From Volume 7, Issue 42 of EIR Online, Published Oct. 14, 2008

United States News Digest

Obama Knew Weatherman Since the 1980s

Oct. 10 (EIRNS)—John Murtagh, a Yonkers, N.Y., city councilman and current candidate for state senator, whose home was bombed in 1970 by the Weather Underground, has come forward to challenge Barack Obama's claim that he only learned of Bill Ayers's and Bernadine Dohrn's activity in the terrorist Weather Underground sometime after a 1995 meeting at the Ayers' home in Chicago, where Obama's political career was launched.

In February 1970, Murtagh's father was a New York State Supreme Court justice presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. On the morning of Feb. 21, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at their home on the northern tip of Manhattan. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. A few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up, making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. In late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Dohrn, Ayers's wife, promised more bombings.

Murtagh put out a statement on behalf of John McCain's campaign Oct. 8 stating, "Barack Obama's friend tried to kill my family."

"The Weather Underground launched an attack on our family home ... looking to kill us," Murtagh told FOX News. "I believe if the senator were to come clean and tell us the full story, we'd find out this relationship well predates the fundraiser held in the Ayers home. It goes back to the '80s."

In an interview on Fox TV, Murtagh established that Michelle and Barack Obama knew Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers beginning in 1988-89, when Michelle Obama and Bernadine Dohrn worked together at the law firm of Sidley and Austin.

Lyndon LaRouche commented that Obama is a creation of the British, and they can still pull the plug on his candidacy. They can sink him overnight. They can determine the outcome of the election by sinking him or not sinking him overnight, even now.

LaRouche had identified the character of the Weathermen after they emerged in 1968, in a document entitled, "The New Left, Local Control, and Fascism." The Weathermen, like ACORN today, was a British-controlled, anti-labor, fascist organization in its essential character. Obama is a product of a fascist movement.

ACORN Under Multiple Investigations for Voter Fraud

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—Investigations have been undertaken in a number of states over the past several days, of the voter registration activities of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which runs campaigns to register low-income voters, often with taxpayer funding. Barack Obama has had various associations with ACORN in the past, and ACORN is backing Obama in the Presidential campaign. ACORN also is part of the George Soros "billionaires club" Democracy Alliance nexus of organizations, which also includes the Tides Foundation and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This apparatus was heavily deployed against Hillary Clinton's primary campaign, and is part of Soros's self-described "hostile takeover of the Democratic Party."

* On Oct. 7, Nevada state investigators executed a search warrant in Las Vegas to seize documents and records of ACORN's "Project Vote" registration drive, for a multi-jurisdictional investigation of alleged fraudulent registrations.

* The Las Vegas Sun reported today that the Nevada Corrections Department learned in July that one of its facilities in Las Vegas had sent out work release prisoners to a contractor which sent 59 of them to ACORN for registering voters;

* The New York Post reported that voters subpoenaed by the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio Board of Elections said they'd been registered to vote anywhere from 10 to 72 times by ACORN canvassers;

* The Chicago Sun Times reported, citing county election officials, that in Lake County, Indiana, an estimated half of the 5,000 voter registrations filed by ACORN in the past two weeks were fraudulent, and Republican officials have taken the issue to Federal Court; and

* The Chicago Tribune carried an AP article reporting that Missouri officials "are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter registration forms" submitted by ACORN, and an FBI spokeswoman was quoted, that the FBI has been in touch with election officials about potential vote fraud and plans to investigate. The article noted that in April, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis pleaded guilty to Federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards in the 2006 election.

Vote for Bailout Is Big Reelection Problem

Oct. 8 (EIRNS)—Two Senate Republicans up for re-election, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), are scrambling to defend their votes in support of the $700 billion bailout to angry voters.

The campaign of McConnell, the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, who rounded up Republican votes for the bailout's 75-24 passage, put out a mass e-mail last weekend which says: "I helped pass a bill with broad bipartisan support to stabilize our credit markets.... Most economists agree that the initial cost of this bill will be recouped, and there is a significant chance the rescue bill could actually make money for the American taxpayers." He says he voted for it because the crisis impacted "real people." McConnell now trails his Democratic opponent by 2 points, according to the latest Democratic poll.

Freshman Chambliss took out a TV ad to defend himself in a close race: "We are facing the worst financial crisis in my lifetime. We had to act: Businesses are failing; people are losing their retirements, their homes, their jobs, and their life savings.... I'm as mad as you about what happened, but doing nothing would have been a disaster. I know in my heart this legislation is good for all Georgia families...." All of the Georgia members of the House, both Democrats and Republicans, voted against the bill.

Lyndon LaRouche advised them to simply tell the truth on why they voted for the bailout: They should say, "I was threatened!"

'Papa Doc' Bloomberg? Mayor Demands To Stay in Office

Oct. 6 (EIRNS)—New York's billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to overturn two voter referenda mandating a two-term limit city's mayor is not playing well outside his rubberstamp City Council. As Newsday columnist Les Payne put it in today's paper, "Papa Doc Bloomberg, Mayor for Life. To hell with this being a nation governed by laws and not men. Shred the City Charter. Scrap the voters' referendum. Ignore the will of the people. Forget even the mayor's own past refusal to extend his reign. The Great Man has placed himself above the law with his billions to back it up."

Payne quotes Bloomberg saying, Oct. 2, "I've been convinced that three terms is right.... In tough times, it is probably good to have more choices, because the decisions you make are more important than ever before." With the economic crisis, Bloomberg will not go quietly away, as the law requires, "from a city I feel I can help lead."

Payne continues, "Tyranny creeps in on precisely such cat feet. Not surprisingly, Rudolph Giuliani tried it. We've seen it not just in Haiti under dictator Papa Doc Duvalier but elsewhere around the world.... Along comes the Wall Street meltdown and, Bingo!—a rationale for the billionaire to stay in his private East Side mansion. After all, who better to protect the city from the excesses of such greedy wheeler dealers than a former equity broker once fired from Salomon Brothers? ...

"Bloomberg declares himself best suited to steer the city through its economic crisis. He didn't, of course, see the calamity coming, but, hey, what's to be expected from a mayor you pay only $1 a year...."

Yesterday, demonstrators were on the steps of City Hall, denouncing the Bloomberg move.

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