I am sure you will be SHOCKED to learn that Obama is acting in much the same way. I know, I know - what a surprise. Ahem. Well, it seems some one has been doing a little investigative journalism, something in VERY short supply of late. But get this - I tell you, you better be sitting down - in this case, it was - WAIT FOR IT -
MSNBC. YES, the very network to which we routinely refer as “MSNBO”! Once I recovered from the shock of it all, I couldn’t wait to see just how transparent President Obama was compared to Bush. (I wonder if there is a way for us to do a pool on these kinds of things, like for NCAA basketball or something?)

This is what MSNBC uncovered in this report:

Obama Names 110 White House Visitors

The White House on Friday released a small list of visitors to the White House since President Barack Obama took office in January, including lobbyists, business executives, activists and celebrities.

No previous administration has released such a list, though the information out so far is incomplete. Only about 110 names —and 481 visits —out of the hundreds of thousands who have visited the Obama White House were made public. Like the Bush administration before it, Obama is arguing that any release is voluntary, not required by law, despite two federal court rulings to the contrary.

The emphasis there is mine. This is a bit of a schizophrenic opening. On the one hand, they want to champion that Obama released 110 names - Woohoo!! On the other hand, they have to acknowledge that, once again, President Obama is using the SAME arguments as Bush. Moreover, this “Constitutional Scholar” is doing so in clear violation of not one, but TWO federal court rulings! Maybe the KoolAide was made improperly that day, I don’t know, but the report continues:

Under the Obama White House’s policy, most names of visitors from Inauguration Day in January through the end of September will never be released. The White House says it plans to release most of the names of visitors from October on, and that release is due near the end of the year. There are limitations there as well, including potential Supreme Court nominees, personal guests of the First Family, and certain security officials.

The names released Friday include business leaders and lobbyists with a lot to gain or lose from Obama policies. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (whose foundation is pushing for changes in teacher pay), former AIG chairman Maurice Greenberg, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JP Morgan’s James Dimon, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis, John Stumpf of Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley’s John Mack, State Street bank’s Ron Logue, BNY Mellon’s Robert Kelly, labor leader Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union (22 visits)*, American Bankers Association CEO Ed Yingling, community bankers president Camden Fine, and lobbyists Heather and Anthony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta led Obama’s transition team.

Besides Gates, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt are also on the list. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC. One of NBC’s parents is GE.)

Advocates and nonprofit leaders include National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is interested in health policy.

So, this is how Obama is paying these people and organizations back, by having them in the White House? I bet Kim Gandy was just all aflutter after she threw ALL women under the bus to endorse Obama over a life-long women’s advocate. There is more on her below.

I know many readers will be interested in this White House guest:

Democratic donor and businessman George Soros visited with White House aides twice.

Yes, indeedy, a major funder of Moveon.org has been to check up on his biggest investment - ahem - twice.

We’re just getting started:

Political figures include former Sen. Thomas Daschle, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, former Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. Al Franken, former Vice President Al Gore, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, and Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf.

Celebrities at the White House include Oprah Winfrey, actors Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Denzel Washington, and tennis star Serena Williams. Journalists include Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.

Conservative religious leader Gary Bauer visited, as did liberal civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Okay, the last two, along with Oprah, are NOT a surprise. Gary Bauer? Just a tad surprising.

For anyone who wants to see more:

Msnbc.com has put the full list in a handy PDF file, and also in an Excel file for those who like to sort.

One guest is mighty interesting:

Not that Bill Ayers

The White House warns that many names that may appear familiar — and controversial — do not in fact refer to the most famous people to carry those names. Jeremiah Wright is on the list, but it’s not the president’s former pastor. This Michael Jordan is not the basketball player. This Michael Moore is not a filmmaker. The William Ayers who took a group tour of the White House isn’t the former radical from Chicago who figured so prominently in the 2008 campaign. And the Angela Davis on the list has a different middle initial than the activist and former fugitive.

The White House could have avoided some of that sort of confusion by providing more information on the visitors, such as an employer name and the city they hail from. For example, is the Shawn Carter who attended a poetry reading the same one who goes by Jay-Z and had campaigned for Obama?

