Saturday, March 1, 2008

Help Me I'm Dead And I Can't Get Up

Government records incorrectly kill off thousands, and there’s no easy fix
By Alex Johnson and Nancy Amons Reporters MSNBC and NBC News updated 5:21 p.m. CT, Fri., Feb. 29, 2008

For a dead woman, Laura Todd is awfully articulate.

“I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to be dead when you’re not,” said Todd, who is very much alive and kicking in Nashville, Tenn., even though the federal government has said otherwise for many years.

Todd’s struggle started eight years ago with a typo in government records. The government has reassured her numerous times that it has cleared up the confusion, but the problems keep coming.

Most recently, the IRS — again — rejected her electronic tax return.

“I will not be eligible for my refund. I’m not eligible for my rebate,” she said. “I mean, I can’t do anything with it.”

Laura Todd is not alone. She is one of tens of thousands of living, breathing Americans whom the federal government has wrongly declared dead — by one measure, more than 35 a day.

Garbage in, garbage out
The problem begins at the Social Security Administration, keeper of most of the records tabulating deaths in the United States. Like other government agencies, the IRS, with whom Todd has most recently tangled, relies upon Social Security’s database, said Dan Boone, a spokesman for the IRS.

When Social Security determines that an eligible current or future beneficiary has died, it closes the person’s entry in its Case Processing and Management System, or CPMS.

The system is only as good as the data it receives. Sometimes, that isn’t very good.

Todd, for example, was killed when someone in Florida died and her Social Security number was accidentally typed in. Since then, her tax returns have repeatedly been rejected, and her bank closed her credit card account.

“One time when I [was] ruled dead, they canceled my health insurance because it got that far,” she said.

Toni Anderson of Muncie, Ind., expired when someone in the government pushed the wrong button, making the records declare that it was she, not her husband, John, who died Nov. 8.

Social Security even sent this letter: “Dear Mr. Anderson, our condolences on the loss of Mrs. Anderson.”

A hard problem to fix
Social Security concedes there’s a problem.

“The accuracy of death information is critical to SSA and its beneficiaries, as well as other federal, state and local government agencies,” it said in a 2006 report. “Input of an erroneous death entry can lead to benefit termination and result in financial hardship for a beneficiary.”

Anderson, 64, lost her monthly Social Security disability check. She hasn’t been able to make house payments and faces foreclosure. Her Medicaid benefits were also suspended, creating a crushing burden as she battles breast and possibly bone cancer.

“They’ve seen me four times, so they know that I’m alive,” Anderson said. “It’s just a matter of being able to get me alive in the system.”

That isn’t as easy as showing up at the Social Security office and saying, “Hi.”

Social Security says an erroneous death record can be removed only when it is presented with proof that the original record was entered in error. The original error must be documented, and the deletion must be approved by a supervisor after “pertinent facts supporting reinstatement” are available in the system.

In several audits, Social Security’s inspector general found that while documentation was required to delete a death record — “resurrecting” it, in Social Security’s language — people could be recorded as dead with much less paperwork.

For one thing, the agency said it “found that deaths were not always verified before SSI payments were stopped.”

For another, “we found it was not necessary to enter a date of death in CPMS to close a case based on death,” it said. “This created the potential for open cases to be improperly classified as processed due to death in CPMS.”

Moreover, until recently, too many people had open access to death records, which are supposed to be protected by “top secret” restrictions.

That door has since been closed, but the inspector general said the government can’t ensure the accuracy of records before mid-2006.

Your government: a serial killer?
In September 2006, the inspector general’s office tried to get a fix on how many people Social Security was improperly killing off by reviewing updates to the agency’s Death Master File.

In all, Social Security officials had to “resurrect” 23,366 people from January 2004 to September 2005. In other words, over a period of 21 months, Social Security was presented with irrefutable evidence that it had been “killing” more than 1,100 people a month, or more than 35 a day.

