Is/was Barack Obama a member of Democratic Socialists of America? It sure looks like it.
No worries–they were probably just guys in his neighborhood.
Between these folks and Ayers and Dorhn (who are no doubt members as well, unless it wasn’t radical enough for them), it sounds like a pretty bad neighborhood.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jonah Goldberg wonders if Senator Obama ever read his home-town newspaper.
And then of course there was Ayers’ own autobiography, the profile in the NY Times in which Ayers casually said he’d wished he’d made more bombs etc.
I don’t know Chicago well. But my sense of the place is that they take politics pretty seriously there. Young, very smart and hyper ambitious politicians like Obama tend to read the local paper (never mind the New York Times, which ran a couple dozen stories mentioning Ayers and his terrorist ties between 1990 and 2004). The political class in Chicago knows who everybody is, where they came from, what they believe. They tend to learn about people who give them jobs, money and political opportunities. And, people like Ayers don’t exactly keep their views or radical past a closely guarded secret, particularly when they remain unreprentant.
In short, I think it’s a lie — and a pretty stupid one — to say that Obama didn’t know about any of this. The obvious answer is he just didn’t care.
Yes, just like Reverend Wright’s rantings. It was no problem. Until, that is,it became politically inconvenient to him. He is lying about his relationship with Ayers, which means that he was also almost certainly lying about not knowing what was being preached in his church of twenty years. Why should we believe anything he says?
[Update late morning]
It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood, with advice columns from Barack’s and Michelle’s neighbors:
Dear Mary Ellen: Your question is borne of bourgeois ignorance and manufactured consent. A violent revolution is coming, and the workers will throw off the chains of their oppression and rise up in a bloody revolt against AmeriKKKa’s legacy of racism, genocide, and hegemonic corporatist empire. In the coming revolution, the state and its propagandist education apparatus will wither away, thus ushering in a new age of proletarian enlightenment. All education will be free, and all children, including yours, will be rescued from their bourgeois shackles and freed to join the vanguard for permanent revolution.
Bernadine has legal advice as well. Also, grooming tips from Rod.
[Afternoon update]
The memory hole doesn’t work so well any more, what with web archives. Politically Drunk has found some pages that had been previously scrubbed that confirm Senator Obama’s membership in the New Party:
From the October 1996 Update of the DSA ‘New Party’:
“New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races…Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).”
Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the “Progressive Populist” magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.
“New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George’s County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.”
Is there any record of Senator Obama demanding a correction to the publications?
Next, I expect him to say “that’s not the Democratic Socialist Party that I knew…”
That would George Soros and Dick Durbin?
dick durbin before he dicks you.
But you’ll soon be stuck with a whole lot of hungry, angry and violent citizens, that you yourselves have created through neglect of…[insert whiny leftist wish list]
Oh? You mean instead of stuck with a whole lot of power-hungry, angry and non-law-abiding citizens who got that way through bitterness at being unable to succeed in life without a big handout from the rest of us? Which is, you know, nothing new at all? We’ve had a restive half-criminal loser underclass since the Romans made examples of them along their roads.
those people will soon be inviting your wives and daughters to dinner, as main course and desert, respectively.
Yawn. Come The Revolution, we’ll all be up against the wall, yeah yeah. Sounds strangely familiar.
Keep in mind we have the guns, and the brains. (After all, we can figure out how to pay for our homes and health care without Big Brother’s help). My advice is to stick to voting yourself more lollipops at public expense, because if it comes to an actual test of will and force, just like in the bad old days on the savannah, you’re dead. Because you’re self-evidently stupid, and lack any form of productive self-discipline.
Oh dear, was I not sensitive to the “needs” of the “middle class?” So sorry! Run and tell mommy, now.
whiny leftist
Hey, not a problem, you’re the ‘Texas Rancher’ who wanted to bring back the good old days, from your perspective you’ll be much better off holed up at the homestead surrounded by your guns and nuts, than you would be if you were working to create a sustainable space based civilization with a happy, healty and well educated populace with a rational system of self governance.
Some of us just have a different perspective on what is scientifically possible and probable with a planetary system and a given amount of people and resources.
I do hope you enjoy the future you have purchased.
Jim, if I thought there were any real chance that Obama, or the 111th Congress, was going to listen to their advice, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d probably volunteer to work for his campaign.