Palin Plays The Bill Ayers Card

[CaneBrain 95]

So is Ward Churchill (or was?) So is Noam Chomsky. If a Professorship at a prestigious university is your criteria for someone youd want your POTUS associating with, youre fighting a losing battle.

it depends on the association. If Obama and Ayers were actually close, it might worry me slightly. By most accounts, they merely are both active in helping the Chicago community which has made them be in contact a few times. It is not that being a professor makes him a good guy......it just makes him not a "known terrorist". They arrest known terrorists not let them teach in college. This is someone who did some things that were very wrong over 30 years ago....had the charges DROPPED....and then clearly did some productive things with his life.You'd think the party so closely aligned with Christianity would believe in forgiveness and repenting.

[Ron_Mexico 4,219]

You'd think the party so closely aligned with Christianity would believe in forgiveness and repenting.

If you think that christians are about that, you haven't been paying attention.

[CaneBrain 95]

If you think that christians are about that, you haven't been paying attention.

Thank you for taking my subtle, sarcastic point and shining a spotlight on it.

[85suited 0]

I mean the guy is a Professor at a prestigious university now.

The University of Illinois @ Chicago (UIC) is hardly prestgious

[CaneBrain 95]

The University of Illinois @ Chicago (UIC) is hardly prestgious

my bad. I thought you said University of Chicago. It is still a good enough university and my point still stands. They dont let known terrorists teach at any college. but thank you for the correction.

[copernicus 0]

It is not that being a professor makes him a good guy......it just makes him not a "known terrorist". Wow, that pretzel logic must have hurt to type.They arrest known terrorists not let them teach in college. Obviously they do. This is someone who did some things that were very wrong over 30 years ago. and says he doesnt regret it and didnt do enought...had the charges DROPPED on a technicality....and then clearly did some productive things with his life.that the people who died directly or indirectly at the hands of his organization never had a chance to do.You'd think the party so closely aligned with Christianity would believe in forgiveness and repenting.

this wasnt a conscientious objector or someone who skipped to Canada. It is someone who destroyed property and lives. sorry, there is no excuse

[CaneBrain 95]

It is someone who destroyed property and lives. sorry, there is no excuse

even if you buy this logic (and to do so you are saying that anyone who ever destroyed property or lives cannot be redeemed----bad news for the Church!) there is still no proof that Obama and Ayers are anything other than two people who have met a few times at charitable or political functions.

[85suited 0]

even if you buy this logic (and to do so you are saying that anyone who ever destroyed property or lives cannot be redeemed----bad news for the Church!) there is still no proof that Obama and Ayers are anything other than two people who have met a few times at charitable or political functions.

plenty of proof above in the thread, you have blinders on

[copernicus 0]

even if you buy this logic (and to do so you are saying that anyone who ever destroyed property or lives cannot be redeemed----bad news for the Church!) there is still no proof that Obama and Ayers are anything other than two people who have met a few times at charitable or political functions.

Of course they can be redeemed...in man's eyes, since I dont believe in god. But there is no redemption when he, as recently as 2001, said he didnt do enough. I dont know the depth of their associations, but at the very least ANY association for someone who has Presidential aspirations is bad judgement.

[CaneBrain 95]

plenty of proof above in the thread, you have blinders on

As far as I am concerned, none of that is proof they are anything more than what I have said. I think you are the one with blinders. This is a story that was already investigated thoroughly and amounted to nothing because nothing is there. If there was something, one of the respected conservative publications would have made it in an issue before now. (Although I am sure, the NY Post will have a field day)

[jmkiser 0]

This is a dumb move for the McCain camp. No one cares about Ayers (except for "Hannity/Limbaugh Republicans") and there are tons of ways that Obama can defend these pointless attacks. "Ooh, he knows a guy" Was Obama involved in anything Ayers did? Did Obama express any desire that he wanted to be part of it? Did Obama even agree about what Ayers did?no no and noMcCain needs to spend his time and money making himself look like the savior of the country. He needs to introduce a huge list of very detailed plans on what he's wants and is going to do as POTUS. He needs to spouting his wonderful plan every chance he gets and he needs to tell the American people exactly (in detail) why Obama's plans are worthless.JSM isn't going to get away with trying to go after Obama's character ... especially if his only weapon is Obama's "relationships". Just as Hannity/Limbaugh Republicans love to point out, Obama has a likeness to him that has created plenty of kool-aid drinkers. You guys should know better then anyone that you're not going to win this by going after the likeness of BHO.

