Uh huh. You can hold whatever opinion you wish.

But I'd call what I said more Patriotic.

I argue for the USA ahead of the "world."

Too bad you don't see it that way, but then the liberal mindset seldom does until the "world" impinges on their OWN laps. Until then, it's someone else's problem and it's "wrong" to put "America first."

But in your 'xenophobic world' no one would HAVE the right of Free Speech anyway, right? Chop heads and "honor kill" anyone you feel has hurt your "honor," right?

Ya, the rest of the world is such a better place than America.

And while we are at it, what ever happened to all those liberal Holloywood celebs who threatened to move out of the USA if George Bush got elected? Couldn't they find any better place to live the way they want to live?

So let's put this whole Ayers controversy to rest. Here's the actual FACTS rather than the typical FoxNoise "Smear Of The Day" talking points.


Pointed out for what? If William Ayers was a part of the Obama campaign I would understand the association, but the FACT remains he is NOT. I don't deny the Ayers past is treacherous, but it was also a sign of the times during Vietnam war. The President himself has his own regrets to that era since he dodged serving in Vietnam.

Did George W Bush Dodge Serving In Vietnam?

Insisting that there is some insidious relationship between Obama and Ayers is a desperate, grasping at straws attempt to discredit a candidate. Invoking the words that Obama "palls around with terrorists" to try and sway a losing campaign. A blind man could see the pure SMEAR politics behind those accusations.

So lets look at the FACTS...

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama at one time lived in the same neighborhood in the city of Chicago, and both had worked on education reform in the state of Illinois. The two met "at a luncheon meeting about school reform."
How shocking that two people living in the same city and working on the same issue of "Education Reform" would meet.

Obama was named to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project Board of Directors to oversee the distribution of grants in Chicago.

The Annenberg Challenge Project was established by right-wing REPUBLICAN pillar, Walter Annenberg. Since Annenberg selected Chicago as a recipient of the challenge grant, he must have saw merit in the initiative authored by Ayers, Hallet and Chapman.

Later in 1995, Ayers hosted "a coffee" for "Mr. Obama's first run for office."

Shame on Ayers for not wearing a flashing neon sign that said "I was once a radical anti-war activist 40 years ago. How dare Obama not run background checks on every person which he has ever been an associate. You think just maybe because Ayers was not convicted, it is likely that Obama had no idea of Ayers past actions.

The two served on the board of a community anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 2000 and 2002, during which time the board met twelve times.

Again, nothing more than the coincidence of two people being active in politics in the city which they reside.

In April 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate. Since 2002, there has been little linking Obama and Ayers. The senator said in September 2008 that he hadn't "seen him in a year-and-a-half." In February 2008, Obama spokesman Bill Burton released a statement from the senator about the relationship between the two: "Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous." CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the non-profit projects in which the two men were involved. Internal reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic "have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship".

MORE PROOF...

Appearing on screen are the words "A deliberate attempt to smear Obama," attributed to The Associated Press, and the word "false," credited to a CNN report. Though the ad does not mention it, both reports refer to the claim by McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, that Obama is "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," a reference to William Ayers, a Chicago professor of education, who in the 1960s was part of a radical anti war group that set off pipe bombs in lavatories in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.

Of Palin's charge, CNN concluded:

CNN Fact Check, Oct. 5: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the city of Chicago awarded William Ayers the "Citizen of the Year Award" in 1997 for his work on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. On a site that encourages repentance, I would say that is exactly what William Ayers has tried to do with the rest of his life. Make up for mistakes he made over 40 years ago. It's a moot point anyways because the heart of the matter is whether he and Obama are associates. Which obviously, other than the interactions of people involved in the same business, there is no ongoing relationship. The right-wing propaganda machine can try as they might to make it more than that, but it will never stick because it is completely FALSE! No more than the accusations of a desperate campaign.

Want2Stay

You just compared Obama to Hitler. 'Nuff said.

When I think of "willing sheep", I think of Christian conservatives.

Well, so much for "love thy neighbor".

