Obama / Ayers connection
 

The Obama - Ayers connection has finally made it outside of talk radio and FOX news. For those of you who don't know Bill Ayers (a non-repentant domestic terrorist), this report from CNN's Anderson Cooper will provide some background.



As with Obama's relationships with Rev. Wright, the relationship and ties to other radical persons/ideologies either demonstrates the political nature of Obama who associates for political benefit and later disavows when these associations are challenged, or he is completely clueless.

I'm very interested to read your opinions regarding this story and how you believe his associations may color his decision making as POTUS.

Seems like a nonissue to me. Obama has denounced Ayers' actions, and it isn't like there is a lot of political capital to be gained by being an acquaintance of someone who hasn't done anything relevant for decades.

This is the kind of stuff that comes up when certain folk need a distraction from low poll numbers.
I think that certain candidates shouldn't throw stones from glass houses, but that's a different thread.

I think everyone is associated with people who aren't always the best of people sometimes. This is no different than McCain being linked to Keating and a group in the Iran-Contra era.

To me this is nothing more than a Rove tactic designed to take issues off of the table and try to rebound in the polls.

Besides, this didn't stick when Hillary Clinton brought it up in the primaries.

I think it's becoming pretty clear that there is only one Karl Rove, and that Republican attempts to replicate his skills are falling woefully short.

more muckraking. is this seriously the level you have to go to to choose the next "leader of the free world"?

Seriously. It's a non-issue. Obama is not friends with this gentleman; serving on a board together several years ago does not constitute any kind of relationship beyond a brief working one that obviously no longer exists.

The Ayers non-issue has already been checked out. It was dead, with the exception of neocon talk radio hosts. As a last ditch effort, the man who said he would run a clean campaign is calling his opponent a terrorist.

They don't have to, but the McCain/Palin camapaign will go even lower:

While talking about Obama, a Palin supporter yelled out "kill him" She kept going like nothing ever happened.

McCain has shown that he'll say or do anything to get elected. He deserves no respect.

otto...or perhaps to most objective observers, it is just a "smear and fear" campaign.

The most ignorant and frightening fall-out of this kind of campaign:

Hmm, how many degrees of separation does McCain have from Joe Vogler? A guy who said "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions” and "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag.” He wanted Alaska to separate from the US, even formed a group trying make that happen. So Let's see... McCain's VP pick is Sarah Palin who's married to "The First Dude" who was, until 2002, a member of the separatist group Vogler started. And the good governor made a welcome video for that group earlier this year.

So is that one degree or two degrees? And Obama's repeatedly denounced Ayers several decades old activity. And I have yet to hear McCain, Palin or "The First Dude" denounce any of Vogler's anti-American comments.
-----Added 7/10/2008 at 12 : 29 : 06-----
I didn't hear/know that, man these people scare the crap out of me.

But let me get this straight. Ayers looked around in the 1960's and decided maybe the only viable action against something he disagreed with was violence. Now decades later people who disagree with what he did think the viable action is violence? Maybe it's just me but my irony meter just blew a fuse.

I'm not surprised that there would be folks at McCain rallies who would say shit like that. Right now, you almost have to be a bit kooky to be really enthusiastic about the McCain/Palin campaign.

I'm not saying you have to be kooky to support them, just to be really enthusiastic about them.

It looks like focusing on the positive charactaristics of their candidate(s) is not working so the strategy now is:

- Wear larger flag pins
- Smear and cast doubt on Obama

I wish Obama would take the high road instead of following them into the gutter. I guess his advisors are telling him to fight back in kind.

To his defense, Obama hasn't really attacked McCain as hard as he could. However, he's in a weird predicament. When the Bush campaign started smearing Kerry, he wanted to take the high road and he waited too long to attack back which gave him a big hit in the polls.. so the Obama camp is trying to walk a fine line with this one.

This election however, I don't think a smear campaign will work when there are so many undecideds, and it's been proven time and time again that undecideds do not like smear campaigns; they are interested in the issues. If Obama performs well in the second debate.. he should remain steady in the polls and you'll see even more smear from the McCain camp.. and I feel if he throws more mud on the wall.. less of it will stick and he'll be doomed. People are generally getting tired of this shit.

I have to agree.. I saw something the other day where John Voight was talking about how enthusiastic and excited he was about Palin and McCain and couldn't wait to introduce California to her. He just looked like the old drunk crazy actor.

The McCain/Palin crowds are turning on anyone who they perceive as the "enemy"...including the press:

This seems to me to be the natural course of things anymore. IMO, this started with Bush and the neo-cons. Bush would do/say something stupid and the press would report "The President toady did/said something stupid." And the neo-con and Bush via proxy would scream bias. See it's not that what Palin says is completely nonsensical it's that the damned mainstream media keeps telling people what she said.

I watch this dog and pony show and think you have to really like what that horse is saying to be willing to eat what comes out the other end.

this just feels worse than the Bush crap though.. this feels like a fucking cult.

