Obama: I Assumed Ayers Had Been Rehabilitated

You know it's funny I can't understand how you McCain supporters conveniently ignore all of the mess created over the last 8 years. Maybe you enjoy suffering but "my friends" the majority of us need a new way and if you have a problem with us not wanting to dig a deeper hell for ourselves that is just something you are going to have to deal with. No one is going to ignore the mess this country is in. I'd rather a so-called "socialist" over a hell bating "rich only" club racist group of idiots any day. And for the poor people supporting this group I have no idea when you are going to wake up and realize that it is not a race issue in this country it is a class issue and if you don't have the money you are not a part of the club. For the love of God, your skin color no longer gets you over unless you are green with 100 dollar bill stamped all over you! We are tired of suffering at the hands of these lunatics making this land inhabitable! Now maybe you need something to complain about and like to live on the streets scractching for food wishing they didn't steal your retirement money but that is your business and I would like for you to keep it to yourself. We are not going to hell with you!

Obama/Bided 08-16!!!!!

Aengil,

I worked at the university for a little less than a year and left for various reasons, not the least of which was the political environment. I never collaborated with any socialists or communists on any boards.

See, this isn't a matter of guilt by association with Obama and Ayers. It's a matter of guilt by PARTICIPATION. An entirely different matter.

The lengths to which people will go to defend Bill Ayers is simply staggering. Ayers never refuted any quotation in the NY Times article. Not a single one. Sure, he didn't kill anyone directly by pure chance. The bombs intended for Fort Dix most certainly would have killed many.

Again, he tries to make a moral equivalence between domestic terrorism, defined as creating terror among the populace by exploding bombs in public places, and American action in the Viet Nam war. It's insane in my opinion but apparently you're ready to sign up for that.

Of course being a socialist or communist is legal in the U.S. That's what makes this country great, as well as the right to pair up with such people for six or seven years on "education reform". But please don't try to spin it as some virtuous act. Obama knew exactly who Ayers was, what his past was, and now, finally, claims he thought he was rehabilitated. If you believe that I've got some hot AIG stock to sell you.

"People do need to bear in mind that Ayers is a professor, and was also appointed to the boards of these charities."
-----
"Charities"?? Hahaha.

What people REALLY need to bear in mind is that Ayers was/is a major hereditary CORPORATE player -- whose ostensibly super-"left" activities with the Weathermen put an end to the broad-based social movement of the late sixties.

The quality of reporting on Ayers' activities during the Weatherman period has NOT been good.

Ayers rehabilitated himself
long ago and is now a
professor of education.

McCain still suffers from
imaginary POW trauma. He
was treated well as a POW
but has gone to extraordinary
lengths to fabricate torture
stories and has deceived the
public for 35 years to
build a political career
for himself.

Obama's relationship with Ayers has been close and long-term, stretching from as early as 1983 (when both were attending Columbia U. in NYC, working with the same faculty mentor and living within walking distance of each other) through the present. That relationship includes:

–1987 when BO was working as a community organizer for the Alinsky-style Developing Communities Project (DCP) and Ayers was a new assistant professor of education at the U. of Ill. Chicago Circle Campus, involved politically with the public schools crisis and looking to DCP as an ally.

–1988 when Ayers solicited Khalid al-Mansour to raise money for BO's Harvard education. (Mansour, a Black Muslim (NOI), was a mentor to Black Panther Party founders and advisor to Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world's richest men.)

–1989 when Ayers and his father Tom Ayers (very prominent Chicago businessman and former head of Commonwealth Edison) got Obama a job at Sidley Austin law firm, where Michelle was already working, as was Ayers' wife Bernadine Dohrn, who apparently had been hired as a favor to Tom Ayers.

–1993 when Bill Ayers placed BO on the Chicago Woods Foundation.

–1995 when Bill Ayers made BO chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge through year 2000.

–1995 when Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn hosted the launch of Obama’s political career at their Chicago home.

–1997 when MO, who was then Assoc. Dean of Student Services and Director of the Community Service Center (CSC) at U. of Chicago, invited Bill Ayers and her husband, BO, then a senior lecturer in the University's Law School, to speak at a University-sponsored juvenile justice panel at the CSC.

–1997 when BO prepared a book blurb for Ayers' book.
–2002 when Ayers and BO again appeared together on a panel regarding intellectualism, co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.

jpt quotes The CHANGEling Obama:

"we're teetering on a really, really bad situation."

Uh, "teetering"? This from a person who voted to turn the US Treasury over to the financial corporations who are his major supporters?

