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10-07-2008, 09:27 AM
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Old School Balla
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The Bomber as School Reformer
Sol Stern
The Bomber as School Reformer Voters—and debate moderators—shouldn’t let Bill Ayers and Barack Obama off the hook. 6 October 2008 - link Back in the early eighties, in an interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, Bill Ayers remembered his reaction upon learning that he would not be prosecuted by the government for his bombing spree as a member of the Weather Underground. “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,” he exulted. Ayers is now a university professor, but he must have been exulting all over again after reading Saturday’s front-page story in the New York Times. The article explored the putative relationship between Ayers and Barack Obama during the time they worked together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a five-year philanthropic venture that, starting in 1995, distributed over $160 million in school-improvement grants to the Windy City’s public schools. Ayers wrote the grant proposal that secured seed money for the schools and ran the implementation arm of the project; Obama became chairman of the board that distributed the grants. Not only did the Times exonerate the Democratic presidential candidate of having anything like a “close” relationship with Ayers—their paths merely “crossed” while working on the Challenge, the paper said—but it also bestowed the honorific of “school reformer” on the ex-bomber. “Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform,” the article maintained. On Meet the Press Sunday morning, Tom Brokaw—who will be moderating tomorrow’s debate between the presidential candidates—picked up this now conventional wisdom and described Ayers as “a school reformer.” Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, productive collective farms.) For instance, at a November 2006 education forum in Caracas, Venezuela, with President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for “the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.” Ayers concluded his speech by declaring that “Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation,” and then, as in days of old, raised his fist and chanted: “Viva Presidente Chávez! Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta la Victoria Siempre!” As I have shown in previous articles in City Journal, Ayers’s school reform agenda focuses almost exclusively on the idea of teaching for “social justice” in the classroom. This has nothing to do with the social-justice ideals of the Sermon on the Mount or Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Rather, Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children with the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive. As a leader of this growing “reform” movement, Ayers was recently elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of ed school professors and researchers. Despite the Times story, American voters still don’t have an accurate picture of the relationship between Obama and Ayers during their work on the Annenberg Challenge. The paper’s account quoted several people who worked on the project as saying that they didn’t think Ayers had any role in selecting Obama for his position as chairman. But we haven’t heard a word about the subject from the two principals. For the first time in his life, Ayers seems to be observing Democratic Party discipline and won’t be talking until after November 4. Meanwhile, in one of the Democratic primary debates, Obama said that Ayers was just “a guy I know in the neighborhood”—which certainly qualifies as one of the biggest fibs told by any of the candidates so far. Is it too much to hope that one of the moderators of the two remaining debates will press Obama for a fuller accounting of his work with Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and also ask Obama what he thinks of Ayers’s views on school reform? If the mainstream media deem it important that voters know which newspapers one of the vice presidential candidates reads, they certainly ought to be demanding more information from a presidential candidate about whom he collaborated with in distributing $160 million to the public schools. How about it, Tom Brokaw?
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10-07-2008, 10:09 AM
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Guru
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It will be up to the Republican party to do so. The media will not expose Obama. Unfortunately, when the Republican party does so, it will look like a smear campaign instead of actually exposing one of Obama's "iffy" relationships.
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10-07-2008, 11:35 AM
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Diamond Member
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odd, we aren't voting for or against bill ayers. the fact that he "pals around" with hugo chavez (nice mention to get people's rage going btw) isn't relative to this race. bnill ayers isn't a confidant, an advisor, and as far as anyone has shown even isn't even a friend of barack obama.
