Looking back on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge

The Annenberg Foundation funds one of the popular liberal Fact Checkers. But back in the mid-19 90s, it funded a huge program to improve the Chicago Public Schools. "The funding, which had also been provided to cities such as New York and San Francisco, was part of a large-scale local school reform philosophy that intended to improve student achievement and other social and psychological outcomes. In Chicago, the Annenberg Challenge reflected a democratic localism that placed great faith in the ability of local schools, in partnership with parents and their communities, to develop their own strategies to achieve professional development and instructional goals." I was a liberal in the 90s, and if I'd known about it then, I would have been supportive. . . especially the part about "local," and "partnerships."

It was an impressive amount with lofty goals for 200+ elementary schools (Annenberg gave half a billion to be matched by others to 3 city school systems). Barack Obama, a rising young, handsome star on the Chicago public scene, and Bill Ayers, the 1970s terrorist, and meddler in education through the University of Illinois, worked together in the Annenberg Challenge (Ayers wrote the original grant), as it was called. By 2001 a research arm of the University of Chicago did a thorough evaluation at all levels, and pretty much found no improvement in academic scores (compared to those schools which received no funding). It's the same discouraging results that came from Head Start after a 50 year evaluation.

So maybe Obama thought it wasn't enough money and went for higher stakes? And Bill Ayers hasn't changed much either.

https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/p62.pdf

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-run-foundation-gave-millions-liberal-groups-including-one-run-bill-ayers

From bomber to Professor at the University of Illinois

Bill Ayers got his start doing what yesterday's bomber did. And today, he's a retired faculty member of the University of Illinois, a good friend of our President who helped him get elected, and speaks at workshops for educators of your children. It's not surprising that the president has a problem with the T-word.  Ayers is also a  visiting scholar at Minnesota State University.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/21/bill-ayers-to-keynote-national-teacher-conference-in-february/

http://nation.foxnews.com/bill-ayers/2013/03/24/minnesota-university-selects-terrorist-bill-ayers-visiting-scholar

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/books/no-regrets-for-love-explosives-memoir-sorts-war-protester-talks-life-with.html?pagewanted=all 

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago.

I wonder what the parents of the 8 year old boy killed yesterday think of Ayers idea of social justice? Or Krystle Campbell’s parents?

“Hordon HEALTH lost a member of its extended family yesterday at the Boston Marathon. Her name was Krystle Campbell, and she died instantly yesterday at the bombings. Krystle could easily have been described as the salt of the earth, but her complexity demands more… “

Glenn Beck provides the genealogy of Days of Rage

If you don't subscribe to GBTV, you missed Glenn Beck's monologue on the Days of Rage this past week-end (it fizzled miserably), back, back way back to the Weather Underground of 1969. He updated us on Jeff Jones, Mark Rudd, Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson, and of course, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine, and what they're doing today. Noted that Tom Hayden is teaching at Occidental in California, where the Obama transcripts are being held hostage. Here's a web site that will do about the same--it's a good read.

Guest Post: Tracing the Origins of the Days of Rage Protest « RickMick

However, don't discount the Days of Rage--which ended up on the steps of the Smithsonian instead of Wall Street, I think he said. The Weathermen started small too, and four of them managed to bomb a building of the University of Wisconsin and kill and injure people. And have you ever read a more apologetic marker for violence? If I were the family of that dead grad student, Robert Fassnacht, I'd sue for such a limp, vacuous account of this tragedy.

This article updates what happened to the dead, injured, and perps.

Deconstructing Obama by Jack Cashill

I was in the public library the other day, which has a real struggle purchasing both politically conservative and Christian conservative titles, and was shocked to see Jack Cashill's book, "Deconstructing Obama." It was actually displayed, not just shelved with new books [I've since checked the catalog and it has one copy for 3 locations compared to about 15 of Woodward's Bush title when it was current]. I debated whether to check it out. I really didn't want to read a confirmation of why I don't like the man. I opened it, and found it extremely readable. Also, I'd just come from a lecture that "deconstructed" the history of women in art, so I thought, why not? Let's see if they can take it as well as dish it out.