Two months later, in November 2006, the inspector general looked specifically at 251 cases of people to whom the agency continued to issue checks even though Medicare records said they were dead.

“Of the 251 individuals in our population, 86 are deceased and their SSI payments should be terminated,” the audit said. “The remaining 165 beneficiaries were actually alive and their Medicare benefits—and, in some cases, their SSI payments—were incorrectly terminated.”

That’s 65 percent, which the audit said “can cause undue hardship for the individual[s] and create public relations problems.” Furthermore, it said, erroneous death terminations “also create additional workloads for Agency staff, who must take action to correct the benefit records and resume payments. According to SSA, these cases are ‘... very time sensitive and require immediate action.’”

But one thing Social Security doesn’t do well is immediacy.

The agency processed more than a half-million requests for hearings in fiscal year 2006— of all types, not just those involving wrongful death terminations — the inspector general reported in yet another audit last May. The average processing time for a Social Security hearing in general: 483 days. If a ruling goes to an appeal, tack on another 203 days.

Apart from the horror stories that sometimes pop up in the media, the inspector general’s office offered some of its own. It said, for example, that in November 2005, an 81-year old woman contacted Social Security to report that her Medicare claims were being denied. After the woman made several more attempts to prove she was alive, the agency finally reinstated her benefits in July 2006, eight months after the error was discovered.

A genie that won’t go back in the bottle
Even if you do finally convince the government that you are not dead, your problems aren’t over.

Social Security, it turns out, publishes its death records. The Social Security Death Index is constantly updated and is available to anyone willing to pay for it. Its records show up in any number of places, from public document collections to Web sites for genealogy enthusiasts.

“I thought: ‘That’s just horrible. It’s never going to be over for me,’” said Todd, details of whose “death” can be found on numerous Web sites devoted to genealogy and public records.

Early on, Todd said, she tried to laugh off the mix-up. But not any longer.

“I’m tired. I’ve been fighting this for [many] years, and it never ends,” she said. “I’m very much alive and would like to live out my life in peace without having this problem.”


URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23378093/

Gore vs Gore - Warm vs Cool Which is it Al?

Norman E. Hooben - 1 March 2008
This is not exactly a repeat of my story Global Warming…Bah humbug which was originally posted during the Christmas season after the story with the same name, but you may want to repeat what Marley’s partner, Mr. Scrooge, said to his nephew, “Bah” followed by the word, “Humbug”. “Bah” to Mr. Al Gore and “Humbug!” to all his theories concerning global warming. Let’s back track just a little to see exactly what I stated previously.
Global Warming...Bah humbug!
This global warming thing is getting old and me with it. Sometime ago, maybe I should say, a long time ago, when I was yet a child somewhere between the age of eight and ten, I first learned of this potential threat. The reason I put the spread on my age was the fact that it was during the time President Harry Truman was in the White House. Yes, we had alarmist back then, but they did not play politics with Mother Nature and carbon footprints were never mentioned.Although I cannot remember the precise date nor the exact source I can boil it down to either the Fall River Herald News or some popular magazine of the era; Time, Look, Life, etc. My friend Frankie also read the piece as we talked about it afterwards.The article proclaimed that the sun was going to explode and during the years leading up to such a catastrophe the earth would experience higher temperatures. Based on the scientific calculations at the time, this event was to take place several million years in the future. With that said, I clearly remember Frankie stating, "Well if President Truman is not worried about it why should we."So there you have it. The global warming buck did not stop at Harry Truman's desk!Al Gore, "Get over it!"

