How long before we get the "This is not the Bill Ayers I knew" speech?

I wondered why I had to keep playing whack-a-mole against three arguments all week. 1. Obama was only 8 years old then, 2. Ayers has "done his time" of community service, and 3. Obama has renounced Ayers' violence. Listening to the Obama campaign's response over the weekend, I now know why that is - those are the only arguments they have. If they had better ones they would use them.
#1 is irrelevant, #3 is nice but inadequate, and to #2 I suggest the response "but he still doesn't think it was wrong."

Keep pounding. I think they've shown their entire hand.

And this will appear on the front page of a major American newspaper or in the primetime news on a major American network when? What's that, please speak up I can't hear you. Louder please. Hello, hello, is this microphone on ? ...

"How long before we get the "This is not the Bill Ayers I knew" speech?"

Not long at all. In fact, I'm surprised His Majesty hasn't already tried to throw Ayers under his bus. The problem for Obama Wan Husseini is that Bill Ayers, no shrinking violet, is going to retort, "The f*** I ain't the Bill Ayers you knew. I've ALWAYS been the Bill Ayers you've known."

I have ten bucks that say McCain is going to bring this subject up tomorrow night. "My history relating to Keating is well known, especially the fact that I was cleared of any wrongdoing. However, Senator Obama, your history with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn IS NOT well known. I'm asking you, right now, to come clean and tell the American people what you know."

In sum:

1. If Obama tries to tap-dance about Ayers, he's f***ed.

2. If Obama actually tells the truth about Ayers, he's doubly-f***ed.

Interesting. Isn't that about the time Ayers was getting national coverage for coming out of hiding and getting let off the hook? Now Obama claims to have been unaware of his past? Kinda hard to believe he missed all that.

"If Obama actually tells the truth about Ayers, he's doubly-f***ed."

Why should Obama start telling the truth at this point,he has been incapable of doing so from the beginning.

Posted by MarkJ at October 6, 2008 01:26 PM

If Obama tries to tap-dance about Ayers...

Racist!

When the facade of respectability Ayers has spend decades building begins to crack; will Ayers, as Rev Wright did, decide he's not going under the Obama bus?

This could get ugly.

As a 31 year old American who has spent the last several years devoting himself to a good faith education in history, it is bizarre to me that Communists should be referred to as "radicals" in the American mainstream. According to FBI files from 1976, Ayers and his SDS associates met with Cuban and North Vietnamese intelligence agents in Communist Czechoslavakia and Communist Havana in 1967 and 1969, respectively. A Cuban agent opined something like "No, we did not create SDS [or the Weathermen], but we radicalized them, gave them direction." The rhetorical intensity and frequency of violent activity increased demonstratably thereafter. Any group with such documented connections to satellites of Moscow and Beijing during that period ought, in my opinion, be considered intelligence agents, an indigenous "military wing" of foreign intelligence agents. Why is this opinion controversial? Does that stem from a desire to avoid the scorn and ridicule of anti-anti-Communists? Are people afraid of sounding like they're members of the John Birch Society? The thing is a *lot* more is known about these organizations now than was known during the Cold War. Anyone who looks honestly at the basic structure, purpose, and activities of the KGB and its foreign satellites' behavior would come to the same conclusion as I do. And these are the same people who run Russia, Cuba, Beijing and Vietnam today! Really - with these revelations about Ayers-Obama, is it really *that* paranoid to be concerned that he is a Manchurian Candidate? Even if you grant that he isn't controlled by these foreign powers? I mean, supposing he were such a person, it isn't as though there would be any more direct evidence than this available. These are *intelligence* services - plausible deniability is what they *do.*

Secondly, I think the general public needs to be informed about what a "Communist" actually is. There is some bizarre, ahistorical notion that one must be a Stalinist, a Leninist, a Maoist to be a "Communist" - as though there weren't doctrinal, tactical and strategic debates even within Stalin's closest cliques. As though there weren't endless debates and splits and conspiracies within the big perverse Marxist-Leninist tribe. There is some straw man that's been erected, or some unexamined sensibility, that there is some cartoonishly consistent and coherent image of a Communist, and if you deviate from this in some way well then you're just a "radical."

This is stupidity and it is harmful stupidity. Ayers is a type that any Old Bolshevik would easily recognize as a comrade. Communism is a mindset - it is just a theory of justice for angry people, a high-grade rationalization of total physical, moral and intellectual violence. Have none of these people read Ayers', SDS's, the Weathermen's many, many, many writings? Is this not exactly what they - to say nothing of their acts - stand for?

