Good old Fox news with the hot Ayers scoop:
Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical.
Obama has said that, although he knew Ayers as a professor involved in community outreach efforts in Chicago, he doesn’t share Ayers’ extreme views.
The massive collection of newly released documents — 140 boxes full of them — includes agendas that clearly put Obama and Ayers in the same room for meetings of Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational initiative that Ayers was instrumental in starting and that Obama chaired in the 1990s.
They served on the same board. Jeebus. Of course they were in the same room. All I could think of was this:
Relevant portion at 2:45.
Hockney: Really? I live in Queens, did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Got a team of monkeys working around the clock on this?
The stupid just never stops with these guys.
Tom Hilton
I can put McCain in the same room with North Vietnamese communist military types, on multiple occasions.
For that matter, I can put McCain in the same room as Bernie Sanders on multiple occasions. But that’s more of smear against Bernie Sanders.
The Dangerman
Was McCain ever in the same room with Charles Keating?
Fuck Fox.
SpotWeld
If only Ayers had been a member of the Saudi royal family.
Noah
$3 Bill Mocking Obama Sold At GOP’s State Fair Booth
Incertus
Shit, I’ve got photos of McCain practically dry-humping Bush. Bush scares me a fuckload more than Bill Ayers does, that’s for damn sure.
MBL
The absolute kicker about all of this is that Bill Ayers is hands down and far away, no question about it a better person than 99% of the people trying to drag his name through the mud. He was one of my advisors at UIC and I very nearly did Ph.D work with him (decided not to pursue the degree), and I literally do not know a kinder or more generous person.
Paul L.
Obama–Ayers controversy
Looks like Obama’s supporters are on stage 4 with Ayers.
Of course, this blog defended Obama when the same thing happened with Rev Wright.
I wonder when Obama will give another “searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech [that] is the most honest speech on [living] in America in my adult lifetime” that will excuse this.
At least with Andrew the Sullyboater and his defenders here.
smiley
This and the fuss over the backdrop/stage at the stadium for tomorrow night’s speech shows that they are really reaching for something, anything to attack. It’s what they do. BTW, I like Josh’s take on the stadium.
Incertus
Paul!
We’ve missed you and your vain attempts to remain relevant.
John Cole
The 80,000 people at the stadium and the folks watching at home are not going to give one shit about the stage.
greynoldsct00
Oh goodie! More engaging repartee from the Daily Troll…
Walker
No, we are at Stage 0: What exactly is it that you are trying to prove?
I mean really. What is it? That he knows Ayers? Or that he agrees with and supports Ayers? Now or back then? I cannot even tell what you are talking about.
If it is that he has met Ayers, I am willing to skip straight to 6 without going 1-5. Please tell me what it is that you are trying to prove that should put me in step 5.
MBL
Step seven, Paul, is that the more Obama hangs out with Ayers, the better off the country is going to be. You’re not fit to wipe the man’s ass.
Either of their asses, actually.
Paul L.
Then you will enjoy this picture of him standing on a American flag.
This comment reflects my view.
Ripley
I remember George and Laura Bush standing on an American flag, too.
You’re a very, very stupid person, Paul. Very stupid…
smiley
You’re probably mostly right. However, several of the right-wing blogs are going on about it. They’re calling it the Temple of Obama. Noron just brought it up with an Obama spokesman. They’re going to try to make people give more than one shit about it. It ties in neatly with the narrative they’ve been trying to weave about Obama being an egomaniac who thinks himself a god, his fiollowers a cult of personality. Not concern trolling here just sayimg to watch for another video press release on this theme from the McCain campaign in the next day or two.
Paul L.
I listened to Bill Ayers talking about being tolerating intolerable like Abu Ghraib or a woman returning from Iraq with her face burnt off and missing her legs.
And complains that Americans worry instead about stupid things like putting a down payment on a car.
You can do that with any injustice.
I am guessing that Ayers tolerates this.
422 Years for a Rapist Who Tortured His Victim
Echo without Bunnies or Men
So Ayers stepped on a flag? So fucking what? Did Obama step on it too? Does everything Ayers do in life have an Obama stamp of approval?
Hey Paul, tell me why I should vote for McCain. Don’t tell me why I shouldn’t vote for Obama, give me some good reasons why I should vote for McCain.
Seriously. Try elevating your candidate if you can, rather than tearing down the other guy.
thomas
it’s a well known fact that John McPOW, when he was in his 20’s, was seen in the same hemisphere as Karl Marx
John, the server, IT HURTS!!!
Echo without Bunnies or Men
Whoa, how the hell did that happen? Double post madness?
Either way, eat shit Paul L you fucking loser.
Kevin Hayden
The goal is to tie Obama to a violence espouser of nearly 40 years ago to make him seem sympathetic to enemies of America today. Yet there a significant difference between suicide bombers who intentionally killed 3,000 people on 9/11 and a guy who committed the crime of blowing up a statue that caused physical harm to no one.
Most liberals and Democrats back then, however, repudiated those who actively advocated violence. At the age of 8, however, Obama’s sympathies were likely more aligned with Captain Kangaroo than some narcissistic pampered rich kid turned outlaw 4 years above voting age.
And 3 decades later, Obama was working to rebuild a community devastated by the loss of jobs in the steel industry when he joined a foundation that put grants to work for education that helped advance the people in that community.