Now I was around nine or ten years of age when I figured out this global warming issue and that over time it became obvious that the issue was no issue at all; just a political bump in the road put out there by people who had no idea what they were doing. Today the issue is global warming. Why? Because I said so! And my name is Al Gore! And because my name is Al Gore, you must believe me! After all, I have the backing of the most corrupt organization in the world…the United Nations! If the corrupt people of the world honor me with the Nobel Peace Prize, everything I say must be taken as fact! And don’t you forget it!
So there you have it. (Here we go again.) Now we have Al Gore confessing he was wrong about global warming. What he meant to say was, “global cooling”. Or at least that’s what we’re hearing from people in the know; that can be found here:
Gore Renounces Global Warming. (partial quote:Two cheers for Al Gore on his about-face on man-made Global Warming, says SOLO Principal, Lindsay Perigo.) (Does this all sound familiar? I voted for it before I voted against it.)
Then we have another headline from someone obviously not a politician that may have been more ‘noble’ in his research than Al Gore was with his ‘prize’.


Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling



World Temperatures according to the
Hadley Center for Climate Prediction.
Note the steep drop over the last year.


Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warmingOver the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
A compiled list of all the sources can be seen
here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a
past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news. Update 2/27: The graph for HadCRUT (above), as well as the linked graphs for RSS and UAH are generated month-to-month; the temperature declines span a full 12 months of data. The linked GISS graph was graphed for the months of January only, due to a limitation in the plotting program. Anthony Watts, who kindly provided the graphics, otherwise has no connection with the column. The views and comments are those of the author only.

As mentioned earlier, this thing is getting old and me with it. I just had my 17th birthday (times 4…it’s leap year in case you’ve forgotten) and I say we remove all these bumps in the road and let’s get some new pavement in the halls of congress! And that removal includes the other know- nothings like Hillary and Obama…the biggest road bumps in history. Only they will be Socialists road bumps and we’ll each have a share.

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Don't forget to check here: Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age

Friday, February 29, 2008

More SPP/NAU...Texas now! Who's next?

WAKE UP AMERICA...This is another wake-up call! The trans-Texas corridor was not voted upon by the people, is not wanted by the people, but will be paid for by the people...and this means you! This so-called corridor is specifically designed as an integral part of the North American Union. Politicians will deny it. Politicians will make excuses for it. Politicians will tell you its for something it's not. And that's what politicians do! It's time for YOU to act! N.E.Hooben
Trans-Texas corridor stirs controversy
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 2/26/2008 4:00:00 AM

TexasThe debate in Texas over a proposed 4,000-mile network of toll roads that will parallel the state's existing highway system is heating up

More than 10,000 people have attended public hearings across Texas to discuss the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, which has also been dubbed the "NAFTA superhighway." It is a project that is expected to cost an estimated $183 billion over 50 years. (hear audio report)

Terry Hall with the group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom warns the project will create widespread eminent domain abuse and involve foreign control of public infrastructure. "They're taking huge swaths of land, up to a million acres of private Texas farm and ranch land," warns Hall. "Some of it is prime agriculture land ... and they're going to take that land and hand it over to private entities for commercial gain."

Hall accuses Congress of pulling a "bait and switch" when they promised Texas taxpayers a free interstate. "They designated this corridor route an international trade corridor back in 1995," argues Hall. "So for Governor Perry, or any of those folks who are trying to push toll roads here in Texas, to try and say that this road stops at the Texas border ... that it's not a NAFTA superhighway ... it is an international corridor and it has been designated as such."
Hall alleges that Governor Perry is "representing the interest of private industry over the public good," noting he has accepted more than $1 million worth of campaign contributions from road contractors and the "road lobby."

But the Republican governor is dismissing the concerns of some state residents who are upset the proposed 4,000-mile Trans-Texas Corridor running from Laredo to Canada will turn operation of the public highway system over to private, if not foreign companies. (hear part two of audio report)

Critics of the proposed highway project claim it was never approved by voters, and Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), CNN's Lou Dobbs, and others call the project a "NAFTA superhighway" and warn it will be part of a "North American Union" between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Governor Perry calls critics of the Trans-Texas Corridor "unenlightened." "Here's what's more important rather than all of the black helicopter ... conspiracy theories," argues Perry. "We have many, many multi-national groups that run various things ... in the United States as we do in other countries, and nobody is going to roll up our highways and carry them back to Spain."