[CaneBrain 95]

Of course they can be redeemed...in man's eyes, since I dont believe in god. But there is no redemption when he, as recently as 2001, said he didnt do enough. I dont know the depth of their associations, but at the very least ANY association for someone who has Presidential aspirations is bad judgement.

as far as I am concerned, McCain's judgment on Falwell was good until Bizarro McCain took over two years ago. I find Falwell to be as much of an America hater as Ayers (actually I think Falwell hated America more). I think it shows bad judgment on McCain's part.....but I dont think it means McCain hates America. It means that he like Obama and all other politicians knows that being in politics means you are going to have to rub shoulders with some disreputable people (who you probably dont like that much) and just grin and bear it. It doesnt mean Obama tacitly approves of things Ayers did when Obama was 8! (nor does it mean McCain thinks America deserved 9/11 because it does not hate gays enough). Just because you know someone does not mean that you agree with everything they have ever said or done (and you know it).And Palin did not say Obama had bad judgment in knowing Ayers (a plausible claim I guess) she said Obama hated America. Which is offensive bullshit.

[copernicus 0]

And Palin did not say Obama had bad judgment in knowing Ayers (a plausible claim I guess) she said Obama hated America. Which is offensive bullshit.

Quote? I dont buy it.

[CaneBrain 95]

Quote? I dont buy it.

"Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."you are right I exaggerated some. I still find the "being so imperfect" to be a huge (and offensive) stretch. I also find the definition of Obama and Ayers relationship as "palling around" to be a huge stretch.but yes, "sees America as being so imperfect" is a bit softer than hates America. Not that much softer though.

[85suited 0]

A Who’s Who of 1968 radicals support OBAMABacking a major-party candidate for president would have been anathema to Michael Klonsky 40 summers ago, when the organization he led, Students for a Democratic Society, urged young people to spurn elections. “By ’68, our line was ‘Vote in the Streets,’” Klonsky told me last spring. “We thought we had to fight with Eugene McCarthy and those people.” In August 1968, protesters clashed with police outside the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago—but far from being political innocents who took to the streets to protest Vietnam War hawks’ capture of the Democratic presidential nomination, many of them never supported antiwar candidates McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. “Those of us who have been in the streets for the past five days didn’t give a flying **** whether McCarthy would win or lose,” SDS declared in posters around Chicago, “and now that he’s lost, still don’t.” On the eve of the general election of that year—in which less than 1 percentage point would separate the popular-vote totals of Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey—Klonsky’s SDS bluntly proclaimed: “The elections don’t mean shit.”Klonsky, whose disgust for mainstream politics led him to launch a new, Maoist Communist Party in the 1970s, today supports Barack Obama so enthusiastically that until recently he was blogging on the Illinois senator’s campaign website. And boycotting this November’s election, Klonsky maintains, would be a “tragic mistake.” He notes that Barack Obama isn’t Hubert Humphrey, 2008 isn’t 1968, and the strong movement he served back then is “relatively weak” now. “My own support for Obama is not a reflection of a radically changed attitude toward the Democratic Party,” Klonsky recently explained to me. “Rather, it’s a recognition that the Obama campaign has become a rallying point for young activists and offers hope for rebuilding the civil rights and antiwar coalitions that have potential to become a real critical force in society.”Michael Klonsky is hardly the only ’68 radical supporting Obama this year. In 1968, when Mark Rudd organized the student strike that shut down Columbia University, the SDS chapter that he chaired ridiculed Kennedy and McCarthy as “McKennedy,” claimed that “neither peace candidate offers an alternative to the war policies of Lyndon Johnson,” and suggested “sabotage” as an alternative to voting. Rudd succeeded Klonsky as national SDS leader, presiding over the organization’s metamorphosis into Weatherman and performing “a liaison function” for the plot to bomb a Fort Dix soldiers’ dance that instead killed three Weathermen, including two of Rudd’s Columbia SDS colleagues. Today, Rudd renounces bombs, embraces ballots—and supports Obama. “Probably the biggest difference between Columbia SDS people in 1968 and in 2008 is forty years,” Rudd explained in an e-mail. “Most of us have lived with compromise our whole lives. As kids we were raving idealists who thought that ‘The elections don’t mean shit’ was a slogan that meant something to somebody. It didn’t.”Then there’s Carl Davidson, who was one of SDS’s three elected national officers in 1968, when the organization first urged young people to refrain from