1 [flak]
noun Sometimes Disparaging .
1.
press agent.
2.
publicity.verb (used without object)
3.
to serve as a press agent or publicist: to flack for a new rock group.verb (used with object)
4.
to promote; publicize: to flack a new record.
CNN Turns Blind Eye To Obama-Alinsky Ties
Journalism: As the president launches his re-election bid by striking a more centrist tone, the partisan press is helping him whitewash his radical past. Teamwork or not, it’ll be hard to bleach.
Exhibit A is CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. Earlier this week, she hosted a segment that tried to de-link Obama from Chicago socialist Saul Alinsky. The late Alinsky is the father of community organizing and the author of the far-left bible “Rules for Radicals.”
O’Brien opened her piece by scolding GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich for warning Obama “will represent Saul Alinsky (and) European socialism” in a second term. “President Obama has never said that he was influenced by Alinsky,” O’Brien insisted.
Duh. Uh, Soledad? Hello? Obama TAUGHT Alinsky principles.
Of course he hasn’t. He’s not stupid enough to publicly link himself to a socialist. But the record is clear that he was in fact influenced by Alinsky, if only CNN’s “journalists” would do their homework. Allow us to do it for them:
• Obama first learned Alinsky’s rules in the 1980s, when Alinskyite radicals with the Chicago-based Alinsky group Gamaliel Foundation recruited, hired, trained and paid him as a community organizer in South Side Chicago. (Gamaliel’s website expressly states it grew out of the Alinsky movement.)
• In 1988, Obama even wrote a chapter for the book “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois,” in which he lamented organizers’ “lack of power” in implementing change.
• Gamaliel board member John McKnight, a hard-core student of Alinsky, penned a letter for Obama to help him get into Harvard Law School.
• Obama took a break from his Harvard studies to travel to Los Angeles for eight days of intense training at Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, a station of the cross for acolytes.
mp3Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast• In turn, he trained other community organizers in Alinsky agitation tactics.
• Obama also taught Alinsky’s “Power Analysis” methods at the University of Chicago.
• During the presidential campaign, Obama hired one of his Gamaliel mentors, Mike Kruglik, to train young campaign workers in Alinsky tactics at “Camp Obama,” a school set up at Obama headquarters in Chicago. The tactics helped Obama capture the youth vote like no other president before him.
• Power would no longer be an issue, as Obama infiltrated the highest echelon of the political establishment — the White House — fulfilling Alinsky’s vision of a new “vanguard” of coat-and-tie radicals who “work inside the system” to change the system.
• After the election, his other Gamaliel mentor, Jerry Kellman (who hired him and whose identity Obama disguised in his memoir), helped the Obama administration establish Organizing for America, which mobilizes young supporters to agitate for Obama’s legislative agenda using “Rules for Radicals.”
Saul Alinsky’s son says his dad would be proud of Obama
“Obama learned his lesson well,” said David Alinsky, son of the late socialist. “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing.”
She even tried to tie Alinsky to the Tea Party.
IBD was way too kind to O’Brien.
Is she really this clueless? Or is she covering for Obama? Either way, it does not reflect well on a journalist of her stature and influence.
O’Brien is not a journalist. She is a flack.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Nothing new Dr. J. The MSM has been in cahoots with the power brokers in the liberal/progressive leaning Democratic party, concerning Obama, since his Illinois Senate run.
Currently, and considering all the time the MSM is giving to Newt’s marriage history, or Romney’s financial background, it is both funny, and sad, that the American public, in general, know more about what Kim Kardashian did last nite than about Obama’s history. If the MSM had done the same job on Obama as it has done on Bush, McCain, and the current crop of GOP candidates, Obama would have never gotten out of the gate in 2008. Instead, we were handed a product, with a bill of sale still due on it, that we never wanted in the first place. Nice job MSM.
The confusion over polls continues as do the MSM outlets dealing with them. Today, Gallup nationally has Newt ahead of Mitt. Yet in Fla., the news is Mitt is 9% ahead of Newt. And we know that the entire MSM, plus the DC Pub elites hate Newt and btw, don’t like Rick S much either. Nope. They want another moderate like Ford, H.Bush,Dole and McCain. All lost Yikes. We know that CNN, MSNBC and the Big 3 outlets plus the newspapers held by Blue States, all will hate , blast all Pubs in Oct. and Nov. They will never endorse a Pub even if we dug up Ronaldus Magnus!! Why listen or read to any of these MSM outlet? Just tell , demand, vial mail, and donations that will say: Pubs must must unite with Reagan Dems, all wings of the GOP, Indies, Reagan Dems, Libertarians and ….TEAS. Yep. That will be an across the board vote against Obama and every Dem progressive district.
@ DrJohn,
” . . . a journalist of her stature and influence.”
LOL. O’Brien is very typical of the CNN types who were from the very beginning of the company’s founding, not well paid by Turner, not the sharpest tools in the shed, but whose exposure on TV would lead them on to better paying jobs. The trend on ‘low quality talent’ continues. They’re getting paid a little better, but the quality of the talent remains questionable.
I think the term “dumb” fits most of them well. We can’t expect quality investigative journalism from these dolts.
Their abject failure to ever ask about Obama’s communist / socialist roots, has allowed the placement of a very effective glad-hander-socialist into the White House, able to trample all over the Constitution.
Obama in Dreams from my Father:
“I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”
(Obama was referring to his time at Occidental college)
Next to Columbia:
“I ventured to the East Village for “the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union, ….”
After graduating Columbia:
“In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of SNCC and Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia. At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature.”