here's the ny times article referenced above: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths By SCOTT SHANE CHICAGO — At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol. Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors. Their relationship has become a touchstone for opponents of Mr. Obama, the Democratic senator, in his bid for the presidency. Video clips on YouTube, including a new advertisement that was broadcast on Friday, juxtapose Mr. Obama’s face with the young Mr. Ayers or grainy shots of the bombings. In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?” More recently, conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.” A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.” Obama campaign aides said the Ayers relationship had been greatly exaggerated by opponents to smear the candidate. “The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false,” said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood. He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park. In the stark presentation of a 30-second advertisement or a television clip, Mr. Obama’s connections with a man who once bombed buildings and who is unapologetic about it may seem puzzling. But in Chicago, Mr. Ayers has largely been rehabilitated. Federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges against him were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct, and he was welcomed back after years in hiding by his large and prominent family. His father, Thomas G. Ayers, had served as chief executive of Commonwealth Edison, the local power company. Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform. “He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview this week, explaining that he has long consulted Mr. Ayers on school issues. Mr. Daley, whose father was Chicago’s mayor during the street violence accompanying the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the so-called Days of Rage the following year, said he saw the bombings of that time in the context of a polarized and turbulent era. “This is 2008,” Mr. Daley said. “People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.” That attitude is widely shared in Chicago, but it is not universal. Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and “God damn America” sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers, whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired. “I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,” Mr. Chapman said in an interview, speaking not of the law but of political and moral implications. “If you’re in public life, you ought to say, ‘I don’t want to be associated with this guy,’ ” Mr. Chapman said. “If John McCain had a long association with a guy who’d bombed abortion clinics, I don’t think people would say, ‘That’s ancient history.’ ” Mr. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a clinical associate professor at Northwestern University Law School who was also a Weather Underground founder, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Schools Project The Ayers-Obama connection first came to public attention last spring, when both Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s Democratic primary rival, and Mr. McCain brought it up. It became the subject of a television advertisement in August by the anti-Obama American Issues Project and drew new attention recently on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page and elsewhere as the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the University of Illinois were opened to researchers. That project was part of a national school reform effort financed with $500 million from Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. Many cities applied for the Annenberg money, and Mr. Ayers joined two other local education activists to lead a broad, citywide effort that won nearly $50 million for Chicago. In March 1995, Mr. Obama became chairman of the six-member board that oversaw the distribution of grants in Chicago. Some bloggers have recently speculated that Mr. Ayers had engineered that post for him. In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama’s appointment. Instead, it was suggested by Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based group whose board Mr. Obama, a young lawyer, had joined the previous year. At a lunch with two other foundation heads, Patricia A. Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation, Ms. Leff suggested that Mr. Obama would make a good board chairman, she said in an interview. Mr. Ayers was not present and had not suggested Mr. Obama, she said. Ms. Graham said she invited Mr. Obama to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Chicago and was impressed. “At the end of the dinner I said, ‘I really want you to be chairman.’ He said, ‘I’ll do it if you’ll be vice chairman,’ ” Ms. Graham recalled, and she agreed. Archives of the Chicago Annenberg project, which funneled the money to networks of schools from 1995 to 2000, show both men attended six board meetings early in the project — Mr. Obama as chairman, Mr. Ayers to brief members on school issues. It was later in 1995 that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted the gathering, in their town house three blocks from Mr. Obama’s home, at which State Senator Alice J. Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Mr. Obama to a few Democratic friends as her chosen successor. That was one of several such neighborhood events as Mr. Obama prepared to run, said A. J. Wolf, the 84-year-old emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel Synagogue, across the street from Mr. Obama’s current house. “If you ask my wife, we had the first coffee for Barack,” Rabbi Wolf said. He said he had known Mr. Ayers for decades but added, “Bill’s mad at me because I told a reporter he’s a toothless ex-radical.” “It was kind of a nasty shot,” Mr. Wolf said. “But it’s true. For God’s sake, he’s a professor.” Other Connections In 1997, after Mr. Obama took office, the new state senator was asked what he was reading by The Chicago Tribune. He praised a book by Mr. Ayers, “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court,” which Mr. Obama called “a searing and timely account of the juvenile court system.” In 2001, Mr. Ayers donated $200 to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. In addition, from 2000 to 2002, the two men also overlapped on the seven-member board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago charity that had supported Mr. Obama’s first work as a community organizer in the 1980s. Officials there said the board met about a dozen times during those three years but declined to make public the minutes, saying they wanted members to be candid in assessing people and organizations applying for grants. A board member at the time, R. Eden Martin, a corporate lawyer and president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, described both men as conscientious in examining proposed community projects but could recall nothing remarkable about their dealings with each other. “You had people who were liberal and some who were pretty conservative, but we usually reached a consensus,” Mr. Martin said of the panel. Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship. If by then the ambitious politician was trying to keep his distance, it would not be a surprise. In an article that by chance was published on Sept. 11, 2001, The New York Times wrote about Mr. Ayers and his just-published memoir, “Fugitive Days,” opening with a quotation from the author: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Three days after the Qaeda attacks, Mr. Ayers wrote a reply posted on his Web site to clarify his quoted remarks, saying the meaning had been distorted. “My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy,” he wrote. But he added that the Weathermen had “showed remarkable restraint” given the nature of the American bombing campaign in Vietnam that they were trying to stop. Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another. An accidental 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house basement killed three radicals; survivors later said they had been making nail bombs to detonate at a military dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And in 1981, in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in Nanuet, N.Y., that involved Weather Underground members including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed. In his memoir, Mr. Ayers was evasive as to which bombings he had a hand in, writing that “some details cannot be told.” By the time of the Brinks robbery, he and Ms. Dohrn had emerged from underground to raise their two children, then Chesa Boudin, whose parents were imprisoned for their role in the heist. Little Influence Seen Mr. Obama’s friends said that history was utterly irrelevant to judging the candidate, because Mr. Ayers was never a significant influence on him. Even some conservatives who know Mr. Obama said that if he was drawn to Ayers-style radicalism, he hid it well. “I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert, when we were together at Harvard Law School,” said Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Mr. Obama and who served as associate White House counsel under President Bush. Mr. Berenson, who is backing Mr. McCain, described his fellow student as “a pragmatic liberal” whose moderation frustrated others at the law review whose views were much farther to the left. Some 15 years later, left-leaning backers of Mr. Obama have the same complaint. “We’re fully for Obama, but we disagree with some of his stands,” said Tom Hayden, the 1960s activist and former California legislator, who helped organize Progressives for Obama. His group opposes the candidate’s call for sending more troops to Afghanistan, for instance, “because we think it’s a quagmire just like Iraq,” he said. “A lot of our work is trying to win over progressives who think Obama is too conservative.” Mr. Hayden, 68, said he has known Mr. Ayers for 45 years and was on the other side of the split in the radical antiwar movement that led Mr. Ayers and others to form the Weathermen. But Mr. Hayden said he saw attempts to link Mr. Obama with bombings and radicalism as “typical campaign shenanigans.” “If Barack Obama says he’s willing to talk to foreign leaders without preconditions,” Mr. Hayden said, “I can imagine he’d be willing to talk to Bill Ayers about schools. But I think that’s about as far as their relationship goes.” |
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10-07-2008, 12:55 PM
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What's important and give credence to this issue is that Bill Ayers has had some level of influence on Obama.
I believe it is fair to research and ask question to determine what is true or not-true? What did Obama learn from Bill Ayers? Specifically what values has he taken from Bill Ayers? What are Obama's views in terms of education reform as dicated by Bill Ayers? What does Obama think about the relationship and ties between Bill Ayers and Hugo Chavez? What promise to America can Obama make in regards to the influence of Bill Ayers on future policies? What is Obama willing to let the people of America hold Obama accountable for in his presidency? I would love to hear the media go to town and ask these question of Obama, and better yet go into details behind the folks tied to the financial crisis who are now advising or working for him in his campaign...what about ACORN, what does he support or not support regarding ACORN. When will we here the media ask very direct and pointed questions to Obama? Let Obama make very direct statements that the people can judge for themselves on how he carries out his presidency...if he is honest and leads with integrity, then he has nothing to fear. If however, he is a liar and will actually lead in a way that contradicts what he is saying on the campaign, then he will avoid these questions. If he wants to exude "Presidential" then he needs to answer the tough questions about him and where he wants to lead America. So yes, asking him about Bill Ayers has everything to do with this election. |
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10-07-2008, 03:18 PM
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Quote:
CNN: Obama’s lying about William Ayers October 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey link You’ll want to double-check the logo at the bottom left corner during this report. It really is CNN and Anderson Cooper fact-checking Barack Obama’s claims to have barely known William Ayers — and calling it dishonest. Stanley Kurtz even gets to make an appearance on a network other than Fox for this report (via Dirty Harry’s Place): Griffin also tells a somewhat nonplussed Cooper that Obama has lied about his “coming out party” at the home of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in 1995. Obama has said that Alice Palmer arranged the fundraiser and the venue, but Griffin spoke to two people who attended the event, who claim Obama lied. Palmer had nothing to do with that event outside of being invited to it. Obama and Ayers planned the event themselves. Obama has lied repeatedly about his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist. He spent years working for Ayers, promoting Ayers’ causes. Even CNN won’t buy the Obama line any longer. Expect John McCain to raise this point tonight in the debate.
