Obamaites -- Will Your Man Ever Be Accountable To The Media ?

[johns76222 0]

ABC News And "The Central Question:" Will Obama Be Scrutinized Next?What an amazing escapade in broadcast journalism.In his exclusive one-on-one interview with Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Charlie Gibson of ABC News began with what he characterized as “the central question:”“Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question” he stated. “Can you look the country in the eye and say ‘I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?’"Great question, Charlie. And it should be the “central question” for anybody who seeks the presidency or vice presidency. So why is Governor Palin being asked this question now, while the question has not been posed to the other candidates that have participated in the 2008 election cycle?Gibson further questioned Palin about having adequate understanding of “international affairs,” and how, and why, she remained so confident in her abilities to be President or Vice President. Gibson even asked if her attitude towards the challenge didn’t entail “some hubris.”Much has been written in the past two days about Gibson’s condescending attitude towards Governor Palin, as well as his questioning her about “the Bush doctrine” - - complete with his refusal to clarify what he was implying with the term “Bush doctrine,” as though the term implies one precise, easily defined concept (it does not). Within the past twenty-four hours, it has also been discovered that the complete transcript of Gibson’s interview does not match up with the edited video that ABC News aired, and it appears that edits were made so as to make Governor Palin seem more aggressive towards Russia than she actually was.I do not wish here to attempt to add to this type of analysis. I must, however, raise this question - why hasn’t Gibson’s line of questioning been applied universally, to other candidates? In particular, why hasn’t Barack Obama ever been asked similar, if not the same questions?Senator Obama is a lawyer, former “community organizer,” and legislator, who cannot claim any particular legal, business, or legislative accomplishments. He has earned a few million dollars in the past two years with his writing and publishing, yet his written works do not enlighten about history, nor reveal any great new insights or visions for the world’s future. Both of his published books are about himself, and his “life’s journey.”With his rather limited personal and professional background, it seems reasonable that Mr. Obama would be asked if he is “experienced enough,” or if he has a sufficient understanding of “international affairs.” One could also make the case that Obama should be challenged about “hubris,” given his favorite writing topic, and given his fast-track approach to pursuing the presidency (he launched his presidential campaign with less than a full year of experience (184 days) in the U.S. Senate).But Barack Obama has not been asked about these things. Not by Charlie Gibson, nor by anyone else among the esteemed ranks of American journalism. And “experience” aside, there are many other puzzling facets of Mr. Obama and his candidacy, that don’t seem to elicit the slightest bit of curiosity among our journalist friends.For example, Mr. Obama has insisted for most of this year that we are in a recession. The American economy has not posted a single quarter of “negative growth” in the GDP this year (indeed Q2 posted a rather robust gain of over 3%), and last week’s projections for Q4 estimate strong new hiring and job growth. Yet, Mr. Obama continues to say that when he becomes President, he will lead Americans out of “the recession,” and has used “the recession” to argue for a doubling of the capital gains tax rate, and sharp increases in corporate and personal income taxes. His presupposition about “the recession,” and his reasoning that tax increases will help fix “the recession,” continue to go unchallenged by American journalists.On foreign policy, Mr. Obama has vowed to abandon the policy of the American President refusing to personally meet with leaders of known terrorist states. The policy has been in place since 1979 when President Carter’s Department of State implemented it, and it has been followed by every President since. Yet Mr. Obama has promised that when he becomes President, he will continue his great “healing work” and will meet “without pre-conditions” with the heads of our nation’s adversaries, terrorist states and all. This plan has gone unchallenged by American journalists.The “small town gal” from Alaska is being scrutinized. The guy from the big city of Chicago, who writes and speaks eloquently about himself and has already labeled himself as a “change agent” and “the one” who is leading America “to healing,” manages to escape such scrutiny. Somebody is displaying a whole lot of “hubris,” and it is not Governor Palin.

[vbnautilus 48]

Is your plan to simply repost here every anti-Obama article you find?