I guess "love thy neighbor, as long as they are just like you" would be more accurate.

As far as the celebs, I couldn't care less. They are 0.0000001% of the population, and not worth commenting on.

Hmmm, for a second, I thought you must have been talking John and Cindy, the honorable couple of the century...

AGG

Now that's almost amusing, coming from someone who starts his posts with "you liberals do not think much"...Hypocritic perhaps?

AGG

Unfortunately, this misses the point. No one said he was a "part" of Obama's campaign. That is not the point. What has been said is that Obama has strong ties to an unrepentant domestic terrorist who brags that he "didn't do enough" in his attacks on America. That is an attitude he has TODAY. That was his attitude when he LAUNCHED Obamas political career in his living room. That was his attitude over the years they worked together on the Annenberg project.

The fact that Obama has close political affiliations with America haters like Jeremiah Wright and terrorist, Bill Ayers reveals an aspect of Obamas CHARACTER that should be taken into account.

And Obama knows this or he wouldn't have LIED and dismissed him as nothing more than "some guy who lives in my neighborhood." Dismissing this with idiotic spin like: he did the bombings when he was 8, or Ayers is not part of the campaign is not going to work on most people. It is clear they worked closely together and it is clear that Ayers HATES AMERICA and has no remorse about his terrorism. That is a SUITABLE FRIEND to Obama. We are known by the company we keep so this needs to be considered.

If those kinds of associations are OK with democrats, that is fine, but please lets not be dishonest about it and lets not dismiss it as an "mudslinging." The truth is not "mudslinging."

If John McCain hung out with David Duke of the Klan, wouldnt that be relevant information for us to consider? Of course it would.

WALL STREET JOURNAL
OPINION SEPTEMBER 23, 2008

Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools
By STANLEY KURTZ


Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.


Bill Ayers.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

<snip>

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.



entire article

Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?
The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned.

Why? I suspect it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.

You might think the Times would be more curious. After all, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has already lied to the Gray Lady about the origins of his relationship with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Back in May, in a cheery profile of Obama’s early Chicago days, the Times claimed (emphasis is mine):

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.


Now look, anyone who gave five seconds of thought to that passage smelled a rat. Ayers and Dohrn are passionate radical activists who lived as fugitives for a decade. There’s no way they held a political coming-out party for someone who was unknown to them. Obviously, they already knew him well enough by then to feel very comfortable. They might have been sympathetic to a relative stranger, but sponsoring such a gathering in one’s living room is a strong endorsement.

And now, even the Times now knows it’s been had. In this past weekend’s transparent whitewashing of the Obama/Ayers tie, the paper claimed that the pair first met earlier in 1995, “at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper[.]” That storyline is preposterous too, but it is also a marked revision of the paper’s prior account (which, naturally, reporter Scott Shane fails to mention).

Why the change? The tacit concession was forced by Stanley Kurtz and Steve Diamond — whom the Times chooses not to acknowledge but who hover over Shane’s sunny narrative like a dark cloud.

Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers. As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”

Be clear on that much: Whether clothed as a terrorist or an academic, Ayers has made abundantly clear in his public statements, both before and after he established a working relationship and mutual admiration society with Obama, that he remains a revolutionary fueled by hatred of the United States. And while Obama now ludicrously pleads ignorance about Ayers’s terrorism — the terrorism that made the unabashed Ayers an icon of the Left — understand that this rabid anti-Americanism is the common denominator running through Obama’s orbit of influences.

Yes, Ayers is blunter than Obama. As he so delicately told the Times, America makes him “want to puke.” The smoother Obama is content to say our society needs fundamental “change.” But what they’re talking about is not materially different.

Such sentiments should make Obama unelectable. So, when it comes to his own radical moorings, Obama is engaged in classic liar behavior. He changes his story as the facts change — and the burden is always on you to dig up the facts, not on him to come clean. Yesterday, asked to comment on the Ayers relationship, David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, hilariously chirped, “There’s no evidence that they’re close.” Translation: Get back to us when you can prove more damaging information — until then, we don’t need to further refine our perjury.

