NBC Universal to buy The Weather Channel for $3.5B

NBC Universal to buy The Weather Channel for $3.5B
Sunday July 6, 5:45 pm ET
By Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- NBC Universal and two partners said Sunday they have reached a deal to buy The Weather Channel from Landmark Communications Inc., ending a drawn-out process that had attracted interest from several major media companies.

Financial terms weren't disclosed, but a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity said the purchase price was $3.5 billion in cash. NBC was joined in the deal by the private equity firms The Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital LLC.

In addition to The Weather Channel, which can be seen by 97 percent of U.S. cable subscribers, the deal also includes several related assets such as weather services for newspapers and radio stations and the widely used Web site Weather.com.

NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., became the sole bidder for The Weather Channel last month after Time Warner Inc. dropped out. CBS Corp. and cable industry leader Comcast Corp. had also expressed interest earlier.

NBC already operates a digital weather and news service called NBC Weather Plus that was launched in 2004 and would make a logical fit with The Weather Channel. NBC Weather Plus is owned by NBC and its affiliated TV stations and can be seen on digital cable services and digital subchannels operated by NBC stations.

NBC and Landmark said in a statement that The Weather Channel would be operated as a separate entity out of its base in Atlanta. They said they expected the transaction to close by year-end, pending regulatory approvals.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., GE Commercial Finance, GSO Capital Partners and Sankaty Advisors LLC will provide debt financing for the transaction.

Landmark, a privately held media company based in Norfolk, Va., put The Weather Channel up for sale in January along with its other businesses, which include The Virginian-Pilot and eight other daily newspapers. No announcement has yet been made about the newspaper sales, which are continuing on a separate track.

The Weather Channel was launched in 1982. Its Web site has about 37 million monthly unique visitors, putting it in the top 15 Web sites, according to the company. The Weather Channel has 1,300 employees and estimated annual revenues of $550 million.

WHY CONSERVATIVES SHOULD SUPPORT MCCAIN by Len Munsil

Source: http://www.lenmunsil.com/2008/03/why_conservatives_should_suppo.php

March 30, 2008 01:26 PM

For nearly 25 years I have actively promoted conservative principles in public policy, as a journalist, lawyer, public policy expert and political candidate.

I have done so because I believe conservative principles of economics, national defense and social policy are in the best interests of our community, state and nation.

On the front page of today's Arizona Republic Viewpoints section is an article I wrote arguing that conservative interests will best be served by the election of Arizona Sen. John McCain to the presidency this fall.

The article appears alongside two others -- written by a press spokesman and a high school student -- extolling the virtues of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I was not aware the Republic planned to present my column as part of a "point-counterpoint" series on the candidates. My intent was to make the case for why conservatives should support Sen. McCain.

A few lines were edited out of the printed version, including this important point:

For conservatives, supporting John McCain is not a compromise or a sell-out of our principles. He is a presidential candidate who will strengthen national security, appoint conservative judges, support the sanctity of life, keep taxes low and veto pork barrel spending. He will advance the conservative cause in significant ways.

I will be discussing the article on KFYI's Mike Broomhead show tonight at 8 p.m. (550 AM). Here is what I wrote in its entirety:

Although Sen. John McCain has locked up the Republican nomination for President, some conservative leaders continue to snipe at him. While I agree with elements of most conservative critiques of Sen. McCain, I could not possibly disagree more with their conclusions – especially if those conclusions cause conservatives to sit this election out.

Sen. McCain is not the lesser of two evils. In fact, he is worthy of the enthusiastic support of every thinking conservative.

I join many citizens in gratitude that a genuine American hero with core conservative beliefs – who has already given so much for our nation -- is willing to spend his eighth decade on earth serving a cause greater than himself.

If you are an across-the-board conservative like I am – a fiscal, social and foreign policy conservative – it is in your interest and the national interest to elect Sen. McCain.

It’s not just because either of the Democratic alternatives would jeopardize our security, our economy and our values – though they would. It is because the election of John McCain will substantially advance the conservative principles and values we’ve been fighting for.

In the interest of full disclosure, Sen. McCain endorsed me in the Republican primary for Governor in 2006, even making strong television ads on my behalf. I was honored to have his support in a contested primary that I eventually won. But he never asked me for anything in return, then or now.

