Obama and the 'Tangential' Bill Ayers

Ayers: Part of a Pattern
Another Piece of the "Who's Obama?" Puzzle
The 'tangential' Bill Ayers




Barack Obama's relationship with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, is not a topic for polite MSM or liberal conversation.

We're neither liberal or polite.

LBG discussed the issue yesterday [Obama’s Ties to 1970’s Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers: Disassociation and Little Condemnation]. Today, we'll discuss it again.

No San Francisco cocktail party invites for us.

Democrats insist that any discussion of Obama and Bill Ayers is a "smear".

Is it?

A "smear" is defined as a "vilifying or slanderous remark". While Obama's friendship with Ayers is certainly "injurious to [his] reputation--especially now that Obama's running for president--there's absolutely nothing slanderous about it.

Generally, the truth is an absolute defense in any suit for slander or libel, and the truth is: the Barack Obama-Bill Ayers association goes back years.

The following observations, from comments at Free Republic helps put that association in perspective.

Q: What does Obama and Osama have in common?
A: They BOTH have friends who bombed the Pentagon.

This from stockstrader at Free Republic:

I wish someone would ask [Obama] just once: "Then tell me, would it be ok for a child who was eight years old on 9/11--to then have a friendship with Osama bin Laden later in life as an adult"?

We might add "running for president in 2020 or beyond" to the description of that eight-year-old child.

Mark Steyn's comment on the Obama-Ayers connection:

"Well, why shouldn't they vote on "character"? Barack Obama has no accomplishments, no legislative record, no nuthin'. So if you don't want to vote on character (ie, his condescension to crackers too boorish to understand how sophisticatedly nuanced it is to have a terrorist pal and a racist pastor), what else is left?"

[h/t: What's the Rumpus?]



Obama launched his political career from Bill Ayers' house. Ayers' has had fund-raisers for the Democrat presidential candidate. Obama chaired the foundation that Ayers wrote the grant for. Obama and Ayers served on the same boards.

This is not, as Obama told Bill O'Reilly this week, a "tangential" acquaintance. This is not "one of the thousands of people that I know".

That Obama didn't see anything wrong with Ayers until it became a campaign issue reveals something about Obama: his actions and past associations somehow seem to center around "change": as in, 'the USA is not a good place' and needs to be changed.

Ayers tried bombing his way to change--regardless of what the voters and the rest of the community had decided.

To discuss Obama's relationship with Ayers isn't to claim that Obama wants to blow things up (Obama's "Barack the bomb-thrower" remark). But it may help reveal the mindset of a man who wants to become president--before he became nationally-known.

That his campaign continues to downplay this--disingenuously, we think--is evidence that Obama's handlers feel this is a damaging issue. As LBG stated:

barrackobama.com's FACT CHECK section on Ayers cites various MSM sources which claim the Ayers-Obama connection is “phony”, ‘tennous”, and a “stretch”.


DBKP FACT:

Barack Obama held his first fundraiser at Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine’s home in 1995.

“Obama claims Ayers was just a “guy in the neighborhood,” but clearly he was more than that. Obama misrepresents his relationship with the man in whose home his first fundraiser was held.”
–Investors Business Daily

Here's how the Chicago Sun-Times, in a bit of WTF-ery, puts it:

Ayers is nothing more than an aging lefty with a foolish past who is doing good. And while, yes, Obama is friendly with Ayers, it appears to be only in the way of two community activists whose circles overlap. Obama's middle name is Hussein. That doesn't make him an Islamic terrorist. He stopped wearing a flag pin. That doesn't make him unpatriotic. And he's friendly with UIC Professor William Ayers. That doesn't make him a bomb thrower.

Individually, those Obama actions may not raise eyebrows at the Sun-Times; collectively, might they seem to suggest, to the uninterested observer, an Obama pattern?

In the O'Reilly interview, Obama was allowed to skate away from the questions on Ayers by saying that Ayers was "tangential": Bill O'Reilly didn't hone in on the follow-up. That's understandable: O'Reilly would like to land another rating-boosting Obama appearance on his show at some point in the future.

The Obama campaign will not, just as understandably, bring up the issue of Ayers unless pressed. The Mainstream Media will not, just as understandably, press the issue with a candidate that 90% of their reporters will likely vote for in 2008.

Which, once more, leaves it up to the blogosphere to press the issue.

We intend on doing that, along with others. To those on the right, there's a lot more to discuss about Obama and Ayers and we'll get around to that. To those on the left, "sticks and stones..."

As for the "smear" talk?

