Debunking Obama's Ayers "Fact Sheet"

Townhall.com ^ | April 24, 2008 | Guy Benson

[ncfool]

Questions about character are only appropriate if they are directed at GOPers

By Jack Kelly

When John McCain first ran for Congress in 1982, a fund raiser was held for him at the home of a prominent Phoenix businessman. As a young man, the businessman took part in the bombing of several abortion clinics. One of the bombings caused several deaths. Despite this, the businessman has never expressed remorse for the criminal acts of his youth. Sen. McCain and the businessman have remained friendly. Until a few years ago, they served together on the board of a local charity.

You haven't heard about this relationship before because I just made it up. But if it were true, I suspect most journalists would find it newsworthy. Very newsworthy.

But not when the shoe is on the other foot. The two most unpopular people in journalism this week are Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC, the moderators of last week's debate between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Theirs was "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years," said Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher magazine. "Shoddy and despicable," said Washington Post media critic Tom Shales.

It was "something akin to a federal crime," said Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker. "I am still angry at what I just witnessed, so angry that it's hard even to type accurately because my hands are shaking," said Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.

Mr. Bunch and the others are furious with their ABC colleagues because they asked Sen. Obama about the remarks he'd made at a San Francisco fund-raiser demeaning rural Pennsylvanians, and about his associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres.

The questions were a distraction from the "real issues," the journalists said. "At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Sen. Obama's comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly friendly, and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn't wear an American flag pin on his lapel," said Michael Grunwald of Time magazine.

The odds are you hadn't heard about Bill Ayres until George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. Obama about him. Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois—Chicago, Mr. Ayres joined the Weatherman domestic terror group in 1969, and took part in bombings of several police stations and the Pentagon. He became a fugitive after a bomb he and his associates were planning to place in the Fort Dix officers' club exploded prematurely, killing three. While on the run, Mr. Ayres married fellow terrorist Bernadine Dohrn. They turned themselves in 1981, but charges against them were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.

In an interview with the New York Times published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Ayers said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Mr. Ayres lives in the same Hyde Park neighborhood as does Sen. Obama. They met in Mr. Ayres' home in 1995, when Barack was first running for the state senate. They were introduced by State Sen. Alice Palmer, who was vacating the seat to run for Congress.

"When I first me Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends in their own minds, Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn," wrote Maria Warren on her blog in 2005. "They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread." Sen. Obama and Mr. Ayres have remained friendly. They served together on the board of the Woods Foundation. Both spoke at a testimonial dinner for Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO spokesman who is now a professor at Columbia University. (Mr. Khalidi is another of Sen. Obama's circle that journalists covering his campaign don't think you need to know about.)

Sen. Obama said his relationship with Mr. Ayers is inconsequential because he was only eight years old when Mr. Ayers was planting his bombs. Most journalists agree. Questions about character are only appropriate if they are directed at Republicans.

But Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman disagrees: "His comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols," he wrote Sunday.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0408/jkelly042408.php3?printer_friendly

[ncfool]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0408/jkelly042408.php3?printer_friendly

[cincinnati65]

Finally, and maybe most preposterously, the document pronounces Ayers and Dohrn to be "respectable" members of the "mainstream" community.

Does anyone have the Photoshop skills to make a "Movie Poster" with the title Obama-Ayers and the "respectable members of the mainstream community....." -- Barack Obama "review line" on the picture of Ayers standing on the U.S. Flag?

[Chaguito]

As someone else posted elsewhere, the proper approach here is not to hang Ayers around Obama’s neck, but to hang Obama around Ayers’ IOW Why would this radical marxist terrorist support the political aspirations of Obama? Subtle, but very tangible, difference.

[El Sordo]

Innerestin’

[sturmde]

Umm, why did Øbama just coincidentally turn up in the Fall of 1981 in New York City, ostensibly to transfer to Columbia, just in time to be there in support of the Brinks Robbery?

No one at Columbia remembers him, as it has been related many times. Let’s see that transcript Barack. What exactly were you doing in New York City?

[word_warrior_bob]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S8QcpdUtxNQ

I want to see Obama talk his way out of THIS association next.

[dr_who]

Obama=another coat and tie radical

[Twinkie]

That Chicago thug, Obama, is going to have to answer in detail for sitting under the teaching of a “hate Whitey” so called preacher and for his “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” relationship with Tony Rezko (this he fears), and for his TIES to Wm. Ayers, the terrorist responsible for the deaths of innocent people in bombings. WHO IS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA?

Can someone get photographs of the numerous government financed housing “developments” in Barack Hussein Obama’s district that are now boarded up and abandoned which Tony Rezko got government loans for, with help from Obama (and didn’t pay back)? Obama just kept on propping Rezko up, and was handsomely rewarded for doing it.

This man is scary as all get out. I doubt McCain is afraid of the Keating thing, but Barack is awfully afraid of details about his mutual admiration society relationship with Tony Rezko coming out in detail - and that’s why it needs to.

[o-n-money]

Just watched NBC news in NYC. They nonchalanted the Obama relationship with Ayers. They said the kids go to the same school as one reason how they know each other. Well then, the Ayers children must not have gotten the brains of their parents. Being adults and still in grammar school, as Obama’s kids, is pretty embarrassing./sarc
I Emailed NBC about the age difference...awaiting their answer.

[syriacus]

1997 -- Obama and Ayers together on panel discussing juvenile justice

2002 -- Obama and Ayers together on a panel discussing "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis" *

*NOTE: Barbara Ransby, (UIC, African-American Studies) the moderator, Graduated from Columbia the same year that Obama did [1984]

[syriacus]

I Emailed NBC about the age difference...awaiting their answer

Great!

[Canedawg]

It’s going to take the cumulative effect of all the radicals he has befriended. Not just ayers, but ALL of them

keep hitting, and mix it up after they all are introduced into the narrative

[Wil H]

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?

Bank Street College has no student housing so Ayers could not live on campus. Columbia encourages students to live on campus but no-one can remember Obama ever being there - Fox News asked 400 of his fellow alumni and no-one knew him, so presumably he lived off campus too.

Wayne Root (Libertarian VP Choice) was in Obama’s pre-law class 1983 -he says he never met him and no-one at class reunions ever new him....??

Was he hanging out down the street with his buddy Ayers?

If this theory is correct then an awful lot of other dots connect and answers fall into place.

[Faith-Hope]

Back in the 80’s there was a company that put out addresses of residents of cities and towns across the country. Sorry I cannot remember the company name but those books are kept in libraries. Someone might check and just happen to find where each were living during their college years. An old phone book might have some information.

[syriacus]

YouTube video showing lots of images of boarded buildings that Obama's friends have worked on [images start at about 14 seconds into video]

Here is an article with one picture

MAP OF REZMAR'S LOW INCOME PROJECTS
Labels the projects which are foreclosed, boarded up.

[downtownconservative]

If they went to the same schools, they went a much diffetrent times. Obama’s kids are 15+ years younger than Ayres’. Great job of fact check by NBC.

[BookmanTheJanitor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW12_OscRZg

here’s a similar video on Obama’s housing policy

[Poincare]

Did Ayers take Obama to his home town Chicago after Columbia?

Was Obama involved in one of Columbia’s overseas programs?

I can only hope that answers will be forthcoming.