I write today on my own, without the knowledge or approval of the McCain campaign. And I do so because I am concerned that some conservatives are heading down a path that will result in the destruction of every principle they claim to promote.

Foreign policy conservatives should have the least concern about McCain. He has the experience and determination to carry the battle to the enemy in what he describes as the “transcendent issue” of our time – the fight against radical Islamic extremists. He is committed to victory in Iraq, and was an early proponent of the surge that has turned the tide.

Both Democratic candidates have made promises of withdrawal that will embolden our enemies and put at risk not only our troops but also the free citizens of Iraq who have trusted us with their lives.

Social conservatives have worked for a generation to promote the unique humanity and value of every human life, and are finally winning the battle of public opinion. Sen. McCain not only has voted pro-life for more than two decades – receiving the endorsement of Arizona Right to Life in every election since 1982 – but has pledged to appoint judges who are committed to constitutional fidelity. He has fought for every conservative appointment to the high court, including Robert Bork.

When we are so close to restoring the promise of the Declaration of Independence – the “unalienable” right to life of every human child – why would any sincere pro-lifer sit this election out? Unfortunately, we know what either Democrat would do – the “litmus test” of commitment to the flawed Roe v. Wade decision is alive and well. Aging liberals on the Court will line up to let Clinton or Obama replace them with liberal justices 30 years younger – preserving Roe and other activist decisions for at least another generation.

Sen. McCain supports marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Like Fred Thompson, he opposes amending the U.S. Constitution to protect marriage unless it is absolutely necessary -- which it would be if federal courts overturn state definitions of marriage. For now, he supports state efforts to confirm marriage as the unique bond of male and female.

Economic conservatives should appreciate Sen. McCain’s lifelong quest to reduce the size and scope of government and to end pork barrel spending. He has never voted for a tax increase and is committed to making the Bush tax cuts permanent. He believes in free market solutions to health care, not the government take-over promoted by Democrats.

With a lifetime conservative voting record of 82.3 percent, Sen. McCain’s commitment to our principles stands in stark contrast to his Democratic opponents, both of whom vote conservative less than 10 percent of the time.

The suggestion by one pundit that Hillary Clinton is “more conservative” than McCain is hyperbole on steroids -- so factually wrong that it’s just plain silly.

Talk show pundits have bludgeoned us with the list of McCain’s sins against conservative orthodoxy, beginning with his immigration bill.

But consider this – even in dealing with illegal immigration, Sen. McCain’s concern for national security and his recognition of political reality will cause him to do much more to secure the borders than any Democrat. If that’s the only issue you care about, Sen. McCain is still your best hope for progress – the Democrats can’t even given a straight answer about whether they would give drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens.

I first met McCain in 1984, when he came to my office for an interview while I was the editor of ASU’s daily student newspaper. Later, in a debate at ASU, he criticized federal efforts to stop illegal immigration. Consistent with his position today, he expressed concern about rounding up and deporting people who have been here for years. But then he said, “We need to tighten up our border control.”

That’s right – all the way back in 1984, when many of us who are concerned now about illegal immigration were not even aware of the issue – John McCain was on record calling for more border security.

For conservatives, supporting John McCain is not a compromise or a sell-out of our principles. He is a presidential candidate who will strengthen national security, appoint conservative judges, support the sanctity of life, keep taxes low and veto pork barrel spending. He will advance the conservative cause in significant ways.

Every day that conservative leaders grumble and express reservations about McCain increases the likelihood that a liberal Democrat will take office next January.

Then there will be no checks on the liberal tendencies of Nancy Pelosi and a Democratic Congress. The Supreme Court will be gone for a generation. Our right to make medical decisions will be lost. Our economy will be stifled by taxes and regulation. Our border will remain wide open. And we can only pray that our pullback from the war effort does not lead to more attacks in the United States.

For conservatives, that’s an awfully high price to pay because you’re mad about campaign finance reform or a dead and buried immigration bill.

The American Patriot

The American Patriot to me is one who loves their Country and wish America no harm for any reason.

The American Patriot is male, female and children of every nationality, race, ethnic background and religion who wish America no harm for any reason.

The American Patriot are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom who wish America no harm.