According to Perry, there is a reason CEO Magazine selected Texas as the number-one state to do business. "... [U]nderstand you have to have a transportation infrastructure system in place so that people can get from point A to point B, and they don't spend all their time in gridlock instead of being with their kids at soccer practice or back home with their families," Perry explains.

Governor Perry maintains the controversial transportation network is necessary to "move [the state's] people and product around" and reduce road congestion.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Islamofascism...Risky Business

The Risky Business Of Islamic Finance

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Islamofascism: Shariah banking has come into vogue in the West, as even cash-strapped U.S. banks try to attract free-flowing Arab petrodollars. But it poses major risks. Wall Street beware.

With oil prices hovering around $100 a barrel, more than $1 trillion in petrodollars are now available annually for global investment. And major U.S. financial institutions, hit hard by the credit crunch, are hungrily eyeing them.

Citibank and Goldman Sachs, for example, are creating investment vehicles that cater to Muslim investors in order to grab some of the billions in management fees in the offing. These products include Shariah-compliant bonds, mutual funds, mortgages, insurance, hedge funds and soon REITs.

Dow Jones Corp. has even created its own index for Islamic-correct investments: the Dow Jones Islamic Index.

While the $800 billion global Shariah market is relatively small, it's growing at a 15% clip, thanks to the oil boom and a resurgence in Islamic fundamentalism, according to the Center for Security Policy. And it's expected to more than double over the next 10 years.

What's the fuss? Money is money, right? Not in this case.

Shariah-compliant finance involves investments and other transactions that have been structured to conform with the orthodox teachings of Islamic law.

That means they can't charge or earn interest — the cornerstone of our credit-driven economy. Nor can they take any stake in haram, or forbidden, industries, including meat and beverage producers (if they process any pork or alcohol); entertainment; gaming; and interest-based financing.

Wall Street is jumping into this hot new market oblivious to the risks not just to the bottom line, but to national security. It knows little about Shariah law and is turning to consultants to create "ethical" products to sell.

Lost in the hype over these Muslim-friendly funds is that they must "purify" their returns by transferring at least 3% into Islamic charities, many of which funnel funds to terrorists. So the Street may unwittingly be helping the evildoers launder blood money.

Shariah law obligates that a sizable portion of zakat, or giving — one of the pillars of Islam — go to support jihad. So many of the purification donations generated from Shariah finance could wind up in the hands of our enemy.

Wall Street also knows little about who's advising these funds. Each has to hire Muslim scholars to bless the investments.

One such scholar is Yusuf Qaradawi, a member of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which works for the establishment of a global caliphate, and an open supporter of suicide bombings. Another is Muhammad Usmani, a radical Pakistani cleric who ran a madrassa that trained thousands of Taliban, according to the Washington-based Center for Security Policy.

Usmani sits on the Shariah supervisory board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund, which is run by the North American Islamic Trust — a Saudi-tied alleged front for the Muslim Brotherhood that holds title to some of the most radical mosques in America. The Justice Department last year named the Islamic Trust an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror-financing case.

It is this radical group, which may be using investment proceeds to finance new mosques in America, to which Dow Jones has lent its name — something the company, under the new management of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, may want to revisit.

These funds offer little transparency. They fail to disclose either the radical ties of the scholars who are advising and running them or the tenets that dictate the structuring of the investments. The prospectuses explain simply that the investments are "ethical" or "socially acceptable," when in fact they're grounded in a religious doctrine that threatens America and the West.

The main purpose of Shariah law is to promote Islam as the only legitimate governing system and to help establish its rule worldwide. Shariah-compliant finance is a means to that end.

Ignoring in a time of war the moral hazards associated with such financial products, and treating them as if they were as benign and secular as any other, may be the height of corporate recklessness.

______________

Meanwhile back at the home front we have an imbecile running for Commander-In-Chief which can be viewed below...

