Solutions, a panel established to provide advice on "the best ways to mobilize citizens, nonprofits, businesses and government to work more effectively together to solve specific community needs."(continued)

A troubling headline at the Cincinnati Enquirer: Schism develops over Catholic campaignA 'schism' is a clear break in the Church as a response to heresy. 'Heresy' is a clear rejection of a dogma of the Church. Rich Leonardi, of Ten Reasons, is quoted: "The groups funded are consistently highly political and always political in one direction." And... "You end up with these very hard left groups with a very partisan agenda." Does that indicate a charge of 'heresy'? It's debatable. Tony Stieritz, director of social action at the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, whose office Mr. Leonardi claims "sponsored a talk by a...

At LifeSiteNews there’s an intriguing report about happenings within the Chicago office of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development [CCHD]. I recommend the article in full, but would like to make a few observations. Rey Flores did a lot to reform Chicago CCHD. I appreciate the good reforms he made there and wish he had not been fired from his job. Having said that, it is not okay to continue to fund community organizing such as the protests against the Arizona Diamondbacks. (See here for my report at NewsRealBlog on that.) I was told by more than one friend within...

How to Create a Crisis and Steal a NationBy Aristotle the Hun, The Rev. Big Goon and Good Shepherd Sam Note: It will quickly be obvious to the reader why details have been obscured, omitted or fictionalized in this narrative of events that began nearly forty years ago. "Se non è vero, è ben trovato." Even small children know how to get what they want by creating a crisis. Witness any “temper tantrum.� My wife and I teach parenting skills. One of our sayings which we recommend to parents when dealing with a child’s “crisis strategy� is: “Poor planning...

Like Freddie or a bad penny, they just won’t go away. Despite numerous federal investigations and a series of videos that exposed unethical behavior (among them, one showing ACORN employees facilitating under age prostitution) … these “Community” organizers, aka Obama Get Out The Vote Campaign, ACORN has just rebranded itself … and yes, here in New England too. Apart from Communities United, ACORN chapters in 12 states have reorganized themselves into 11 new organizations. The largest appear to be Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, and New England United for Justice (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island).

The Cambridge, Massachusetts Climate Emergency Congress (CEC) is more than a grassroots group of out-of-touch leftists. Rather, it is a casebook study of a new movement of "climate community activism" that pushes sustainability issues in municipal governments. It is a worldwide movement that bears watching. The largest player in this movement was founded in 1990 to fight ozone pollution under the name "International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives." It is now known as the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. ICLEI is a global organization of 1,124 municipalities and regional organizations. The Clinton Foundation's Climate Initiative is also a major force in...

"A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children - the youngest a third-grade boy - was a far-left political extremist who was "obsessed" with President Obama to the point of being off-putting."--Boston Herald, February 15, 2010 'Oddball' portrait of Amy Bishop emerges:http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100215oddball_protrait_emerges_suspects_family_pals_offer_clues/srvc=home&position=0___________________________________________________ "The woman accused of killing three colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville was a suspect in a 1993 attempted mail bombing, according to a report by The Boston Globe. The report broke the day after it was learned that Bishop fatally shot her brother in Braintree in 1986. More than fifteen years ago,...

Since the election of our first ex-community organizer as President, organizing for progressive change has declined. The reasons range from sharply reduced funding for organizers, to complacency after Democrats’ sweeping 2008 victories, to labor unions being forced to focus on protecting current workers from contract givebacks rather than organizing new members. The net result is that grassroots organizing – which prioritizes face-to-face contacts with the unconverted, empowers people rather than simply asking them to fulfill a task, and builds local coalitions for pressure campaigns targeting politicians – is being replaced by less effective e-mail mobilizations and other short-cuts. As the...

A race for mayor of Atlanta headed for a recount on Wednesday after a knife-edge election that exposed a racial fault line running through the biggest city in the U.S. Southeast. Former state Senator Kasim Reed declared victory overnight when official results from the runoff vote showed him beating city councilwoman Mary Norwood by 758 votes out of 83,000 cast. But Norwood declined to concede defeat and is almost certain to demand a recount under rules that permit one when less than 1 percent of votes cast separates the candidates. Norwood, who led an initial round of voting November 3,...