I'm seriously scared for America at this point. I even told my wife we're moving to Canada is McCain is elected.

I'm thinking that eventually a reporter is going to get attacked at their rallies.

olbermann had the PERFECT response to this last night:

my new hero

God, I love Keith Olbermann.

While I always take Olbermann with a grain of salt.. (he is the liberal equivalent of Beck) I love his sarcastic style.

hrmm maybe we could have a head to head between Beck and Olbermann?

yea, olbermann is just far more entertaining to me than beck..i think bc he actually seems to do research and doesn't just jump to the base level conclusion. that stuff drives me insane.

still, i think this whole issue is a nonsequitor to take the focus off the economy, the issues, and mccain's slipping numbers..

www.intrade.com correctly predicted all 50 states in 2004 and has been an amazingly unbiased indicator.


www.election-projection.net and pollster.com are showing mccain as flailing in the wind as well.


Last friday, there was an article about how mccain was going to go hardcore on the attack ads and try to take the focus off the issues...today and yesterday, we got this..then obama's camp came back with a LOT of keating 5 information...

i'd say mccain and palin both have too many skeletons in the closet to start dragging this stuff too deep in the mud like that...i just ohpe the dems know what to do with the info.

I want to have Olbermanns baby. It worked in Junior dammit!

Oh, and I recommend Electoral-vote.com: President, Senate, House Updated Daily for projections as well. Things are not looking good for McCain...

I'm amazed that information about the Keating 5 hasn't come out widely prior to this. When McCain announced his candidacy, my dad told me to look it up. But I'm glad it's out there; I think it's really important that voters know about this piece of McCain's history, and I hope more information about it continues to come out.

i wonder if this thread has gone the way the op intended it to.

I don't hold keating 5 against McCain.

Two things I can say about McCain:
1) He comes from a long line of military in his family, including himself. He's not a chickenhawk and actually believes that military might can make right.
I don't agree with him philosophically, but I can respect his position as genuine.

2) It's fairly clear that he was deeply affected by the Keating 5 situation. Regardless of how much involvement you want to put on his shoulders, he either learned his lesson or was simply caught up as a young senator by political forces outside his control.
Either way, his record demonstrates to me that he would prefer a system that doesn't allow political corruption and has made moves to limit corruption of public officials.

Now, what the incident does show us is this fundamental belief he holds about deregulation of markets which is a position I do not agree with on a fundamental level. It doesn't speak anything of his character to me, however. People can believe that war can solve certain issues and also that free markets are more beneficial to our economy and our disgreements over those two issues shouldn't say anything about either of our moral character.

smooth...I think the issue here is the hypocrisy of McCain/Palin (and surrogates) assigning "guilt by association" to Obama (re: Ayers, Rezko, Wright) when their respective pasts have equally questionable associations.

redbaiting.
how charming.
it was just a matter of time.

it's be nice were this a campaign that enabled folk to discuss policy and ideological differences, but it's obvious that the republicans think they'll loose in such a context.
some republican strategists think they'll loose anyway, barring some Colossal Outside Event
US election: John McCain struggles to keep afloat in final weeks of campaign | World news | guardian.co.uk

regardless, it's clear that the right is going to keep on trying to turn this into a rovian affair.
the only good thing about that is that if things go as it looks like they will, this will simply increase the pulverization of the right.
but you'd think there'd be a limit past which the "party of personal responsibility" would have to allow mc-cain at least to stand up and go on his own on the issues and come what may. i would include palin in that, but i don't see her as terribly capable of doing that. there you go again, joe.

It may have been early in his career but he was over 50 years old at the time. He wasn't a naive kid and he had been accepting donations and perks like use of Keating's jet for five years.

I agree with the hypocrisy part of the argument, but as you can see from kutulu's post some people take it much further than that.

(and there is no such word as irregardless so if anyone must fuck with my quotes at least use real words)

Honestly, there isn't much there (Keating 5 scandal). However, if McCain is going to go there with Obama (Ayers) he should be prepared for the same kind of garbage.

My mistake. I quoted you and deleted the part of your previous post that I thought was irrelevant. I must have missed the first letter of your post though and that is how that happened. I will fix that right away.

AIP is terrorist organization.
Todd Palin is terrorist organization member.
Sarah Palin is married to a terrorist organization member.
Sarah Palin has attended and spoke at terrorist meetings.

This is my conclusions using her own definition of terrorists.

It's a desperate move on McCain's part. The worst thing that can happen is that he still loses the election.

Obama is actually lucky that this stuff came out during the primary season. Who would have thought that Hillary going massively negative would have been such a good thing for him.

After reconsidering the predictability of politics here at TFP, it's going pretty much the way I should have expected.