An assocaite of Lenin's, who fell out with him eventual, said Lenin "had visions of peace - through mists of hatred." Exactly! That's all there is to it. Let's not let the odd adjective "radical" distract us from the essence of the situation, and its historical antecedents.

In dealing with the Obama campaign, and its acolytes in the MSM, is time to begin wearing the epithet of 'RACIST!!!' as a badge of honor.

Folks, Obama's ties to terrorists for political gain is understandably very upsetting, but please watch the language, and don't respond to the trolls. I can ban them and and delete their comments quick enough.

DamnCat,

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was a tap-dancer.

Gene Kelly was a tap-dancer.

Fred Astaire was a tap-dancer.

Obama, trust me, is no tap-dancer.

McCain should remind viewers tomorrow night that Obama actually had a chance to come clean before the American public during the democratic debates and he claimed that Ayers was just some guy that lived in the neighborhood. McCain should ask Obama if he was lying then or is he lying now?

Microp., I strongly disagree.

Racism is one of the ugliest diseases of the human mind. The fact that Obama debases the word by its overuse is no reason to wear the label proudly: I would no more do so, than I would wear the label "fascist" proudly just because the left flings that term like around like confetti.

Were I to wear that label as you suggest, I would cede to the left the authority to determine who is racist and who isn't, which I utterly reject. And it would also say that we on the Right do not regard true racism as a serious matter, which is not true.

In response to Obama's slander, we must point out that we are the true anti-racists: we eschew and abhor the judging of any human being on the ground of his race, be he black, white, red, yellow, brown, or whatever. We judge you, Barack Obama, not as a black man, but as a man: and it is as a man that we reject your candidacy for president of our republic.

CY, I offer an apology, and request your forgiveness. Inexcusable manners, on my part.

Dunno about that Voorhees bird, though...

Ayers today describes himself as a small c communist. Lovely. Remember that the Rosenbergs were defended from truth with lies for forty years with great success. Even now, with their accomplice Stobell confessing that they were Stalinist spies, the Hard Left shifts easily from claiming their innocence to claiming an allegience to something greater than country. If these scum were idealogues merely we would have gotten to that in the sixties but no, these are not simply adherents to an oddball ethic and philosophy. These witless morons like Ayers actually construe themselves as enemies of civilization at large. As such they are the natural allies of violent criminals, any available profaner of the norm or right and even, explicitly, the mentally ill. Remember this when dealing with your own local meatheads. For this domestic anti-American brood, this isn't some simple divergence of opinion but a struggle of Dark and Light and they are of course, the Lightworkers. They must have the weight of murder and destruction for which the domestic and international Left is responsible dumped on their heads, not for any benefit to them; oh no. Recovery from these depths is not impossible but impractical. Your target audience are those who may, through their own ignorance and inate openness (the young, mostly) be taken in by the passionate certainty they never see questioned, even when they know the facts to be otherwise themselves. The Obies are singing a world into existence. It seems to have no place for anyone not with the program, as Michelle says. We may yet be watering the Tree of Liberty but let's hope it does not come to that. The racist and fascistic demogogue, Barack Obama, is not yet in the seat of power and even if that day should come, he will find that seat more precarious than he ever knew. Of course this cat does not know much.

I am beginning to fear another Clinton Cycle where the lefties clamor for their man, castigate all the awful truths told about him as lies from lying liar right wingnuts, and then have get clobbered by the truth when it's far too late. Kinda like when all the lefties wildly battled for Clinton through his impeachment and then, when he had won, his rape of Juanita Broderick popped up. There was a collective moment of silence from the Left, as I recall, as they realized the kind of man he was. But they supported him nevertheless because he was on their side. It was only after he was an impediment to their promotion of Obama that they finally admitted the conservatives had him pegged all along.

The lefties are blind lemmings who are likely to push a closet radical into the Presidency, the consequences of which are likely to be terrible for all to behold.

kulthur, you are attempting to be reasonable and thorough, and I salute you for it. However, as a 55-year-old, I have to warn you that such an approach will be very frustrating when dealing with progressives. I recommend a favorite beverage, such as a Guinness or a Jamieson, taken freely with like-minded friends. Not alone.

Tantor - and did you notice that their argument immediately changed into "Everyone always knew he was a liar, but..." A progressive's reset button is a remarkable thing.

What I cannot understand is the blase attitude towards Ayers and Dohrn among the left. I don't know anyone of their stripe, and if I did, I would not tolerate being around them, let alone working with them. They would not be "just some guy who lives in my neighborhood." They woul dbe "those murdering bastards" whom I would cross the street to avoid, whose presence at any function would be cause for me to leave.