[85suited 0]

I think it is funny how no Liberal will ever answer the question...Seriously, do the liberals really have no problem with the fact the Obama has associated with a known terrorist for 20 years?

[copernicus 0]

Is your plan to simply repost here every anti-Obama article you find?

They are good articles and I havent seen any significant refutation of them. While they reflect the conservative perspective they are certainly valid criticisms of the way MSM has operated since at least 2000.

[mk 11]

They are good articles and I havent seen any significant refutation of them. While they reflect the conservative perspective they are certainly valid criticisms of the way MSM has operated since at least 2000.

seriously, i think i'm convinced you're actually mentally retarded.

[copernicus 0]

seriously, i think i'm convinced you're actually mentally retarded.

thank you for your typically meaningful contribution

[irishguy 14]

I think it is funny how no Liberal will ever answer the question...Seriously, do the liberals really have no problem with the fact the Obama has associated with a known terrorist for 20 years?

There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers, now holds the position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported here. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.Is there anything here that raises questions about Obama's judgment or is this just another example of guilt by association?The FactsThe first article in the mainstream press linking Obama to Ayers appeared in the London Daily Mail on February 2. It was written by Peter Hitchens, the right-wing brother of the left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war supporter, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens cited the Ayers connection to bolster his argument that Obama is "far more radical than he would like us to know."The Hitchens piece was followed by a Bloomberg article last week pointing to the Ayers connection as support for Hillary Clinton's contention that Obama might not be able to withstand the "Republican attack machine." Larry Johnson, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA and the State Department, predicted that the Republicans would seize on the Ayers case, and other Chicago relationships, to "bludgeon Obama's presidential aspirations into the dust."The London Sunday Times joined the chorus this weekend by reporting that Republicans were "out to crush Barack by painting him as a leftwinger with dubious support". The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued: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.In the short term, the person who has most to gain by speculation about Obama's acquaintance with a former terrorist is Hillary Clinton. The former First Lady likes to present herself as "tested and vetted" after years of exposure to Republican attacks, in contrast to Obama, a relative newcomer to hardscrabble presidential politics. Such arguments resonate with Johnson, the counterterrorism expert, who told me that he is a Clinton supporter, although not involved with the campaign. But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and "passion for social justice.""This whole connection is a stretch," Harrington told me. "Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns." The facts of the association between the two have been exagerated by Republicans and the Clinton campaign during the primaries. Lets talk for the moment about Palin's husbands connection to a radical group from Alaska who had separation as a part of there platform and the fact that Palin sent a video tape endorsement of said group. -> Neither of these things deals with the issues but oh thats right this isn't an election about the issues.

[TrulyRaNd0m 0]

The facts of the association between the two have been exagerated by Republicans and the Clinton campaign during the primaries. Lets talk for the moment about Palin's husbands connection to a radical group from Alaska who had separation as a part of there platform and the fact that Palin sent a video tape endorsement of said group. -> Neither of these things deals with the issues but oh thats right this isn't an election about the issues.

Now I totally get where the Alaskan secessionists were coming from. If was from Alaska and I saw the disrespect the state was getting in the media, I'd be on my way out as well!No taxation without representation!

[85suited 0]

