Posted on 10/17/2008 9:45:22 PM PDT by Brown Deer
WASHINGTON--Barack Obama 
continues to be attacked by John McCain and other Republicans for his relationship with Bill Ayers, the former terrorist turned respected Chicago educator. Obama served on civic boards with Ayers and Ayers held a coffee for Obama when Obama first ran for a state senate seat in 1995. McCain said he may bring up Ayers at the third and final presidential debate Wednesday night.
Obama said McCain--running ads featuring Ayers with Sarah Palin making him an issue on the stump--never said anything to his face. Ayers did not came up in the first two presidential debates. If McCain continues to insist that Obama launched his political career from Ayers' Hyde Park living room, he is misleading the public by overplaying the size and significance of Ayers' early support.
*Obama's campaign really was launched when he got the backing of then state Sen. Alice Palmer (D-Chicago), who wanted him to replace her as she was planning a run for Congress. Palmer's backing gave him entrée into local influential political circles.
Obama and Palmer would later have a falling out that continues to this day. Palmer changed her mind and decided to run for re-election after all. Obama got Palmer and his other rivals knocked off the ballot. Palmer ended up backing Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic primary bid.
*Obama's formal kick-off to announce his run for state senate was at the Hyde Park Ramada Inn on Sept. 19, 1995. Obama was introduced by Palmer in a room filled with supporters at the Ramada, fronting Lake Michigan on South Lake Shore Drive, a stroll from the Museum of Science and Industry.
*Around this time, Obama started to attend a series of coffees in the Hyde Park community where he lived, standard operating procedure for political rookies running in the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Chicago.
"I was certainly (hosting) one of the first," said Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, rabbi emeritus at Chicago's KAM Isaiah Israel--located across the street from the Obama home.
"There were several every week," he recalled on Tuesday night when we spoke. "I remember what I said to him: 'Someday you are going to be vice president of the United States.' He laughed and said, 'Why not president?'''
*The Ackermans, Sam and Martha, longtime Hyde Park activists in independent Democratic politics, also held an early event for Obama in their condo on E. Hyde Park Boulevard. (They have since divorced.)
Sam Ackerman told me Tuesday when we exchanged e-mails that "as I recall, the event at Bill Ayers' house (prior to ours) was a fund-raiser for Alice's congressional campaign at which she also introduced Barack as the successor she would like to see elected."
If Ackerman's recollection is correct--that the event at Ayers home was really for Palmer and Obama just piggy backed on it--then any argument that the Obama's political career was launched in the Ayers home is moot.
Martha and I talked on Tuesday night and she said she was not sure if the coffee at their condo for about 20 people was before or after Obama's Ramada Inn announcement.
"As a starter, I know that Barack went to Alice Palmer," Martha Ackerman told me. "...Then the question was, 'how do you go about doing this in the Hyde Park way," she said, a reference to the personal touch needed in the Hyde Park- Kenwood neighborhoods, at the time immune to the dictates of the remnants of the Chicago machine and Mayor Daley's City Hall.
"...the way to launch the campaign was to have coffee, and not one coffee, as in 'this is the start of everything.' Barack went around to a number of people and requested that they hold coffees for him."
But the Ackerman's did not want to host an event for Obama without meeting him first. So he came over to their house and spent more than an hour with the couple.
When Obama left, "I said to Sam, 'this guy could be the first African American president of the United States."
Martha Ackerman said, "I know there were a number of coffees. It wasn't just one or two."
Wow, I totally believe the Sun-Times! /sarc
what is the meaning of “is” ?
This dumb broad has been giving Obama Lewinsky’s as long as I remember. News fo Lynn-——he really prefers Sinclairs.
Pitiful quibbles from another squalid, vapid Obama cultist.
No one denies that Palmer introduced him to a gathering of key leftist influentials in the Ayers/Dohrn living room in the first days of his developing candidacy.
Whether it was his first or only “launch” at that time, or one of several, it was the incumbent Palmer introducing him to a group of her key leftist supporters in “the Hyde Park way” as they called it.
It is possible that this is the case. The problem is that Obama has DONE nothing to give any timeline and the major media won’t even investigate this. The reason seems to be simple. To investigate this will most possibly open up a can of worms that shines light on other unsavory things about Obama that the media doesn’t want to shine light on. It’s why Obama is the least vetted Presidential candidate EVER. The lame scream media is doing all it can to keep Obama’s past locked in the basement for no one to ever see.
His political career did not begin in Ayers’s living room.
It was the kitchen.
Oh yes, the very same Lynn Sweet who claims that Obama had $42,000+ in student loans from Harvard while Michelle’s were slightly less at $40,000. /s
The same Lynn Sweet who swears Obama worked construction as a summer job! /s
All very conveniently vague as to timing and import of the “coffee” in Ayers’ house. The fact is Ayers held a campaign event for Obama, which fact alone is damning in my view. And why would Alice Palmer introduce Obama at the event as her chosen successor if the event was for her and she hadn’t already decided to step down? That little bit of obfuscation thrown out by Lynn Sweet makes no sense.
Thank you, Brown Deer. Good thread, as usual.
Pinging.
Alice Palmer didn't start the Ayers event; was invited, dropped in, left after a short while. It was an Ayers-Hussein thing.
Ayers was in Caracas in 2006 (not when Hussein was eight) kissing commie Chavez' ample ass, screaming, "Viva la revolucion bolivariana! Hasta la victoria siempre!"
Did Joe the Plumber or Todd Palin do that?
Ayers was down there praising Chavez' education program that makes little radical socialists--which is what Ayers thinks education is all about: making little radical socialists--and Hussein gave a rave review of Ayers' book stating education's sole goal is to make little radical socialists--Chavez and Ayers and Hussein, los tres amigos, compadres, comrades.
Hussein crapped a brick when McCain called him "that one" but said nothing regarding Ayers saying America makes him puke--
Obviously America makes Michelle puke, too.
And Hussein has to take dramamine when he wears a flag pin.
What I find interesting is that Hillary never did her homework or really laid out these issues. This should have been done in January of this year. I think the Chicago folks that she thought were trustworthy....probably weren’t. I’m thinking that alot of the Hillary insiders simply looked the other way and allowed her to lose.
Respected by who, his fellow communist terrorist thugs? The only people I know of who respect a murderous traitor like Ayers are people such as Obama, his so-called "minister", and other similar America-haters who don't deserve to live in the same nation with freedom loving Americans who are grateful to God for allowing them to be here in this relatively free nation.
Every day that Ayers lives and enjoys the freedom he can only find in America is an insult to the real Americans who bought that freedom he enjoys with their own lives and blood.
I don’t think Ayers was even at that luncheon for Obama. I believe he was holed up finishing the last chapters of Obama’s autobiography that day and could not attend.
I'll bet she felt pushed aside because she's the one of the candidates in the primary who Obama challenged her petition signatures and she didn't qualify. He ran unapposed as a result.
I think she was threatened with the withdrawel of support for any future elections. She will still need the DNC the next time she wants to run for POTUS or even her Senate seat again.
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