Cashill's interview on C-SPAN, Feb. 17, 2011, in Kansas City.

"Jack Cashill questions whether President Obama wrote his memoir, Dreams from My Father. Mr. Cashill argues that Barack Obama was assisted in the writing of his 1995 memoir by Bill Ayers and contends that the president's life story is different than the one presented in his biography. Jack Cashill presented his argument at the Kansas City Public Library in Kansas City, Missouri."

If you don't have time for the book, here's the article.

Our most famous granny terrorist speaks again

Still spewing after all these years--Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayer's wife, the Obamas' Chicago neighbor and friend, unrepentent terrorist still thinks conservatives, and not her ilk, are the ones to fear.
See the video, feel the chill wind blowing.

Clinton blames peaceful protesters not his actions at Waco for Oklahoma City

It's the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings when Timothy McVeigh, a wacko enraged by the Waco incident two years before, decided to kill the way the government under Janet Reno had killed at Waco. Now Clinton chooses the anniversary of the Murrah Building bombing to absolve himself of any blame and to caution today's peaceful protestors. It's either convoluted thinking, or just thinking like a Democrat.

With the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaching, former President Bill Clinton on Thursday drew parallels between the antigovernment tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today, saying government critics must be mindful that angry words can stir violent actions.

Recalling ’95 Bombing, Clinton Sees Parallels - NYTimes.com

The Clintons and our current President all participated in not-so-peaceful protests; in fact, Obama's friend Bill Ayers who helped launch his career in Chicago is a domestic terrorist who bombed buildings in the 60s, and his UCC Chicago pastor preached inflamatory, racist, and anti-semitic sermons, but he stayed in the church year after year. So why can one group listen to all this anti-government language, but others can not? What are they afraid of? That it might work? A conservative takeover? Why wasn't Clinton chastising the SEIU protestors who actually got arrested in their protests on Tax Day?

Business Reply University of Illinois Foundation

Faculty Profile

A Bill Ayers theory

Ann Althouse has a plausible theory on why Bill Ayers would admit to authoring Obama's book, Dreams from my father. Wanting to get back in the news would get my vote. Getting back at Obama who has been a big disappointment to the far left would come in second. But Marxists lie, so who would believe him? I'll let this one pass.

More on philanthropy

Not on my watch!

Connecting the dots, Ayers and Duncan

American Princess does research like the rest of us, she Googles it. And it's just not that hard to find out who will really be running education from Washington.

My favorite subject in all of this Chicago mess is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the project on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together. I love this project because right up the street from me, I have an Annenberg Challenge school, which I think is known in the community as the “Peace School,” and is very interactive with residents of my little neighborhood. They hold peace studies rallies, drum circles, indoctrinate children in what appear to be Marxist values and hold the weekly farmers market (who said communism couldn’t taste fresh?). . . Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools.

I mean, we're really not that surprised, are we? We knew Bill Ayers wasn't going away. Blagojevich is just a smoke screen for all the other gunk in the engine of the new administration.

Dear University of Illinois Alumni Association

Sara Greenstein
Vice President and Associate Chancellor, Alumni Relations
sarag@illinois.edu

Joseph Rank
Vice President, Membership
j-rank@uillinois.edu

Dear University of Illinois Alumni Association:

Until Bill Ayers is removed from the faculty of the University of Illinois, please remove me from your alumni mailing list. He is a disgrace and embarrassment, a threat to our legacy, and the personification of the depths to which the university has fallen.

Norma Bruce
'61, '66

America's favorite Terrorist has new book

Bill Ayers, Barack's mentor and Chicago backer has a new book. I'm sure I'll have no problem finding it--given its track record my public library will flood the shelves with copies. Here's what Charming Billy bakes in his pie laced with hate for our culture and government (i.e. white Americans--a group of which he is a member, a descendant of generations of the oppressor class).

"Bill Ayers 'gets it.'* Here's what he understands: One strategy to undermine culture is to discredit its values and history. Of course, reducing American history to a simplistic notion of 'white supremacy' is absurd, but that’s the point. The point is to slowly undermine the confidence of people about the values and history of their own culture so they'll be less willing to defend and protect it. Along the way, you've also created a structure of 'them' (so-called 'white' people, meaning, in this context, people from western and northern Europe) and 'us' (everyone else). This creates internal conflict based on simple, easy to understand qualities like skin color.