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10-07-2008, 04:53 PM
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the cnn report doesn't reveal any new items. the information has all been brought up before. obama never "worked for ayers", they served together on boards.
those "radical" grants? efforts to teach peaceful resolutions and also african american studies. wow, how radical.... frankly, if ayers is the only issue that mccain has in his toolbox to use against obama, the race is truly over and obama wins in a landslide. mccain needs to focus on the issues and not get dragged into an argument over who knew whom when. |
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10-07-2008, 05:32 PM
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10-07-2008, 05:36 PM
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Tonight, I predict will be the day that the so called polls turn in McCain favor no matter what. The press will be all over where Obama lost this debate, and where Obama has finally showed his true inexperience. Mark my words, these so called National polls will start leaning towards McCain, and when McCain wins, they will point to this debate to where Obama lost this race. That is my prediction. Mark this post down Mavdog..
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10-07-2008, 06:01 PM
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"Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is." - Winston Churchill Last edited by purplefrog; 10-07-2008 at 06:02 PM. |
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10-08-2008, 09:47 AM
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Old School Balla
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10-08-2008, 10:43 AM
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from what I can see, the only "new" information is the revelation by palmer that she was not behind the greet and meet at ayer's home.
yawn. if that's earth shattering news that shakes the campaign, we're focusing on the minutiae. does this incidental item call into question obama's "credibility"? not in my book, as it was such a small item in the background, and could have been easily a mistake on his part. or it could call into question palmer's credibility, I can't say...nonetheless it is really insignifigant, as nobody is denying that the event occured. credibility is intact, that's the bottom line. |
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10-08-2008, 11:06 AM
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Old School Balla
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The lived in the same neighborhood thing was meant to imply that they were only casual acquaintances and was purposefully misleading. The "kids went to school together" thing was also purposefully misleading, because their kids are about 20 years apart in age. Ayers threw a party to start Obama's political campaign in Illinois -- at Obama's request. Obama has been dishonest about his relationship with Ayers from the get-go. The obvious question is: Why? The other obvious question about Ayers is what did he seen in Obama that caused him to gravitate toward Obama?
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10-08-2008, 11:19 AM
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Now, lets take all the neighbors that lived in their neighborhood or kids attended the same school or PTA board or even worked before with the same company or even in the same building and put them in this same pot. OK! Because now they are Radicals as well from so called associations. Now, the pot is getting bigger right? Yes. Now, once we get this group, I do believe this new group had neighbors as well, so we HAVE to lump them into this pot as well, because associations is by the standards we just set. Right? Now, we have to continue this cycle for infinity until we get all the terrorists in this pot..Guess who is a terrorist? Let me give you a starting point to ponder. Everyone here on this message board must be a terrorist by the new standards set forth by the ones talking this mess. |
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10-08-2008, 11:24 AM
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Old School Balla
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"Just because you can post doesn't necessarily mean that you should." Or somesuch.
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10-08-2008, 11:27 AM
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Last edited by Silk Smoov; 10-08-2008 at 11:29 AM. |
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10-08-2008, 11:29 AM
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moderately impressed
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I'm expecting a TerrorXpert2008 to sign up at any moment.
