Jackson Free Press

The absurdity du jour is that the desperate McCain campaign and right-wing media are suddenly demanding the release of a video of a party Obama attending with Palestinian studies expert and Columbia University professor Khalid Rashid Khalidi—whose group to study Palestinian issues was funded by none other than ... get ready for it ... John McCain!

The McCain camp gambit comes after conservative writers have repeatedly pressed for media outlets to write about the rather tenuous connections between Obama and Khalidi, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights. Specifically, National Review writers want much more attention paid to the association, given that the LA Times has reported that Khalidi lavished praise on Obama at a farewell party in Chicago at which Bill Ayers was also present. (Other writers have accused Khalidi of being an aide to Yasser Arafat, a claim which Marc Ambinder and Ari Berman have suggested is not credible.)

In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well. During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars. A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)

The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."

Come on, McCain, stop playing these damn games with the American people and run on your own merits. If not, media might finally start asking you questions about your buddy G. Gordon Liddy, which wouldn't be any more relevant than all this garbage.

UPDATE, Oct. 30, 2008:

CNN's Rick Sanchez makes a fool out of McCain's spokesman by showing the hypocrisy of criticizing Obama for going to a party with a man that McCain gave half a million dollars to. And the spokesman could not name another of Obama's other "anti-Semitic" friends:

UPDATE, Oct. 31, 2008:

Ooo, Sanchez found out who the "other" anti-Semite supposedly is. And watch him mow down this poor, illogical hate-filled talk-show kid Ben Ferguson:

There you have it: the latest from the Hate Talk Express.

Previous Commentsshow

McCain knows he has the complexion for the connection, protection, and explanation, but he also knows Barack doesn't. The one drop rule has casted Barack from within. If McCain can just find the smoking gun, at least he would have finally got himself together and found the kriptonike to put the hard to stop Negro away, and thereby assuage or relieve the fears, wonders and appetites of so many distressed citizens unaccustomed to worrying about matters such as this. Lots of people are counting on McCain to put the gennie back in the bottle or to put the flag on the hill, so to speak. The hill is high, the valley is low, the tide is violent, and these are the times that try men's souls.

Walt

Oct 28 2008

I do wonder when FOX, et al, will demand the release of the raw footage of all the Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin. That, at least, would be relevant to this campaign! What. dolts.

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

I rather feel like, for any new readers, we should point out that you are one sassy black man, Walt. ;-)

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

Consequently, nothing is off base for McCain and Palin. And if I were Obama I would stop hugging babies, children and women not my wife or children. Surely he will get accused of feeling on some children or woman not Michelle or something worse. The republicans are coming with no holes barred.

Walt

Oct 28 2008

Well, we need it would happen. Of course, so did the Obama campaign. This thing, for instance, has knocked around for a while without getting traction—maybe because people are smart enough to see that Obama went to a party with the guy, while McCain funded his work. The Republicans want us to focus on nothing real. Meantime, the Dems haven't even tried to play the Liddy card or much else of McCain's other odd dalliances, other than than the Keating 5 mess, which kicked off his career as a "reformer." (Necessity=invention and all that). And Obama is leading because he hasn't stooped to scaremongering, as he should be. But Lord knows what these people will try to pull. I'm thinking they may have cried wolf a bit too often, though, to make yet another college professor prove that Obama is some kind of hoodlum. ;-)

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

And I'll say it again: It is up to McCain to be enough of a leader to put a stop, or at least repudiate, all the hatemongering. But he's doing it. I'm simply befuddled that he has stooped so low. I honestly thought he was too honorable. :-(

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

This is hilarious: Apparently Matt Drudge pulled his October Un-Surprise off his Web site after Seth Walls exposed that McCain himself funded Khalid's work. It sure seems like Walls knew they'd probably try this, and just sat on the information until the wingnut media mounted their coordinated effort. It's not like it wasn't stupidly predictable. (Right after it "broke," I Googled Newsed it, and there was FOX, National Review, NewsMax and other wingnut media all with the story out at once. Sure does look like they called each other first!) Anyway, it doesn't sound like McCain will want to open this particular can of worms. It does seem sometimes like his memory is failing him; could he not have known about his group when he was chairman funding this man? This sounds a lot like McCain's Pennsylvania chairman hawking the Ashley Todd mutilation lie, and then it turning out that it was false. They don't seem to even vet their own fear-stories. This Rovian-Atwater trickery needs to be buried once and for all.