The American Patriot ia proud of their flag and the Statue of Liberty which "welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed" and wishes America no harm.

The American Patriot takes pride in the greatest Warriors in the history of man - the American Soldier and wish America no harm.

The American Patriot looks at their sons and daughters in uniform with tears in their hearts and pride on their faces as their children goes off to defend the greatest country ever on this planet and wish America no harm.

The spouse and children of the American Patriot with anxiety in their hearts and faces shining with pride watch as their American Warrior leaves to defend America.

The American Patriot lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.

The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness and the right to self determination and wish America no harm.

The American Patriot does not want to weaken America in dangerous times for political reasons.

The American Patriot does not put ideology first and America second to harm it in hopes it will learn a 'lesson'.

God Bless America and its' Patriots!

The American Warrior

The American Warrior is someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness.

The American Warrior is someone who frightens many people because they live in denial of reality, the American Warrior reminds those people that violence exists in the world.

The American Warrior has the capacity for violence towards those who threaten America and the American way of life.

The American Warrior is a constant reminder that there are terrorists in the land and those that wish to destroy America are already here on American soil.

The American Warrior on September 11, 2001, rushed towards the danger instead of fleeing from it, intent on defending and helping those American citizens in danger. Many American Warriors gave their lives that day and many more were willing to give the ultimate sacrifice for America and its citizens.

Most Americans are glad that they were not on the planes that crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon - the American Warrior wished they had been on those planes because they might have made a difference.

American Warriors were on United Airlines Flight 93 and defended unto death America and its citizens with the cry "lets roll".

The American Warrior waits for the day that they have lived for and trained for their entire life - to defend until death, America and its citizens.

"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke

This 4th of July, I salute the American Warrior, both living and dead. Men and women who serve in the Armed Forces, Police Forces, Fire Departments and ordinary civilians who rush forward to our defense instead of running from danger.

The American Warrior who wishes no harm to America - God Bless You!

Obama's Ultra Liberal Campaign Swing By Amanda Carpenter

Source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2007/07/24/obamas_ultra_liberal_campaign_swing?page=full&comments=true

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) called opponents of the Senate immigration bill “racist,” strutted picket lines and said universal health care should include abortion in his last week of campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President.

Obama made these controversial remarks at a trio of campaign stops for the National Council of La Raza, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees and Planned Parenthood.

On Sunday, Obama addressed the Hispanic special interest group National Council of La Raza at the Miami Beach Convention Center. There, he said that the debate over the Senate’s failed immigration bill “was both ugly and racist in a way that we haven’t seen since the struggle for civil rights.”

He told participants that both Hispanics and African Americans have struggled to get access to health care and education and quoted a telegram Martin Luther King Jr. sent to Cesar Chavez in 1968: “Our separate struggles are really one. The civil rights movement wasn’t just for African Americans.”

“It doesn't matter if that struggle involves a brown man who is badgered again and again to prove his citizenship or a black man who's pulled over because his car is too nice,” Obama explained.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), who is also pursuing the nomination for President, headlined the NCLR event as well. Both Democrats spoke of their support for comprehensive immigration reform, universal healthcare and free in-state tuition for illegal aliens.

On July 21, Obama was in Des Moines, Iowa speaking at a rally for Council 61 of the American Federation of State and County and Municipal Employees.

“I stood on the picket line and marched with workers at the Congress Hotel in Chicago last week. I had marched with them four years earlier and I told them when I left that if they were still fighting four years from now, I'd be back on that picket line as President of the United States,” Obama told labor activists.

Obama also said that Washington “has thrown open its doors to the most anti-union, anti-worker forces we've seen in generations.”

The abortion lobby welcomed Obama at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s political organizing conference on July 17. At the Washington, D.C. event, Obama said he believed expanded insurance coverage under his proposed universal health care plan should cover “reproductive services.” Obama campaign staff later confirmed those reproductive services should include abortion.

In his speech, Obama took care to lay out his vision for the Supreme Court and touched on other issues he thought were important to women.

Indirectly referring to the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision that upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, Obama said, “We know that five men don’t know better than women and their doctors what’s best for women’s health.”

"Justice Kennedy knows many things," Obama said of the Justice who penned the Supreme Court opinion that upheld the ban, "but my understanding is that he does not know how to be a doctor."

