Campaign-Promises.com

Popularity: 15% [?]

Democratic Nominee Makes Final Appeal to Voters in Key States

By JAKE TAPPER

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 27, 2008—

With just eight days of campaigning left, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are stepping up their stump speeches to avoid stepping down on November 4.

With the political battleground well defined, states like Ohio and Pennsylvania are critical to both candidates’ chances, and both senators kicked off the final full week of the campaign with stops in both.

Supporters of Democrat Obama gathered Monday evening for a “Change We Need” rally inside Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena. After an introduction by Pittsburgh Steelers president Dan Rooney, Obama told the crowd change in America is one week away.

“Sen. McCain might be worried about losing an election, but I’m worried about Americans who are losing their homes, and their jobs, and their life savings,” Obama said.

“I can take one more week of John McCain’s attacks, but this country can’t take four more years of the same old politics and the same failed policies. It’s time for something new.”

At Canton’s Memorial Civic Center Monday afternoon, Obama delivered a speech his campaign dubbed the “closing argument,” and touched on themes consistent with those he outlined during his break-out appearance as a little-known state legislator at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Campaign officials claim the consistency has served the Illinois senator well, especially in contrast with McCain, who they say has jumped around from issue to issue, looking for anything that would stick.

Before 5,000 screaming fans, a pumped up Obama decried what he called President Bush’s — and John McCain’s — “tired worn-out old theory” of trickle-down economics.

Obama reminded voters that even after months of campaigning and three presidential debates, his White House rival had not provided the American people with a way to differentiate his policies from those of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

The Democratic nominee begins the final stretch of his campaign in Ohio, a battleground state where an Oct. 22 Ohio newspaper poll has him with a narrow lead of 49 to 46, and then Pennsylvania, another key state, where he enjoys a more comfortable margin of 13 points, according to a Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll from Oct. 26.

According to Democratic strategist Tad Devine, Pennsylvania is “a place where Obama has been ahead in the polls; if McCain could figure out somehow how to win Pennsylvania he might be able to get back into a plausible scenario of winning the race, but that’s why he’s spending so much time there.”

But while addressing the crowd in Canton today, Obama cautioned supporters against complacency, despite his success in the opinion polls.

“Don’t believe for a second this election is over,” he chided.

“Don’t think for a minute that power concedes. We have to work like our future depends on it in this last week, because it does.”

“Sometimes overconfidence can hurt you with your own supporters,” said Devine.

Referring to voters, Devine said, “They may think you have so many votes because they see these polls and they believe these polls and they think the race is over before the people, all the people have voted.”

Beyond his attacks on the Arizona Republican, Obama’s speech included themes of uniting the country, similar to those themes he discussed in 2004.

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America,” Obama claimed four years ago.

Today he continued those themes. “Each of us has a role to play,” Obama said.

“Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to our fellow citizens.”

“That’s what’s been lost these last eight years,” he pointed out.

“Our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that’s what we need to restore right now.”

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By BRIAN ROSS and MOLLY DEAN

October 27, 2008—

His relationship with Sen. Barack Obama has become a major theme of the McCain campaign.

His background with a 1960′s domestic terror group, the Weather Underground, has been recounted in hundreds of news articles.

His words could add to the evidence that debunks the claims Obama was “palling around with terrorists.”

But Bill Ayers is staying mum, and working hard to duck reporters and the campaign spotlight in the final week before the election.

He told a journalism student attending a education justice symposium in New York Sunday he and other former radicals were being “demonized” by Fox News. “We’re nice guys, right?”

Asked by the student, if he repudiated the actions of the Weather Underground, which carried out a series of 1960′s robberies and bombings that killed at least six people, Ayers walked away without answering.

Ayers declined requests for an interview from ABC News, and after the appearance in New York, he used a garbage-littered freight elevator in an unsuccessful attempt to duck ABC News cameras waiting outside.

(Watch the video here!)

“I have nothing to say,” he told ABC News as he left the building, accompanied by several burly men in dark suits.

Asked about Sen. John McCain’s description of him as a “washed up terrorist,” Ayers said nothing as he raced to find a taxi.

Ayers appeared as an “artist” at a forum devoted to dealing with issues including educational injustice.

Organizers of the event attempted to stop media coverage by falsely claiming Ayers’ appearance had been canceled.

Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, made no mention of his radical past or Sen. Obama during an hour and a half presentation to a group of about 50 people attending the Harold Clurman Festival of the Arts.

Obama served on the board of an education reform group with Ayers in Chicago, where both men were prominent figures.

When Obama first ran for public office, in 1995, Ayers held a fundraiser for him at his house, according to a February 2008 article on Politico.com.

In an interview with ABC News, Obama told Charlie Gibson, “This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old.”

Obama said he had talked with Ayers about school reform issues, but said, “the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that I’ve palled around a terrorist, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”

Charges against Ayers were dropped in the 1970′s after revelations of illegal FBI wiretapping.

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By: Mike Allen

October 27, 2008 10:10 AM EST Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is returning to his promise of “a new politics” as he delivers what his campaign calls his “Closing Argument Speech On The Change We Need” in Canton, Ohio, at lunchtime on Monday.

‚ÄúIn one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope,” he says.

With a comfortable lead in state and national polls, Obama is kicking off the final full week of his grueling two-year campaign by shelving the slam and poke of the daily grind for a reminder of the reasons he initially captured the imagination of national Democrats as a promising young unknown.

“In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need,” he says in prepared remarks. “[A]s I’ve said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn’t just about new programs and policies. It’s about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.”

Obama says that part of the reason that “the economic crisis occurred is because we have been living through an era of profound irresponsibility.”

“[W]hat we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone,” he said “What has also been lost is the idea that in this American story, each of us has a role to play. Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to our fellow citizens. That’s what’s been lost these last eight years – our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that’s what we need to restore right now.”

Here are excerpts of the speech, released Monday morning by the campaign:

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street.

In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle-class, create new jobs, and grow this economy from the bottom-up so that everyone has a chance to succeed; from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor; from the factory owner to the men and women who work on its floor.

In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.

In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.

….

At a moment like this, the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven’t worked, and it’s time for change. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States.

Now, Senator McCain has served this country honorably. And he can point to a few moments over the past eight years where he has broken from George Bush – on torture, for example. He deserves credit for that. But when it comes to the economy – when it comes to the central issue of this election – the plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this President every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed. Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debt. Calling for less regulation twenty-one times just this year. Those are the facts.

And now, after twenty-one months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy. Senator McCain says that we can’t spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change, but you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is embracing the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.

It’s not change when John McCain wants to give a $700,000 tax cut to the average Fortune 500 CEO. It’s not change when he wants to give $200 billion to the biggest corporations or $4 billion to the oil companies or $300 billion to the same Wall Street banks that got us into this mess. It’s not change when he comes up with a tax plan that doesn’t give a penny of relief to more than 100 million middle-class Americans. That’s not change.

…

The question in this election is not “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” We know the answer to that. The real question is, “Will this country be better off four years from now?”

…

Understand, if we want get through this crisis, we need to get beyond the old ideological debates and divides between left and right. We don’t need bigger government or smaller government. We need a better government – a more competent government – a government that upholds the values we hold in common as Americans.

…

So the choice in this election isn’t between tax cuts and no tax cuts. It’s about whether you believe we should only reward wealth, or whether we should also reward the work and workers who create it. I will give a tax break to 95% of Americans who work every day and get taxes taken out of their paychecks every week. I’ll eliminate income taxes for seniors making under $50,000 and give homeowners and working parents more of a break. And I’ll help pay for this by asking the folks who are making more than $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rate they were paying in the 1990s. No matter what Senator McCain may claim, here are the facts – if you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime – not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing. Because the last thing we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle-class.

…

But as I’ve said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn’t just about new programs and policies. It’s about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.

Part of the reason this economic crisis occurred is because we have been living through an era of profound irresponsibility. On Wall Street, easy money and an ethic of “what’s good for me is good enough” blinded greedy executives to the danger in the decisions they were making. On Main Street, lenders tricked people into buying homes they couldn’t afford. Some folks knew they couldn’t afford those houses and bought them anyway. In Washington, politicians spent money they didn’t have and allowed lobbyists to set the agenda. They scored political points instead of solving our problems, and even after the greatest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, all we were asked to do by our President was to go out and shop.

That is why what we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone. What has also been lost is the idea that in this American story, each of us has a role to play. Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to our fellow citizens. That’s what’s been lost these last eight years – our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that’s what we need to restore right now.

