Posted on 10/04/2008 10:05:25 PM PDT by 2nd amendment mama
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.
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.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” 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.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”
Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.
John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.
Gentleman my a$$
What the eff is this?
Obama claims he hardly knows William Ayers and didn’t meet him till late 1995.
We know this is a lie, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers prove that.
But did you know this?
Are you aware that while Obama was completing his degree at Columbia in 1982-83, Bill Ayers was attending Bank Street College from which he graduated with a Masters in Early Childhood Education in 1984?
Bank Street College is 371 yards from Columbia, and they collaborate on courses.
We know, from his own writings, that Obama “was drawn to foreign students, Marxist professors, and punk poets”. One such professor was Edward Said, who was also an associate of Bill Ayers.
It is inconceivable, given their concentric politics, and Ayers’ penchant for recruiting black radicals, that they did not meet in the two years they were studying within a quarter mile of each other. Bill Ayers was no doubt something of a celebrity in the radical community having been a terrorist that had beaten the rap. Obama would surely want to meet such a famous radical.
Is this why Obama won’t release his transcript from Columbia? Does it reveal a tie to Ayers? Were they classmates? Did they perhaps even live together or close to each other?
He did not say he ever supported Obama, he said “Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system.”...that is a far cry from supporting him.
My gut tells me this is going to backfire big time on McCain.
Oh no, please take some pepto or something:( This cannot backfire!
bump! bump! bump!
I still await our local paper headline.
OBAMA LINKED TO CHICAGO TERRORIST
I am not holding my breath.
No wonder they are going out of biz.
In these most troubling times for our economy it is beyond reckless to ask Americans to support a trillion dollar change agenda. Save it for times when America is at peace and prosperity Obama you are as Radical, Reckless and Irresponsible as your Chicago associates, Ayers, Rezko and Wright. Obama, Not ready to lead.
BTTT
Just a note of detail...Those tried for the bombings were not from Alabama.
The four stages of the undermining of a free society are as follows:
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with them that a Rifle Ball won’t fix!!!
“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, dozen’t make much sense, George.”
Why does he always take about 50 words to say anything, no it doesn’t make sense because its all gobldey gook words.
Nobody is talking about 8 years old, Ayers told the New York Times in September 2001, regarding bombing and murdering at the pentagon “I don’t regret setting bombs...I feel we didn’t do enough.”
Obama was 40 years old,
Barack Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers have worked closely together on education reform since 1995, and possibly since 1987 on the Annenberg Challenge.
1995 Ayers hosted a fund-raiser for Obama prior to Obama’s run for Alice Palmer’s seat in the state Senate; they both served on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago from 1999 to 2002; and Ayers donated $200 to Obama’s state Senate campaign. Other researchers and reporters (for example, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times) noted a few joint panel appearances and a favorable review by Obama of a book by Bill Ayers.
But even this was more than Obama was willing to admit. Asked point blank by George Stephanopoulos in the Philadelphia debate preceding the Pennsylvania primary to “explain that relationship for the voters,” Obama prevaricated by pretending he scarcely knew Ayers:
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.
His step father ruled the family with the chauvinistic methods of his Indonesian Muslim culture. His mother, a anthropologist who hated America, was willing to submit herself to this culture. The dynamics of Obama’s early life play a major part in why he is attracted to Marxists and terrorists.
Obama saw a step father who was highly controlling and ruled his family with strictly defined roles for the mother. Rules are unchangeable and the father, as the leader of the household, rules with authoritarian measures to maintain the Islamic ideal of harmony. Under this value system, there is no room for dissent or conflict. It is a wonder that Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann, was able to adapt to this culture.
In 1972, Stanley Ann took Barry back to Hawaii to live with her parents. Barry was ten at that time. Her parents lived in a modest two-bedroom Honolulu apartment which was an effort to save money for Obama’s tuition to attend the Punahou Academy, an elite private school. Obama's mother returned to Indonesia to live with Lolo and his stepsister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.
It was in Hawaii that Barry's formative years would be further influenced by the grandmother who would care for him and provide for his education, Madelyn Dunham. Not much is known about Madelyn Dunham who has been kept hidden by the Obama team from public contact.
In 1980 Stanley Ann divorced Lolo.
Why is Ayers still breathing our air? Surely we should have dispatched him by now... Why is this rabid animals heart still pumping?
Interesting-and chilling-article about the kind of people Barack Hussein Obama looks up to and admires. Sadly, I’ve heard people in places like Ithaca defend Ayers as nothing more than a college prankster.
...I’m sorry, I fail to see the difference between New York Dems and New York Republicans. They both look pretty left wing to me....
I know quite a few people who “don’t support Obama”, but are going to vote for him anyway. Said people often consider their left wing views to be the “moderate” “middle of the road” point of view.
Hell I know lots of liberatarians who despite their calls for less government support Obama - a man promising to nationalize everything.
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