"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges,” Obama explained.

Of his Senate votes against the confirmation of Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, Obama said, “There is nothing wrong in voting against nominees who don't share a broader vision of what the Constitution is about.”

Obama also said it was time for the government to offer “an updated social contract” that would give women paid maternity leave and keep children in school longer, to accommodate working mothers’ schedules.

The Company He Keeps: Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==

April 11, 2008 6:00 AM

Why is Barack Obama so comfortable around people who so despise America and its allies? Maybe it’s because they’re so comfortable around him.

He presents as the transcendent agent of “change.” Sounds platitudinous, but it’s really quite strategically vaporous. Sen. Obama is loath to get into the details of how we should change, and, as the media’s Chosen One, he hasn’t had to.

But he’s not, as some hopefully dismiss him, a charismatic lightweight with a gift for sparkling the same old vapid cant. Judging from the company he chooses to keep, Obama’s change would radically alter this country. He eschews detail because most Americans don’t believe we’re a racist, heartless, imperialist cesspool of exploitation. The details would be disqualifying.

MICHELLE
So, instead, we get glimpses. The most profound influence in his life, his wife Michelle, is notoriously less circumspect than her careful husband about where she’s coming from. Her college thesis, which Princeton tried to keep under lock and key, testifies to a race-obsessed worldview. She may have refined it, but she’s never grown out of it.

After four years at one of America’s most esteemed academic institutions, Michelle recoiled at the thought of “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.” That the sky has been the limit for her, that she has managed to ride the “periphery” from Princeton to Harvard Law School, to one of the country’s top law firms, and to a plethora of prestigious institutional positions, has not much altered her perspective. Through the windows of her mansion on Chicago’s south side, American society still appears as a caste system.

The United States, says she, is “just downright mean.” Never, prior to her husband’s presidential run, had she had a reason to feel proud of it, she told a campaign throng. But by last November, with Barack’s pursuit of the brass ring catching momentum, she suddenly got plenty proud. And confident: so much so that she was moved to tell MSNBC, “Black America will wake up and get it” — unite and carry him over the finish line.

THE REV. WRIGHT
Years earlier, the Obamas had gravitated to the baleful Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an unapologetic racist and hard Left firebrand. They were comfortable with him — and he with them.

By the senator’s own account, Wright is the inspiration for his memoir, The Audacity of Hope — the title is cribbed from a Wright sermon (“The Audacity to Hope”). For Michelle, who had written that a racial “separationist” would have a better understanding of American blacks than “an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight,” Wright’s Trinity Church mission statement had to resonate, right from its opening declaration:

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.

Rev. Wright inspired his congregation — of which the Obamas were 20-year members — with “black liberation theology.” The doctrine is itself the inspiration of James Hal Cone, a professor of “Systematic Theology” at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Cone is also the author of several books, which a tendentious Wright urged Sean Hannity to read during a recent interview.

It’s a useful suggestion. For example, there is Cone’s 1969 opus, Black Theology and Black Power, in which he helpfully explains:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community.... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Black liberation theology, as Wright has elaborated, is closely aligned with the “liberation theology” of Nicaragua during the seventies and eighties: i.e., the doctrine that catalyzed Marxist revolutionaries. It spurred an unabashedly Leftist movement that emphasized, you guessed it, the crying need for “change” — as George Russell aptly described it in a 2001 Time magazine analysis, “social change in the process of spiritual improvement.”

It is this same drive for upheaval, for supplanting a political order which purportedly treats blacks as “less than human,” that impelled Wright’s plea for God to “damn America.” In the oppression narrative, the murder of 3000 Americans on 9/11 isn’t terrorism but social justice. America, after all, had it coming. For Wright, it was “chickens coming home to roost.” Indeed, Wright sometimes prefers to call our country “the U.S. of KKK A” — a grotesque sentiment which, we shall see, is shared by others with whom the Obamas choose to associate themselves.

For their part, the Obamas couldn’t get enough of Wright. Barack and Michelle had him marry them. They chose him to baptize their children, who were routinely exposed to Wright’s race-baiting bombast.