The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:If you take the Obama campaign at its word, the contention that there is a relationship between Bill Ayers and Barack Obama is “phony,” “tenuous,” a “stretch.” In Obamas own words, Ayers was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” certainly not a long time close political ally. But a review of just the publicly known highlights of the Ayers-Obama relationship suggests a twenty year pattern of connections between the two. At the heart of this “Top Ten” list is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers founded and Obama and Ayers co-chaired for five years, raising and spending at least $110 million in an effort to bolster a “radical” (Ayers’ word) reform program in the Chicago Public Schools from 1994 to 2001. 1) Out of the Woods: The Woods Fund financed the hiring of Obama in 1985 by the Developing Communities Project. According to The Nation: “The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political identity. In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project (aka the “DCP”), which hired Obama, at 24, as an organizer on Chicago's economically depressed South Side.”The Woods Fund was founded by the Woods family which owned the Illinois-based Sahara Coal Company, a major supplier of coal from its mines to major Illinois power companies. Commonwealth Edison, the giant Chicago-based electric power company was headed by Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers.Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund from 1993 until 2002. Bill Ayers joined the board of the Fund in 1999 and continues to serve on the board today. He chaired the board for two years during that time. 2) Know your ABCs: Obama's DCP supported radical school reform project together with Bill Ayers. In 1987 in the wake of a controversial strike by the Chicago Teachers' Union, the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs, was formed to lobby for a new Illinois law that would mandate the establishment of a new power center in Chicago public schools. Local school councils would be established to watchdog union teachers and their principals and they would have the power to fire principals at will.Bill Ayers helped organize the ABCs group, was its contact person and later its chair. Barack Obama worked on school reform efforts for the DCP at that time and the DCP was a member of the ABCs. Chicago United, a business group established by Tom Ayers, Bill's father, was also a member of the ABCs.The Woods Fund also provided additional financial support to the DCP in 1988 to support its school reform efforts. A program officer of the Woods Fund at the time was Ken Rolling who would later be hired by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama as Executive Director of the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge. 3) Putting on the White Shoe: Obama and Dohrn worked for elite law firm Sidley and AustinAfter surfacing from the Weather Underground in 1980 Bernardine Dohrn, wife of Bill Ayers, pled guilty to criminal charges related to the violent Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969 and received three years probation. She later refused to testify in front of a grand jury convened to investigate a bank robbery carried out by former comrades of Dohrn's from the Weather Underground. Currently a clinical faculty member at Northwestern University School of Law, she told the New York Times that she thought grand juries were “illegal” and “coercive.” She served seven months in jail. Because of the criminal convictions Dohrn, who received a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967, was refused admission to the New York bar. Nonetheless, she was hired as a legal clerk by Sidley and Austin, a major Chicago law firm, in their New York office in 1984. Howard Trienens, then managing partner of the firm, recently told the Chicago Tribune that he arranged the hiring of Dohrn as a favor to his fellow Northwestern University trustee and classmate, Tom Ayers. Tom Ayers' firm, Commonwealth Edison, has used Sidley as outside counsel for many years. She later worked in their Chicago office when she and Bill Ayers moved back to Chicago in 1987. She left Sidley in 1988.Barack Obama left Chicago in the fall of 1988 to attend Harvard Law School. In the summer after his first year at Harvard he became an associate in the Chicago office of Sidley and Austin.4) A hard rock miner: Chicago lefty lawyer and Dohrn classmate Judson Miner hires Barack Obama out of Harvard.Barack Obama returned to Harvard after his summer at Sidley and Austin in the fall of 1989. That fall he was elected the president of the Harvard Law Review, the first black person to hold the position. Although Obama could have returned to Sidley or perhaps clerked for the United States Supreme Court, a natural step for Law Review officers, he chose instead to work for Judson Miner, a partner in a small civil rights law firm in Chicago. Miner had been counsel to Chicago's late black mayor, Harold Washington. Miner was also classmates with Bernardine Dohrn at the University of Chicago law school in 1967 where they were both were involved in anti-war activity. 5) Rising to the Challenge: Ayers is named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Bill AyersIn late 1993, Bill Ayers, now an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, organized a team to put together a grant proposal to secure nearly $50 million from the Annenberg Challenge. The money was to be used by Ayers and co. to bolster the radical Local School Councils reform project that Ayers and Obama had championed back in 1988 through the ABCs.The grant application was successful and in early 1995 Barack Obama was named chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers was named co-chair of the Challenge’s operative and strategic body, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. Ayers and Obama work together for the next five years on raising an additional $60 million in matching money from local foundations and corporations and using the money to intervene in the governance of the Chicago public schools.The Challenge through a multi-million dollar Leadership Development Initiative intervened in the School Council elections in the middle of what was known as the Chicago School Wars. At the same time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was pushing, successfully, to gut the power of the Councils. 