Spoken like the vapid corporate figurehead he is.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, somebody seems to have bombed the BART tracks, and the bomb squad was deployed in the Mission District, in a local news report which was never followed up.

Go read "Ayers Has Not Left Radicalism Behind" yesterday at ibdeditorial

Anyone who buys that ridiculous 'I was 8 when he did a bad thing' line is a gullible moron.

Someone posted how McCain is so great because he's from militaary royalty, as opposed to someone who hangs around 60's era terrorists. What B.S.! First, McCain is a punk, like Bush, who was born on third and thought he hit a triple. He was lucky to get an sppointment to Annapolis, because his high school grades stunk! He graduates near the bottom of his class, and if he was NOT the son of an admiral, would have been tossed out of the academy before the first sememster of his freshman year! he ONLY gets to go to flight school becuase of daddy and granddaddy, and crashed his first jet in training, then after getting his wings, crashed a plane flying home after an Army/Navy game. Then there's the controversial incident on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal, where it's alleged he didn't follow proper procedures and "wet-started" his jet, making the situation worse. When he gets shot down, he again admits he didn't take proper procedures to avoid being hit by a SAM in his autobiography! When he gets back from Vietnam, and stays in the Navy for another decade, he again crashes another plane! Then lets talk about his associations with right-wing, John Birch type groups, joining the World Anti-Communist League, led by a neo-Nazi former Air Force colonel, Johon Singlaub, an organization that backed right-wing death squads in a number of countries, very anti-democratic! Then there's the Keating Five Scandal, and McCain was lucky to get a free pass on that one. McCain, the seantor who didn't like regulating businesses in any way, shape or form, and totally for dismantling FDR's New Deal business-regulating legislation that saved the consumer/taxpayer middle class and working poor, and saved the American business world from itself!
Finally Palin: connected with a right-wing wacko Alaskan Independent Party, whom she addressed earlier THIS year, a group allied with the Confederacy Party which wants the former Confederate States to be independent, and the so-called Constitution Party (a misnomer if there ever was one), which wants a Christainist USA!
GO OBAMA!

marylou: "there's still much more beneath the surface than has seen the light of day"

How do you know that, if it hasn't seen the light of day?

You don't.

All we want are the facts, ma'am.

Woody: It's always entertaining when someone takes part of what someone says as verbatim truth, while simultaneously ignoring other things the same person said.

You're picking and choosing from what Ayers has said. Ayers responded to the NYT's reporting him as saying "we didn't do enough", stating the article was "deliberate distortion". He stated he said he "had a thousand regrets, but no regrets for opposing the war with every ounce of my strength." And he also said "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." That makes for a slightly more complex picture, does it not?

Bombing symbolic buildings in opposition to a war (particularly one as contentious as the Vietnam war) is always going to be a complex subject. It's trivializing just to yell "Ayers! Terrorist! TERRORIST!!!"

But as for him being a terrorist now - what acts of terror is he committing, exactly, these days? Teaching?

I mean, what definition of rehabilitation are you working with? Should Obama have read Ayer's mind to work out whether he was truly rehabilitated? Or, since as far as I'm aware he's not telepathic, should he have looked at what Ayers was doing?

Finally, you said "Just because someone works for a major university does not mean they cannot be an active socialist, communist ..." You are actually allowed to be a socialist or communist in this country. It's not illegal. And if you think there's a problem working alongside such people, well, you also said you've worked in such a university. Can I conclude that you, therefore, are a commie?

I didn't think so.

Obama's "last eight years" is a red herring designed to absolve democrats...even SNL made fun of democrats' involvement in the crisis...does he not get it? At least McCain admits it is a bipartisan issue...

Aengil, you're a good little soldier for Obama, but intelligent people know that Obama was indeed attempting to hide the depth of his relationship with Rezko. In fact, the true story only came out in dibs and drabs as needed - and there's still much more beneath the surface than has seen the light of day. Which makes the rest of his quote about "trust" all the more interesting. But you're right, I did mean Obama/Rezko/Auchi - and there's a lot there if anyone in the media cares to dig for it. Which luckily for Obama, nobody does.

Bottom line: Obama can't be trusted.

It's all about trust & character ...

Let's see ... a war vet with a lifetime of service to his country (from a family with a history or service), or Obama & his radical 60's terrorist has-been friends (who are now just 60's radicals working from the inside), and a pastor that he listened to for 20 YEARS preaching whitey hate ... 20 YEAR is a long time to not really know somebody.

