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soonercruiser
1/10/2012, 12:13 AM
So, How can a partisan hack like George Stephanopoulos be considered an "independant" new person?
Of course he really can't. That's why he asked stupid questions at the last debate.
A closer look into the Obama-Stephanopoulos "comminity" connection.



WND EXCLUSIVE
Is this why Stephanopoulos ripped GOP candidates?
Look where debate moderator's ties go back to
Published: 1 day ago

ABC News commentator George Stephanopoulos has a previously undisclosed connection to President Obama: The two were part of a small group at Harvard University that met for a period of three years purportedly to promote involvement with U.S. community institutions.
Participants at the research project, which took place between 1997 and 2000, include scores of individuals with ties to Obama, including several activists who were later appointed to Obama administration positions. Other participants were instrumental in promoting Obama’s political career.

Just yesterday, Stephanopoulos was the subject of conservative criticism for pointed questions he asked Republican presidential candidates while hosting Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate.

Stephanopoulos is best known as the chief political correspondent for ABC News and the co-anchor of ABC morning news program, “Good Morning America.” He also returned last month as host of the Sunday morning news program, “This Week.”

Prior to joining ABC News, he was a senior political adviser to the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and later served as Clinton’s White House communications director for two years.

However, an overlooked detail of Stephanopoulos’ work history is his participation alongside Obama in Harvard’s Saguaro Seminars, a long-term research project aimed at significantly increasing Americans’ connectedness to one another and to community institutions.

The project and its relationship with Obama was exposed in the recently released book, “Red Army: The Radical Network that must be defeated to save America,” by reporters Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.

Saguaro’s signature effort was the 1997-2000 dialogue “on how we can increasingly build bonds of civic trust among Americans and their communities.” The dialogue resulted in a study being published in 2000 recommending Americans participate more with community groups.

In “Red Army,” Klein and Elliott detail how the idea for the Saguaro Seminars begins with author Robert D. Putnam, who is attributed with charting the “decline of civil engagement in the USA over the last 30 years or so.”

In a January 2001 review of “Bowling Alone,” David Moberg explains at In These Times, a socialist-style magazine, that Putnam defines social capital as connections among individuals and “‘community’ adapted to a large-scale capitalist society.”

Social capital, Moberg explains, is “more abundant in small communities than in big cities, but networks that constitute social capital develop in churches, unions, PTAs, neighborhood clubs, fraternal organizations and even bowling leagues (which have declined in the United States, thus ‘Bowling Alone’).”

“[At Saguaro Seminars] we find a number of people who have either been instrumental in promoting Obama’s agenda or have used their positions of influence on his behalf,” write Klein and Elliott.

In 1992 Obama served on the founding board of Public Allies, an organization dedicated to training a cadre of community organizers. Public Allies cofounders Vanessa Kirsch and Katrina Browne, at Obama’s suggestion, interviewed his wife, Michelle Obama, to head a new Chicago office. Michelle Obama served as executive director from spring 1993 until fall 1996.

Obama left the Public Allies board when Michelle was hired, although he served on the Public Allies national board in 1997, when both he and Vanessa Kirsch participated in the Saguaro Seminars.

A second Saguaro Seminar member close to Obama is Reverend Bliss W. Browne. In December 1995, Browne’s United Imagination Network, also called Imagine Chicago, a collective of five elementary schools and one high school, was one of the first 35 school networks and their partners to receive school improvement funds from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or CAC.

The CAC was founded by Weatherman domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, who served as the group’s director. With Ayers, Obama served as president of the CAC board of directors from 1995 to 1999. He continued as a member of the board until 2002.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/is-this-why-stephanopoulos-ripped-gop-candidates/

SanJoaquinSooner
1/10/2012, 12:25 AM
Did you type out "Stephanopoulos" or did you copy and paste?

But more seriously, which questions were stupid?

KABOOKIE
1/10/2012, 07:01 PM
George is nothing more than a hack for the dems. I heard him giggling like a school girl off camera during the 2008 DNC when Obama walked on stage a day earlier than expected.

Midtowner
1/10/2012, 10:37 PM
George is nothing more than a hack for the dems. I heard him giggling like a school girl off camera during the 2008 DNC when Obama walked on stage a day earlier than expected.

So I guess you feel the same contempt for all of the conservative Fox News analysts?

StoopTroup
1/10/2012, 11:11 PM
I know George was a leading member of Clinton's Presidential Campaign and later he kind of evolved in taking DeeDee Myers spot as press secretary but once the Whitewater Scandal began he seemed to fall out of favor with the administration.

I'm sure many folks might feel that just because he took a job with Clinton means he's tarnished but IMO the guy is very well educated from Columbia and Oxford and a Rhodes Scholar. In his youth he even considered becoming a Greek Orthodox Priest.

