Posted on 07/03/2008 11:10:08 AM PDT by syntacticus
William Ayers in photographs. From left to right: An early mugshot; standing on the American flag; speaking at the University of South Carolina in February 2006 (note the red Communist star lapel pin); speaking during the Resisting Endless War panel at the November 2007 Movement for a Democratic Society conference in Chicago while wearing a Cuba baseball jersey.
* * * * *
John McCain has many, many, many faults -chief among them that he is at best a lukewarm conservative- but whatever his shortcomings the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war is not in the habit of clinking champagne glasses over brie with living, breathing, remorseless terrorist traitors who continue to seethe with hatred for the United States.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn't have a problem with such people until he gets nailed on it. In fact, Obama has a close personal relationship with a man who did everything in his power to hurt John McCain and other U.S. personnel serving in Vietnam.
But more on that in a moment.
The most famous example of Obama unloading a troublesome associate is the case of the anti-American firebrand Rev. Jeremiah Wright who preached hatred from the pulpit of Obama's church for decades. The Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting continues to hang out with people who really don't like America, such as Obama campaign advisor Cornel West, a radical Princeton professor who denounces his native land as racist and patriarchal and who embraces Venezuela's leftist strongman Hugo Chavez. Chavez allows terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas to operate in his country and has been backing communist rebels trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of Colombia. Another politically radioactive Obama friend is Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American and former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) spokesman who is now Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.
However, among Obama's many unsavory associates, no one stands out quite like the unrepentant Pentagon bomber William Ayers, a self-described revolutionary communist who even today is proud of what he did. Ayers was a leader in the Weathermen, or Weather Underground, a homegrown American terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and the violent overthrow of the United States government. Ayers's group planned but failed to succeed in a 1970 plot to detonate a bomb and kill hundreds of U.S. soldiers in Fort Dix, N.J.
And Obama's close personal friend is proud even to this day of waging war against America. Ayers said he had no regrets about bombing New York City police headquarters, the Capitol, and the Pentagon in the 1970s. "I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers said in a New York Times interview that happened to be published September 11, 2001. "I feel we didn't do enough." When asked if he would do it all again, he said, "I don't want to discount the possibility." The home page of Ayers's personal website is, unsurprisingly, graced with a photograph of mass murderer Che Guevara.
On April 16 when Obama was asked about his relationship with Ayers, with whom he had served on the board of the left-wing Woods Fund of Chicago, Obama was indignant as he tried to downplay the relationship.
Throwing out a rhetorical red herring, Obama said he was just a child when Ayers bombed U.S. landmarks. Obama said he had little contact with "a guy that lives in my neighborhood... who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody I exchange ideas from [sic] 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 eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense..."
It is true that Obama can't be blamed for terrorist acts committed by another when he was a boy, but the Illinois senator omitted important background information critical to understanding the extent of his relationship with Ayers.
It has been widely reported already that Ayers hosted a fundraiser in his home in 1995 that helped launch Obama's political career, but hardly any media outlets have reported on the Annenberg connection.
In his 49-page curriculum vitae posted online, Ayers describes himself as a co-founder of the 1995-2000 Chicago School Reform Collaborative project, a.k.a. the Annenberg Challenge. Obama was its first chairman of the board. (See "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years," Consortium on Chicago School Research, 1999. PDF of report available here. Ayers is identified as co-founder at page 11. Obama is identified as chairman in endnote 15, page 54.)
In addition to serving as the Annenberg Challenge's first chairman, Obama served on the "Leadership Council" of the Chicago Public Schools Education Fund, the Challenge's successor organization. Obama served on this council alongside Ayers's father, Thomas, and his brother, John, in 2001 and 2002, according to the Fund's annual reports. Obama and John Ayers also served on the council in 2003 and 2004, according to the Fund's annual reports. (Thomas Ayers, who died in 2007, had been CEO of Commonwealth Edison.)
Obama and Ayers also appeared on academic panels together. One panel dealt with juvenile justice issues, and at that time Obama said Ayers's book on the topic was "a searing and timely account." Both also worked to reform Chicago's education system. (New York Times, May 11, 2008)
It is hard to believe that the two passionate left-wing activists who both live in the ultra-leftist environment of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood exchanged no ideas about political goals and tactics in all their interactions together. After all, they have so much in common and so much to discuss. Ayers could easily have served as a Marxist mentor to Obama.
But apart from offering a perfunctory denunciation of Ayers's past actions during the debate and a lame attempt to spin the facts on his website, Obama has failed to denounce the rabidly anti-American radicalism of his friend. Both Ayers and Obama refuse to discuss their relationship. Why?
And after a brief flurry of media coverage following the April debate, the issue has gone dormant.
