Freedom Friday 08.28.09

Show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are.

"Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. "-Barak Obama, Third Presidential Debate, Oct 15, 2008

In his own words, Obama himself recognized that he surrounds himself with the people who have "shaped his ideas." Have you been paying attention to who President Obama is appointing as his special advisors and czars? Just who exactly is he surrounding himself with?


There are nearly three dozen of these special advisors or czars that have been appointed. They don't go through a confirmation process. They answer to no one but the President. They are advising our President. So isn't it fair to ask:

• Who are they?


• What do they believe?


• What are they advising the President to do?

This week we'll look at Czar #1: Van Jones, Special Advisor to the President for Green Jobs.

• Attended Yale Law School and has been quoted as saying "If I'd been in another county, I probably would have joined some underground guerilla sect. But as it was, I went on to an Ivy League law school." Although he wanted to drop out, he stayed because he felt that the degree would give him some legitimacy to speak out on civil rights issues.
• Was arrested in 1993 as part of the Rodney King riots. In jail he, "met all these young, radical people of color. I mean really radical--communists and anarchists. And it was like, This is what I need to be a part of." The verdict in the King case came down in April of that year and Jones said, "By August, I was a communist."
• He spent the next 10 years as a full-fledged radical and even founded a group, STORM, 'Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement', which held study groups in the Marxist and Lenin teachings. In the group's historical pamphlet, "Reclaiming Revolution", they said, "All of STORM's members developed a basic understanding of and committment to revolutionary Marxist policies with a particular emphasis on the historical experiences of third world communist movements." The group revered Mao Tse-Tung, the revolutionary theorist and political leader that history tells us killed 77 million of his own people. STORM specialized in "mobilizing young people of color into militant direct action and combining it with more deeply-rooted organizing in our communities."

So how is it that such a committed revolutionist has made it so high up in the Obama Administration? Isn't it fair to ask how Obama's "ideas are shaped" by this chief advisor?

Yesterday while driving home from school my daughter noticed that the truck in front of us had several "Obama" stickers on the bumper. She remarked, "There goes a stupid person." Trying to give the benefit of the doubt, I replied, "I wonder if perhaps they have changed their mind about him now?"

And she said, "I sure hope so because Obama sure does hang out with some weird people!"

Even my 13 year-old gets it. That right there made my heart sing!