…from Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, courtesy the LA Times blog:
“We’re prepared for a very aggressive debate,†Axelrod told reporters aboard Obama’s plane today en route to Nashville from North Carolina.Should the need arise, Axelrod said, taking off one glove as a preemptory warning himself, Obama will remind Americans during the debate here at Belmont University of the Arizona senator’s role in the “Keating 5†thrift scandal of the 1980s.
“The Keating case is pretty germane to the discussion we’re having right now,†Axelrod said. “The Keating issue was one….
…in which Sen. McCain intervened with regulators on behalf of a financial institution that ultimately collapsed, and taxpayers were left holding the bill.â€Â
— Which, of course, is why he learned from his mistake and became an ardent reformer. Whereas Barack Obama takes no responsibility for his role in the credit crisis — insisting instead that he was out front warning people of the crisis, even as he later kept Franklin Raines and co. around as advisers (until such time as they, like others before them, were shown the rear door of the Obamalot Express).
Axelrod also responded to McCain’s attacks on Obama for his relationship with William Ayers, a University of Illinois professor who in 1969 cofounded the radical Weathermen group that planted bombs in public buildings.
When Obama arrived on the Chicago political scene, “Ayers was advising Mayor Daley on school reform issues, and that was his profile, was that he was an expert on education issues,†Axelrod said.
During his 1995 state Senate run, Obama was unaware of Ayers’ background in terrorism when the professor and his wife, Weathermen cofounder Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a house party to introduce Obama to Democrats, Axelrod said.
“No one’s suggesting that he never knew,†but it was later that he found out about their history with the group, Axelrod said.
Given Ayers’ profile in the annals of New Left hagiography, one can conclude one of two things: either Obama, even having the advantages of being a Harvard grad, a lawyer, and living in the same city as Mr Ayers and his salon, was truly ignorant that the man he was allowing introduce him into the political scene was a rather widely known figure from one of the most politically-charged times in US history; or else he’s lying.
Neither explanation works — and McCain would do well to exploit that opening. Because even were we to believe Axelrod’s explanation (and I don’t for a minute believe that everyone in Obama’s pre-Ayers circle, from Davis to Wright to the Alinskyites, was unaware of Ayers’ past, or unwilling to share that information with Obama), what we still don’t understand is this: why would the Senator, having learned of Ayers’ violent past, continue to do business with him, keeping him around as a kind of political patron, instead of taking the opportunity to quite publicly distance himself from such a figure?
The answer I think is fairly obvious: to Obama, Ayers was, with the exception of a few minor bombing incidents, “mainstream” — believing in precisely the kind of “social justice”-flavored education reform as he did.
****
update: McCain camp fires back.
****
update 2: Granted, it’s Larry Johnson, but check it out anyway, for kicks.
(h/t SBP)
Comment by cjd on 10/7 @ 5:43 pm #
Just to get this out of the way, Jeff, since you brought up Obama-Ayers:
racist
(I’m too lazy for all caps)
Otherwise, good post.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/7 @ 5:44 pm #
Baracky tried to get us to lose in Iraq just like Ayers campaigned for defeat in Vietnam. Also they both like teaching marxist thought to children in public schools. I hope Baracky doesn’t become president cause him and his wife are angry commie hippies I think.
Comment by Without All That Stuff, Jonas Sedlar (What The --?) on 10/7 @ 5:46 pm #
What’s up with the LA Times’ weird elliptic?
Comment by Sdferr on 10/7 @ 5:46 pm #
McCain maybe ought to just fire his own Keating five story out there from the get go, stand up and tell it, defy that punk straight up. And then offer Obama the opportunity to explain himself and his stinking allies.
Comment by Ric Locke on 10/7 @ 5:47 pm #
One of the things that amuses me here is that one of the leftoids’ slams against George Bush is that he isn’t curious. He doesn’t investigate. He takes things at face value and doesn’t explore them further.
So what can we say about a man who associated with Ayers and Dohrn for twenty years and never figured out who they were?
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Without All That Stuff, Jonas Sedlar (What The --?) on 10/7 @ 5:47 pm #
Sorry — is that like “ellipticalness,” rather?
Or let’s just say “weird ellipses.” OK.
Comment by B Moe on 10/7 @ 5:49 pm #
So what can we say about a man who associated with Ayers and Dohrn for twenty years and never figured out who they were?
That his community is very well organized.
Comment by Sdferr on 10/7 @ 5:50 pm #
I mean, after all, most everything McCain has done in the campaign finance arena has been spurred by his idiosyncratic honor beliefs, trying to make up for his mistake with Keating his whole damned career. Own it, slap it down on the table or pummel Obama’s face with it.
Comment by dre on 10/7 @ 5:54 pm #
I hope McCain mention that 4 of the Keating 5 were Demorats.
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 5:56 pm #
Don’t know how much in the face it can get, really. Its a town hall thinger.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/7 @ 5:59 pm #
Town halls are gay and contrived. I blame Oprah.
Comment by Sdferr on 10/7 @ 6:01 pm #
Rhetorically, I think it can get very “in the face”, urthshu, why not? Direct challenge to a fella’s honor or calling his principles anti-american for instance, can be a pretty up-in-his-face speech act.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/7 @ 6:01 pm #
There’s not a real town, you understand. They just pretend.
Comment by dre on 10/7 @ 6:04 pm #
Potemkin Village debate.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 10/7 @ 6:07 pm #
“What’s up with the LA Times’ weird elliptic?”
That’s how they lie.
Comment by Sean M. on 10/7 @ 6:13 pm #
Pointing this stuff out is mean. Meanies.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 10/7 @ 6:14 pm #
Larry Johnson’s site has some smack talk.
Too bad it’s… Larry Johnson’s site.