To Joe the Plumber (on raising Joe’s taxes) while running for president:
“I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
No, CNN, Obama never admitted he was influenced by Saul A.
Not in so many words, anyway.
You always need to check the days the polls were held. For example, the FL polls you mentioned were before last night’s debate. Sometimes poll date releases are split, with a day or days included some before and after the debates, skewing the results.
So the dates need to be matched up to the events… which can be debates, an onslaught of media “scandals” or negative ads, etc. i.e. during the days of these particular polls, Abrams came out with his hit piece, saying Newt really didn’t like Reagan, and Romney was busy with heavy negative ads… er, lies… about Newt calling Spanish a ghetto language. These events tend to make poll numbers look like a bobble head doll.
I didn’t’ check the dates on the latest AZ polls, but it shows Newt and Mitt tied there. Florida isn’t going to result is some sudden anointing of Romney, and is likely to continue it as a serious horse race, with Romney against anyone but him.
@James Raider, the interesting thing about Soledad is that she’s of Cuban descent, so you’d think she’d have a better handle on Florida’s pulse. She did say this AM that generally the Cubano population (Florida) leans Republican while the Mexican and Puerto Rican populations lean Dem. Apparently she ain’t one of them…
Solenoid O’Brien- in the tank, hack. I happened across a puff piece, The New York Times hack writing a book about Moochelle Obama. All that was stressed was an angry black woman. Solenoid was not very magnetic.
Nice echo of lies from Newt and Fox. But, Mitt Romney’s father loved Saul! But, guess what high school drop outs; teachers teach lots of things, even communism.
@MataHarley: #5,
” . . . Cubano population (Florida) leans Republican . . . Apparently she ain’t one of them…”
Good point. She seems to have just enough hobbled synapses functioning well enough to know that to keep her job, she must tow the CNN/Time Warner party line. Principles? Common sense? Insight? . . . Not so much.
She also betrays her own roots. Most Cubans who have landed on the shores of Florida and created lives for themselves and their families, are too familiar with desecration of the human spirit which communism can bring, to support an Obama-powerful-central-government-handout agenda.
@oil guy from Alberta: “Solenoid O’Brien” ROFL!
@James Raider: I like Soledad O’Brien’s stature. She might be more credable in a swim suit. You may be right about her roots, were they blonde? (Sorry to degrade you blondes!)
“Mitt’s father”, this guy chases butterflies and tells us his adventures with his net. Such indications do need empirical references besides grannies cupcakes. Time to close down the computer, put some pants on over your BVD’s and move out of the basement.
That O’brian girl is smoking hot.
Good piece, DrJ. Here’s a little trivia that will go along nicely with your OP.
Constitutional lawyer and Conservative radio host, Mark Levin tells how, in his role as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education in the Reagan administration, he found hundreds and hundreds of copies of Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals. Seems the Carter administration had been handing them out to our public schools. Mark also tells how he had them all destroyed, lol.
From the Canada Free Press.. a bit dated but more relevant than ever given GA court proceedings…
by J.B. Williams
BREAKING => Two New States Massachusetts And Obama’s Very Own Illinois Challenge Barrack’s Official Ballot Eligibility.
Read MORE
BREAKING => Two New States Massachusetts And Obama’s Very Own Illinois Challenge Barrack’s Official Ballot Eligibility.
Obama’s wife wasn’t proud to be an American until she was First Lady. When she is no longer First Lady, will she no longer be proud to be an American?
What will the propaganda media do when the Georgia court and Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse declare that Obama isn’t qualified to be president under our Constitution?
More on Saul Alinsky:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-campaign-attacks-20120130,0,6641100.story
And, of course, Bill Maher eventually had to get on the case:
From the LA Times story:
>>Alinsky was neither a socialist nor a communist. He was — mostly — a Democrat-leaning Jewish social activist who pioneered a way of teaching impoverished and minority communities how to gain political power by organizing. His most famous project was organizing the residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood in Chicago “to take on the Daley machine,” said journalist Nicholas von Hoffman, who worked with Alinsky from 1953 to 1963.
>>”Saul’s genius was as a political tactician and organizer,” Von Hoffman said. “He had humor, imagination and ingenuity.” (He was also famous enough at the peak of his career that after the Detroit riots in 1967, he was invited to discuss the civil rights struggle with then-Michigan Gov. George Romney, Mitt Romney’s father.)
>>Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” a primer on confrontational social activism, has been adopted by political activists on both ends of the spectrum, including members of the tea party. James O’Keefe studied it before creating his 2009 undercover “sting” against the community activist organization ACORN.<<
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
I noticed CNN had covered Sam LaHood’s situation in Egypt 3 days ago.
This was as Sam LaHood got turned away from the airport, learning for the first time that he was on Egypt’s no-fly list.
But crickets since then….from CNN.
Yet, since then, Sam LaHood had been charged with crimes in Egypt, crimes that could put him behind bars for 5 years.
The trial system in Egypt is the defendant sits in a cage in court while the case is made against him.
All of Egypt’s American lobbyists have dropped them as a client, at a cost of millions.
Since Sam LaHood’s placement on Egypt’s no-fly list Obama tried to rush $2 billion in aid to Egypt.
The US Congress, since then, has held up Obama’s promised $2 billion in aid to Egypt over Sam LaHood’s situation (as well as the other 4 Americans with him).
Today, the US Embassy in Cairo accepted some of these Americans as they took shelter there until they are free to leave Egypt.
This is shaping up into a 1979 Tehran hostage situation, yet CRICKETS from CNN.
In Obama’s pocket CNN?