I think what does matter is electing somebody who didn't vote ninety percent of the time with Bush.The question is do we want the horrific policies of waging unjustified, illegal wars, Wall St over Main St, ruining our environment, slashing funding on education, health care, senior citizens? Personally from what I read on www.factcheck.org the relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers is (in my words) a bunch of irrelevant hot aires. Factcheck is a completely impartial site that separates truths and lies. They go after untruths by both Democrats and Republicans.
A good source too for the truth is www.truthorfiction.com
Here's what they wrote of Obama and Ayers.
First a little background. William Ayers was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. They took the name from a line from a Bob Dylan song lyric. "You don't need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows."
Mr Ayers was a radical who bombed federal buildings in the 60s. These include the Pentagon and the Capital building. My source is the truth or fiction site. This is a quite reliable source. In other words I believe it can be trusted.
However Obama was a little boy when this happened. I recall meeting Abie Hoffman, a few years before he passed, at Green Party conference. Does that make a Yippy?
People very often change. Many times for the better. The former Weather Underground founder was an education professor. Obama and Ayers were part of the Annenberg project. Please note the AP is not part of the Annenberg Center of the U. of PA. The AC is the sponsor of the Fact Check site.
My take is to not be so eager to be judgemental. This is the early part of the twenty first century. I am definitely not condoning or minimalizing what Ayers did. What I am saying is he is not the same man he was then. He is now a respected professor of education at the U. of Ill. and a community organizer. His education project was endorsed by the then Republican governer of Illinois.
Besides Barack Obama denounced publicly he does not agree with William Ayers former radical views. He called his acts detestable. This doesn't sound like an endorsement.
Fact Check claims John McCain lied concerning Obama's relationship with the former 60's radical.The same source found the Republican nominee's charge that the Democrat nominee fabricated his connection with Ayers.
Sarah Palin made a big to do over Obama association with Ayers. In my and many other's opinions, she made it look as if the Democratic Ill Senator and Bill Ayers were practically comrades.
They wrote too that what Obama said of his relationship with the former Radical was essentially true. The same site continues to state the relation between Obama and Ayers was never that close.
The so called education foundation that practiced radicalism was endorsed by the then Republican governer and local civic leaders. The periodical "Education Week" states the organization showed "mainstream thinking"
Below is Fact Check's statement on McCain, Obama, Ayers.
"Analysis Sen. John McCain has dialed up his attacks on Sen. Barack Obama's past association with former Weather Underground activist Bill Ayers. He released a 30-second TV spot Oct. 10 claiming Obama "lied" about Ayers. A day earlier he announced a 90-second Internet ad claiming that Obama and Ayers "ran a radical education foundation together" and suggesting Obama was being untruthful."
Obama didn't say he never was working with Ayers.
My conclusion is Barack Obama is most certainly not close with William Ayers, either personally, professionally or politically. One shouldn't necessarily judge people by the company they keep. Especially when its so tenuous.
The election concerns do we continued with the policies of the past eight years or do we make a break and a change we can believe in.
How does one define a terrorist. Mr Ayers said what he did was meant to cause property damage only. Its not that I think damaging property is permissible. At least there was no intent to harm people. What ever his acts, William Ayers led a quiet life as a professor for at least thirty years. He is a former terrorist. He is certainly no Osama Bin Ladin. Even if he says he's unrepentent.
McCain says in one of his ads and some stump speeches, that his Democratic opponent lied when he replied 'This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood
Here is the truth. "Obama never said Ayers was "just" a guy in the neighborhood. That statement is from the Democratic Primary Debate at Drexel University in Phila,PA. Obama not only didn't say the Mccain misquote. He elaborted on their relationship. Obama said he worked with Ayers on a charitable board. He admitted getting some early political support from him.
Below is the exchange. It is written verbatim. ABC News.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, April 16: An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?
Obama: George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about.
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.
Sen. Hillary Clinton then said, "I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation," and predicted that "this is an issue that certainly Republicans will be raising."
Obama responded, "President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground, which I think is a slightly more significant act than me ... serving on a board with somebody for actions that he did 40 years ago."
We wrote back then that Clinton had gone too far by suggesting that "people died" as a result of Ayers' actions. And nothing Obama said then has since been shown to be false. It is true that he did not bring up his work with Ayers on a second project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama was board chairman and Ayers was an early organizer, and where the two were together for half a dozen or so meetings. But neither Clinton nor Stephanopoulos asked him about that project. McCain could fairly accuse Obama of not volunteering the information, but it is false to claim he "lied."
"Pal Around"
The first to begin using the new line of attack against Obama was McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, after a lengthy article appeared Oct. 3 in the New York Times about Obama and Ayers:
Palin, Oct. 5: Our opponents see America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who would bomb their own country.
She's repeated the charge again and again at different campaign stops since then, citing the Times. What the Times article actually says, however, is this: "he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers." The Times says its review of documents and interviews with key players "suggest" that Obama "has played down his contacts with Ayers," but describes their paths as having crossed "sporadically" since their first meeting in 1995. And far from palling around with Ayers, the two haven't spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the Senate in January 2005, according to an Obama spokesman. He said the two last saw each other more than a year ago, when they accidentally met on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.
Obama addressed Palin's claim on Oct. 8, when questioned by ABC News' Charlie Gibson:
Obama, Oct. 8: This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois. ... And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that ... I've 'palled around with a terrorist', all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.
Stormy Weather, Underground
Bill Ayers' notoriety dates from the radical, anti-Vietnam War group he helped to start in 1969, splintering off from the activist Students for a Democratic Society. The members of the new group, the Weather Underground, favored shows of violence to further their cause. On March 6, 1970, though, three of them blew themselves up in a Greenwich Village townhouse during a bomb-making session gone badly awry. Ayers and his fellow Weathermen, as they were called, soon dropped out of sight.
Barack Obama, who was born Aug. 4, 1961, was 8 years old at the time.
The Weather Underground continued setting off bombs, including one in a men's lavatory in the Capitol building in 1971 and another in a women's restroom in the Pentagon in 1972. Nobody was killed, due to evacuation warnings the Weathermen sent out in advance.
After the Vietnam War ended, the group's activities petered out. In 1980 Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, another member, surfaced and turned themselves in to police. Because of illegal federal wiretaps, pending charges against Ayers for allegedly inciting a riot and conspiring to bomb government sites had been dropped. Dohrn pleaded guilty to separate charges of aggravated battery and jumping bail; she was fined $1,500 and given three years' probation. Ayers and Dohrn, who had had two children together while in hiding, married in 1982.
Several other Weather Underground alums, including Kathy Boudin, along with some members of a group calling itself the Black Liberation Army, were involved in a bungled 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Nanuet, N.Y., in which a security guard and two policemen were killed. Ayers and Dohrn have never been publicly tied to the incident, which took place after they had turned themselves in. Dohrn was jailed for seven months for refusing to provide a handwriting sample to the grand jury investigating it.
Dohrn is now a clinical associate professor of law at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Locally, Ayers' radical past hasn't been much of an issue. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet wrote last spring that it "was no big deal, or any deal, to any local political reporters or to the editorial boards of the Sun-Times or [Chicago
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Contributor's Note
This is why I think Bill Ayers should be a non issue in the Barack Obama campaign. Especially when McCain voted at least 90 percent with Bush's failed policies.
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