Obama and his supporters brusquely dismiss the drawing of sensible inferences from these gestures of admiration as “guilt by association.” In point of fact, though, the Obamas didn’t just associate with Wright. They subsidized him to the tune of over $20,000 — not exactly chump change from a couple without great means or any history of philanthropy to speak of. And until recent public attention to the pastor’s noxious rants threatened to derail his White House bid, Sen. Obama kept Wright officially on board as part of his campaign’s “African American Religious Leadership Committee.”

BILL AYERS AND BERNADINE DOHRN
With this as background, is it really all that startling that Sen. Obama enjoys a friendly relationship with Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, a pair of terrorists?

I want to be clear here: Not terrorist sympathizers. Terrorists.

The mainstream media, in their zeal to elect a Democrat, are assiduously airbrushing Ayers: “an aging lefty with a foolish past,” as the Chicago Sun-Times has so delicately put it. In fact, it is the press that is rife with foolish, aging lefties. Ayers, by contrast, is an unapologetic terrorist with a savage past — one who beat the system he so reviles when, after his years of fugitivity, terrorism charges were dropped due to government surveillance violations. He’s “guilty as sin,” by his own concession, but “free as a bird.”

Ayers didn’t just carry a sign outside the Pentagon on May 19, 1972. He bombed it. As his memoir gleefully recalled, “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

Whether Pentagon bombing day was more or less ideal than other days, when he, Dohrn and their Weathermen comrades bombed the U.S. Capitol, the State Department, and sundry banks, police stations and courthouses, Ayers does not say. But on each occasion, there was surely optimism that the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.

There were lots of bombs. There is no remorse. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” he told the New York Times in 2001, sorry only that he and the others “didn’t do enough.” Like what? We can’t be sure, though National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg recounts Ayers’s sentiments back in the day: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”

Ayers and Dohrn have done the actual dirty work of terror, while Jeremiah Wright draws the line at waving pom-poms. But the prism through which they assay the dirty work is precisely the same: America has it coming.

For them, that makes all the difference. It’s not terror, just chickens coming home to roost. “Terrorists destroy randomly,” Ayers rationalizes with nauseating arrogance, “while our actions bore ... the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.” Right. As her companion Discover the Networks profile illustrates, Dohrn now goes even further: insisting their bombings weren’t terrorist acts at all: “We rejected terrorism. We were careful not to hurt anybody.”

Maybe she’s forgotten the “bastards getting what was coming to them” part. Or maybe she’s just lying. She was, we can be confident, something less than a model of compassion back then — like at the Weathermen “War Council” meeting in 1969, when she famously gushed over the barbaric Manson Family murders of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three others: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!”

Charming. The “War Council,” it should be noted, concluded by first condemning the United States for — what else? — its pervasive racism, then formally declaring war against what the Weathermen called “AmeriKKKa.” Rev. Wright would have understood.



It was at the Chicago home of Ayers and Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming “community organizer,” had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working “only to educate” — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers.

Barack Obama made a joint appearance with Bill Ayers in 1997 at a University of Chicago panel on the outrage of treating juvenile criminals as if they were, well, criminals. Obama apologists say, “So what? People appear with other people all the time.” Nice try. This panel was orchestrated by none other than Michelle Obama, then an Associate Dean of Student Services. Ayers didn’t happen to be there — he was invited by the Obamas to educate students on the question before the house: “Should a Child Ever Be Called a ‘Super Predator?’”

And here’s how the University’s press release chose to describe this would-be super predator:

William Ayers, author of A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), says “We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn’t suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?”

Ayers, who spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice[.]

The other panelists included “Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama … who is working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.” The goal was to promote change, to actuate the vision of “Chicago reformer” Jane Addams, who’d sought “the establishment of a separate court system for children which would act like a ‘kind and just parent’ for children in crisis.” Never mind the crises they’d caused the victims of their wanton murders and mayhem — the fault for those, surely, was our downright mean society.

The Ayers and Obama, meantime, kept up. There was yet another panel in 2002, Obama and Ayers waxing on “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis.” Dohrn, too, was asked to weigh in, on a panel addressing the question, “Why Do Ideas Matter?” I’m sure it was, er, wild.