"Eventually, the culture becomes so disillusioned and split apart that an organized cadre of leaders can take control and establish a new kind of society – like the Bolsheviks did in 1917, or the National Socialists in 1933, or the followers of Mao in 1949," the forum participant wrote.

More on the book at "Ayers, Dohrn: 'White supremacy' responsible for America's troubles"

*I wonder if this is what Michelle Obama meant in Bexley last week when she said, "Barack gets it." The crowd whooped and cheered.

You've read or seen "I am Joe"

Don't miss "I am Bill" for equal time, to be fair to the other side, to spread the wealth and fun around.

In his 2001 screed, Fugitive Days, Ayers recounts his life as a Sixties radical, his tenure as a Weatherman lieutenant, his terrorist campaign across America, and his enduring hatred for the United States. "What a country," Ayers said in 2001. "It makes me want to puke." Discover the networks

Sexy Criminals

I didn't remember what Bernadine Dohrn looked like, but one of my coffee shop friends who eats a cinnamon roll every day and is a decade younger than me told me she was "hot," 'cause he remembered. He grew up in working class Philly and says that in the 60s when he was in a rock band and would pick a girl up for a date, she would either start taking her clothes off in the car, or start rolling a joint. So I guess he had an eye for "hot." Today she's just another old lady with a past, but does look good in the preview below. Here's a review of The Weather Underground, and I suppose you can get it at your public library, since they really go for that sort of thing. Barack, btw, wasn't 8 years old in 1995 when he sought out Ayers as a mentor for his career in Chicago politics. This review is from NYT which really digs the fun stuff of terrorism and calls it smart and solid, now that 9/11 has faded a bit from memory.

''THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND,'' directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel (unrated, 92 minutes). This documentary tells the story of the Weathermen, a splinter group from Students for a Democratic Society. This terrifically smart and solid piece of filmmaking lets the former members of the Weathermen, now on the downside of their 50's, speak into the camera and reveal a bit of their personal histories as well as what the peace movement meant to them. The documentary is also packed with some of the most powerful images of violence of the period, like a bound Vietnamese being shot in the head at point-blank range and the bloody bed of the Black Panther Fred Hampton after he was killed. Voluble and charismatic, the film's stars -- the members of the group determined to overthrow what they considered to be a criminal United States government that waged the Vietnam War and targeted groups like the Black Panthers -- spent a lot of time in the media spotlight. Young, white and articulate, figures like Bernadette Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Brian Flanagan and Naomi Jaffe were clearly very sexy criminals. That exuberance and incentive has been captured by the directors. Mr. Green and Mr. Siegel have made a film of passions, and they establish a context that shows what a turbulent period the late 1960's were, slyly contrasting the peace-and-love vibe with events of the time. The film doesn't let its subjects off the hook, despite apparent sympathies toward their politics (Mitchell). The preview.

The ad that makes Ohio's Governor swear in public

But it's all true. It's not even a smear. All of it's out there in Ayers book, in books about the "revolution," in the archives of the Annenberg Collection and in newspapers. This ad hardly uses any adjectives or adverbs, it is so low-key. If you were living back then, it was indeed a "reign of terror." Ayers and his wife were on the Most Wanted List. The reason they aren't serving time is the government used some shady tactics, but they weren't any less guilty--they've even admitted it. It's a badge of pride. So why is our Governor losing his temper in public about robocalls? Obama couldn't be where he is today without some pretty shady, rich white guys helping him, and the money continues to pour in and the origins will never be investigated by a Democratic Congress. Ayers isn't just another aging bald white man in a Cuba shirt, he's an unrepentant, hate-America terrorist.

I don't give a damn

said Governor Strickland, our former Methodist pastor governor elected to clean up after Governor Taft's riotous golf game misbehavior. Put your hands over the kids' ears.