And then Axelrod gave us still more lies: “There’s no evidence that Obama in any way subscribed to any of Ayers’ views.”

Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Axelrod, how do you explain Obama’s breathless endorsement of Ayers’s 1997 Leftist polemic on the criminal-justice system, A Kind and Just Parent? As Stanley Kurtz has recounted, Ayers’s book is a radical indictment of American society: We, not the criminals, are responsible for the violent crime that plagues our cities; even the most vicious juvenile offenders should not be tried as adults; prisons should eventually be replaced by home detention; American justice is comparable to South Africa under Apartheid. Obama’s reaction? He described the book as “a searing and timely account” — a take even the Times concedes was a “rave review.”

Obama and Ayers shared all kinds of views. That is why they worked so well together at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), funding the likes of Mike Klonsky, a fellow SDS and Maoist associate of Ayers who, as Steve Diamond relates, used to host a “social justice” blog on Obama’s campaign website. With Obama heading the board of directors that approved expenditures and Ayers, the mastermind running its operational arm, hundreds of thousands of CAC dollars poured into the “Small Schools Workshop” — a project begun by Ayers and run by Klonsky to spur the revolution from the ground up.

Precisely because they shared the same views, Obama and Ayers also worked comfortably together on the board of the Woods Fund. There, they doled out thousands of dollars to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church to promote its Marxist “black liberation theology.” Moreover, they underwrote the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by Rashid Khalidi, a top apologist for Yasser Arafat. As National Review’s David Pryce-Jones notes, Khalidi once directed WAFA, the terrorist PLO’s news agency. Then, like Ayers, he repackaged himself as an academic who rails at American policy. The AAAN, which supports driver’s licenses and public welfare benefits for illegal aliens, holds that the establishment of Israel was an illegitimate “catastrophe.”

Khalidi, who regards Israel as a “racist” “apartheid” state, supports Palestinian terror strikes against Israeli military targets. It’s little surprise that he should be such a favorite of Ayers, the terrorist for whom “racism” and “apartheid” trip off the tongue as easily as “pass the salt.”

And it’s no surprise that the like-minded Obama would be a fan. Khalidi, after all, has mastered the Arafat art of posing as a moderate before credulous Westerners while (as Martin Kramer documents) scalding America’s “Zionist lobby” when addressing Arabic audiences. The Obama who decries “bitter” Americans “cling[ing] to guns or religion” when he’s in San Francisco but morphs into a God-fearing Second Amendment enthusiast when he’s in Pennsylvania — like the Obama who pummels NAFTA before labor union supporters but has advisers quietly assure the Canadians not to worry about such campaign cant — surely appreciates the craft.

Obama and Ayers not only demonstrated their shared view of Khalidi by funding him. They also gave glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia’s greener pastures. That would be the same Columbia from which Obama graduated in 1983.

Khalidi was leaving to become director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, assuming a professorship endowed in honor of another Arafat devotee, the late Edward Said. A hero of the Left who consulted with terrorist leaders (including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah) and was once photographed hurling rocks at Israelis from the Lebanese border, Said was exposed by researcher Justus Reid Weiner as a fraud who had created a fictional account of his childhood, the rock on which he built his Palestinian grievance mythology.

We know precious little about Obama’s Columbia years, but the Los Angeles Times has reported that he studied under Said. In and of itself, that is meaningless: Said was a hotshot prof and hundreds of students took his comparative-lit courses. But Obama plainly maintained some sort of tie with Said — a photo making the Internet rounds shows Obama conversing with the great man himself at a 1998 Arab American community dinner in Chicago, where the Obamas and Saids were seated together.

Said had a wide circle of radical acquaintances. That circle clearly included Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. When they came out of hiding in the early 1980s (while Obama was attending Columbia), Ayers took education courses at Bank Street College, adjacent to Columbia in Morningside Heights — before earning his doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College in 1987.

Said was so enamored of Ayers that he commended the unrepentant terrorist’s 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days — the book in which the haughty Ayers brags about his Weatherman past — with this glowing dust-jacket blurb:

What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers's America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or “second thinking.” For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading.