But it shouldn't. It should be on every TV news and talk show and on the front coverage of every newspaper. Here's why:
Decades after Ayers bombed the Pentagon in May 1972, he giggled about the experience in his memoir. In a 2001 Wall Street Journal column about a book signing event for Ayers's memoir, John Tabin noted: "In his book, he writes: ‘It turns out that we blew up a bathroom and, quite by accident, water plunged below and knocked out their computers for a time, disrupting the air war [in Vietnam] and sending me into deepening shades of delight.'"
Added Tabin: "In those four little words, ‘disrupting the air war,' there is the dark prospect of American soldiers in jeopardy."
And who might one of those soldiers in jeopardy at the time have been? While Ayers interfered with America's war effort and cheered for a North Vietnamese victory over the United States, John McCain, whose A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967, was held in captivity by the North Vietnamese and tortured regularly. Now the Republican Party's presumptive presidential candidate in 2008, he was released by the Communist Vietnamese government in March 1973.
As McCain languished in the Hanoi Hilton, Obama's friend Ayers spent the 1970s waging war against the United States and fleeing justice. He surrendered in 1980 but a legal technicality led to all charges being dropped. Ayers gloated: "Guilty as sin, free as a bird, America is a great country." And what a forgiving country it is! After he retired from his distinguished career in terrorism, he was welcomed with open arms by the academy. Ayers is now Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and he uses his position to spread his gospel of revolution.
In an age of terrorism when national security issues are of great national importance, why aren't journalists asking more questions about Obama's connections to a known terrorist whose actions might have had an impact on another presidential candidate?
It's way too good a story to ignore.
(Much of the above appears in "Barack Obama: A Radical Leftist's Journey from Community Organizing to Politics," by Elias Crim and Matthew Vadum, published by Capital Research Center in Foundation Watch, June 2008.)
Poster signed up yesterday, Folks. Watch your backs on this subject. You may be quoted LIBERALLY elsewhere. ;)
How ironic that Obama allied himself with people who loathed the U.S. and loved McCain’s North Vietnamese captors!
There’s always a potential for embarrassment in quoting something we saw on the internet. That’s why we need the Media to investigate such things. Of course, we can count on the fact that the Drive-by, “Main Stream Media” won’t look into this relationship, they’ve already “dealt with” this matter, and put it to rest (at least until November 3). On the other hand, I would expect that Fox, and other more credible “alternative media” sources would be giving the Ayers/Obama relationship more than a cursory glance, and they’re not.
Ayers’ and Dohrn’s two sons, born in the 1970s, are reportedly named Zayd and Malik. The assassin of a NJ State Trooper, who also performed his dirty deeds in the 1970s, was named Zayd Malik Shakur; is there a connection here and if so, why has one of the major party candidates for President attended a fundraiser at the home of, and sat on the board of a “community” orgranization with a fetid piece of trash (William Ayers) who would name his kids after a cop killer and who is married to a big-mouthed radical hag (Bernadine Dohrn) who at the time of the Manson murders, reportedly laughlingly praised the murderers (who slashed Sharon Tate to death while she begged for the life of her unborn baby)? Am I missing something, or is the “press”?
Roll Pictures: Mccain as Pow, Vietnam war images, Fighter planes taking off, McCain being captured:
Roll Pictures: Chicago '68 riots and protests, Weatherman, Berkeley protests '68-'70,
Still: Bill Ayers Mug shot ... Morph to Bill Ayers today as announcer says:
"Bill Ayers, Leader of Weather Underground, Bombed the Pentagon and is proud of that fact. he wishes he had done more."
Picture: Barrack Obama, with Ayers.
Voice over: BHO's political career was started in the living room of Bill Ayers, a terrorist. BHO still refers to him as a friend. Do we really need or want friends like this? (Picture: Ayers mug shot.)
"Or this?" Roll film: McCain Coming home.
Excellent! If I were you, I would be emailing that idea to all conservative PACs.
I agree. Timing is everything.
I know what you mean, but rather then "win" you, all he needs is your vote, you do not have to like him.
I am not a McCain supporter, as much as I am Anti-Obamaclintonreidpelosi.et.al.
Thank you. But don't you think they will see it here?
John McCain does not need our votes. He has reportedly said and I was told by a supporter of his on FR that he does not need and does not want the vote of somebody as conservative as me.
Hannity talks about it day and night. I believe he was the first on Fox to cover this story.
I know, but Sean's an "opinion" guy, not a reporter. When Brit Hume or Shep Smith start reporting on it, the fur will fly.
Ayers cheered the Commies? Hell, good buddies of McCain in the Senate represented the Commies' case against "U.S. imperialist war criminals" before the Congress and the Public!
Hell, he reaches across the aisle to people whose activities as "anti-war", pro-Ho activists kept him in prison years longer than it would have been without those New Left-cum-Rats' treason.
They did far more damage than Ayers -- they are responsible for millions of dead and injured. IMO. They encouraged the enemy to just hang in there.
McCain will be reaching out for Bill, Bernadine, and Barack before October.
Do you believe everything McCain says?
So why start with this one?
;)
Not the question here, would you and your fellow conservatives want OOOBBBAAAMMMMAAAA?
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