“I don’t give a damn about Bill Ayers but I do care about the people of Ohio and the people who need leadership that will be concerned about them and their problems,” Strickland said. Politickeroh.com

He's upset about robocalls, but not Obama's friendship with his mentor Bill Ayers. Doesn't this seem a bit skewed? Has anyone ever been killed with a robocall, or building blown up? The unrepentant, domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, who hired Obama to help radicalize Chicago school children with bundles of money from the Annenberg Challenge, and then helped him launch his political campaign when Chicago schools remained mired in the muck. He, the terrorist, is no threat to the people of Ohio, but robocalls are?

Potty mouth.

What happened to the $160 million Annenberg challenge?

Through Bill Ayers, Obama got a piece and had the opportunity to “spread the good(s)” in the 90s and launch his career in politics. Peggy Noonan doesn't get it. Do You? Do you really want Democrats controlling all three branches of the government with their Just-Us radical, anti-American social plans?

“[Bill Ayers‘] hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn't going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools.”

Ayers is no education reformer

Reduced to holding pancake breakfasts?

I checked the website of the Prairie Fire Collective, the Weatherman group created in the late 1970s by Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. There was an ad on the page for a pancake breakfast fund raiser, although it was for December 2006. You really don't know whether to laugh or cry.

The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding, with members facing the criminal charges against them, while the May 19 Coalition continued in hiding. A decisive factor in Dohrn's coming out of hiding were her concerns about her children according to Wikipedia. The Prairie Fire Collective started to surrender to the authorities from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The remaining Weatherman Underground members continued to violently attack US institutions. East coast members favored a commitment to violence and challenged commitments of old leaders, Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones.

Here's their statement of purpose. It has Bill and Bernadine written all over it.

We oppose oppression in all its forms including racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and imperialism. We demand liberation and justice for all peoples. We recognize that we live in a capitalist system that favors a select few and oppresses the majority. This system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice.

Prairie Fire Organizing Committee.

The unrepentent Bill and Bernadine Ayers

Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers turned themselves in on December 3, 1980, in New York. Charges were dropped for Ayers. Dohrn received three years probation and a $15,000 fine. These criminals and others of the anti-war protest groups who tried to destroy the USA in the 1960s and 1970s went scot free and government officials who had violated privacy laws during their investigation were tried during the Carter Administration, receiving stiff fines, prison terms and ruined careers. They were later pardoned by Reagan. [See Wikipedia article which contains citations]

Here's what Bill Ayers, who provided the spring board for Barack Obama's career in leftist politics by including him in the Annenberg Project to radicalize Chicago school children, said in 1970. To my knowledge, he hasn't recanted, but Palin is roundly criticized by the MSM and Obama campaign as "racist" for bringing up his friendship with Obama.

"We were talking the other night and we realized that all our heroes are dead. Wow, what a trip! Ché, Nguyen Van Troi, the Vietnamese who tried to get McNamara. We're running their pictures in our paper with the line 'Live Like Him!' and they've all been killed. Outtasight, man. We've got a new slogan for the people that are going down to help with the sugar harvest: 'Cuba is for the Living!' "

Ayers' remarks typify Weatherman's tendency to define its situation in terms of extremes. Building socialism in Cuba is for the living; overthrowing American imperialism is a death trip. Weatherman, as early as the action in the streets of Chicago, already had begun to live in the shadow of death. Not long after the "Days of Rage," Weatherman would compensate for its death trip mentality with hedonistic orgies. Like a pendulum, moving from one extreme to the other, Weatherman swung from death trips to life trips to death trips … . Bill Ayers is quoted in an article by John Kifner, "Vandals in the Mother Country," New York Times Magazine, January 4, 1970. This quote appears in the publication, Weatherman, by Harold Jacobs, Ramparts Press, 1970. p. 86

Who is more dangerous?

Over at Democratic Underground dotcom which seems to be a discussion board (I haven't found actual articles) there are 30,200 posts about Sarah Palin and 5,270 about Bill Ayers and his relationship to Obama. Most of those Ayers posts are how to refute, stomp on, deny and disclaim that he has any link to Obama other than just a harmless fuzz ball from the neighborhood. I didn't even bother to check on what they're saying about Sarah, but obviously as a woman not defined by leftist feminism, she's a terrible threat to the Democratic Underground.