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

And it's not a small amount of money—nearly half a million dollars. From above: A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. It's so obvious that the McCain is trying to scare Florida Jews away from Obama. On the same day that Charlie Crist ordered the polls to stay open longer for all the early voters, the McCain camp/Drudge/Fox News and NewsMax (headquartered in Florida): 1. Dredge up the Khalid story again. 2. Have Joe-the-Not-A-Plumber talk so hard about Obama being the "death of Israel" that even Shepard Smith was shaken into broadcasting a disclaimer. 3.Send out a mailer in Florida about Obama and Israel. This is what desperation looks like, folks, and it's ugly.

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

The Los Angeles Times released a statement that they do not have permission to release the video, which is good journalism if they don't; clearly, the wingnuts are just looking for something to edit into an ad or a robocall: "The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton. "The Times keeps its promises to sources." Now, that said, one wonders if the Times or other mainstream media will now, however, follow up on the news that McCain gave Khalid half a million dollars to help fund his research. That's the news part here. The party was reported long ago. Or, they might just ignore the whole thing, recognizing it for the last-ditch political ploy that it is.

DonnaLadd

Oct 28 2008

Jesse Jackson had it right when he said that Israel would lose influence in an Obama administration. Every Jewish voter should see this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2J33i7-Yz4

GeraldD

Oct 29 2008

How about treating Israel fair like everyone else, no better and no worse except for the rare circumstance when better or worse is warranted.

Walt

Oct 29 2008

Barack would not mistreat Israel. Israel hasn't been dumb enough to trust us blindly for years and we're not dumb enough to trust them blindly. Barack is not going to turn on our allies such as Israel or Europe (no chance of either ever happening), but I hope he's not dumb enough to ignore or fail to explore establishing relationsips with other nations who can be made less of an enemy or threat to us or the world by simply acknowledging that their interests count too.

Walt

Oct 29 2008

The Arizona Republic is reporting that Obama and McCain are neck and neck even in Arizona. What good news! No chance of Obama winning Mississippi though.

Walt

Oct 29 2008

Scott Horton mops up this hatemonger mess in Harper's Magazine: In the current issue of National Review, Andrew McCarthy continues his campaign to link the Democratic nominee to various and sundry Hyde Park radicals. This time it is “PLO advisor turned University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi,” who now heads the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Columbia University. Khalidi, we learn, makes a habit of justifying and supporting the work of terrorists and is “a former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat.” And then we learn that this same Khalidi knows Obama and that his children even babysat for Obama’s kids! This doesn’t sound much like the Rashid Khalidi I know. I’ve followed his career for many years, read his articles and books, listened to his presentations, and engaged him in discussions of politics, the arts, and history. In fact, as McCarthy’s piece ran, I was midway through an advance copy of Khalidi’s new book Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. (I’ll be reviewing it next month–stay tuned.) Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies. In a sense, Khalidi’s formula for solving the Middle East crisis has not been radically different from George W. Bush’s: both believe in American values and approaches. However, whereas Bush believes these values can be introduced in the wake of bombs and at the barrel of a gun, Khalidi disagrees. He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles. Khalidi is also a Palestinian American. There is no doubt in my mind that it is solely that last fact that informs McCarthy’s ignorant and malicious rants. McCarthy states that Khalidi “founded” the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). In fact, he neither founded it nor has anything to do with it. But AAAN is not, as McCarthy suggests, a political organization. It is a social-services organization, largely funded by the state of Illinois and private foundations, that provides support for English-language training, citizenship classes, after-school and summer programs for schoolchildren, women’s shelters, and child care among Chicago’s sizable Arab community (and for others on the city’s impoverished South Side). Does McCarthy consider this sort of civic activism objectionable? Since it was advocated aggressively by President Bush–this is “compassionate conservativism” in action–such an objection would be interesting. Nor was Khalidi ever a spokesman for the PLO, though that was reported in an erroneous column by the New York Times’s Tom Friedman in 1982. That left me curious about the final and most dramatic accusation laid at Khalidi’s doorstep: that the Khalidis babysat for the Obamas. Was it true? I put the question to Khalidi. “No, it is not true,” came the crisp reply. Somehow that was exactly the answer I expected.