No-brainer.

"Well, what would you call it? Was he planting bombs when Obama met him? Was he a fugitive from justice? No. Was he a respected member of the community, a university professor of education, and an expert on educational issues? Yes.

I'd call that rehabilitated too."

If Daley is associating with an unrepentant terrorist, then Daley is in the wrong. So is UofC. And you know as well as I do that the only reason he's not behind bars today is he got off on a wiretapping technicality. Ayer's quote on being acquitted:

"Guilty as sin, free as a bird, America is a great country."

Have you ever worked for a university? I have. An Ivy League university in fact. It is a different world, a far left world where far left ideology and political correctness rule the day. Just because someone works for a major university does not mean they cannot be an active socialist, communist or unrepentant terrorist. Those attributes will most likely get you ahead in that environment.

If Ayers was rehabilitated why would he say things in the New York Times on 9/11/2001 like:

'''I don't regret setting bombs,' Bill Ayers said. 'I feel we didn't do enough.'''

"So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? 'I don't want to discount the possibility,' he said."

Yeah, that sounds rehabilitated to me.

Maybe that Weathermen tattoo on his neck reminds him every day of his glory years. Maybe he's very much still the same person, just a little more patient.

I'ts kind of funny that when a questionable characteristic of Obama is brought to light by the Republicans... like his lying about his association with Ayers and with Rezko..... their campaign has turned nasty.

BUT...
when Obama's backers accused Palin of actually being the GRANDmother of Trig, and when his storm-searchers trekked to Alaska to find the dirt on a governor has won an 80 percent approval rating from her state..... that's perfectly acceptable.

Keep on slurping the kool-aid guys......

marylou: In regard to your quote, note that Obama was responding to Hillary Clinton's statement that Obama was "representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago". Obama's response accurately addressed the point of him 'representing Rezko'.

As for the 'Obama/Ayers/Auchi' triangle, you're kidding me right? Firstly, I think you meant 'Rezko', not 'Ayers', secondly, that's not so much a triangle as a line, and a pretty fuzzy line at that.

When was it 'proven' that Obama met Auchi, exactly? I think you're referring to two people - out of the 100 people who supposedly were there - claiming the Obamas attended the reception. As far as I'm aware, no actual details or actual proof has emerged regarding that reception. And that appears to be the sum total of any evidence linking Obama to Auchi. Well I'm convinced. Not.

Is your definition of 'proof', 'believing who, and what, you want to believe'?

"Note: college professors don't count as terrorists."

Obviously, you never went to USC.

Ayers was voted CITIZEN OF THE YEAR in Chicago in 1997. People change.

Chicago is a politician's town - how many citizens of the year visit Hugo Chavez and participate on the Miranda International Center - and praise Chavez?

Obama and Ayers shared an agenda as they funded radical groups like ACORN in their grants to these organizations. ACORN is implicated in 15 states for fraud--that's just this year- in years past, they've done their share to elect Democrat officials. Plus taxpayers fund their intimidation tactics (Saul Alinsky) in housing and other social activism. Oh yes, they forced banks to lend to people who couldn't pay for the houses they bought and they called it 'GOOD." Good is not when you force others to do your will - and freddie and fannie are the result of such tactics. Predatory lending was definitely part of it, but so was activist groups like ACORN.

ACORN says they can't guarantee a fraud free election, but they've registered over a million people this year including the Dallas Cowboys team in Nevada. Obama paid them $800,000 to get out the vote- he used the same Saul Alinsky playbook when he was an organizer in Chicago.

Is it guilt by association or guilt by participation?

Ayers and Obama through the Woods Fund and the CAC gave grants to radical groups (like ACORN) over academic groups--that is participation.

Zank: "Why was Obama working with Ayers who believed in that philosophy?
Answer: Because Obama shares similar views."

So... you think Arnold Weber, who was also on the Chicago Annenburg Challenge board of directors with Obama, is also a marxist? Even though he was a member of the Nixon administration, and has donated money to the McCain campaign?

Sheesh!

Jake Tapper: "In an interview with conservative Philadelphia radio talk show host Michael Smerconish today, ...."

"[C]onservative"? "Michael Smerconish"?

Michael Smerconish is NOT a "conservative"!!! FYI: Media darlings David "Gergen" Brooks, David Gergen, Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Phillips and the completely insignificant but repeatedly quoted "Republican" (i.e., non-Republican) Susan Eisenhower are NOT "conservatives". They are not even "Republicans".