RASHID KHALIDI
In the interim, Ayers and Obama had teamed up for three years on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago charitable organization. Together, they voted to donate $75,000 of the largesse they controlled to the Arab American Action Network. The AAAN was co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a longtime supporter of Palestinian “resistance” attacks against Israel, which he openly regards as a racist, apartheid state. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, Khalidi peremptorily denies having been a PLO operative or having directed its official press agency for six years (from 1976 to 1982). There can be no gainsaying, though, that he was an influential apologist for Yasser Arafat, the terror master who spawned two Intifadas and ordered the murder of American diplomats.

In the mean, besotted United States, of course, being a terrorist, a terror apologist, or simply raging at the machine qualifies one for a cushy academic soapbox. Thus did Khalidi eventually land on his feet at the University of Chicago, where he ran in the same circles as Associate Dean Michelle Obama, Law Professor Barack Obama, University of Illinois-Chicago Education Professor Bill Ayers, and Northwestern Law Professor Bernadine Dohrn (who prepared for a career in instructing future officers of the court with a stint in federal prison for flouting a judge’s order that she testify in a grand jury investigation into the Weathermen’s infamous Brinks robbery-murders).

For Khalidi, though, greener pastures called: the opportunity to become a professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. There, he now directs Edward Said’s legacy: Columbia’s notoriously Israel-bashing Middle East Institute — though, much to the University’s chagrin, he was scratched in 2005 from a program designed educate teachers on instructing their young students about the Middle East. New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein concluded Khalidi’s splenetic meanderings mightn’t be the best model.

They didn’t faze Barack Obama, though. He was front and center with Ayers and Dohrn at a farewell bash when Khalidi left Chicago for New York. It was only right. Khalidi, after all, had hosted a fundraiser for Obama in 2000, when the latter launched an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. And so it goes. A few weeks ago, Khalidi told worldnetdaily.com he supports Obama’s presidential run “because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause,” and because Obama has promised negotiations with Iran.

Ayres, too, provided a minor ($200) contribution to Obama, in 2001. That was the year of September 11, just a few days before the Times published its excerpt of Ayres’s remembrances of bombings past. Read the short interview and ask yourself: Could anyone, let alone someone as sophisticated as Barack Obama, chat with Bill Ayers for about 30 seconds and not know exactly where is coming from?

Could they really have been friends? Well, Ayers is virtually channeling Michelle Obama and Jeremiah Wright when he wails that American “society is not a just and fair and decent place.”

“God, what a great country,” he scoffed to the Times. “It makes me want to puke.”

Hey, right back at you there, Professor. At least that’s how most of us are likely to feel. But not Sen. Obama. And that’s why Ayers — like Khalidi and Wright and Michelle Obama, and others who know the senator well while we’ve been told precious little — sees in Barack Obama the change he’s been waiting for.

No thanks.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is author of Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad.

Mrs. Obama Is NO Jane Addams

Source: http://www.hullhouse.org/aboutus/history.html

Hull House 1891-1894. (JAMC neg. 146)

Jane Addams 1885. (JAMC neg. 1363)

Jane Addams 1896 (JAMC neg. 7. Photograph by Fred Hollyer)

Jane Addams c.1934 ((JAMC 58)

Photo Credits: University of Illinois at Chicago, University Library, Department of Special Collections, Jane Addams Memorial Collection

Jane Addams Hull House Association is the direct descendent of the settlement house founded by Jane Addams in 1889. In the words of our founder, our purpose is to “Aid in the solutions of life in a great city, to help our neighbors build responsible, self-sufficient lives for themselves and their families.” We carry on this mission today as one of Chicago’s oldest and largest social and human service agencies.

Ms. Addams established her residency in Hull House based upon several basic principles:

Live in the community as an equal participant in the local issues of the day. Unlike the social workers and society matrons who visited the poor and then returned to their middle class homes every evening, Ms. Addams and her colleagues lived where they worked. The settlement concept was central to the success of the Hull House community, and the practice of neighbors helping neighbors became a cornerstone of the Hull House philosophy.

Believe in the fundamental dignity of all individuals and accord every person with equal respect regardless of their ethnic origins, gender, age, etc. Ms. Addams believed that if people –of any age, race, gender, ethnicity - were allowed to develop their skills, that person could not only make a better life for himself but contribute to the community as a whole.

