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but anyone with more than a single brain cell realizes that you can't judge people based on things their acquaintances did generations in the past.

Unless it is the Pope.
It seems quite a few of you were rather upset that he had been in Hitler youth, despite the fact that he really had no choice in the matter.

resedit wrote:

but anyone with more than a single brain cell realizes that you can't judge people based on things their acquaintances did generations in the past.

Unless it is the Pope.
It seems quite a few of you were rather upset that he had been in Hitler youth, despite the fact that he really had no choice in the matter.

ooh!!!

good one res.

truth be told, i could really care less about the pope.

resedit wrote:

mo' ron wrote:

In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above,  Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

- http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/ … ml?showall

A rather poor assumption for him to have made.

funny, the author of that article seemed to think otherwise.

resedit wrote:

mo' ron wrote:

In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above,  Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

- http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/ … ml?showall

A rather poor assumption for him to have made.

Why?

I somehow doubt Ayers really brought up his propensity for bombing things in his youth, while working on school reform projects. And I don't think most people would suspect their college professor associates of secretly wanting to blow things up (unless they teach physics/chemistry).

Most people had never heard the name "william ayers" before this issue came up, and I doubt most of the people Ayers dealt with on a daily basis knew his past. And I would further go on to say that not a single person here would have shunned Ayers had they been in Obama's position either.

bratboy wrote:

I don't know Ayers.  I most certainly don't endorse his criminal activities.  But apparently many politicians in Chicago--of both parties--have found it not completely intolerable to interact with him in professional/political situations.  This includes the Annenbergs, who McCain is associated with.

Many people had no problem dealing with any number of crooks or knaves. I dont see how that redounds on their character. And if for example Bush is in a picture with some money man that democrats don't like you KNOW that you will use that picture and that association to judge Bush. How many times have we heard how Bush is Saudi Arabia's bitch because he is an oil man. And if you want to know Ayres here is his summation of both himself and his country "Guilty as sin, free as a bird - what a country". He is one who has been born with a spoon in his mouth, and has  a rich daddy to give him his respectability. But the guy BOMBED THE PENTAGON. what is the matter with you? His wife was on the FBI's ten most wanted list. She still isn't on the bar because of her criminal past. Ayres' girlfriend got blown up by a bomb that went off that they were trying to put together. They've been involved in terrorist activities, robberies, and he is still unrepentant to this day. The Annenbergs may be guilty of bad judgement, but they didn't try to BLOW UP THE PENTAGON. If they were runnnig for president I'd be asking them why they gave money to such a radical who was still unrepentant. And Obama is frankly lying about his dealings.

If you want to know who Ayres is here's an article from someone who's house Ayres firebombed when he was 9. The weathermen tried to kill my family

I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.

For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.

Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.

And he, through 2006 is unrepentant that he did these things. And Obama worked with him anyway and didn't even bat an eye.
He (john murtaugh) says:
Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
And thats the exact point.Why is he linked to so many radicals, what does it say about his judgement his morality and his politics, as well as his philosophies. And I don't think you can answer that, nor do you even want to. But that is the fundamental question that has to be answered and why this is totally relevant.

Obama's association with him is not noteworthy.  He's not "palling around" with him, he isn't being advised by him, they don't even appear to be friends.  It's not going to work.

He started his career in Ayres basement. He wrote a blurb for Ayres book on education (more on that in a minute). He appeared in many speeches with the guy. He served on a board with Ayres for years the Leadership Council of the Chicago Public Schools Education Fund as well as on the Woods Foundation past 2001 when Ayres said he was unrepentant and wished he had done more. He may have been 8 when Ayres did his actions, but he was in his 30's when he was serving on a board with this unrepentant terrorist.

"Sweep it under the rug?"  I couldn't care less.  This is HURTING McCain's campaign, it isn't helping.  Obama is practically daring McCain to bring it up at the next debate--do you honestly think they're worried about it?

I know you couldn't care less. Yet you can't answer the question as to why Obama would serve on a board with someone who tried to blow up the pentagon. Did he not know, did he not care? What does that say about him? Were they on the same page as far as their socialist leanings? Did he think that he was reformed? Seriously, saying he was 8 years old when Ayres commited domestic acts of terror and tried to blow up capitol buildings, doesn't cut it when he's a grown man and needs to answer for his associations for a number of years. He may have a good reason for working with Ayres, but lets hear it. The fact that you could't care less about it makes me question your honesty. I KNOW that you'd certainly care more were it one of your political enemies. It sounds more like, you don't want to know about it and are trying to sweep it under the rug, due to political considerations and partisanship.