How did these vile specimens earn their rehabilitation?

Argument #1: Obama was only 8 years old
Response #1: City Journal has an article about an 9-year old 'victim' of Ayers' criminal violence. Link here ... http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0430jm.html

Argument #2: Ayers has "done his time" of community service
Response #2: fascinating that paid, low-stress education chin-stroking employment by a university is on the par with 'community service'. Any court-ordered 'community service' picking up trash on the side of an California Interstate during a hot August summer in broad daylight like the rest of us prols?

Argument #3: Obama has renounced Ayers' violence
Response #3: News to me. Has Obama unequivolcally stated that Ayers et al will have no place in his administration, will receive zero federal funds, etc etc?

Ayers and Dohrn, like many left-wing radicals, were rich kids. Ayers' daddy was CEO of the Chicago power utility, and he sent little Billy to a private prep school. His protests stink of adolescent resentment to Daddy's money. It looks like he never really grew up.

Maybe I just run with too sarcastic a crowd, but when I read DamnCat's single word comment I thought he was just making fun of the most likely response of Obama's defenders. Though I suppose that only DamnCat knows what he had in mind in posting.

What about the connections between McCain and G. Gordon Liddy? Oh, I forgot, we're supposed to forget about him: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0504chapmanmay04,0,6061828.column

Truth be told, Ayres, Dohrn, etc. are awful people. But the dirty secret is that every major Presidential candidate over the past 40 years has had connections to questionable and appalling characters. It is absolutely proper to point out Obama's, and judge him on that fact, but hypocritical to pretend that McCain doesn't have them too (and yes, there are others beyond Liddy, though he is pretty appalling in his own right).

Awesome job Bob! As always.

And doing the work the MSM refuses to do.

"Obama, trust me, is no tap-dancer."

(Posted by: MarkJ at October 6, 2008 01:59 PM)

I agree, Mark.

With all that Chicago "political grease" sticking to his shoes, if Obama tried to tap dance... he'd fall in the sink!

Steve:

It's because almost none of us have come face to face with political violence of the kind advocated by Ayers and Dohrn.

A significant segment of this pampered and comfortable society really believes that the street theatre which passes for protest in this country, or the umpteenth movie about the McCarthy era are 'brave' demonstrations of 'political dissent'. They don't notice that the West's tinker-toy revolutionaries never show up to cause trouble at APEC Summits in Shanghai, where' they'd get to go toe-to-toe with the enforcement apparatus of a genuine police state.

It never occurs to people sporting bumper stickers declaring 'I love my country but fear my government' that they wouldn't dare express such sentiment in places where people truly fear their governments.

That, and reflex antipathy toward authority and the institutions of this society have been so fully institutionalized by our media-industrial and edcuational complexes that Ayers behavior can be contextualized and excused.

But only for some, mind you. The Unibomber and abortion clinic bombers get what they deserve -- one way tickets to incarcerated oblivion. Violent psychopaths on the Left get to set educational policy.

Waiting for someone with a big voice to make the Ayers-Mcveigh (sp?) comparison and point out some contrasts -
1. Ayers = Tim Mcveigh, only Ayers is (fortunately)incompetent.
2. If Mcveigh had been let off on a legal technicality he would never have found a comfortable place in mainstream conservative circles, much less as exalted a place as Ayers and Dohrn have found.
I have heard pundits in the MSM discuss the "end of conservatism" based on the bailout and current economic situation. Aside from using Ayers to expose Obama for what his real beleifs are, who is the great communicator in the conservative movement to point out the true moral corruption at the heart of the American Left? At this point Sarah Palin seems to be out there alone.

Speaking of terror ties, look at the contributions flowing to Obama from overseas.

This is a paradigm-shifting moment. In the last election, we saw how groups such as LGF exposed John Kerry by spreading the news about his anti-war activities.

Now, the coin has turned. The widespread reach of the Internet is allowing foreigners to fund Obama's campaign and flying mostly under the radar. In fact, if they send $200 at a time, it doesn't have to be reported.

If I can have my (little-read) site spammed several times a day by someone taking the trouble to type it in (and fill out the Chapta box), what's to prevent countries from funnelling money to Obama under the table this way?

There has been a lot of talk on this thread about Obama overusing and repeatedly using the word racist. I used this argument on my liberal friend and he challenged me to find any time Obama used the word. So I went looking and didn't find anything, but I am sure it is out there (i'm not that great with the internet). Can anyone post a link please? Thanks

It's not about Obama's "associations" with Rev. Wright, Rezko and Ayers. That argument sounds vaguely unfair, and is always made in the passive tense. And a lot of people will accept those associations as long as Obama finally "denounces" them.