I guess what I'm saying is when Clinton had the issues he did....George didn't stick around when it was obvious that Bill and Hillary and many others seemed to be a part of some nefarious circumstances.

That said....George seems to have long split from politics as an advisor and now seems to be a pretty good Journalist.

I guess some folks can't imagine that he might not have distanced himself from things in his past but IMO unless you engage one party or another at sometime in your life....how the hell are you to become qualified to be a political moderator?

For a long time I wondered why the heck he seemed to walk away from being a political advisor but IMO it might lie somewhere in his youth when he considered possibly being a priest.

As we get older and some of our heroes become disappointments it's sometimes possible to turn away and head a different direction. Maybe critics should consider that's why he is being called an independent?

Chuck Bao
1/10/2012, 11:32 PM
I don't see any agenda. He comes across as smart and fair and not afraid to ask difficult questions. I had assumed that questions in a debate needed to be rather pointed to draw out distinctions amongst the candidates.

Caboose
1/10/2012, 11:36 PM
Ive always thought he seemed pretty balanced... but to be fair I think I have only heard seen/him 3 times in the last decade... and one of them was on Pawn Stars.

StoopTroup
1/10/2012, 11:54 PM
Ive always thought he seemed pretty balanced... but to be fair I think I have only heard seen/him 3 times in the last decade... and one of them was on Pawn Stars.

Saw that one....lol

His shows are pretty good. I don't watch everyone of the Sunday Shows but I do try to watch enough until they begin to make me sick of politics....lol

dwarthog
1/11/2012, 09:09 AM
I suppose we'll see how balanced he is when he dredge's up Jeriamiah Wright and Bill Ayers from Obama's past in a "hit" question, like he did the letters from Ron Paul's. I won't be holding my breath though..

badger
1/11/2012, 09:52 AM
Meh, he's getting old and television is not kind of old reporters. It's easier for men to age gracefully on camera than women, but dudes have to plastic surgery and dye their hair endlessly in hopes of not getting replaced by 20 and 30-somethings, also.

hawaii 5-0
1/11/2012, 10:47 AM
John Huntsman was a U.S. Ambassador to China. Does that automatically make him a shill for Obama?

Gotta pick and choose.

5-0

badger
1/11/2012, 10:55 AM
John Huntsman was a U.S. Ambassador to China. Does that automatically make him a shill for Obama?

Gotta pick and choose.

5-0

I pick hawaii 5-0 as a shill for Obama because he's from the same state as him. ;)

soonercruiser
1/11/2012, 12:17 PM
I suppose we'll see how balanced he is when he dredge's up Jeriamiah Wright and Bill Ayers from Obama's past in a "hit" question, like he did the letters from Ron Paul's. I won't be holding my breath though..

Stoop! You make an convincing argument.
But, I don't see the left leaning moderators being hard on any Democrat....let alone Obama, and his horrible economic record.
That is all!.....of my argument.

Midtowner
1/11/2012, 01:09 PM
Stoop! You make an convincing argument.
But, I don't see the left leaning moderators being hard on any Democrat....let alone Obama, and his horrible economic record.
That is all!.....of my argument.

The President's economic success or failure is a matter of perspective. He did have to dig out of quite a hole left by the banking meltdown.

ictsooner7
1/11/2012, 05:41 PM
I suppose we'll see how balanced he is when he dredge's up Jeriamiah Wright and Bill Ayers from Obama's past in a "hit" question, like he did the letters from Ron Paul's. I won't be holding my breath though..

He's already done that about wright, asking Obama during a debate that he hand wrote the question given to him by hannity during a radio interview earlier in the day.

KABOOKIE
1/11/2012, 07:04 PM
So I guess you feel the same contempt for all of the conservative Fox News analysts?

Yes. Plus, I don't seem them moderating dem debates.

soonercruiser
1/17/2012, 11:10 PM
The President's economic success or failure is a matter of perspective. He did have to dig out of quite a hole left by the banking meltdown.

So did Ronnie Raygun!
And, I believe that he did a much better job.
I believe that even GW had to deal with the blow to the economy that 9-11 dealt us.
So much for excuses.

The facts is that Obama has done nothing for the American public to break this depression.
Alll he did was distribute the $1 Trillion skimulus to his political cronnies, so that they could return it to him at election time.

Midtowner
1/17/2012, 11:35 PM
So did Ronnie Raygun!
And, I believe that he did a much better job.
I believe that even GW had to deal with the blow to the economy that 9-11 dealt us.
So much for excuses.

The facts is that Obama has done nothing for the American public to break this depression.
Alll he did was distribute the $1 Trillion skimulus to his political cronnies, so that they could return it to him at election time.

So wait... the collapse of the housing market flowed from 9/11?