Should we also be talking about the Counsel of World Freedom?  G. Gordon Liddy?  Charles Keating?  There's probably a reason McCain has been hesitant to bring this up in a setting where Obama can respond.

Neither of those two set bombs that tried to blow up the pentagon. neither of those two robbed banks, targeted police stations started riots. And until Charles Keating was implicated in the Savings and Loan he wasn't disreputable. Is Mccain hanging out with Charles Keating after the S&L debacle?as to liddy, he certainly sounds like a kook and an extremist (though probably an entertaining one) but he at least went to jail for his crimes.

Again, Obama is a blank slate. Very little is known about him as he has very little record in the senate. Yet you look into his past to find out more information about him and you find he surrounds himself with radicals. Why? And why can't he simply defend his history? Rather than say he was shocked to find out that Wright said negative things why not defend Wrights statements as true? Beacause if he is truly shocked it makes no sense that he would have sat in that church for so long, nor count him as a mentor. It smacks of political opportunism and of a guy who refuses to be honest. At least Ayres is up front about his activism. Obama hems and haws about his shock at Ayres ations and wrights actions, yet there is no history of him denouncing them, or refusing to work with them, until he's called on it. And please tell me why Barack himself worked with Ayres for that long, knowing the guys history if not that he has some political affinity.


As to education here's Ayres in Venezuela talking about education (right from his own website):
http://billayers.wordpress.com/2006/11/ … ion-forum/

I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!

Education as socialistic revolution. Is that the type of education he was bringing to chicago. Is that why Barack Obama signed on board? Do they have an affinity of ideas on education so that they would both view education as creating revolutionaries?

Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.

Viva Mission Sucre!
Viva Presidente Chavez!
Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana!
Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

Clearly ayres is still a revolutionary and a communist one at that, who sits at the foot of someone like Chavez. This was in 2006. Ayres has never fundamentally changed his position as a communist or even really his stance on education (and in fact he was teaching when he started engaging in his terrorist activities). So when he was promoting his education proposals, why did  Obama sit on that board? Ayres may in fact be right. Maybe that is the best form of education. But we have a history of Obama working with this guy. Does he agree or disagree with this revolutionary position on education and indoctrination? I can't imagine him working all those years on this board if didn't have some sympathy for said ideas, so the point is who is Obama and what does he stand for? He should be out there defending his position on education, and even his working with Ayres. Instead though he obfuscates and tries to deny that there is any real connection. Yet this is part of what makes Obama Obama. So is he pretending to be a moderate democrat so he can get elected and then plans on creating a revolution of enlightenment of liberation and change, or is he a moderate democrat or something else. He needs to answer for his working with Ayres, so we can determine in fact whether he is truthful or a liar an extremist or a moderate. You should be asking those questions yourself considering you plan on voting for him.

Last edited by everlong554 (2008-10-10 1:23 am)

obama also said this:

“The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.”

It makes total sense. It makes sense and says alot about your values who you befriend, who your mentor is and who you work with. He may have commited acts 40 years ago, when Obama was 8, but Obama is working with him as an adult and not even batting an eye.
And that reflects on him and his values.

Think about it. Byron De La Beckwith killed Medgar Evers back in the 60's and was unrepentant. He faced trial after trial but always got off. And people knew he killed Medger Evers. If 40 years hence you were friends with Byron De La Beckwith, that says something about your character frankly. Because if you found the murder of Medger Evers to be reprehensible you wouldn't be friends with him, or working with him or in the same circles with him. And those who were and said nothing, have to share some values in common, otherwise they wouldn't associate with him. It would be a reasonable question to ask, if an associate of his were runnning for office, why are you friends with Byron, or why did you have an association with him, and it certainly would be relevant what your answer was. If you said, The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense,would that be reasonable if you are working with him and associating with him for that long?

Robert Byrd is an elder statesman in the democratic party who used to be in the klu klux klan. Yet he's respectable today because he disavowed his service in the clan. If he never did that I would question why people associated with him lo these many years, and it would reflect on their character. And people are perfectly able to take a stand and say they will not associate with them. That reflects on their character too. Obama didnt have to have a 20 year association with Wright or serve on more than one board over the course of a few years with a terrorist, but he did.