A three-story downtown warehouse, initially planned as a condo conversion project, is being sold to a local nonprofit agency for its new headquarters. An investors group organized by Dave Jorgensen, a partner in VJS Construction Services, is selling the 45,000-square-foot building at 728 N. James Lovell St. to Community Advocates Inc. for $1.8 million, said Joe Volk, the agency's executive director. Community Advocates, which helps the poor deal with tenant-landlord disputes, problems with obtaining health care, and other basic needs, plans to renovate the building for its headquarters, Volk said Tuesday. The project will consolidate the group's main office, now...

InsideHigherEd.com writes: In the last few years, a conservative legal organization [Ed. -- Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation] has filed complaints and extensive information requests to at least 11 colleges and universities with regard to labor centers that conduct research about and offer programs for unions. ... The [American Association of University Professors'] statement questioned the basis for the Landmark actions and said that the association was trying to undercut the labor centers by waging an ideological attack on them. Further, the statement noted that colleges and universities have a range of offerings for different organizations in society, and that...

Can You Say Brook(en)? by: Bethany Stotts, October 09, 2009 What type of degree prepares students for community organizing? The California-based Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center adds another clue as to the type of training received by community activists of a left-leaning demeanor. Students with a Saybrook Human Science degree “may design a unique transdisciplinary plan to focus on individual academic and professional goals,” states the school website. “Graduates have studied such diverse topics as gender and violence; metaphysics and altered states of consciousness; alternative health; popular media and culture; technology; architecture; the meaning of sports; bio-ethics and...

The Obama Administration has placed a large premium on what it calls “national service.” It has launched a website, www.Serve.gov, that is reported to act as a clearing house for Americans eager to “give back” to their communities. Unfortunately, Americans looking for an opportunity to volunteer may get something they weren’t expecting. By typing “ACORN” into the search field entitled “What interests you” at Serve.gov, you’re transported to allforgood.org where you can choose from a list of volunteer opportunities, including “healthcare activist.” This particular “volunteer” opportunity is with the Tuscon ACORN office: ________________________________________________ Also, Obama has set up http://www.servir.gov/, the...

UPDATE! 8/4/09 The Apollo Alliance has now ADMITTED that they wrote the Stimulus Bill AND the Cap and Trade Bill. It will only be a matter of time before America learns THEY wrote the Healthcare Bill too!

As the Health Care Reform Town Hall meetings and Tea Parties heat up and the August Congressional summer session winds down, conservatives finally have a play book to help them gain traction on the slippery slope to socialism that they feel this country appears to be heading. “Rules for Conservative Radicals,” written by Michael Patrick Leahy (www.michaelpatrickleahy.com) takes the Alinsky viewpoints expressed in “Rules for Radicals,” and puts a moral, ethical, conservative spin on them.

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but...

Last month House Republicans released a report telling us something we all know, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN) has been engaging schemes to use misuse taxpayer money to support a partisan political agenda. The executive summary of the report includes this charge. "Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan agenda and to manipulate the American electorate," The report accuses ACORN of fraudulent activities, widespread corruption and calls for a...

Voter Fraud: Republican leaders want to defund and criminally investigate ACORN. Why should taxpayer dollars fund a "nonpartisan" organization that proclaims "Obama needs ACORN, and we need Obama."That the greatest attempt at voter fraud in the nation's history is being funded in large part at taxpayer's expense is more than a bit ironic. House Minority Leader John Boehner wants it stopped and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wants the group allegedly behind the fraud, ACORN, criminally investigated and prosecuted. ACORN calls itself a "nonpartisan" group seeking to register minorities and the poor. But its political arm has endorsed Barack Obama, who...

Public Discourse: The candidate who told his supporters "to argue with them and get in their face" now finds the shoe on the other foot. So they're taking names and encouraging you to turn in your neighbors.So this is hope and change — telling American citizens who in a democracy disagree with you that they are mind-numbed robots participating in mob action and expressing "manufactured" outrage. Considering that upward of 80% of those hooligans like their doctors, like their insurance and like their care, anger over your government-run health care was not that hard to assemble. It was not that...