6) In the Palmer of his hand: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn host Obama’s state senate kick-off in their Hyde Park homeIn the fall of 1995 Barack Obama began his first electoral campaign to replace State Senator Alice Palmer who was attempting to run for Congress. Palmer accompanied Obama to the Hyde Park home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn for an introduction of Obama to the Hyde Park left. Unnamed Obama campaign aides told the New York Times that this was the first time that Obama met Ayers and Dohrn, part of the campaign's effort to minimize the relationship between their candidate and the two authoritarian leftists. Of course that was wrong, as clearly Obama and Ayers had already met well before this “meet and greet.” 7) The “lost years”: Ayers and Obama to the rescue of troubled youthIn 1997 Bill Ayers published a book that criticized the treatment of juvenile defendants in the criminal justice system including the practice in some states of trying these individuals as adults. Barack Obama praised the book as a “searing and timely account” in the Chicago Tribune. In late 1997 and 1998 a bill to impose “blended” sentencing on certain juvenile offenders was proposed in the Illinois legislature where Obama was now a state senator, representing the south side Chicago district that included Ayers and Dohrn's Hyde Park neighborhood. The bill would have allowed parallel juvenile and adult sentences with the adult sentence held as a threat to be imposed if serious offenders violated terms of their juvenile conviction.Obama, Dohrn and Ayers opposed the bill. Michelle Obama, now working at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, organized a panel discussion there in late 1997 as the new bill was gaining momentum, to discuss Ayers' book. Barack Obama and Ayers were on the panel and Obama was described in the event's press release as ”working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.” The “R” word: Obama advisor promotes a reparations approach to education reform; Ayers endorses itIn 2006 Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin, the then president of the American Education Research Association (AERA), the nation's leading School of Education professional association, proposed a new policy to tackle the problems of America's public schools: the repayment of centuries of “education debt” that allegedly is owed to people of color as a result of slavery and discrimination. She rooted the concept in the literature supporting reparations for slavery.In 2007 Linda Darling-Hammond, a prominent and respected professor at the Stanford University School of Education, endorsed the same idea in an article in The Nation. In late 2007 Darling-Hammond was named an education advisor to the Obama campaign. In February 2008 Darling-Hammond issued a blueprint for education reform by the next President that set as its #1 priority the repayment of the “education debt,” as proposed originally by Ladson-Billings.Bill Ayers has endorsed the idea of repayment of the “education debt.” Ayers is now a Vice President-elect (Division B: Curriculum Studies) of the AERA. A chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called A Light in Dark Times. A chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers' book, To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row just published. Ladson-Billings contributed a chapter in a book edited by Bill Ayers, Rick Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Jesse L. Jackson called Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment published in 2001. More fundamentally, Bill Ayers introduced the concept of “white supremacy” as America's original sin within the new left group SDS as part of his effort, together with his future wife Bernardine Dohrn, to hijack the student-led antiwar movement for his still-to-come terrorist actions as a leader of the Weather Underground.Ayers argues that the fundamental issue in American life is “white skin privilege” - that white Americans benefit from being white at the expense of blacks.Ayers himself wrote on his website in a January 19, 2008 essay on school reform:“The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. Across the US,the National Governor's Association declared in 2005, a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts. This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood racial achievement gap, and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy.Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up.”Obama has several times during the campaign suggested that the kind of reparations he is for is increased spending on education. 9) A toast to the maoist: Bill Ayers long time comrade Mike Klonsky blogs for ObamaOne of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn's comrades in the late 60s Students for a Democratic Society was Mike Klonsky. When Dohrn and Ayers moved in one direction toward the violent tactics of the Weather Underground, Klonsky, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, dropped the pro-Russian communist politics of his parents and became a committed Maoist. As leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977 he travelled to Beijing and was toasted by the senior Beijing leadership.When the crazy left of the 70s died in the 80s, Klonsky went to graduate school in education in Florida and then moved to Chicago. While driving a cab there he was recruited by his old friend Bill Ayers to head up a new project called the Small Schools Workshop in 1991. It's offices were in the Department of Education building at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus where Ayers taught. In 1995 the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge headed by Ayers and Obama gave the Workshop a grant of $175,000. The Annenberg Challenge also had its office space in the same building as Ayers Department and the Workshop, rent free courtesy of the University.In 2008 Klonsky ran a blog on the official Obama campaign website on education policy and “social justice” teaching. When discussion of the Klonsky blog emerged in the blogosphere, it was promptly shut down by the campaign and all of the posts made by Klonsky were removed from the site.10) The Great Debate: George v. Barack There is little publicly available information on the precise relationship between Obama and Ayers today. I have been told by Linda Darling-Hammond that Ayers does not have any role in the campaign, although I do wonder how Ayers buddy Mike Klonsky could blog on the Obama website unless Ayers had a hand in it. Obama himself did not exactly eliminate any doubts on this score when asked about his relationship with Ayers during a debate with Hilary Clinton by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. Obama said that Ayers was a professor of English (not Education) and was just a guy who lives in his neighborhood. Well, clearly not “just,” as we now know. But then Obama said that he does not exchange ideas with Ayers “on a regular basis.” Whatever that is supposed to mean (they debate the future of the world on an “irregular basis”?) it certainly fails to put the issue to rest.

