Most important, Ayers was – for good or ill – deemed a mainstream member of Chicago political circles. He has been praised by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley; he’s a professor at the University of Illinois. He was named Chicago “Citizen of the Year” in 1997. One of the boards on which he and Obama served together was funded by a Republican and current McCain supporter.
Ayers simply isn’t the fringe member of society that Obama detractors have painted. Maybe he should be: It’s a legitimate beef that the liberal establishment holds a double standard. An unrepentent abortion-clinic bomber would never get hired as a professor at an elite university.
But Ayers was forgiven his past sins by a wide variety of people in Chicago long before Obama arrived on the scene.
Maybe Obama, like Daley, believes in second chances. Or tolerating Ayers just furthered his ambition – a stance that would hardly distinguish him from most politicians.
The limited professional relationship doesn’t prove that Obama is sympathetic to terrorist activity. (In fact, he has condemned Ayers’ actions.) For the McCain campaign to insinuate that it does is wildly irresponsible.
First of all, Kirsten, “for good or ill” hardly begins to grapple with the level of corruption of the Chicago political establishment. Sure, Daley believes in second chances. Shouldn’t a Mayor whose family’s corrupt dynasty has cast a shadow over Chicago for the best part of a century feel that way, since the voters of Chicago have given him the mantle of Ward Boss di Tutti Bosses of Wards? As for Ayers, this pathetic snivelling shit scion of Con Ed CEO and Chicago bigwig who got off “guilty as hell, and free as a bird,” tenure seems to be rehab for radicals who even recently have felt that they weren’t violent enough, didn’t do enough.
Nobody, you twit, is accusing Obama of advocating terror, though his palling around with Odinga turned out to be bad judgment:
Did Obama downplay his relationship with Ayers? Perhaps. But that may be because he viewed their interactions as minor, given how many events he attended on any given day.
I’m sorry, but the pattern is already manifest. He’s outright lied about his relations with Ayers. He subsequently admitted to having served on the board of a charitable foundation with him, when in fact it has been two. He strongly endorsed Ayers’s radical educational philosophy as expressed in the book he wrote a cover blurb for, and which he helped to support in action through grants as Chairman of the CAC. Between them, they doled out over $150 million in funds for radical educational reform programs that produced no visible benefit with respect to what most Americans regard as core curriculum. That wasn’t the intention, anyway, as Ayers’s subsequent comments to Hugo Chavez with respect to educational philosophy and the radicalization of the young demonstrates.
In other words, Kirsten, it’s all about the ideological agreement between these two men. If you’re looking for rehab, the Daley machine’s about the last place to go. A Kind and Just Parent? Perhaps if more parents were wise and just, not so many kids would be effectively wards of the state. Children learn what they live: guilty as hell and free as a bird! Oh, and screw Penny Pritzger, too.
If the Ayers connection ever gets any real traction in the MSM (unlikely), other “journalists” will be able to point to articles such as this one as indicative that they were already on the case, and that Ayers and Obama have been fully vetted on the topic, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I despair.
One of THE Mellon family lived in the small Mississippi town of my parents’ birth. Back in the 1930’s, he shot and killed a black man for saying something — what, it’s never been clear — to his wife when she was downtown. Mellon was never prosecuted. He was pretty much a model citizen. Other than that.
Forgiveness without repentance is vacuous contemporary liberalism. Ayers is unrepentant. The fact that he is on staff at a university merely means that the values of modern academia are suspect.
strawmen as coping mechanism.
“Ayers simply isn’t the fringe member of society that Obama detractors have painted.”
Methinks this says more about Chicago than it does about the rehabilitation of Ayers.
“But Ayers was forgiven his past sins by a wide variety of people in Chicago long before Obama arrived on the scene.”
I don’t think that “a wide variety of people in Chicago” have the authority to forgive Ayers’ past sins.
Is it me, or is this rehabilitation of Ayers seeming like preparation in the event that it can be proven that Ayers and Obama were more than professionally associated?
Less to do with corruption and more to do with racism I should think, S.L. Or, at least, a combination of the two.
Our mainstream terrorist boy is sure kinda laying low for being all mainstreamy and all. I think it’s cause he knows he’s for real a radical terrorist is why. Kristen don’t think too good. Who is she anyway?
I hope Jeff feels better soon. It sucks to be sick. It is windy here. And smoky. I ate some oatmeal. It didn’t have anything to say. Nobel Prizes are for wankers. They can all blow me. Later this week there will be a debate on the tv.
“But Ayers was forgiven his past sins by a wide variety of people in Chicago long before Obama arrived on the scene.”
In nominee patri et fillie, I, R. Daley, absolve you, W. Ayers, of your sins in this Chicago circle jerk and thus grant you dominion over the minds of the young ones.
“One of the boards on which he and Obama served together was funded by a Republican and current McCain supporter.”
What board is she talking about? Annenberg died in 2002 so it couldn’t be that one. Then again maybe it could in the “Chicago dead voter” sense.
She’s an Alaska born “Dem. strategist” (code for worker-bee, I take it) TV hottie (FoxNC, columns for NYPOST) who will occasionally stand up for Palin in a homestate/sisterly sort of way, but was certain to return to party dogma soon’s her tiny tingle of indignity had worn off.
Speaking of Nobel Prizes, Slate does right this time:
http://www.slate.com/id/2201447/.