Last edited by everlong554 (2008-10-10 1:13 am)

It's funny that you remember that, because it didn't happen.

There was one time when some people got angry when Trent Lott said this while at Strom Thurmond's birthday party:

"When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."

I'm not sure if you remember Strom Thurmond's Presidential Platform...

Does this mean you're not voting for the terrorist loving Obama in 3 weeks now, res, as you've repeatedly claimed?

matt wrote:

But again, the attempt to tie Barack Obama to someone who committed a terrorist act when Obama was eight years old and who is not actively a terrorist is pretty laughable. The claim that it would somehow reflect on Obama's patriotism is pathetic.

It's the equivalent of saying that every Democrat who has relatively recently met Robert Byrd is a racist or every Republican who has relatively recently met Larry Craig is out having anonymous gay bathroom sex.

It's not just pathetic-- it's absurd.

When Thurmond had his presidential platform it was in 1948. Trent Lott was probably 8 or at the very least, in his teens. So why all the outrage over something that occured more than 50 years ago?

And again, as per Byrd, Byrd actually renounced his time in the klan. Ayers never did. He may have softened his stance somewhat but hes still the ardent activist and socialist that he's always been.

Last edited by everlong554 (2008-10-10 6:44 am)

everlong554 wrote:

He started his career in Ayres basement.

More evidence that the truth matters very little to you.

Later in 1995, Ayers hosted a "getting to know you" gathering at his house as Obama was preparing for his first campaign, a run for the Illinois Senate. The incumbent state senator, Alice Palmer, had announced she would run for Congress.

To help Obama in the Democratic primary race to succeed her, Palmer organized a few informal meetings to introduce Obama to her supporters in the fall of 1995, including the gathering at Ayers' house. It was not a fundraiser, as some reports have stated. And it was not the meeting that launched Obama's political career, as other Obama critics have alleged.

Link.

I know you couldn't care less. Yet you can't answer the question as to why Obama would serve on a board with someone who tried to blow up the pentagon.

...because crossing political paths with Ayers is clearly part of the price of doing business in Chicago politics.  Does that make it right?  Of course not.  But numerous members of both parties, some prominent, have interacted with this man though his work in education.  You're tarring a awful lot of people by suggesting that anyone who didn't jump up and run screaming from the room when Ayers walked in can fairly be accused of "palling around with terrorists."  Bad people can still do good work, and apparently Ayers work in education is viewed as a positive by many in Chicago.  He's not a fugitive, in any event.   

The fact that you could't care less about it makes me question your honesty.

No offense bud, but your judgment doesn't strike me as particularly important. 

I can't imagine him working all those years on this board if didn't have some sympathy for said ideas, so the point is who is Obama and what does he stand for?

So does that comment go for any Republican who has ever served on a board with Ayers, as well? 

Neither of those two set bombs that tried to blow up the pentagon. neither of those two robbed banks, targeted police stations started riots. And until Charles Keating was implicated in the Savings and Loan he wasn't disreputable. Is Mccain hanging out with Charles Keating after the S&L debacle?as to liddy, he certainly sounds like a kook and an extremist (though probably an entertaining one) but he at least went to jail for his crimes.

So you're telling me that--at this stage in the campaign, with your candidate in such dire straits as he currently is--you wouldn't similarly be foaming at the mouth if Obama had a 'Counsel of World Freedom connection,' or a 'Keating Five connection,' or a 'G. Gordon Liddy connection?' I find that rather difficult to believe.

You're hyperventilating because your candidate is doing quite poorly and the election is just around the corner.  But I promise you, your party's continued obsession with Obama's association with Ayers comes at your own peril.

It doesn't matter that much anyway - my electoral college vote is virtually guaranteed to be going to Obama regardless.

resedit wrote:

but anyone with more than a single brain cell realizes that you can't judge people based on things their acquaintances did generations in the past.

Unless it is the Pope.
It seems quite a few of you were rather upset that he had been in Hitler youth, despite the fact that he really had no choice in the matter.

Hold on, having an acquaintance do something terrible is different than joining an organization that stands for something terrible. Pope aside for the moment, if some dude joins the KKK, even if he never personally lynches anyone, sorry, that is a huge black spot on your ethical resume. Of course, the pope was just a kid, maybe cut him some slack; but your comparison isnt quite right, because people DO have choices in those kinds of situations, and I know very well that some kids really did make the choice not to join Hitler Youth groups or to abstain from groups that they had been members of which turned into Hitler Youth.