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10-08-2008, 11:31 AM
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Old School Balla
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10-08-2008, 11:33 AM
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Hey! Dont worry you still have another year of two before your teacher talks about long division. Dont worry, there are plenty of us here that will help.  Does DJ really know how old you are? Just wondering out loud. |
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10-08-2008, 11:35 AM
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10-08-2008, 11:45 AM
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all this info has been public since the get go, there has not been any denial by obama that he had the greet and meet, or that they served on the boards together. why does he minimize the relationship? pretty darn obvious when we see the type of accusations being made. what would have happened if obama said "well, yes bill and I worked a lot together and I've been a guest in his home."? the cartoon of the gas being poured on the fire is appropo... does obama "play down" the relationship? a yes. does that mean that there is more to the relationship than we know? a no. does this question obama's credibility? a no to that as well. do you expect him to provide fodder for the right to attack him? that would clearly question his intelligence! Last edited by Mavdog; 10-08-2008 at 11:46 AM. |
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10-08-2008, 01:18 PM
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If I combine the lack of forthrightness by the Obama camp in regard to Ayers with his distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright (pastor/spiritual mentor) when it became politically expedient, I get the sense this guy will say/do anything in order to get elected. He associates himself with Ayers when it will help him politically. He distances himself from a 20 year old friend and advisor when it hurts politically. How can you believe anything this guy says when his goal is obvious and the means are unimportant? How can you not question his character and integrity? The "change" Obama is talking about is the change he's willing to make in order to make himself a more palatable candidate. Who knows what he'll do if elected. My biggest problem is that I really don't like McCain either.
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10-09-2008, 07:23 PM
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Old School Balla
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After you read the blog entry, click on the video of the interview. Very revealing. Glad to see that CNN and now another MSM guy (Halperin) are finally looking into this issue with some degree of persistence. I agree with Halperin and Wehner: Why won't they answer the question?
**** The Unasked Question Peter Wehner - 10.08.2008 - 5:39 PM - link Mark Halperin of Time magazine conducted an intelligent and revealing interview with Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser for Barack Obama’s campaign, which can be seen here. Mr. Halperin’s question was straightforward. At some point Barack Obama learned that William Ayers was a domestic terrorist and was unrepentant about it, Halperin says, yet at a minimum Obama continued to associate professionally (and perhaps personally) with Ayers after knowing about his past. Halperin then asks if it’s therefore reasonable to conclude that Obama, while having deplored the violent acts of Ayers, felt it was fine to continue to have professional associations with a domestic terrorist. The answer, of course, is yes – and watching Mr. Gibbs squirm and evade that simple, direct question tells you everything you need to know. One wishes that Senator McCain, or Tom Brokaw, or Bob Schieffer, or Jim Lehrer, or anyone else in the press would ask that same question of Senator Obama, in just the same way that Halperin did. It would be an illuminating response. It’s up to voters to decide how much weight they want to put on Senator Obama’s association with Bill Ayers. Some may believe it should matter a lot, some may believe it should matter a little, and some may believe it shouldn’t matter at all. But that association, like the associations with the Reverend Wright and Tony Rezko, are part of Obama’s history and deserve to be discussed in a temperate, reasonable, factual way. Mark Halperin attempted to do just that. Team Obama’s evasive and clumsy response simply raises additional doubts about its candidate and his past. If there’s a simple explanation to Obama’s past associations, it would be helpful to hear what it is.
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10-09-2008, 07:28 PM
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#23 | ||||||
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Old School Balla
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10-09-2008, 08:02 PM
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#24 |
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KG, since you seem to strongly believe that Obama should have an answer to the question of whether he thinks it is appropriate (or at least, not inappropriate) to have some sort of association with Ayers...let me ask you a question and see what your response is.
In what way do you believe Obama's association with Ayers materially affects Obama's approach to governance? |
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10-09-2008, 08:07 PM
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#25 | |
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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Quote:
To answer your question, I think it calls into question the man's judgment, his real beliefs (versus his campaign rhetoric), and his worldview. The fact that Obama and his campaign have misled the public about the nature of the relationship from the get-go makes it clear that he has something to hide and knows that the public would not approve of it.
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10-09-2008, 08:48 PM
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#26 |
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Guru
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Cowboys Country
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You are being as vague as you are accusing them of being. What is it he has to hide? If his real beliefs and worldview are closely aligned with Ayers--as...I guess...you are trying to suggest--then, again, how would that manifest itself in the way he would govern?
Are you trying to score political points, or do you actually have something to say about these issues? Are we to take it as "Ayers, bad = Obama, bad"? Or can you articulate something specific? |
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10-09-2008, 09:16 PM
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#27 | ||
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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I think his lack of honesty speaks poorly of his character. I don't think dishonesty is a good trait for the President to have. As for how his worldview would manifest itself in the way he would govern, you and I have been down this road before. I could list off all of the negative things that I think he will do if he becomes President (like appointing liberal Supreme Court justices, increasing taxes, etc.), but what's the point? I don't think you want to have a serious discussion about it. Bottom line, you seem to think he's this center-left guy who's going to carefully and thoughtfully guide the country. I think he's a far left guy who's going to use his time in office (aided by a Democratic Congress) to advance a progressive agenda as far and as fast as he can.