We're not asking about Obama's kids or whether he's their father: we're asking about a man from whose house Barack Obama announced his Illinois Senate bid:

The 'tangential' Bill Ayers.


by Mondoreb
images; dbkp file

Anti-Nazis Use Nazi Methods to "Wreck" Oxford Debate

To the Left, a sense of irony has always been over-rated.

Socialists and others, proclaiming themselves anti-fascists, proceeded to use fascist tactics to shut down an Oxford Union debating club forum recently.

An eyewitness reports:

I was one of over a 1,000 protesters from all walks of life that gathered outside the Oxford Union debating club on Monday of this week to try and stop it from hosting a “forum” featuring two leading Nazis.

Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party(BNP) and Holocaust denier David Irving were to be two of the speakers at the debate. Neither is an appealing figure, but they weren't the only speakers who had their plans disrupted that night.

Their scheduled opponents never got to argue their cases either, thanks to the quick wits--and arms and legs--of the brave watchmen of British liberties.

The atmosphere at the protest was electric as people thronged around the Union building, arguing with those trying to attend the meeting.

The air was full of real political debate – in sharp contrast to the superficial rituals that the Union prides itself on.

The real debate of deciding if a real debate gets to take place. The witness has a real future if the Soviet Union is ever reconstituted.

Or Nazi Germany.

Getting to decide another's actions, or what is heard or said: it's enough to stir the blood of Socialist and Nazi alike.

People kept up a noisy presence by chanting and singing, when suddenly a gate swung open. Around 60 of us pushed our way into the Union compound past a pair of security guards that tried to rugby tackle us.

Eventually around 35 of us made it into the debating chamber – fending off attempts to physically block us by the Oxford Union’s champions of “free speech”.

We argued with the people inside, telling them that what went on in their chambers had real effects in the outside world.

At this point they decided to walk out of the debating chamber and hold their meetings with Nazis in two separate rooms elsewhere.

The atmosphere was getting ugly, so we negotiated to be let out.

One might remark that the atmosphere was plenty ugly well before that. But then that would spoil the mood.

The witness then recounts how he exited the building, "rejoining the protest outside to cheers."

Irony was not among the well-wishers, having long since departed.

It's disturbing whenever free and open debate is strangled. There's little doubt that had Griffin had 1000 of his cohorts and true-believers present, while the witness had tried to address a crowd, that the same results would have occurred.

Shout them down, shut them up: they're Nazis, they're Socialists, they're Jews.

The end justifies the means. What would Stalin do? Or Hitler or Mao or Che? What is Chavez doing at this very moment?

Tactics are tactics and totalitarian methods are totalitarian methods, no matter what the label.

The witness can slap some lipstick on his Nazi-like actions and pretend that they're now pretty and noble; just as he slapped some quotation marks around free speech and pretended that it wasn't.

The Brown Shirts excelled at disrupting the speech of anyone they disagreed with: breaking up meetings of opponents, shouting them down, hounding them in public until they silenced them. Physical violence shortly followed and grew.

As did the list of those whose speech they found disagreeable.

Once a group gets to decide who speaks and who is silenced, they develop a taste for it. Today's allies become tomorrow's enemies. And there's always a need for an enemy: a target's just the thing to produce an "electric atmosphere" among the faithful.

At least it can't happen in America. Can it?

Liberal zealots spend their days crafting Internet screeds against the coming Bush police state. The rants are so many, one would think they'd have time for little else.

But there's always time to be found to rush down to the College Union to fling a pie at the occasional conservative speaker who wanders on campus.

It's not really police state tactics if the target is Ann Coulter. After all, she's such a bitch.

A squelching of free speech is a squelching of free speech.

Hello Nick!
There's a reason that Nazis and White Supremacists and Socialists like our witness mainly flourish in the shadows with their cronies: when they come out into the light, most people can see how insanely ridiculous they are.

The issue of political elites not listening to their constituents is always a wild card in Europe, but I'll take the regular guy's good sense every time, Jerry Springer notwithstanding.

Give David Irving three hours of prime time every week and in less than six months, both he and his loony views will be as unpopular as any of the politicians who now hog the BBC's airwaves. As if they aren't already.

There'd be a line of historians from Oxford to Moscow forming up for a chance to debunk the nut.

If the Socialists are really interested in stamping out the BNP, they'd take up a collection so Nick Griffin could get his prime-time slot too. The British see through him. Let Nick have his chance to humiliate himself.

But then, that would be letting ordinary folk make up their own minds about what to hear.

Source: Socialist Worker, "1000 Anti-Fascists Wreck Oxford's Sham Debate"

by Mondoreb



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.