And there sat the guy that was never convicted of his crime because the prosecutors also broke the law, a guy who has spent a quarter century committed to education reform after departing his brief tenure as an advocate of violence.
Obama has never embraced violence as a way to change our country. He’s never uttered a single word of support for anyone who does. He’s repudiated what Ayers did a quarter century before he met him. His work at a foundation whose members met four times a year was done to aid the community, not to hang out with a former college radical and the other distinguished board members without a radical past.
But the commercials will continue because they’re really trying to tie Obama to Al Qaida which is, of course, as silly as saying Obama supports the KKK.
Obama reached adulthood while Ayatollah Khomein was holding US embassy employees hostage so his entire adult life, he’s been fully aware of the danger violent Muslim extremists pose to every civil society. There’s not one word or deed in his life to support any claim that he’s sympathetic to that. And among his biggest supporters from the beginning of his career are Jewish members of his community.
But the lies will continue, as we all know, only because Obama’s not a Republican. And before Election Day, I fully expect the Republicans to claim that Captain Kangaroo was secretly a member of Hezbollah and Mr. Greenjeans was a Commie spy.
handy
Why do you hate freedom? John McCain was a POW!
bootlegger
I listened to Ayers at that link and truly don’t see why you wingnuts have your panties in a wad. Is he a nauseating idealist? Maybe. Is he an “enemy of America” or “just like the Klan” (as Sean Vannity said the other day), you’re really too far off the deep end if you believe that crap.
Obama did nothing wrong. Period.
Horse
While I love the clip, there is an argument that it wasn’t the best one to use here. After all, as we find out later, Hockney did hijack that truck. :)
bootlegger
Obama, and particularly his surrogates, need to get ahead of this before the narrative sticks. Sean Vannity was force feeding it to his audience yesterday (and probably every day, I can’t listen to him long enough to tell) and had a couple of Obama supporters on who simply tried to change the subject. Fuck that. Tell him straight up, “big fucking deal, Ayers didn’t hurt anyone, Obama was on a charity board with him, and there is nothing here to doubt his ability to lead this country.”
SteveIL
The enlightened non-liberal has returned.
Diana Oughton, Ayers squeeze back in the 60s and another rich and spoiled brat like Ayers, was blown to pieces (along with two other terrorists) by a nail bomb designed by Ayers. It took police four days to recover what was left of Oughton’s remains. Had these Darwin Award winners not managed to be stupid enough to blow themselves up, they were trying to bomb a military dance where there were innocent people. So it isn’t that Ayers and his terrorists loons didn’t kill anybody, they were just too stupid.
And Ayers and his terrorist wife are allowed to walk the streets. Yes, it’s an issue that Obama was heavily involved with these terrorists.
Olly McPherson
“Obama was heavily involved with these terrorists.”
Right…I hear he saved up his paper-route money to send over bomb-making pamphlets from Indonesia.
By the way, I haven’t seen any indication that Ayers had anything to do with the Greenwich Village explosion.
myiq2xu
A few years ago, John Cole was defending GOP chickenhawks. Now he defends domestic terrorists.
And he calls me a douchebag.
I would link to the chickenhawk post (#3010) but it seems to have disappeared.
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=3010
thomas
Hagel consulted McPOW when he developed the dialectic. And we know what that led to!
thomas
Oops – Hegel.
wobbly
My take on Obama is that he checked out Ayers, the ’60’s faux revolutionary, and totally went the other way, personally and politically.
While I don’t agree with where he has landed…his interest is nothing to apologize for.
John Cole
Obama is a terrorist now?
mellowjohn
i took a class with bill ayers a couple of years ago, so i was in the same room with him for 3+ hours a week for an entire semester. i was even to dinner at his house (the whole class went there one night).
i found his politics only slightly to the left of my own.
guess i can never be president, either.
of course, when president obama leaves office in 2017, i’ll be almost as old as john w. mcsame is now.
SteveIL
Olly McPherson:
You have to read history.
mellowjohn:
So that puts your politics somewhere between Karl Marx and Joe Stalin. Apparently you didn’t learn anything, like who is an America-hating POS.
mellowjohn
oh, jeebuz, steve. that really hurts.
handy
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Such a stinging rebuke!
History, eh?
The righties carted out this same conspiracy-dribbled bunk about the Clintons in the 90s. Vince Foster, anyone?
History tells me this is more of the same garbage, thank you very much.
SteveIL
By the way, did Bernadine talk about how much she respected Charles Manson?
Jim
I don’t really like commenting on other posters, but I can not avoid the conclusion that myiq2xu and Paul are truly assholes.
myiq2xu: Where, exactly, did John Cole defend Ayers?
Paul: What exactly has Obama done with respect to Ayers that is wrong? Didn’t condemn him strongly enough? Serve on a Board with him? Live in his neighborhood (oh, the horror). Ya know, doesn’t it you creep people, you with your head being so far up your ass you have to look out your mouth.
trollhattan
Good lord, hep me, as I’ve probably been on public transit with numerous felons. Who I now repudiate with zeal.
Can I take office now?
Jules
I blame that godless Communist Walter Annenberg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Annenberg
Richard Nixon is turning over in his grave that he appointed Annanberg the ambassador to the Court of St. James in 1969.
Olly McPherson
“You have to read history.”
Wow, where can I find this “history”? Is it produced by Regency Press?
Paul L.
How do explain this?
We all say/do stupid things when we are young. However…
MBL
He said it six years before I was born, and I don’t give a fuck?