Believe that poverty and the lack of opportunity breed the problems of the ghetto. Ignorance, disease, and crime are the result of economic desperation and not the result of some flaw in moral character. Ms. Addams promoted the idea that access to opportunity was the key to successful participation in a democratic, self governing society. The greatest challenge and achievement of the settlement was to help people help themselves.

We build on the enduring vision of Jane Addams. She foresaw a compassionate, interdependent world revolving around the principles of social justice, fairness, tolerance, respect, equal opportunity, civic responsibility and hope for every individual, family and community. Hull House Association itself is an evolving community where committed staff and volunteers serve, nurture and learn from each other, and those who - at every stage of life - come to our door in need.

Jane Addams Hull House Association is still in the heart of the community. Each year, more than 60,000 people receive help through a variety of programs including foster care, job training, child care, counseling, education and literacy. Our programs continue to be community-based so they can be most responsive to the needs of children, families, and seniors. We continue Jane Addams’ simple mission of neighbors helping neighbors.

Jesse Helms quotes on life and politics

Jesse Helms quotes on life and politics

By The Associated Press
1 hour, 3 minutes ago



Some quotes of Jesse Helms, who died on the Fourth of July at age 86:

"I'm so old-fashioned I believe in horse whipping." — During a debate in 1991 on an AIDS-related amendment.

"Well, there is no joy in Mudville tonight. The mighty ultraliberal establishment, and the liberal politicians and editors and commentators and columnists, have struck out again." — Helms after defeating black Democrat Harvey Gantt for Senate in 1990.

"I came up between the two world wars during the Depression. All the people around me emphasized working and savings and personal responsibility. They spelled out in one way or another the uniqueness of America. This has largely been lost. Nobody would have thought of turning to the government to solve all our problems." — 1984 interview.

"The destruction of this country can be pinpointed in terms of its beginnings to the time that our political leadership turned to socialism. They didn't call it socialism, of course. It was given deceptive names and adorned with fancy slogans. We heard about New Deals, and Fair Deals and New Frontiers and the Great Society." — From a Helms editorial at WRAL-TV in Raleigh.

"I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year's Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day." — Helms writing in 1956 on life in his hometown of Monroe, N.C.

"If he taught us anything, he taught us that we are personally responsible and accountable. I remember that day, and always will, when he called in several from the senior class. ... He said you can make it in this country. He said it's going to take hard work. ... He said you're going to succeed. He said you'll own your own homes and you'll have two cars and all that. I thought this man had lost his mind." — Helms reflecting on his high school principal.

"Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line — and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" — Helms writing in 1959 on compromise in politics.

"To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing." — Helms responding in 1956 to criticism that a fictional black character in his newspaper column was offensive.




Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Former Republican N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86

Former Republican N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86

BY DAVID ESPO and WHITNEY WOODWARD, Associated Press Writers
17 minutes ago



Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

Helms died at 1:15 a.m., said the Jesse Helms Center at Wingate University in North Carolina. The center's president, John Dodd, said in a statement that funeral arrangements were pending.

"He was very comfortable," said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton, who added Helms died of natural causes in Raleigh.

Helms, who first became known to North Carolina voters as a newspaper and television commentator, won election to the Senate in 1972 and decided not to run for a sixth term in 2002.

"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" Helms wrote in a 1959 editorial that foretold his political style.

As he aged, Helms was slowed by a variety of illnesses, including a bone disorder, prostate cancer and heart problems, and he made his way through the Capitol on a motorized scooter as his career neared an end. In April 2006, his family announced that he had been moved into a convalescent center after being diagnosed with vascular dementia, in which repeated minor strokes damage the brain.

Helms' public appearances had dwindled as his health deteriorated. When his memoirs were published in August 2005, he appeared at a Raleigh book store to sign copies but did not make a speech.

In an e-mail interview with The Associated Press at that time, Helms said he hoped what future generations learn about him "will be based on the truth and not the deliberate inaccuracies those who disagreed with me took such delight in repeating."

"My legacy will be up to others to describe," he added.

Helms served as chairman of the Agriculture Committee and Foreign Relations Committees over the years at times when the GOP held the Senate majority, using his posts to protect his state's tobacco growers and other farmers and place his stamp on foreign policy.