I only know of three groups of people who even think about Vietnam:

1) people who think "if not for..." we would have won the war
I've never actually met someone who believed this, only seen them post on anonymous forums and imply it on TV; I assume it's fairly small population

2) people who think it was a sad chapter from our collective history that is best moved past
these people seem to be willing to give a pass to draft dodgers, civilian protesters, and even the extreme protests like Ayers, and to some extent even the government as long as we can move past it; talking to them gives me the sense that a general amnesty is the best approach

3) people who either participated in opposition to the war or wish they were born in time to do so
these people tend to believe that the war was fundamentally wrong and the only way it ended was due to radical protest and domestic uprising against the government


So from a practical perspective, it just seems like a dumb move to scratch at the scar that Vietnam is to nearly everyone in our country.
I don't personally know anyone under 30 who would argue that Ayers is a morally deficient person. Even among the ones who don't agree with the bombings of the Underground, they seem to think of it all as a big confusing period. Nearly everyone over 30 that I personally know dislikes talking about the Vietnam era in general.

I don't see anyone being swayed by these ads and I'm not even sure of who the target audience is.

I predicted you would say that. :)

otto...it would be most helpful if you could offer your opinion on how you believe his "associations" may color his decision making process as POTUS.
-----Added 7/10/2008 at 06 : 45 : 10-----

Here is my short answer......it wont....because the "relationships and ties" as presented by the McCain/Palin campaign and surrogates are not representative of the true nature of the past associations with the persons in question.

Good one! :)

I believe he has consistently demonstrated that he is willing to say or do what is politically advantageous for the sole purpose of promoting his career. It would have been disastrous to stand up and say "yes, I absolutely believe in Rev. Wright's Afro-centric teachings because I've regularly attended his church for 20 years and I cannot express enough praise and adoration for my spiritual leader (as indicated in one of his books)"... so he plead ignorance and quickly threw Wright under a bus when it is politically expedient.

The association with Ayres is now demonstrating to be much deeper than he has admitted. As more information is uncovered about this relationship, Obama once again resumes the pattern of claiming ignorance... he was only an acquaintance... he didn't know about the bombings and current philosophy. The problem now is that there is a documented working relationship of Barack and Michelle both proactively supporting Ayers' projects and organizations.

So which is it? Is he so naive that he becomes blindly involved with these people? Did he actively seek out these relationships to merely gain "street-cred"? Or does he truly believe in the radical movements of Wright, Ayers, and others? I believe he is masking his ideological intent with this "audacity of hope" persona... doing or saying anything to get elected.

So is he a moron... or a slick and highly calculating fake?

otto....thanks for you opinion...but I'm still not sure how you think it would impact how he would govern or make policy decisions. Is there any thing in his voting record in the Illinois or US Senate that would suggest those "associations" have influenced his vote?

How do you think it is different from McCain past association with the US Council on World Freedom and its support of right wing death squads in Central America during the illegal Iran-Contra affair? Will that influence McCain's foreign policy decision making process?

Do you believe Palin's association with the extremist anti-American Alaska Independence Party will influence her decision making process?

I dont think the attempt to focus on past association will change the opinions of many Indepedent swing voters still on the fence and most concerned about pocket book issues...but I could be wrong and it wont be the first time.

Obama as "naive" or a "moron" or a "slick and highly calculating fake?" IMO, it is "none of the above"

nice, otto: you're working those o'reilly factor tactics with alpomb--set up a series of false premises based on idiotic interpretations of cherry-picked infotainment, make a rickety series of inferences based on them and them top it off with a false choice between two ludicrous options which presuppose that the previous nonsense is actually compelling.

ayers has been working in elementary education for a long time. his notions of education link it to questions of social justice. it's interesting stuff, not that it would matter if all you're interested in is knuckle-dragging red-baiting.

Teaching Bill Ayers

were we to reverse the tiresome conservative pundit game, the central question would be "why do you oppose social justice, otto?" in that context, it'd be easy to frame out the weather underground---but why do that? i see nothing problematic about having opposed the war in vietnam. i see nothing problematic about the weather underground trying to stop that war--EVEN THOUGH I DO NOT AGREE WITH THEIR TACTICS---not because i oppose them in principle, but because they were ill-considered and self-defeating. but look at ayer's webpage and see what he has to say about it.

but hey, why bother? why bother figuring out what you're actually talking about? why waste your time on reality when red-baiting is so much easier?

what's funny is all this drivel from conservativeland is good publicity for ayers' educational work.
free publicity too.
because not everyone is as stupid as the mc-cain campaign thinks they are.
some folk look stuff up.

The only thing that I have to say to this is that you can say the exact same for McCain. Here is a very long article by Rolling Stone (haha, bias) that paints McCain as someone who would do anything and take any stance, no matter his personal belief, for political gain.

Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

rb....I was kinda curious myself about what otto finds so troubling about Ayers' current projects and organizations.

His school reform work with the Annenburg Challenge, his work with the anti-poverty, philanthropic Woods Charitable Fund?

A friend in politics doesn't mean too much. Even if they are friends outside of work, I have friends that may not have perfect pasts.

Then again, does Obama respect the guy for standing up to the government? Is he a freedom fighter or domestic terrorist?

(And for the paranoid, was it their bombs that killed a lot of their members... or was it just made to look like they blew themselves up accidentally)