Ayers Confirms Holding Fundraiser For Obama
Former Weatherman domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is now confirming what the White House has previously denied – that he held a fundraiser in his living room for Barack Obama. That 1995 meeting was said to have launched Obama’s political career.
In an October 2008 interview on MSNBC host Chris Matthews’s show, Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, categorically denied the fundraiser was ever held. Matthews asked Gibbs: “Did [Ayers] have a fundraiser for [Obama], or not? Gibbs, who would become the White House spokesman, replied: “No, he did not have a fundraiser for our candidate as he said ten seconds ago.”
However, in an interview last week with the Daily Beast, Ayers recalled that fundraiser. Stated Ayers of his relationship with Obama: “We were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was ‘a guy around the neighborhood,’ that was true.”
Now this column has found information that indicates the socialist-oriented New Party is the missing link at the center of that 1995 Obama fundraiser in Ayers living room in Chicago. It was at that meeting that New Party member Alice Palmer announced she wanted Obama as her successor as state senator since she was stepping down to run for Congress.
This column has found that in the July 1996 edition of the New Party’s newsletter, the controversial party announced that “the Illinois New Party capped off a month-long house party drive in Chicago.”
Further review of New Party literature from 1995 and 1996 finds that so-called house parties were regularly utilized by the New Party to introduce candidates to leading party activists as well as to raise money and recruit new members.
It is known that single-payer activist Quentin Young, who advised Obama on healthcare when the politician was a state senator, was present at the parlor meeting at the Ayers’ residence. WorldNetDaily reported that Young was listed by the New Party as an early party founder and builder.
“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” Young was quoted as saying. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”
Chicago-based blogger Maria Warren was also present. She wrote that she remembered watching Obama give a “standard, innocuous little talk” in the Ayers’ home. “They were launching him,” Warren wrote, “introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”
It would make sense that the New Party sponsored the get-together in Ayers’ living room for Palmer’s announcement. Palmer was the New Party’s signed candidate for office. The New Party, which had partnered closely with ACORN, was mobilizing support for Palmer among its constituents and the larger Chicago progressive community.
Why The Sudden Hawkishness Toward North Korea?
Is the Obama administration’s military buildup in the Pacific part of the president’s so-called pivot-toward-Asia strategy, a move that could demonstrate the biggest shift in world power since World War II?
Specifically, is Washington using the North Korean nuclear standoff as an excuse to shift massive military might to Asia just as China and other powers seek to create a new economic order that would rival the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund?
It is difficult for most seasoned observers to explain why Obama is suddenly responding to North Korean aggression when the White House did little in 2008 when North Korea refused to allow United Nations inspectors into its nuclear plants. The Obama administration also took little action when North Korea in 2009 carried out at least two nuclear tests, one of which is believed to have been the cause of a magnitude 4.7 seismic event.
Furthermore, the White House did not allow the U.S. military to respond significantly when North Korea torpedoed a South Korean navy ship in 2010, killing 46 sailors. North Korea then shelled a South Korean island with little U.S. reaction.