Sorry mess, indeed. For his part, Ayers is at least equally enthralled by Said, of whom, even in death, Ayers says “[t]here is no one better positioned … to offer advice on the conduct of intellectual life[,]” than the man who was “over the last thirty-five years, the most passionate, eloquent, and clear-eyed advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people.”

After they left Columbia, both Obama and Ayers went to Chicago: Obama to become a “community organizer” (the director of the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Gamaliel Foundation dedicated to Saul Alinsky’s principles for radicalizing society); Ayers, two years later, to teach at the University of Illinois. Diamond details how they both became embroiled in a major education controversy that resulted in 1988 reform legislation.

Ayers’s father, Tom Ayers, a prominent Chicago businessman, was also deeply involved in the reform effort. Interestingly, in 1988, while Obama and Ayers toiled on the same education agenda, Bernadine Dohrn worked as an intern at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin — even though she could not be admitted to the bar due to her contempt conviction for refusing to cooperate in a terrorist investigation. How could that happen? It turns out that Sidley was the longtime outside counsel for Tom Ayers’s company, Commonwealth Edison. That is, Ayers’ father had pull at the firm and successfully pressed for the hiring of his daughter-in-law.

The next summer, though he had gone off to Harvard Law School (another impressive accomplishment he prefers not to discuss), Obama returned to the Windy City to work as an intern at Sidley. Dohrn was gone by then to teach at Northwestern. A coincidence? Maybe (Diamond doesn’t think so), but that’s an awful lot of coincidences — and a long trail of common people, places and experiences — for people who purportedly didn’t know each other yet managed to end up as partners in significant financial and political ventures.

In short, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama moved in the same circles, were driven by the same cause, and admired the same radicals all the way from Morningside Heights to Hyde Park. They ended up publicly admiring each other, promoting each other’s work, sitting on the same boards, and funding the same Leftist agitators.

You could conclude, as I do, that it all goes back to a formative time in his life that Obama refuses to discuss. Or you could buy the fairy tale that Bill Ayers first encountered an unknown, inexperienced, third-year associate from a small Chicago law-firm over coffee in 1995 and suddenly decided Barack Obama was the perfect fit to oversee the $150 million pot of gold Ayers hoped would underwrite his revolution.

LINK

The truth is not mudslinging, agreed. And you know full well that people who complain about mudslinging are not complaining about the truth; they are complaining about candidates' constant efforts to bring down the other guy instead of explaining why they are the better candidate. The implication of "I am the better choice because he has skeletons in the closet" is absurd.

If folks want to make decisions based on what people did years ago, who their friends were/are, etc, that is fine by me. They will no doubt enjoy reading about Ayers or Wright, just like they will enjoy reading about McCain's affairs, Keating 5 ("poor judgment"), Cindy's unbelievable hypocrisy ("do we want HER in the White House??"), etc. But regardless, it'll still be mudslinging, because it says nothing good about the candidate you are promoting.

Personally, this to me is still a choice between the lesser of two evils. I do not like the Wright connection, but to me it is evened out by the affairs/Keating/Bush/Palin anchors that McCain carries. I wish there were other choices.

But after 8 years of Dubya, no matter what "character" he might have had, I believe that intelligence, understanding of the world around us, and vision, are infinitely more important than "character".

AGG

ML,


Ayers does not hold that opinion TODAY.

Quote: Bill Ayers's blog explaining the soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough chit."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"


Nothing dishonest about it. There is most definately a double standard for sure though. When people point out that McCain has his OWN unsavory friendships, Charles H. Keating, it's scoffed by the right wing conservatives as being unimportant, but when there's a story about Obama's unsavory acquaintances were supposed to believe it as gospel. The bias couldn't be more blatant if they tried. :RollieEyes:

Trying to discredit Obama's CHARACTER when McCain is still in an unrepentant affairage is the pot calling the kettle black. The fact remains that McCain couldn't win talking about the ISSUES so he has now changed his tactic to mudslinging. He couldn't win talking about the issues because the American people realize HIS polices would bring more of the same destruction to the United States that George Bush's policies have because they are one and the same.

