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