voting. His disillusionment with traditional politics became so pronounced that, in the post-sixties hangover that followed, Davidson joined Klonsky in rejecting traditional politics for fringe Marxist movements. More recently, he helped organize the 2002 rally in which Obama first spoke out against the Iraq War and now serves as the webmaster of Progressives for Obama. “The last thing we need is a simple repeat of 1968, which saw Nixon and the new Right as an outcome, as well as the defeat of [Humphrey],” Davidson contends. “One thing I’ve learned. Social change is not made by elections, but it certainly proceeds through them, not by ignoring them or chasing the illusion of end runs around them.”Former SDS president Tom Hayden is also in the Obama camp. Hayden organized the made-for-TV protest outside the 1968 Chicago convention. But the catharsis of throwing debris at the Chicago police, the purer-than-thou sanctimony that tolerated no distinction between Lyndon Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, and the exhilaration of “voting in the streets” instead of in election booths combined to ensure liberal defeats. Hayden’s orchestrated anarchy proved more damaging to Humphrey’s presidential aspirations than any dirty trick Nixon’s henchmen could have dreamed up. Klonsky remembers Hayden plotting to spread nails on a highway; another SDS leader recalls Hayden encouraging activists to firebomb police cars. If the Democrats couldn’t run a convention, many Americans wondered, how could they run the country? “Did the radicalism of Chicago elect Richard Nixon?” Hayden asked, clearly pained, in his 1988 memoir. “Having struggled with that question for twenty years, I find there is no ‘neat’ answer.”Now Hayden is one of the organizers of Progressives for Obama. “The difference is that back then the Democratic Party was directly carrying out the Vietnam War, which meant there was no anti-war critic to vote for after Kennedy was assassinated and McCarthy defeated by the establishment,” he offered in an e-mail last month. “Today the Republican Party is directly carrying out the war, which obviously will make a lot of people favor changing the presidency despite the uncertainty of what the Democratic candidate will do when in office.”Progressives for Obama resembles a Who’s Who of SDS luminaries. In addition to Hayden, Rudd, and Davidson, the group includes Bob Pardun, SDS’s education secretary during the 1966–67 school year; Paul Buhle, a radical professor who has recently attempted to revive SDS; Mickey and Dick Flacks, red-diaper babies who helped craft 1962’s Port Huron Statement, a seminal New Left document; and SDS’s third president, Todd Gitlin. Age and experience have mellowed some of the SDSers in Obama’s camp. Gitlin, for instance, has evolved into a respected Ivy League professor and milquetoast liberal. But others still glory in a past that can only damage Obama’s future. The aging New Left still practices a therapeutic politics that places a higher value on feelings of personal liberation than on restrained pursuit of political aims.Obama has already taken political hits for his connection to Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. In the sixties, Ayers advocated that young people kill their parents, and Dohrn praised the Charles Manson murders. Alongside their Weather Underground cohorts, the pair declared war on the United States and participated in a bombing campaign that hit the Capitol, the Pentagon, and numerous law enforcement agencies. The couple eventually reinvented themselves—first as academics, then as players in Chicago-area Democratic politics. Obama praised Ayers’s book in the Chicago Tribune, sat with him on a foundation’s board, and benefited from a fundraiser held at the couple’s home. Ayers spoke at events organized by Michelle Obama; Barack Obama spoke at events organized by Ayers.SDS’s history offers a template for eliminating the embarrassing past. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and others founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) during the Progressive era, but by World War I the word “socialist” had fallen from favor. So, with the Left seeing labor unions as the agent of societal change, the ISS became the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). Then, by the end of the 1950s, theorists Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, and Norman O. Brown scoffed at the idea of blue-collar workers—often violently hostile to the Left’s aims—as transformative agents, and the LID’s student arm, the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), rechristened itself Students for a Democratic Society. Just as SDS killed SLID as the fifties became the sixties, Weatherman killed SDS as the sixties became the seventies: SDS’s spirit of “participatory democracy” could not peacefully coexist with the vanguardism of Weatherman. And now, completing the circle, the SDS alumni of “progressives” for Obama resurrect a term that would have been more familiar to their distant forebears in the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. On the Left, everything old is eventually new again.