[irishguy 14]

bunch o'stuff

Here's the thing every piece of association shown between the two can likely be drawn between Ayers and any Illinios Democrat. None of it really does anything except show how active Obama was within his community. There isn't a politcal person alive who doesn't have some sort of connection to someone that's scum. It is however almost refreshing to see him labeled as a left wing terrorist as opposed to a muslim terrorist but again as I stated earlier this along with the Palin stuff really isn't about the issues at all.

[Jeepster80125 0]

Here's the thing every piece of association shown between the two can likely be drawn between Ayers and any Illinios Democrat. None of it really does anything except show how active Obama was within his community. There isn't a politcal person alive who doesn't have some sort of connection to someone that's scum. It is however almost refreshing to see him labeled as a left wing terrorist as opposed to a muslim terrorist but again as I stated earlier this along with the Palin stuff really isn't about the issues at all.

lol 'community activist'. Is Ayers one as well?

[CaneBrain 95]

I think it is funny how no Liberal will ever answer the question...Seriously, do the liberals really have no problem with the fact the Obama has associated with a known terrorist for 20 years?

I have no problem with it. Seriously. This guy did a bunch of bad stuff when Obama was eight. Decades later, Obama happened to be on some of the same committees and community revitalization projects. As has been pointed out, you dont get very far in politics without rubbing shoulders with some undesirables. I mean, Sara Palin, the bastion of small town values and the biggest political outsider of all time is married to a guy who once wanted Alaska to secede from the US. Shit happens.

[Balloon guy 158]

I have no problem with it. Seriously. This guy did a bunch of bad stuff when Obama was eight. Decades later, Obama happened to be on some of the same committees and community revitalization projects. As has been pointed out, you dont get very far in politics without rubbing shoulders with some undesirables. I mean, Sara Palin, the bastion of small town values and the biggest political outsider of all time is married to a guy who once wanted Alaska to secede from the US. Shit happens.

I have wished Massachusetts would secede many times.Does that make me a radical?

[copernicus 0]

Hey, Ron Paul wants the entire US to secede from the US. Is he a radical?Oh....wait.....

[85suited 0]

I have no problem with it. Seriously. This guy did a bunch of bad stuff when Obama was eight. Decades later, Obama happened to be on some of the same committees and community revitalization projects. As has been pointed out, you dont get very far in politics without rubbing shoulders with some undesirables. I mean, Sara Palin, the bastion of small town values and the biggest political outsider of all time is married to a guy who once wanted Alaska to secede from the US. Shit happens.