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The Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund of Chicago funded numerous controversial groups while Barack Obama served on their boards between 1995 and 2002, an analysis of their tax returns shows.

In 2001, when Obama was a part-time director of The Woods Fund of Chicago, it gave $75,000 to ACORN, the voter registration group now under investigation for voter fraud in 12 states.

The Woods Fund also gave $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attended. The reason for the donation to the church is unclear — it is simply listed as “for special purposes” in the group’s IRS tax form.

It gave a further $60,000 to the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, which was founded and run by Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of domestic terrorist William Ayers and, with her husband, a former member of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground.

Other controversial donations that year included $50,000 to the Small Schools Network — which was founded by Ayers and run by Michael Klonsky, a friend of Ayers’ and the former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an offshoot of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society — and $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, which critics have accused of being anti-Semitic.

The Woods Fund did not respond to questions about the funding.

When Obama co-chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which calls itself “a public-private partnership improving education for 1.5 million urban and rural public school students,” it gave to some of the same groups — partnering with ACORN to manage funding for schools and giving over $1 million to the Small Schools Network.

It also gave nearly $1 million to a group called the South Shore African Village Collaborative, whose goals, according to Annenberg’s archived Web site, are “to develop more collegial relationships between teachers and principals. Professional development topics include school leadership, team building, parent and community involvement, developing thematic units, instructional strategies, strategic planning, and distance learning and teleconferencing.”

But the group mentions other goals in its grant application to the Annenberg Challenge:

“Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us,” one page of the application reads.

Click here to see the application.

Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, found the collaborative’s original application when going through Annenberg’s archives.

Asked to comment, Yvonne Williams-Kinnison, executive director of the collaborative’s parent group, the Coalition for Improved Education in South Shore said, “I don’t want to put more fuel on the fire. You can call us back after the election…. I don’t want to compromise the position.”

Late Afrocentrist scholars Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard were both invited to give SSAVC teachers a training session, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge noted in a report, adding that the “consciousness raising session … received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey session.”

But Carruthers has been a controversial figure because of inflammatory statements he made in writing.

“The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy,” Carruthers wrote in his 1999 book, “Intellectual Warfare.” “Some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.”

In the book, he compared the process of blacks assimilating into American culture with rape.

“We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist,” Carruthers said.

Hilliard has come under fire for advocating what many consider an extreme Afrocentric curriculum.

He selected the articles for the “African-American Baseline Essays” published in 1987 and first used in the Portland, Ore., school district. The essays have been criticized for claiming, among other things, that ancient Egyptians were the first to discover manned flight and the theory of evolution.

An Obama spokesman called investigation of these ties “pathetic.”

“This is another pathetic attempt by FOX News to distract voters from the economic challenges facing this nation by patching together tenuous links to smear Barack Obama,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

“The Annenberg Challenge was a bipartisan organization dedicated to improving the performance of students and teachers in Chicago Public Schools that was funded by a Republican philanthropist who was friends with President Reagan and launched by Republican Gov. Jim Edgar.”

But Kurtz says those founders of the Annenberg Challenge would not have known the details about to whom their Chicago office — one of 18 around the country — was giving money.

“If you read Ayers’ proposal to Annenberg, it doesn’t sound radical. But if you actually read Ayers’ education writings, they are very radical indeed,” Kurtz said. “Ayers, like so many other savvy professors, knows enough not to state his actual views frankly when applying for money. But you can find the truth in his writings.”

The controversial donations make up only a small portion of the overall amount doled out by the Annenberg and Woods funds. The Woods Fund gave over $3.5 million to 115 different groups in 2001, and the Annenberg Chellenge dispensed nearly $11 million to 63 groups at its height in 1999.

Most of the groups are mainstream and well respected, ranging from the Jazz Institute of Chicago to the Successful Schools Project.

But Kurtz says that this should not obscure what he describes as controversial donations.

“If John McCain had given to white supremacist groups and people said, ‘Hey, the majority of funding didn’t go to supremacist groups’ — that wouldn’t even cut the ice,” Kurtz said.

“I feel certain [Obama] knew about these radical groups,” Kurtz said. “We know that he read the applications because he made statements about the quality of proposals.”

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