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10-09-2008, 09:20 PM
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#28 |
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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Why the press hides Obama's lies - Roger Simon (10-8-08)
link Ever since the first sound bites of the execrable Reverend Wright hit the airwaves, it has been obvious that Barack Obama is a less than candid human being. It was impossible to believe that a man who had spent twenty years in Wright’s pews did not have a pretty good idea of the minister’s vile views. You would have had to have been deaf and dumb not to. And Wright was the inspiration of Obama’s books! Yet when the candidate was confronted by the press about this, he denied knowing about Wright’s excesses and made a speech that was hailed by the media as a monument in race relations equal, some said, to Dr. King. It was at that precise moment I knew we were living in a media-constructed lunatic asylum. That didn’t take a rocket scientist, I can assure you, only someone with a modicum of common sense. But it only got worse. When Wright predictably “acted out” and let loose with one of his racist screeds of the very type Obama pretended never to have heard, the candidate blithely pushed the minister under the bus with barely a peep from the compliant press. About that time I learned of his putative relationship with William Ayers, the unrepentant Weatherman. I was assured by the New York Times and others that this was of no consequence, that Ayers was, in Obama’s words, just “some guy in the neighborhood.” Another lie. The more we learn of Obama’s ties to Ayers the more complex and disturbing they become. It is unlikely that we will ever know the extent of them, certainly not before the election. Most of what we do know does not come from the Times or the Washington Post of vaunted Woodward & Bernstein fame, but from Stanley Kurtz of the National Review, who has been following this story of the Ayers-Obama whitewash for months. Under orders or not, the normally voluble Mr. Ayers himself has kept his yap shut. And now we learn of yet another strange obfuscation or omission. In 1996, Obama was apparently a member of the Chicago “New Party,” a now defunct socialist political party of some stripe or other. There’s nothing wrong with being a socialist. I called myself one for the better part of twenty years. Millions of people have and many still do. But there is something very wrong with hiding who you are or who you were from the electorate—especially if you want to be President of the United States. Yet that seems to be a habit of Mr. Obama’s, with the collusion of the press. To my knowledge, no one in the mainstream media has begun to inquire into the details of Obama’s curiously unreported years at Columbia and Harvard, although much could be relatively easily ascertained. Obama himself has not been remotely forthcoming about them. The inescapable conclusion is that Barack Obama is a highly deceptive, often dishonest individual. Again, many would say this is standard operating procedure for politicians in our culture (and most others too). But Obama presents himself as something different, a new kind of post-modern politician above the conventional dirty dealings of backroom politics. Of course, by now that is something of a joke—yet the press is loath to admit it or to do much to balance the investigative reporting equation. They don’t even begin. What is the explanation for this? The most obvious reasons are bias and the desire to defeat the opposing candidate. But beneath these obvious explanations, I sense something more complex and pathological. Deeper fears are perhaps at play - the loss of self-image and personality disintegration, also a desperate need to conform to a fragile peer group. And in these times more than ever, a yet more potent terror – job loss. UPDATE: Two related articles of note have appeared this morning. In the New York Post, Ron Radosh explores Ayers’ educational theories as they relate to Obama . In the American Thinker, Jack Cashill makes the rather extroardinary allegation, using various linguistic study methods, that Ayers may have ghost written Obama’s first book. As a memoirist myself, I found this jaw-dropping. MORE from neo-neocon: Ayers and Obama in synch on education
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The Official KG Twitter Feed Last edited by kg_veteran; 10-09-2008 at 09:20 PM. |
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10-09-2008, 09:25 PM
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#29 | |||||
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Diamond Member
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Location: Texas
Posts: 6,014
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ridiculous. So you don't think lying affects someone's credibility? In my business, it certainly does![/QUOTE] |
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10-09-2008, 09:33 PM
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#30 |
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Inactive.