Yeah, but KP’s hot, so there’s that…
cranky — not sure of your point, but mine is Ayers was a terrorist, and so was Mellon, their later status as model citizens notwithstanding. A politican with a close relationship to either should be suspect, despite Kirsten Powers’ belief that “The limited professional relationship doesn’t prove that [they are] sympathetic to terrorist activity.”
Thanks, Sdferr. She looks utterly banal I think, especially since she couldn’t be bothered to touch up her roots. And if you’re gonna wear something that low-cut you’d think you’d have the sense to throw on a drop or something. Also she had her nose done you can tell. This is a woman what obviously doesn’t think her brainses are her ticket.
Salt Lick: I did not know anything about the Mellon family, so what you wrote seemed to be a non-sequitor. I stand corrected.
Can you tell I’m grumpy? Too many working weekends in a row I think and I accidentally listened to NPR this morning and jeez but they want my America to get its socialism on in the worstest way. They’re genuinely creepy about it with their dulcet matter of factness plus also the way Scandinavia has become a fucking reference point for everything is surreal.
The nose job comment was the tell.
NPR…they want my America to get its socialism on in the worstest way.
Radio Free America? I’m seeing an area of growth here.
“She always has a gorgeous tan…..”
“She was supposed to visit a court to work with kids and she wouldn’t go,” says one. “She’d basically sit around with a group of people that we had working for us who would sit around and discuss the problems of poor people and how terrible it was that people were poor and so on and so forth, and they never did any work. It’s like great theoreticians, but when it comes down to doing work, forget it….”
“(She) refuses to stand for the playing of the national anthem. As she wrote in a 1991 op-ed piece in the liberal weekly The Nation, “The aspects of patriotism that hush dissent, encourage going along, and sanction comfortable distancing and compliance with what is indecent and unacceptable… those aspects are too fundamental to ignore or gloss over….”
“It is mid-March (1993) now, and (she) is swamped with work and with preparations for an upcoming spring vacation in Maui with her family….”
Dig It, Kirsten!
(Of course, it was 15 years ago, and of course everyone in Chicago goes to Hawaii on vacation, so of course it doesn’t matter, because it’ so not today and history is so yesterday, and…acquaintances are so fleeting and banal.)
‘Feets, your grumpy is my normal.
‘Past sins’? He’s still a communist.
OT:
Has anyone noticed amidst all the sturm und drang of the campaign coverage that Sec. Paulson’s initial plan to “buy up toxic assets” has slowly been morphing to the preferred option of many economists and bankers, namely a direct injection of capital into solvent banks as a means to reassure these same banks with regard to one another and thus “unclog” the lending pipeline?
There has been nothing comparable to the roll-out of the original Paulson plan to make this change clear to the voting public, but this change and others have been proceeding apace. Who knows, the Treasury and FedBank may actually end up in a place and with a marker mechanism that will work, and that, I guess, would be a good thing indeed.
marker = market, sorry.
The question is not why would Barack Obama associate with someone like Bill Ayers. The question is what did Ayers see in Obama that made him so very confident that Obama would serve his radical, anti-American purposes.
– Dan – First of all, nobody with the last name “Powers” should ever be taken seriously.
– Secondly, Kirsten is a sweetheart, but if you were lucky enough to find her on your lap extolling your charms and offering hers, ear plugs would be in order. Lovely to look at, listening to her a total waste of time.
– For years shes been bouncing back and forth between Liberal and Lino. She tries mightily to be fair and balanced, that much I give her much credit for, but as always there is no moderation allowed on the brain-dead extremist side of the political spectrum, but she wants to have it both ways, and denies the truth of the rapacious nature of her ideology and following.
-So in that sense, you are right, she doesn’t get it. Doubtful she ever will. Shes just too “nice” for the political arena.
See, I’d be willing to believe that Obama’s practice of hanging with Bad People was actually an attempt on his part of redeeming them IF he:
a) Didn’t lie, then backpedal, then lie again, then backpedal again, then sort of mumble about how he didn’t really know that side of them when confronted.
b) Openly repudiated the more noxious of their philosophies, then explained, clearly and unambiguously, what drew him to them in the first place and what he believes is worth saving.
c) Maybe, I dunno. Did this on a platform with these folks standing beside him.
d) And if they’re irredeemable, SAY SO.
Own up to your associations, IMO, and explain why they aren’t to be feared, rather than pretending you never knew them.
#17
Ya needs the maple syrup fer yer oatmeals. Maple syrup brings the smiles. And some half & half.
“Secondly, Kirsten is a sweetheart, but if you were lucky enough to find her on your lap”
That’s far enough for me. She’s like Alan Colmes, but doesn’t look like she sleeps in a coffin – she does look (and probably smell) very nice, and that’s enough for me. My schmeckel has no litmus test.
The thing is, Obama decided to lie about it. If it’s no big deal, just say so. But no, O! demonstrates consciousness of guilt. He feels the need to hide the relationship from you, because he knows you shouldn’t like it.
Erase, erase, erase…
Or, what Pelligri said @ #27.
Erase, erase, erase…
Pretty much, Pablo.
I can’t convince my dad this is worse than “politics as usual” and that it’s profoundly disturbing to me that he can’t be forthright about this. Said parent is v. hung up on how McCain will DESTROY US ALL by getting us into more imperialistic wars because he’s involved with the Project for a New American Century. Also, Iraq is a failboat.
Iraq is going to be fine one day soon (relative to the rest of its recent history), a very well-off democracy (economically) in the heart of the middle-east and as that comes to pass, we will be glad we undertook the violent change there that we did.
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