Didn’t Barack Obama claim that community organizing was the most important part of his early political life? Wasn’t his work for ACORN presented as one of the chief qualifications for his becoming president? So, now that he’s won, how can this administration rail against Americans coming together in community organizations to oppose his healthcare policies? Isn’t organizing good? This is the same man that during the late campaign for president told his voters to “argue” with your neighbors and “get in their faces.” Now, all of a sudden, this is a president that is urging people to turn in their...

Below Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck explains the Apollo Alliance on his July 28 show. Beck mentions the Obama administration’s “stimulus” blueprint, “The New Apollo Program: Clean Energy, Good Jobs,” which you can read here.

The following video log shows how Obama used and plans to use community organizing to change America while answering the question why IG Gerald Walpin was fired. Here are the uncontested undisputed facts regarding the scandal of President Obama’s firing of inspector general of the AmeriCorps program, Gerald Walpin: Walpin, doing his duty as AmeriCorps IG filed investigative findings accusing prominent Obama supporter Kevin Johnson Mayor of Sacramento California and former NBA star of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. Johnson subsequently worked out a deal with the Sacramento U.S. Attorney to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money, that’s...

I'm tired of seeing this damn commercial, and it's on all the time. Obama's face and voice are everywhere, and why would anyone "volunteer" through the federal government anyway?

QUINN RALLINS, 23, graduated magna cum laude last year from Morehouse College with a dual major in international studies and Spanish. This spring, Mr. Rallins is finishing his master’s degree in comparative social policy at Oxford. He has analyzed research for the Rand Corporation in England, led workshops in Malaysia for Amnesty International and founded an organization to help orphans in the Dominican Republic. His next step? Top financial and technology companies and nonprofit groups have expressed interest in hiring him. Even in this economy, he has options. But Mr. Rallins wants to be a community organizer — just like...

The Senate agreed Monday to take up legislation to triple the size of the AmeriCorps program and open up opportunities for more people to serve their communities. Lawmakers voted 74-14 to move to the legislation that would expand AmeriCorps from its current 75,000 positions to 250,000 over the course of eight years. Sixty votes were needed to bring the bill to the floor. The measure is expected to come up for a final vote in the Senate sometime this week. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who is being treated for brain cancer, made a rare appearance on the Senate floor...

In meeting the challenges of revitalized urban neighborhoods across the country, urban churches are rethinking the ways they connect with their adjacent communities, combining an eclectic mix of edgy art and ancient Christian traditions. It’s new territory for many Christian congregations who fled deteriorating downtowns in the 1960s for more fruitful fields of harvest in the burgeoning suburbs—and now see a growing and culturally influential class of creative people populating inner cities. “I wouldn’t say we’re going after a niche market,” says Winn Collier, pastor of the new All Souls Church, a Virginia Baptist congregation ministering in Charlottesville’s lively downtown...

Change comes to America, as promised by President Barack Obama, with the establishment of the brand new White House Office of Urban Affairs. This new presidential urban power house is a critical need according to the former community organizer and agitator, because "urban areas are where 80% of the American people live and work." Heading up this high level operation is the controversial Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion along with second in command, New York Governor Patterson's Washington lobbyist Derek Douglas. Michael Mcauliff of the New York Daily News reports Obama's announcement. "The Urban Affairs office will focus on wise...

According to an account in the New York Post, President Barack Obama yesterday told Republican leaders, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." With George W. Bush now off the stage, it may be that Obama and some of his fellow Democrats view Limbaugh, and not John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or any other elected official, as the true leader of the Republican opposition. This morning I asked Rush for his thoughts on all this, and here is his response: There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier's plan is to isolate...

President-elect Barack Obama announced the formation of a new group known as "Organizing for America" that aims to continue the grassroots advocacy that the former Illinois Senator began in his presidential campaign. "As President, I will need the help of all Americans to meet the challenges that lie ahead," Obama said in a video message e-mailed to supporters (and reporters) this morning. "That's why I'm asking people like you who fought for change during the campaign to continue fighting for change in your communities." The new group will be the flagship of "Obama 2.0" as many people have taken to...

