Ayers is just some guy in the neighborhood

[guido911]

For someone who does not know Ayers that well...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/10/just_some_guy_from_the_neighbo.asp

Obama is such a LIAR!

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by guido911

For someone who does not know Ayers that well...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/10/just_some_guy_from_the_neighbo.asp

Obama is such a LIAR!

ZZZZZZ.......zzzzzzz....wake me when something substantive comes along.

Hell, even McCain said that Ayers is 'old and washed up'.

He might well be looking at himself in the mirror in two weeks (the old and washed up part, that is).

[pmcalk]

Really, that's sad.  According a blog on the Weekly Standard, Obama wrote a one sentence comment, saying that Ayer's book is "A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair."

Oh, yes, I can tell from those words that Obama and Ayers are practically brothers.

If you have any interested in preserving what's left of the dignity of your party, you really should give it a rest.  You are turning more and more people off.  Poll after poll shows that no one cares about Ayers.  

Not that I mind.  Keep it up.  McCain's popularity continues to decline.  Respected republicans like Colin Powell endorse Obama.  You really are doing a good job at making sure Obama wins by a landslide.

[guido911]

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

 Respected republicans like Colin Powell endorse Obama.

Colin Powell is about as respected as a Republican as Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller are respected by the Democrats--both who spoke at the GOP convention. Incidentally, do you know Colin Powell's son endorsed McCain?

[RecycleMichael]

Colin Powell's son...wasn't he the one given a plum position in the Bush Administration?

Yeah...that's him. Michael Powell was forced to resign after he used his position as head of the FCC to punish political rivals. His term was under constant attack for having uneven punishment given out by his department.

[USRufnex]

Keep going on more witch-hunts, guys... it shows America what you really are all about...

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied_about_bill_ayers.html

Groundless, False, Dubious

We find McCain's accusation that Obama "lied" to be groundless. It is true that recently released records show half a dozen or so more meetings between the two men than were previously known, but Obama never denied working with Ayers.

Other claims are seriously misleading. The education project described in the Web ad, far from being "radical," had the support of the Republican governor and was run by a board that included prominent local leaders, including one Republican who has donated $1,500 to McCain's campaign this year. The project is described by Education Week as reflecting "mainstream thinking" about school reform.

Despite the newly released records, there's still no evidence of a deep or strong "friendship" with Ayers, a former radical anti-war protester whose actions in the 1960s and '70s Obama has called "detestable" and "despicable."

Even the description of Ayers as a "terrorist" is a matter of interpretation. Setting off bombs can fairly be described as terrorism even when they are intended to cause only property damage, which is what Ayers has admitted doing in his youth. But for nearly three decades since, Ayers has lived the relatively quiet life of an educator. It would be correct to call him a "former terrorist," and an "unapologetic" one at that. But if McCain means the word "terrorist" to invoke images of 9/11, he's being misleading; Ayers is no Osama bin Laden now, and never was.

Bill Ayers: "My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy. ...
I said I had a thousand regrets, but no regrets for opposing the war with every ounce of my strength."

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (New York Times, Oct. 3, 2008): He's done a lot of good in this city and nationally. ... This is 2008. People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.

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We Have Contact!

According to an Obama spokesman, the two men first met in 1995, when Obama was tapped to chair the board of the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers had been instrumental in creating the organization, which was to dispense grants for projects that would improve Chicago's schools.

The Challenge was one of 18 projects supported by a $500 million grant announced at a White House ceremony Dec. 18, 1993, by the Annenberg Foundation, founded four years earlier by Philadelphia publisher Walter Annenberg. It was the largest single gift ever made to public education in America. The Chicago project received a $49.2 million grant in 1995, and officials administering the grant funds at Brown University announced at the time that the Chicago proposal was developed through discussions among "a broad-based coalition of local school council members, teachers, principals, school reform groups, union representatives and central office staff" convened by three educators – one of whom was Ayers. Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Democrat, and Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican, took part in a ceremony announcing the grant.

There are other connections between Obama and Ayers: The same year the two men met through the Annenberg Challenge, Ayers hosted a meet-and-greet coffee for Obama, who was running for state Senate and who lived three blocks away from him. Obama and Ayers also were on the board of an antipoverty charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, where their service overlapped from 2000 to 2002. And Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's campaign for the Illinois state Senate on March 2, 2001.

In addition, Obama told the Chicago Tribune in 1997 that a book Ayers wrote about the juvenile court system was "a searing and timely account." This is sometimes billed by Obama's critics as a "book review." Actually, a reporter simply asked three Chicagoans for a sentence about whatever they were reading at the time.

The Annenberg Challenge connection has drawn the most attention recently, though, mainly because of articles written by Stanley Kurtz, a conservative contributor to the National Review, the publication founded by the late William F. Buckley. Kurtz first suggested on Aug. 18 that there was a "cover-up in the making" when he was unable to gain access to 132 boxes of project records housed at the University of Illinois. Records were released nine days later, along with all records held by the Annenberg Foundation itself.

The Chicago Tribune, after examining the records, said they showed Ayers and Obama "attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the education program got under way." It also said Obama and Ayers "continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 operation of the program." The story played on page 2. According to the New York Times, the documents show the two attended just six board meetings together, Obama as chairman and Ayers to inform the board on grantees and other issues. (In a press release, the McCain campaign puts the number of meetings at seven, five of them in 1995, one in 1996 and one in 1997.) Ayers was an "ex officio" member of the board for the first year of the project.

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Among the mainstream Chicago luminaries on Obama's board was Arnold R. Weber, a former president of Northwestern University, who in 1971 was appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon as executive director of the Cost of Living Council and who later was tapped by Republican President Ronald Reagan to serve on an emergency labor board. More recently, Weber has given $1,500 to John McCain's presidential campaign this year.

Others on Obama's supposedly "radical" board included Stanley Ikenberry, a former president of the University of Illinois system; Ray Romero, a vice president of Ameritech; Susan Crown, a philanthropist; Handy Lindsey, the president of the Field Foundation of Illinois; and Wanda White, the executive director of the Community Workshop for Economic Development.

Kurtz originally claimed that Ayers somehow was responsible for installing Obama as head of the board, speculating in his "cover-up" article that Obama "almost certainly received the job at the behest of Bill Ayers." But after days of poring over the records, he failed to produce any evidence of that in his Wall Street Journal article. To the contrary, Ayers was not involved in the choice, according to Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation. She told the Times, and confirmed to FactCheck.org, that she recommended Obama for the position to Patricia Graham of the Spencer Foundation. Graham told us that she asked Obama if he'd become chairman; he accepted, provided Graham would be vice-chair.

The bipartisan board of directors, which did not include Ayers, elected Obama chairman, and he served in that capacity from 1995 to 1999, awarding grants for projects and raising matching funds. Ayers headed up a separate arm of the group, working with grant recipients. According to another board member, Ayers "was not significantly involved with the challenge after Obama was appointed."

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Conclusion

Voters may differ in how they see Ayers, or how they see Obama's interactions with him. We're making no judgment calls on those matters. What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters – in ads and on the stump – with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close. Obama never "lied" about this, just as he never bragged about it. The foundation they both worked with was hardly "radical." And Ayers is more than a former "terrorist," he's also a well-known figure in the field of education.