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Posts: 41,984
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I thought this was going to be about Dirk Nowitzki and I am sincerely disspointed.
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10-09-2008, 09:40 PM
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#31 | ||
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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Quote:
Really? Quote:
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10-09-2008, 09:53 PM
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#32 | |
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Banned
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 2,885
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Mavdog and Chum, You guys know you cant win on this because no matter what you say, they will reply that Obama should have said more, which means he cant be trusted as president. Have you not noticed that these same McCain backers have not answered our questions on McCain's radical friends and past? Just look over to that thread and you see we got two responses back. Now, if any of us responded the same here, we would be avoiding the question and proving their point. We have yet to get a serious response back on the McCain ties to some radicals. |
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10-09-2008, 10:18 PM
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#33 |
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Guru
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Cowboys Country
Posts: 23,336
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KG, I think you know very well how the game of politics is played, and as such I find your cries of despair over Obama representing Ayers as "a guy I know in the neighbourhood" and Obama telling lies--gasp!--to be no more than crocodile tears. Please. We're all more informed than that, I would expect.
As for Ayers and Wright, I'm wondering why the immediate conclusion from observing that Obama had those relationships is that Obama is a socialist who will spin our country wildly down a path that would spin our heads. Why do you seem to believe that one necessarily follows from the other? I, a pragmatist, see it differently. I suspect that Obama associated himself with the Trinity church because it would help him launch his political career. I suspect that Obama had a relationship with Ayers because it was expedient for Obama's rise as a public servant for Obama to serve on that Annenberg board. I see no reason--no reason--to logically conclude that Obama shares the same views as Wright or Ayers. [In Joe Biden style:] I repeat. I see no reason to logically conclude that Obama shares the same views as Wright or Ayers. Because, you see, there is whole other body of work out there. There are MANY other relationships Obama has. Right? Why do you pick and choose the relationships? What about Reinhold Niebuhr, who Obama is said to have great belief in? You are cherry picking, and either you know it or you are too blinded by partisanship to confront it. Neither scenario speaks well for your intellectual rigor. |
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10-10-2008, 09:50 AM
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#34 | ||||
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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At least you admit you just don't really care about dishonesty. It explains why we differ on this subject. Quote:
If anything, it indicates to anyone with a hint of objectivity that they shouldn't trust a word that the man says. After all, applying your logic, he'll do and say whatever he has to in order to get elected. Quote:
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You can choose to be dismissive of the issue, and McCain was an idiot for waiting until just recently to finally start addressing it, but that doesn't make it a non-issue as so many of the pundits proclaim it to be.
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10-10-2008, 09:52 AM
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#35 |
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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A Question of Barack Obama's Character
By Charles Krauthammer link WASHINGTON -- Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association. But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate. McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate. McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by The New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist. This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely. Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once. Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough." Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers' unreconstructed 1960s radicalism? No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama. First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics? Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success. Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition. Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers' views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond. Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse. Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.
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10-10-2008, 01:27 PM
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#36 |
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Platinum Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: state of eternal optimism
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Good, solid article by Krauthammer.
The possibility that Obama does not see the potential problems with certain "relationships" until they become a political liability is disturbing. To me it shows that he'll talk with anyone, allow himself to be mentored by anyone, and even spend 20+ years listening to anyone, until it affects his pursuit of power. Then, for god's sake, cut that person off and disavow them. Why doesn't the instinct to break off the relationship click in a bit earlier?? At the very least, doesn't it suggest this naive and inexperienced man has a problem seeing obstacles unless they hit him in the face? Or maybe he's got a blindspot....... I found this quote on a web site called scrappleface (www.scrappleface.com/?p=3144). The site itself looks pretty iffy, but does anyone know if this is an accurate quote? “Frankly, when you live the kind of lifestyle that I have, it’s hard to make friends,” said Sen. Obama. “You take what you can get, and you don’t ask a lot of questions. These guys are the best I could do.”