That is sad... Sad that during our the war on terror you dont care that a presidential candidate associates with a KNOWN terrtiots...Regardless if the attacks heppened when he was 8! - On 9/11 ayers said he wish he they would have done more.He has known the man and his history for 20 years!..WAKE UP

[irishguy 14]

That is sad... Sad that during our the war on terror you dont care that a presidential candidate associates with a KNOWN terrtiots...Regardless if the attacks heppened when he was 8! - On 9/11 ayers said he wish he they would have done more.He has known the man and his history for 20 years!..WAKE UP

And more then one evangelist said that America brought 9/11 on themselves and yet McCain readily accepted there endorsements this year. Sad really.

[irishguy 14]

That is sad... Sad that during our the war on terror you dont care that a presidential candidate associates with a KNOWN terrtiots...Regardless if the attacks heppened when he was 8! - On 9/11 ayers said he wish he they would have done more.He has known the man and his history for 20 years!..WAKE UP

And then facts..Statements made in 2001In the months before Ayers' memoir was published on September 10, 2001, the author gave numerous interviews with newspaper and magazine writers in which he defended his overall history of radical words and actions. Some of the resulting articles were written just before the September 11 terrorist attacks and appeared immediately after, including one often-noted article in The New York Times, and another in the Chicago Tribune. Numerous observations were made in the media comparing the statements Ayers was making about his own past just as a dramatic new terrorist incident shocked the public.Much of the controversy about Ayers during the decade since the year 2000 stems from an interview he gave to the New York Times on the occasion of the memoir's publication. The reporter quoted him as saying "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough", and, when asked if he would "do it all again" as saying "I don't want to discount the possibility." Ayers has not denied the quotes, but he protested the interviewer's characterizations in a Letter to the Editor published September 15, 2001: "This is not a question of being misunderstood or 'taken out of context', but of deliberate distortion." In the ensuing years, Ayers has repeatedly avowed that when he said he had "no regrets" and that "we didn't do enough" he was speaking only in reference to his efforts to stop the United States from waging the Vietnam War, efforts which he has described as ". . . inadequate [as] the war dragged on for a decade." Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to imply a wish they had set more bombs. The interviewer also quoted some of Ayers' own criticism of Weatherman in the foreword to the memoir, whereby Ayers reacts to having watched Emile de Antonio's 1976 documentary film about Weatherman, Underground: "[Ayers] was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism.' ""We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States." In a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune, Ayers wrote, "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter. "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."

[SAM_Hard8 50]

"We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States." In a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune, Ayers wrote, "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter. "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."

WTF ??????

[Don Giovanni 0]

god, copernicus is the worst poster ever. i think most of us have realized that. even DN hates him.

[jmkiser 0]

I think it is funny how no Liberal will ever answer the question...Seriously, do the liberals really have no problem with the fact the Obama has associated with a known terrorist for 20 years?

I don't.Anyone else? Really?

[jmkiser 0]

I think it is funny how no Liberal will ever answer the question...Seriously, do the liberals really have no problem with the fact the Obama has associated with a known terrorist for 20 years?

At first, I never even knew about it. Then Sean Hannity reported it on his radio show. Then Sean Hannity wouldn't ****ing shut up about it.I'm not a liberal. But because of Sean Hannity, it doesn't bother me at all.

[jmkiser 0]

That is sad... Sad that during our the war on terror you dont care that a presidential candidate associates with a KNOWN terrtiots...Regardless if the attacks heppened when he was 8! - On 9/11 ayers said he wish he they would have done more.He has known the man and his history for 20 years!..WAKE UP

You just made me wish that Obama was close friends with even more terrorists.GO TEWWOWISTS!!!!!

[SAM_Hard8 50]

god, copernicus is the worst poster ever. i think most of us have realized that. even DN hates him.

Someone challenges liberal thinking, and defends his opinions and that makes him the worst poster ever?

[Don Giovanni 0]

Someone challenges liberal thinking, and defends his opinions and that makes him the worst poster ever?

HAHAHA challenges liberal thinking...

[Loismustdie 0]

I don't mind that Ayers is his buddy. Gives the repubs ammo. Who ARE his friends? He certainly tries hard to tell us who is friends aren't, who does he hang with?