With the hospice care volunteer work she's done in Belize, Kara Pennino is one of those millions of youngsters challenging the myth of the selfish teenager. But while the Rochester, N.Y., high school senior always figured her service work might impress a college, she never imagined it could help make college more affordable. So she was stunned earlier this month when she got her acceptance letter from Drew University in New Jersey. She stopped reading after "Congratulations" to celebrate with her teary-eyed mom. It was mom who noticed the second letter — telling Kara she'd won a new community service...

Do you wonder why 2008 election data shows that the majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama even though his record as Illinois state senator proves him the most pro-abortion candidate who ever ran for president? Perhaps one answer is that on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, millions of Catholics will again be putting in their church's collection plate their annual donation to what the pre-printed envelope calls "Campaign for Human Development: The Catholic Church working to end poverty and injustice in America; We'll turn your dollars into hope for the poor of our nation." The generous Catholics who respond to...

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, he will do so in the 30th anniversary year of the founding of the so-called Religious Right. Born in 1979 and midwifed by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right was a reincarnation of previous religious-social movements that sought moral improvement through legislation and court rulings. Those earlier movements—from abolition (successful) to Prohibition (unsuccessful)—had mixed results. Social movements that relied mainly on political power to enforce a conservative moral code weren't anywhere near as successful as those that focused on changing hearts. The four religious revivals, from...

More on Gordon Smith and Questionable Vote Counting By J. Peter Freire on 11.5.08 @ 2:38PM We received a note that there was a possibility that Multnomah County's election offices were flooded and that the "press was being asked to leave." It sounded sketchy, so I called to check it out. According to Shawn Cunningham in their public affairs office, no press has been asked to leave whatsoever. There's a little bit of water in the basement, "the building was built in 1925," and they needed to move the ballots, which the press is welcome to bear witness to. He...

The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977. Seeking to address complaints from anti-poverty activists and housing advocates about banks allegedly discriminating against minority borrowers and "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, the CRA decreed that banks had "an affirmative obligation" to meet the credit needs of victims of discrimination in borrowing. To add a government stick to the process, the CRA decreed that federal banking regulators would consider how well banks were doing in meeting the goal of more multiculturalism in loaning when considering requests by banks...

For those looking for a real start to today's financial meltdown and government rescue, you need to go back — way back — to 1977, and the Jimmy Carter presidency.It was then, for the best and purest of reasons, that well-meaning Democratic members of Congress brought the Community Reinvestment Act into being. The main idea, as the late Democratic Sen. William Proxmire said on the Senate floor in 1977, was "to eliminate the practice of redlining by lending institutions." That term — "redlining" — seems quaint today. But in the 1970s, it was widely seen as the cause of housing...

In 1985, Barack Obama traveled halfway across the country to take a job that he didn't fully understand. But, while he knew little about his new vocation--community organizer--it still had a romantic ring, at least to his 24-year-old ears. With his old classmates from Columbia, he had talked frequently about political change. Now, he was moving to Chicago to put that talk into action. His 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounts his idealistic effusions: "Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks....

This week at the Republican convention, John McCain and his surrogates attacked Barack Obama and mocked the power of community organizing. They sneered at the idea that people like you can play a crucial role in turning this country around. The Republicans just don't get it. Our movement was built by ordinary people working together in their communities -- and that's how we're going to win on Election Day. We have a new tool called Neighbor to Neighbor that makes it easier than ever to connect with potential supporters in your community. It allows you to reach out to your...

After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois (c) 1990 Illinois Issues, University of Illinois at Springfield ISBN: 0-9620873-3-5 Chapter 4 (pp. 35-40) of After Alinsky Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City For three years Barack Obama was the director of Developing Communities Project, an institutionally based community organization on Chicago's far south side. He has also been a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, an organizing institute working throughout the Midwest. Currently he is studying law at Harvard University. "Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City" was first published in the August/ September 1988...