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Does the 'D' in Dingell stand for Dictator? Or is it the 'D' preceding 'MICH': Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich

Bloodsuckers Vs. Lifesavers

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, February 26, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Enterprise: When a great American company offers a medicine that lengthens the lives of hundreds of millions of people, you might think politicians would say thank you. Instead they say: How dare you advertise it.

Pfizer has just been pressured by Congress into dropping its main ad campaign for the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, arguably the most popular medicine in the world and with very good reason.

Lipitor can lower the deadly artery-clogging substance by as much as 60% and, when combined with regular exercise and a low-fat diet, prevents heart attacks and sudden deaths.

Companies who do so much for so many deserve plaudits. But liberal politicians never rest in their search for corporate villains, and so they have demonized the pharmaceutical industry, just as they have an oil and gas industry that spends billions developing new technologies to reach crude and natural gas deposits that were inaccessible only a few years ago.

Just as Congress' big shots have no appreciation for how "Big Oil" can cut our dependence on oil-rich enemy countries, they're equally ungrateful for how "Big Pharma" cures and manages disease.

In his research on productivity and health care for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Columbia business professor Frank R. Lichtenberg found a direct connection between new drug approvals and rapidly increased longevity.

Lichtenberg reckons the average new drug approval adds a total of 1.2 million years to the lives of current and future generations. With it costing the pharmaceutical industry about $500 million to bring a new drug to market, Lichtenberg extrapolated that the "cost per life-year gained is $424" — just a fraction of the economic value of a single year of a person's life of $150,000, cited by Lichtenberg based on calculations by University of Chicago economics professors Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel.

Drug manufacturers such as Pfizer have been performing such incalculably valuable services to Americans and the rest of the world for generations.

It may have been the disorganized Alexander Fleming who won the Nobel Prize for accidentally discovering penicillin in 1928. But he actually failed to recognize its importance and abandoned his discovery. Pfizer, with its expertise in fermentation, mass produced the new wonder drug in response to an appeal from the U.S. government, saving multitudes of Allied forces in World War II.

This is of little interest, however, to Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and an octogenarian who has held his House seat since 1955.

Also known as "The Truck" — as in stay out of his way if you don't want to be run over — Dingell was complaining that Pfizer was using Dr. Robert Jarvik, the physician who helped develop the artificial heart, as its spokesman for Lipitor — and paying Jarvik quite well for his services.

Pfizer on Monday chose to pull its Jarvik ads in the face of Dingell's pressure, and in typical fashion Dingell issued a response that did little to disguise his gloating: "We trust that Pfizer is sincere in its commitment to 'greater clarity' in its advertising. My colleagues and I look forward to meeting with Pfizer's management team to discuss their plans related to direct-to-consumer advertising."

In other words, see you when you and your fellow corporate vassals come by Capitol Hill to deliver your oaths of fealty to your congressional masters.

A company that has saved and extended so many lives — including those of Congress members and their loved ones — are not allowed to sell their own valuable wares without politicians sticking their noses into it. They're not allowed to educate the public in the most effective way about their medicines.

Such arrogant intrusion by politicians in search of corporate bogeymen isn't just political grandstanding; it actually costs lives.

Monday, February 25, 2008

OBAMA WORKED WITH TERRORIST

For more on Obama go here: Obama's women reveal his secret:
http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html

____
Senator helped fund organization that
rejects 'racist' Israel's existence
Posted: February 24, 20085:44 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein© 2008 WorldNetDaily


Sen. Barack Obama
JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen.
Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002. Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website.
According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000. Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.
Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The $40,000 grant from Obama's Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a fifth of the Arab group's reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WND. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN's reported grants for that year.
The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago's Palestinian immigrant community, describes itself as working to "empower Chicago-area Arab immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of community organizing, advocacy, education and social services, leadership development, and forging productive relationships with other communities." It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which supports open boarders and education for illegal aliens.
The AAAN in 2005 sent a letter to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in which it called a billboard opposing a North Carolina-New Mexico joint initiative to deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens a "bigoted attack on Arabs and Muslims." Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line. The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.According to the widely discredited Nakba narrative, Jews in 1948 forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands - some Palestinians claim over one million - Arabs from their homes and then took over the territory.
Historically, about 600,000 Arabs fled Israel after surrounding Arab countries warned they would destroy the Jewish state in 1948. Some Arabs also were driven out by Jewish forces while they were trying to push back invading Arab armies. At the same time, over 800,000 Jews were expelled or left Arab countries under threat after Israel was founded.

