Fire in the Night: The Weathermen tried to kill my family

City Journal ^ | 4/30/2008 | John M. Murtagh

[mojito]

During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “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.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.

In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.

[mojito]

Reading this makes me so angry that a scumbag like Bill Ayers walks free.

Ayers needs to be stuck to Obama every minute of every day until November.

[Lurker]

There's a great campaign commercial right there.

L

[Mr. Binnacle]

Bill Ayers = Willie Horton

[MozarkDawg]

“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's not about 40 years ago, and Obama well knows this. But to clarify for him, since he is requesting that the people in this country endow him with the Public Trust, we are attempting to determine whether or not he is trustworthy.

[RoadKingSE]

Obama’s answer: “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.”

Makes me wonder how many repentant ex-Ku Klux Klan lynchmob veterans Obammy has in his inner circle.

[DallasDeb]

You should send a recommendation to the GOP or McCain campaign.

A link to this article ought to be posted at every blog site we each visit.

[RJL]

Obama’s answer: “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.”

Somehow, I don't think Obama and the Democrats would be so forgiving if I were to start up a friendship and working partnership with unrepentant Ku Klux Klan members who were very active when I was eight years old.

[Maceman]

Somehow, I don't think Obama and the Democrats would be so forgiving if I were to start up a friendship and working partnership with unrepentant Ku Klux Klan members who were very active when I was eight years old.

Democrats is da craziest people.

They all pal around with ex-Klansman and sitting senior senator Robert Byrd, who led a 17-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (when I was 14 years old). Of course, he's changed his views since then.

He proved it by going on national television in 2001 to show how evolved he became in the prior 40 years by graciously announcing that you don't have to be black to be a "nigger."

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

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.

Great read.

[cookcounty]

"Only 8 years old"

but he was 45 when Ayers happily had himself photographed for the press stomping on a US flag laid out on the dirt for the very purpose of desecration.....

So was Obama not a grownup yet at 45?

[RJS1950]

The democrat party is the party of the KKK. They founded, supported and promoted the KKK from the time it was organized. They (and B.O.) are the party of slavery, the party of secession, party of the KKK, party of Jim Crow, the party that stood in front of school doors to bar blacks, the party that turned fire hoses on civil rights protestors and the party that voted as a majority against the civil rights act. They are the traditional party of traitors and domestic terrorism so why shouldn’t they hold terrorsts like Ayers in esteem. Why shouldn’t B.O. feel comfortable among them? As he said himself his white ancestors held slaves and as he never points out his beloved Luo tribe in Kenya was big in the business of capturing and selling slaves for several hundred years. He’s one of them.

[weegee]

Obambi will never grow up. He is the child prince.

[HighlyOpinionated]

My stomach knotted up as I was reading the story. The CJ* url needs to get "out there" so that others who wouldn't ordinarily see it have a chance to do so.

* City Journal

[tommix2]

“when I was eight years old, “ is irrelevant. The point is that Obama as an adult has cooperated with an unrepentant Ayers for a long time.

[CRBDeuce]

So was Obama not a grownup yet at 45?

Jury's still out.......some of us never grow up. He may still be rebelling.

[houston1]

and then after the civil rights act all those democrats you mention became republicans

[flowerplough]

Reading this makes me so angry that a scumbag like Bill Ayers walks free.

Me too. Think I could try to kill him and his family? Or at least fire-bomb his house and car in the exact same manner that he employed against the Murtagh family?

[Freedom_Fighter_2001]

All? Care to cite a source for this exaggeration?

[Osage Orange]

Ayers is a Republican?

ROFLOL!!!

I want what you are smoking........

[editor-surveyor]

"and then after the civil rights act all those democrats you mention became republicans"

One or two might have, but the rest are the heart and soul of the Demacrap party.