What is fair and effective is to say that Obama is the guilty party. Say it directly: he funded, with a lot of money and over a long time, a radical left-wing reform movement on anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism in the Chicago public schools, and encouraged the children to agitate politically. He provided political cover for a corrupt property developer, and raised public money for him, some of which was kicked back to ACORN. He promoted ACORN by training them, funding them, and defending them in court. He donated to and publicly promoted the anti-white, anti-American Trinity church. He raised funds for the anti-Israel Arab American Action Network, which calls Israel's founding a "catastrophe."

Obama is the bad actor in all this. Wright, Ayers and Rezko should be treated as mere walk-ons; don't build them up. This is not about Obama's character. It's about his actual accomplishments, which he would have made with or without these other actors.

I have to wonder how Barack Obama ever made it to the U.S. Senate given his history of communist mentors. The idea of a radical Muslim running for President? It would seem that some real vetting might be in order now that we are 29 days from the election!

Obama is running as the first "black" president but he isn't black - he is 1/2 white, 3/8 ARAB, 1/8 Black. I don't care about race but I do have to wonder why the media isn't asking more questions and why so much has been ignored.

Mickey,

I agree with your first point: a radical muslim running for presidency is important news. Having communist mentors: real news. If Obama is really a radical muslim with strong communist connections, I really want to know about it. I haven't seen any of this yet. As far as I know Obama is connected to a wacky christian church.

Where we disagree is on the subject of race. You say that you don't care about race, but you dissect Obama into white, black and arab. Why does this matter and what questions do you want the media to ask about it?

As was pointed out on NRO's Corner, the big question is, after Ayers wrote Fugitive days (published 2001) and had an interview run in the NY Times saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," on 9/11 (though Ayers probably had little to do with the timing), did Obama immediately distance himself from the unrepentant terrorist, or not?

I don't know the answer, but I would like to.

In response to: {How long before we get the "This is not the Bill Ayers I knew" speech?}

...I'm wondering how long before we start hearing "so what, big deal" as we've heard endlessly since the wonderful (tongue in cheek) Clinton years ? People hear and retain what they want to hear and retain, and eventually it becomes the (un)truth. What a freaking sad country...

Were I to wear that label as you suggest, I would cede to the left the authority to determine who is racist and who isn't, which I utterly reject.

Brown Line: The left invented the term, and has successfully 'branded' it as a one-way pejorative, always away from the sacred 'people of color' and exclusively convicting 'people of pallor' on the mere assertion. No evidence is required. Those not on the left are laughable when they attempt to take moral high ground against others using the term as a weapon.

Logically, this shouldn't be so - if race B mistreats race C based on mere genetics, then B is misbehaving and its activist perpetrators should be held to account. But the left has so abused, overused and confused the term 'racism' in its culture-war opportunism that it's now just a ritual call to summon their MSM and academic allies whenever it can be exploited for political gain. As a non-leftist, you have no moral authority whatever in using it to summon help against any opponent with more melanin than you. You have no hope in participating in determining who's racist and who isn't, since the term has long since passed out of logical use.

Therefore, let us wear it indifferently and help abuse it (for starters, by dishing it out as vociferously as it's received) beyond insignificance into total meaninglessness.

macain should ask about the relationship so much - thats a given. ask about the education agenda. what was their goal? what were the results. lets get an idea of what is behind his rhetoric of change.

Mike wrote "There has been a lot of talk on this thread about Obama overusing and repeatedly using the word racist....Can anyone post a link please?"

Obama is shrewd enough not to do so directly himself, but allows his cultists to do so for him.

Steve Skubinna wrote "What I cannot understand is the blase attitude towards Ayers and Dohrn among the left."

They actually believe the line that Obama didn't really know who Ayers was. And hey, when he finally did, he denounced him don't you know?

I think they also believe that since Ayers is a professor he can't be all bad... you know how they worship academia.

It's all been debunked. Obama said tonight:

"I did not have community relations with that man, Bill Ayers."

The onlyway Huss-O can redeem his credibility is to have his wife sit down with Matt Lauer and blame questions about her husband's relations (with terrorists) as a right wing conspiracy!

OMG -- Ayers is worse than you think. "...the separation of the concept of progressive education from the concept of politics and political change. You can’t separate them..." he says.
http://rwor.org/a/063/ayers-en.html

This, folks, is Obama's idea of education reform?