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"Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is." - Winston Churchill Last edited by purplefrog; 10-10-2008 at 01:28 PM. |
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10-11-2008, 04:04 AM
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#37 |
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Diamond Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
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By ANDY BARR | 10/10/08 2:54 PM EDT
Republican Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois said Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin should cool her rhetoric directed at Barack Obama. “This doesn't befit the office that she's running for. And frankly, people don't like it,” LaHood said during an interview on WBBM, a Chicago radio station. Palin has accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and of putting “political ambitions in front of doing what's right for our troops.” As Palin and running mate John McCain have upped the level of attack against Obama, the crowd at their rallies have grown increasingly angry toward the Illinois senator. In recent days, shouts of “terrorist” and “traitor” have come from the crowd when McCain has mentioned Obama’s name. LaHood criticized the attacks against Obama, which he said “certainly don't reflect the character of the man.” The Illinois Republican, who announced last year that he will retire at the end of this term, has endorsed McCain. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14467.html
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10-11-2008, 04:09 AM
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#38 |
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Diamond Member
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McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred
By Frank Schaeffer October 10, 2008 John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence. At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee - an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman. Shame! John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain. You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate. John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there. Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs. John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows. John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations. Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever. We will hold you responsible. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...,7557571.story
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10-11-2008, 04:34 AM
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#39 |
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Diamond Member
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10-11-2008, 08:05 AM
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#40 | |
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Old School Balla
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 13,097
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*** John Leo The Power of One Liberal media transforms a single bigot at a Sarah Palin rally into a racist mob. 9 October 2008 - link Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers. Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to the dismal interview. The Tampa Tribune, for example, reported that she said: “I shoulda told them I was just trying to keep Tina Fey in business.” But Milbank’s report triggered Democratic rage across the Internet with his charge that “Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness.” Some in the Clearwater crowd, he wrote, shouted abuse at reporters. Someone yelled “Kill him,” apparently a reference to Ayers; and one person shouted an epithet at a network sound man (apparently the N-word, though Milbank didn’t say) and told him, “Sit down, boy.” Two shouting extremists in a crowd of 4,500 are two too many, of course. The question is whether these outliers offer sufficient evidence for a clearly hostile reporter to demonstrate that Palin’s rallies have gotten ugly. Florida reporters did not see the event that way. The St. Petersburg Times ran a benign story on the Palin speech. William March of the Tampa Tribune told me, “They booed Obama and the press, but that just makes it a normal Republican rally.” March admitted that he was standing further from the speaker’s stand than national press reporters, and therefore heard less, but he maintains that the rally was no hate-fest. An early web version of Milbank’s column was headlined, “In Fla., Palin Goes for the Rough Stuff as Audience Boos Obama.” Rough stuff? There’s no evidence that Palin did anything more than challenge Obama on Ayers. In the short TV clip available at the Huffington Post, the crowd booed in response to Palin’s litany of Obama’s liberal votes in the Senate. This is pretty standard campaign behavior. Milbank’s lone racist at the rally soon became a group (or a mob) of people shouting racial epithets. A New York Times editorial Tuesday (“The Politics of Attack”) misquoted Milbank’s Post column, claiming that one person shouted “Kill him” and “others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.” Many blogs followed suit: “Crowd at Palin Rally Hurled Racial Epithets at African American on News Crew,” read the headline at Pensito Review. This was too much for Bob Somerby, the left-leaning blogger at the Daily Howler. Calling Milbank “a highly unreliable chronicler,” Somerby taunted the Times for multiplying racists at the rally: “It’s the power of pluralization!...One example becomes much more powerful when we stick an ‘s’ on the end. In this case, one epithet-shouter turns into a group. How many people were shouting those epithets? The editors let you imagine.” At the Huffington Post, the “Kill him” shout directed at Ayers was interpreted as an assassination threat against Obama. Another Huffington piece asked, “Is Palin Trying to Incite Violence Against Obama?” As the misreporting gathered steam on the Internet, writers became ever angrier. “The event sounds like the precursor to a lynching,” wrote a Daily Kos blogger. Another opined: “There is a time to start feeling fear.” Former New York Times reporter Adam Clymer compared Palin events with George Wallace speeches, though he gracefully conceded that “lots of journalists have worked in situations more menacing than covering Sarah Palin.” This was a disastrous outing for the Post, the Times, and bloggers determined to view Palin appearances as brownshirt rallies. If the atmosphere is so hate-filled and racist at these events, why does the evidence come down to one shouter at one rally?
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