The theme of AAAN's Nakba art exhibit, held at DePaul University in 2005, was "the compelling and continuing tragedy of Palestinian life ... under [Israeli] occupation ... home demolition ... statelessness ... bereavement ... martyrdom, and ... the heroic struggle for life, for safety, and for freedom."
Another AAAN initiative, titled, "Al Nakba 1948 as experienced by Chicago Palestinians," seeks documents related to the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding. A post on the AAAN site asked users: "Do you have photos, letters or other memories you could share about Al-Nakba-1948?" That posting was recently removed. The AAAN website currently states the entire site is under construction.
Pro-PLO advocate held Obama fundraiser, describes Obama as 'sympathetic' AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi was reportedly a director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group.
Khalidi's wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA's English translator during that period. Rashid Khalidi at times has denied working directly for the PLO but Palestinian diplomatic sources in Ramallah told WND he indeed directed WAFA.
Khalidi also advised the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference in 1991. During documented speeches and public events, Khalidi has called Israel an "apartheid system in creation" and a destructive "racist" state. He has multiple times expressed support for Palestinian terror, calling suicide bombings response to "Israeli aggression." He dedicated his 1986 book, "Under Siege," to "those who gave their lives ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon."
Critics assailed the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism. While the Woods Fund's contribution to Khalidi's AAAN might be perceived as a one-time run in with Obama, the presidential hopeful and Khalidi evidence a deeper relationship. According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, the Democratic presidential hopeful first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. The professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of Chicago until 2003 while Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the Senate in 2004.
Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a fact not denied by Khalidi. Speaking in a joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor Show of New York's WABC Radio and Los Angeles' KFI Radio, Khalidi was asked about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama. "I was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local politician," Khalidi stated. Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause." Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran.
If the U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is no reason it can't talk with the Iranians." Asked about Obama's role funding the AAAN, Khalidi claimed he had "never heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few months ago."
He terminated the call when petitioned further about his links with Obama. Contacted by phone, Mona Khalidi refused to answer WND's questions about the AAAN's involvement with Obama. Obama's campaign headquarters did not reply to a list of WND questions sent by e-mail to the senator's press office. Obama, American terrorist in same circles Obama served on the board with Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and has written about his involvement with the group's bombings of the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers told the New York Times in an interview released on Sept. 11, 2001 "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," Ayers wrote in his memoirs, titled "Fugitive Days." He continued with a disclaimer that he didn't personally set the bombs, but his group set the explosives and planned the attack.
A $200 campaign contribution is listed on April 2, 2001 by the "Friends of Barack Obama" campaign fund. The two caught appeared speaking together at several public events, including a 1997 University of Chicago panel entitled, "Should a child ever be called a 'super predator?'" and another panel for the University of Illinois in April 2002, entitled, "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?" The charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.
Ayers is married to another notorious Weathermen terrorist, Bernadine Dohrn, who has also served on panels with Obama. Dohrn was once on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America."
Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left 4 people dead. Obama advisor wants talks with terrorists. The revelations about Obama's relationship with Khalidi follows a recent WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern" about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.
Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.
Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state. Malley's contentions have been strongly refuted by key participants at Camp David, including President
Bill Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and primary U.S. envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, all of whom squarely blamed Arafat's refusal to make peace for the talks' failure.
To interview Aaron Klein, contact M. Sliwa Public Relations
by e-mail, or call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.
_________________
For more on Obama go here: Obama's women reveal his secret:
http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html