DonnaLadd

Oct 29 2008

MORE: Of course, Khalidi has been involved in Palestinian causes. McCarthy ought to ask John McCain about that, because McCain and Khalidi appear to have some joint interests, and that fact speaks very well of both of them. Indeed, the McCain–Khalidi connections are more substantial than the phony Obama–Khalidi connections McCarthy gussies up for his article. The Republican party’s congressionally funded international-networking organization, the International Republican Institute–long and ably chaired by John McCain and headed by McCain’s close friend, the capable Lorne Craner–has taken an interest in West Bank matters. IRI funded an ambitious project, called the Palestine Center, that Khalidi helped to support. Khalidi served on the Center’s board of directors. The goal of that project, shared by Khalidi and McCain, was the promotion of civic consciousness and engagement and the development of democratic values in the West Bank. Of course, McCarthy is not interested in looking too closely into the facts, because they would not serve his shrill partisan objectives. I have a suggestion for Andy McCarthy and his Hyde Park project. If he really digs down deep enough, he will come up with a Hyde Park figure who stood in constant close contact with Barack Obama and who, unlike Ayers and Khalidi, really did influence Obama’s thinking about law, government, and policy. He is to my way of thinking a genuine radical. His name is Richard Posner, and he appears to be the most frequently and positively cited judge and legal academic in… National Review. The level of desperation in the McCain-Palin campaign, and their ring-wing media surrogates, is staggering.

DonnaLadd

Oct 29 2008

Sho nuff, the man and his followers are coming to git Barack. Barack had better get right (not wangnut right) and stay right because the man is gonna get him.

Walt

Oct 29 2008

GeraldD, you are quoting Jesse Jackson? Why don't you quote Al Quaeda too? They like you guys. Ya'll are the life of their party.

FreeClif

Oct 29 2008

My sources are telling me that a rift between McCain and Palin is brewing. McCain hours ago said if Palin causes him to lose Arizona, the presidency and his senate seat later she'll have hell to pay. He then quipped when he thought no one was listening, "why didn't she tell me she was crazy and slow to boot." I got this from the News from the Black Side. Good looks fool another man, and it ain't hardly any news any more.

Walt

Oct 29 2008

The republican party has more than whites, Baquan. Didn't you see the republican convention? I counted at least 4 brothers and sisters mumbling something like why did I come to this sh1t or can you believe these necks are practicing straight up hang the Negro on live televison with everyone watching.

Walt

Oct 29 2008

Y'all, check out the Rick Sanchez videos I just added above. It is just remarkable that hateful, illogical people like Ben Ferguson get a national platform in 2008. This is what one of our interns wrote in the JFP about his book a few years back: To you of legal age, I propose a Ben Ferguson drinking game; every time he repeats himself verbatim more than three times on a single page, take a shot; every time he contradicts himself, take two. I guarantee you’ll be drunk by the third chapter. That applies to the above interview as well. Good for Rick Sanchez, though, for showing these people for what they are.

DonnaLadd

Oct 31 2008

Oh, and I love how Sanchez hit Ferguson with that statement from the Anti-Defamation League at the end about how they have seen no evidence that Wright is anti-Semitic. Then, Ferguson acts like he doesn't know what the ADL is (which he might not; seems real sheltered), and maybe they haven't done enough homework to know. That's one of the funniest things I've ever heard. The worst thing here is that McCain-Palin, etc., seem to think Jews are really stupid. I don't think that kind of condescension is going to get them a lot of votes.

DonnaLadd

Oct 31 2008

The Sanchez interview with Goldfarb is classic. To be honest, I thought Sanchez was rather conservative, which made me surprised when he pinned down Goldfarb the way he did. Regardless of his personal political stripes, he should ask the tough questions that needed to be asked.

golden eagle

Oct 31 2008