Want2Stay

What?

Look, someone pointed out to me something today that makes perfect sense. This election is really about Biden vs. McCain. There is NO way that Obama doesn't get whacked in office. As much as I hate to see anyone get killed, the man is so far left that there is a segment of this population that simply will not stand for such a radically anti-American president. Maybe there will be a holiday to remember him by...maybe not...but bottom line is, the man isn't going to be president for very long.

IMHO, his associations are what are going to do him in. Whether it is his association with a clearly racist pastor..or a terrorist, it will cost him. Then we can have riots in the streets just like after MLK was killed (I don't seem to remember riots after JFK was shot)....

Joe Biden I can handle as president. I don't agree with him on many things...but at least he isn't a radical. Using Biden's OWN words for reasoning, Obama should not be president...McCain would make a good president. Unless there is a deal changer soon, Obama will be president...that is unless he ticks someone off sufficiently before then.

All sad...but true.

Aw, you listen too much to the morons at the McCain rally yelling "off with his head" about Obama...Does that say something about McCain's associations?


"Left" or "black"?


Well, all the more reason for voting for Obama. Because what is more likely true is not that Obama will get whacked but that McCain will croak, and then we'll be staring at a real dimwit in the Oval Office. Biden is a safer bet, which I also totally agree with.

AGG

No, the only morons I hear are here...the liberals. I haven't been to, watched or had anything to do with a McCain rally.

If I meant BLACK, I would have said BLACK.

Actually, it is very likely Obama would be whacked. It is easy to kill anyone...even a president...or candidate...if one is properly motivated. History shows that to be all too true.

Obviously, I won't VOTE for Biden. HE does have the one big strike against him...abortion (even though he admits that life begins at conception...go figure!).

As for a dimwit in office...I haven't seen her IQ scores. Have you? I see a lot of people that are very well spoken that are as dumb as logs. There are a few on this site...one would even be called Dr. by the crooked letters after his name...

But, in all honesty...Palin would not have been my first choice for VP even though she has the highest approval rating of any governor on our country. Most likely, I would have gone with Romney or Huckabee. A woman was picked for obvious reasons.

WOW! Do you always make accusations like that of people you don't know?

Just can't keep from attacking your fellow posters, can you?


Nonetheless, there were shouts of "off with his head", from those conveniently placed near the front. Do you support that?


I am not following your logic.. We should not vote for Obama because he might get whacked?


Not going by her IQ score, but by what comes out of her mouth.

I would have considered voting for McCain until he made that choice.

AGG

Why yes, right after I stopped beating my wife... :twobyfour:

Where do you see an accusation? I questioned if Obama is more likely to get whacked for being black or for being left... Where is the accusation? Sheeshh...

AGG

Do I have some kinship with you because you happen to post here? YOU brought up the issue of "morons" when you referred to the McCain rally. What, it's a problem to suggest that the liberals, not those that would support McCain are in fact, the morons?




I don't recall saying who you should vote for. I was making a statement about my own thoughts.

If you are going to judge people by what comes out of their mouth...perhaps you should start with Biden who clearly said Obama is not qualified for office.


I did not take your comments about left or black as being directed against me.

Well, considering he never used the word 'black' that's where I see the accusation. Sounds to me like you played the race card.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a noted conservative OPINION columnist. His conservative BIAS is all over the article you posted. If you wish to believe his opinion is TRUTH that is up to you, but I see it as more Obama bashing for the sake of the tyring to save an election.

Want2Stay

If Obama is likely to be whacked in office because he's a...errr...liberal (yeah, that's the ticket), what does that say about conservatives in this country?

Not many things are more unpatriotic or anti-American than MURDERING THE PRESIDENT.

That alone is reason enough to disregard McCain as a candidate. Why should anyone side with those who would seek to assassinate the Commander-In-Chief?

They are the very definition of "domestic terrorists".

I guess if you want to be on the same side as murderous racists...err...highly motivated conservatives, go right ahead.