[CaneBrain 95]

pointless things

yes, it is definitely Obama's fault that people are supporting him. How many people who hate gays, or blacks, or jews are voting McCain? Should we fault him for this?utter nonsense.

[85suited 0]

I really am not posting this for your approval...Plenty of undecided voters here trolling and they can read your posts and ours and make their own conclusion

[Nimue1995 1]

All I can say to the above list is: so what? I lived through the sixties and there were a great number of young people who protested the war in Vietnam and many of them became enamored of the SDS and other like organizations. But you know what? Just like it says in your article, THEY GREW UP. They figured out that there were better ways to get things done than protesting and bombing things. Even your "terrorist" Ayers says that his statement that "they didn't do enough" didn't have anything to do with bombing shit. It had to do with fighting against the war which he still passionately believes was right. I know when I was college age, I did some pretty stupid stuff too. And I too learned eventually to work within the system instead of trying to tear it down. If you didn't live in the era, you really don't know what the atmosphere was like in the United States and particularly on college campuses at that time. That's probably the reason that when you bring this shit up, it gets a big shrug from most of us who did (and yes I did go to college, but I just ended up taking a job instead of graduating).

[vbnautilus 48]

A Who’s Who of 1968 radicals support OBAMA

Allright now this is just silliness. We are holding him responsible for the failings of those who support him now? Digging deep here. I don't really understand what the concrete point is here with the Ayers guy, beyond trying to associate him with something that is easy to paint as negative. Are they saying Obama is a terrorist? He hates his country because he knows some dude who engaged in violent protests in the past?"Palling around with terrorists"? So we are to believe that Obama is planning a terrorist attack or what? What exactly is the insinuation? I think it's basically too late for this mudslinging strategy to work. Like the other recent mccain campaign tactics, it is too transparent of a ploy to really stick. All the Obama campaign has to do is to point out the desperation of this move. Their response:Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan called Palin's comments "offensive" and "not surprising given the McCain campaign's statement this morning that they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation's economic ills."Is pretty much the right response imo.

[CaneBrain 95]

I really am not posting this for your approval...Plenty of undecided voters here trolling and they can read your posts and ours and make their own conclusion

I never for a second thought you cared about my approval. but if you are going to post something, I can reply with why I think it is pointless or irrelevant. Try responding to my criticisms of what you posted instead of stating obvious first amendment truths.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

Yawn. Who cares, this election's over anyway.Copernicus: This thing's a looooong way from being over!!

[CaneBrain 95]

Yawn. Who cares, this election's over anyway.Copernicus: This thing's a looooong way from being over!!

<-------not so convinced it is over.with the modern media, a month is forever.

[85suited 0]

Here is the “resume” of an unrepentant American terrorist, William Ayers:7 October 1969 – Bombing of Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago, apparently as a “kickoff” for the “Days of Rage” riots in the city October 8-11, 1969. The Weathermen later claimed credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”8-11 October 1969 – The “Days of Rage” riots occur in Chicago in which 287 Weatherman members from throughout the country were arrested and a large amount of property damage was done.6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO stated in their book “Prairie Fire” that they had did the explosion.27-31 December 1969 – Weathermen hold a “War Council” meeting in Flint, MI, where they finalize their plans to submerge into an underground status from which they plan to commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO). 13 February 1970 - Bombing of several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department.16 February 1970 – Bombing of Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen.6 March 1970 – Bombing in the 13th Police District of the Detroit, Michigan. 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, during that period, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.6 March 1970 – “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members die . The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails TO INFLICT MAXIMUM CASUALTIES UPON DETONATION.30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO “bomb factory” on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO “weapons cache” in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.10 May 1970 – Bombing of The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C.21 May 1970 – The WUO under Bernardine Dohrn’s (Ayers’ current wife) name releases its “Declaration of a State of War” communiqué.6 June 1970 – The WUO sends a letter claiming credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice; however, no explosion actually took place. Months later, workmen in this building located an unexploded device which had apparently been dormant for some time.9 June 1970 - Bombing of The New York City Police Headquarters.27 July 1970 - Bombing of The Presidio army base in San Francisco. [NYT, 7/27/70]12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, break out and escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.8 October 1970 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. [NYT, 8/10/70]10 October 1970 - Bombing of Queens traffic-court building . [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]14 October 1970 - Bombing of The Harvard Center for International Affairs [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]1 March 1971 - Bombing of The United States Capitol . “ [NYT, 3/2/71]April, 1971 – Abandoned WUO “bomb factory” discovered in San Francisco, California.29 August, 1971 - Bombing of the Office of California Prisons . [LAT, 8/29/71]17 September 1971 - Bombing of The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY [NYT, 9/18/71]15 October 1971 - Bombing of William Bundy’s office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]19 May 1972 - Bombing of The Pentagon . [NYT, 5/19/72]18 May 1973 - Bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York28 September 1973 - Bombing of ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy . [NYT, 9/28/73]6 March 1974 - Bombing of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco31 May 1974 - Bombing of The Office of the California Attorney General.17 June 1974 - Bombing of Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters.11 September 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation).29 January 1975 - Bombing of the State Department in (AP. “State Department Rattled by Blast,” The Daily Times-News, January 29 1975, p.1)16 June 1975 - Bombing of Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New YorkSeptember, 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott CorporationOctober 20, 1981 - Brinks robbery in which several members of the Weather Underground stole over $1 million from a Brinks armored car near Nyack, New York. The robbers murdered 2 police officers and 1 Brinks guard. Several others were wounded.1981 “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country,” Ayers said when interviewed by David Horowitz.September 11, 2001 “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers is quoted in a New York Times article.

[CaneBrain 95]

more stuff about Ayers not Barack Obama

I find your unwillingness to engage in a back and forth conversation to be debilitating to your credibility.Explain why it is bad that so many former radicals support Obama when McCain is probably (definitely) "pwning" the KKK vote. Should we assume McCain sympathizes with KKK aims?

[vbnautilus 48]

I find your unwillingness to engage in a back and forth conversation to be debilitating to your credibility.

Indeed it is.