It would definitely explain why they’re hammering on Palin’s supposed AIP ties so hard.
Comment by Sean M. on 10/7 @ 6:15 pm #
Mean people suck. And so do my HTML skillz, apparently.
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:16 pm #
…I feel like a hypocrite
talking to you
and your terrorist friends…”
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:18 pm #
I know senatoring bores you;
you rather be the pezzydent
but then there’s you
and your terrorist friend
Comment by dre on 10/7 @ 6:25 pm #
Comment by dre on 10/7 @ 6:25 pm #
“”
Comment by alppuccino on 10/7 @ 6:25 pm #
I’ve never been polled – you know by a pollster.
Can’t seem to make that not sound gay.
Well, my only political activity is here at PW and that’s about a mile wide and an inch deep. Hey the world needs shallow people too.
But lately I’ve been emailing the McCain campaign and telling them if Johnny doesn’t call for a full and immediate Fannie/Freddie inquiry at the debate, or “I won’t contribute until I see Senator McCain aggressively prevent a radical from being elected”.
I figure, if a fly-by-the-seat, live-and-let-live, you-scratch-mine type of guy like me is letting them know, a whole shitload of more serious people are. Maybe?
Comment by dre on 10/7 @ 6:26 pm #
OJ stole the /b!!!
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:27 pm #
/b
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:27 pm #
dammit.
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:29 pm #
anyway, I figured I wasn’t actually gonna watch this one. Need a break, in a sense.
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/7 @ 6:33 pm #
yeah, we’re bold!
Comment by Bob Reed on 10/7 @ 6:34 pm #
In football, we used to call this Locker room pinnin’s…
It.is.so.ooooooooooon!!!1!1eleventy!!11!!
I kind of agree with B.Moe on the last thread:
“Comment by B Moe on 10/7 @ 5:15 pm #
I am just keeping my fingers crossed and praying with my eyes screnched up tight that McCain is letting these pinheads scream “OMG!… Louder and louder in anticipation of unloading a full clip in their asses tonight during the debate.”
Like this fine gent, I want blood, not necessarily for Mav’s sake, but for all of us, who’ve just been soaked for 700 billion…
A full clip would be nice; but let’s just say I’m looking for something more…fissile!
Break out the crowd pleasers, light those candles, Nuke ‘em Mav!
Comment by Roland THTG on 10/7 @ 6:35 pm #
“And so do my HTML skillz, apparently.”
Hmmmm
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:36 pm #
Other side wants the same
Comment by Roland THTG on 10/7 @ 6:36 pm #
Hah! Fixed it!
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:36 pm #
o hey the lights came back on. where are my mittens now
Comment by guinsPen on 10/7 @ 6:38 pm #
And there was hell to pay whenever the Good Sisters caught a schoolgirl wearing a local radio station’s, I’m Bold promo button.
Comment by guinsPen on 10/7 @ 6:39 pm #
Blast!
Comment by Roland THTG on 10/7 @ 6:41 pm #
Mcpain needs to ditch the whole “My friends”, and Mavrick thing.
He should say, “No, in fact we can’t all get a-fuckin long!” “Do you people have the first fucking clue about this asshole?”
Then proceed to elucidate at length, chapter and verse, on ol Barry O’Bama.
But, he won’t.
sigh
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:42 pm #
I was watching local moonbat #1 watch the hasselbeck thinger and she was all like ‘that stoopid b*tch’ and I was like, ‘but you’re watching the view’
of course, I watch people that watch the view, so never mind me. I’m scientifical
Comment by lee on 10/7 @ 6:45 pm #
What I would like to see is if on the way to their podiums, they paused to dip their hands in hot wax and then thrust them into vats of broken glass.
It could be very dramatic, if they did it right.
Comment by Bob Reed on 10/7 @ 6:49 pm #
al,
I write multiple e-mails daily to Mav’s campaign voicing my pleasure/displeasure as the issues come and go.
I figger it like you do; if a 1/2 asser like me is ridin’ them, what are the serious folks doin’…IM?
Comment by urthshu on 10/7 @ 6:50 pm #
I think the town hall thing will be calm and stuff. It’d work better really if Baracky went off on McCain. B/c that way he’d look like the silly goose who can’t behave in front of guests.
Comment by SarahW on 10/7 @ 6:51 pm #
That New Party stuff , I think I may well have read that here first, many months ago. Here’s an older mention of it elsewhere.
Comment by Anne on 10/7 @ 8:37 pm #
If Obama’s campaign really believes the American people do not care about this or see it as a “REAL” issue just as much as the current economic crisis (which by the way, Obama has DIRECT ties in laying the foundation for in his work as a community organizer with ACORN), they are DEAD wrong.
Many of us have not forgotten 9/11 and find it unacceptable for someone running for President of the greatest country in the world to have so many of these kinds of associations and ties to people whose words tell what is in their heart, a HATRED for America. Was Obama never taught… “Birds of a feather flock together”???
http://www.sparrowgirls.com
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people… of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” John Adams
Comment by pdbuttons on 10/8 @ 9:30 am #
Mcpain sucks
I need a doubleshot of
Palin!
her election-a-rary starts Nov 5/
is that a glow stick in ur pants
or just the back of A Sully’s head?
Comment by Slartibartfast on 10/8 @ 10:39 am #
I know senatoring bores you;
you rather be the pezzydent
but then there’s you
and your terrorist friend
Odd, I was just listening to a song by the same group, this morning, whose refrain sounds like an ode to Semanticleo:
Experimental dog
Salivating dog
Good dog
Waiting for the dinner bell to do the bell thing
Dinner bell, dinner bell ring
Comment by Slartibartfast on 10/8 @ 11:34 am #
Or:
Big hand’s on 120
little hand’s on E
But I thought that applied better to thor.