His opposition to Communism defined his foreign policy views. He took a dim view of many arms control treaties, opposed Fidel Castro at every turn, and supported the contras in Nicaragua as well as the right-wing government of El Salvador. He opposed the Panama Canal treaties that President Jimmy Carter pushed through a reluctant Senate in 1977.

Early on, his habit of blocking nominations and legislation won him a nickname of "Senator No." He delighted in forcing roll call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag-burning and other cultural issues.

In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

After Democrats killed the appointment of U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle, a former Helms aide, to a federal appeals court post in 1991, Helms blocked all of Clinton's judicial nominations from North Carolina for eight years.

Helms occasionally opted for compromise in later years in the Senate, working with Democrats on legislation to restructure the foreign policy bureaucracy and pay back debts to the United Nations, an organization be disdained for most of his career.

And he softened his views on AIDS after years of clashes with gay activists, advocating greater federal funding to fight the disease in Africa and elsewhere overseas.

But in his memoirs, Helms made clear that his opinions on other issues had hardly moderated since he left office. He compared abortion to both the Holocaust and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves," the former senator wrote in "Here's Where I Stand."

Helms never lost a race for the Senate, but he never won one by much, either, a reflection of his divisive political profile in his native state.

He knew it, too. "Well, there is no joy in Mudville tonight. The mighty ultraliberal establishment, and the liberal politicians and editors and commentators and columnists have struck out again," he said in 1990, after winning his fourth term.

He won the 1972 election after switching parties, and defeated then-Gov. Jim Hunt in an epic battle in 1984 in what was then the costliest Senate race on record.

He defeated former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996 in racially tinged campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumbling up a job application, these words underneath: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority."

"The tension that he creates, the fear he creates in people, is how he's won campaigns," Gantt said several years later.

Helms also played a role in national GOP politics — supporting Ronald Reagan in 1976 in a presidential primary challenge to then-President Gerald R. Ford. Reagan's candidacy was near collapse when it came time for the North Carolina primary. Helms was in charge of the effort, and Reagan won a startling upset that resurrected his challenge.

During the 1990s, Helms clashed frequently with President Clinton, whom he deemed unqualified to be commander in chief. Even some Republicans cringed when Helms said Clinton was so unpopular he would need a bodyguard on North Carolina military bases. Helms said he hadn't meant it as a threat.

Asked to gauge Clinton's performance overall, Helms said in 1995: "He's a nice guy. He's very pleasant. But ... (as) Ronald Reagan used to say about another politician, `Deep down, he's shallow.'"

Helms went out of his way to establish good relations with Madeleine Albright, Clinton's second secretary of state. But that didn't stop him from single-handedly blocking Clinton's appointment of William Weld — a Republican — as ambassador to Mexico.

Helms clashed with other Republicans over the years, including fellow Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana in 1987, after Democrats had won a Senate majority. Helms had promised in his 1984 campaign not to take the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, but he invoked seniority over Lugar to claim the seat as the panel's ranking Republican.

He was unafraid of inconveniencing his fellow senators — sometimes all of them at once. "I did not come to Washington to win a popularity contest," he once said while holding the Senate in session with a filibuster that delayed the beginning of a Christmas break. And he once objected to a request by phoning in his dissent from home, where he was watching Senate proceedings on television.

Helms was born in Monroe, N.C., on Oct. 18, 1921. He attended Wake Forest College in 1941 but never graduated and was in the Navy during World War II.

In many ways, Helms' values were forged in the small town where his father was police chief.

"I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year's Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day," Helms wrote in a newspaper column in 1956.

He took an active role in North Carolina politics early on, working to elect a segregationist candidate, Willis Smith, to the Senate in 1950. He worked as Smith's top staff aide for a time, then returned to Raleigh as executive director of the state bankers association.

Helms became a member of the Raleigh city council in 1957 and got his first public platform for espousing his conservative views when he became a television editorialist for WRAL in Raleigh in 1960. He also wrote a column that at one time was carried in 200 newspapers. Helms also was city editor at The Raleigh Times.

Helms and his wife, Dorothy, had two daughters and a son. They adopted the boy in 1962 after the child, 9 years old and suffering from cerebral palsy, said in a newspaper article that he wanted parents.

___

AP Special Writer David Espo in Washington contributed to this story.



Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.