“This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information,” a White House special counsel, Norm Eisen, wrote on the White House blog.

If you spot a name on the list that bears investigating, please drop us a note.

Of COURSE we will just trust Obama and his spokes-minions when they assure us that this Bill Ayers could not POSSIBLY be domestic terrorist - Capitol Building and Pentagon bomber - long time friend and mentor Bill Ayers! He is just some guy who wanted to visit the White House Gift Shop and pick up a couple of Marine One helicopter models for his boys. I am sure of it. Sheesh. Really? They expect us to believe this crap? Evidently - they got plenty of other people to believe that kind of crap and more, so why stop now?

Okay - if you are consuming any liquids right this minute, I suggest you put it down when you read this:

Limited release

Despite the accompanying White House claim of “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” the Obama White House continues to take the same legal position as the Bush White House, arguing that the records are not public records subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Only limited “voluntary releases” are being made to settle a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group, though a federal judge has twice ruled that all the visitor logs are public. (Again, emphasis is mine.)

Yet there are severe limitations to the transparency:

Most of the visitors from Inauguration Day to September will never be released by the White House under this voluntary disclosure — unless the public can guess their names. The White House policy doesn’t allow members of the public or press to ask for “everyone who visited health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle,” or everyone who visited on May 4, or everyone from the American Medical Association. Only individual names can be checked.

I know, right? Didn’t this sound just a little pissy?? From someone at MSNBC?? The bigger picture is that the Obama Administration is BREAKING THE LAW. Hell to the YES, that information falls under FOIA - this is OUR White House, not the Obamas. We most definitely DO get to know every single John Smith and Jane Doe who cross the threshold of the White House. You better believe we do.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it is a start:

The list released at 4:30 p.m. Friday includes just about 110 names with 481 visits. Those names were among those requested by members of the public so far, for visits during the period from Inauguration Day through July. (That’s why we know of visits by the wrong Bill Ayers, the wrong Angela Davis, etc., but we don’t know of visits by countless unnamed lobbyists.) Members of the public who used the White House online form to check names did not receive a personal reply indicating whether or not the request was received, or whether the name appeared on the list, so the system provides no feedback. Does the absence of Bill Clinton’s name on the list mean that he has not been to the White House, or that the request wasn’t received by the White House online system?

A request for the complete records of all visitors from the first months of the administration, filed by msnbc.com, was rejected by the White House, and an appeal is pending. The news organization requested the names of all visitors to the Obama White House beginning with Inauguration Day. Msnbc.com has filed an administrative appeal with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.

Say whaa?? The White House rejected a request from their lapdog “news” source?? Huh. There’s a shocker. Welcome to the “Under The Bus” club, MSNBC!

The Wall Street Journal focused on the most frequent visitor to the White House. He was mentioned in the list above, but without the acknowledgment of the frequency:

SEIU’s Stern Tops White House Visitor List

Promising “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” The White House released its visitor log this evening under a new voluntary disclosure policy.

The log chronicles 481 visits to the White House from individuals ranging from Jay-Z to Bill Gates from January through July.

The list includes William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore, Robert Kelly (R. Kelly), Malik Shabazz, and Michael Jordan.

But the White House said those aren’t the guys you’re thinking of. Nor is the log complete.

Ahahahahahahaha!!! I just cannot get enough of this one - sure, they aren’t the same people. Yeah, okay, we believe you. NOT. And because it is just so much fun to see them squirm, I am keeping in the part that is repetitive of the article above, especially the quotes from Eisen. Oh, what a funny guy:

“A lot of people visit the White House, up to 100,000 each month, with many of those folks coming to tour the buildings. Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few ‘false positives’ – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else,” Norm Eisen, a special counsel to the president, writes on the White House blog. “The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.”

Adds Eisen: “This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information.”

Uh, ya know, I think we are all smart enough to not get all confused by this incredible level of “transparency.” Beginning with, we actually know the definition of “transparency,” something Eisen and Obama apparently do not.

And then there is this:

One thing is clear: *Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern holds sway at the White House, where he’s listed for 22 visits—the top number on the logs. Visitors in the top 10 also include former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan.

So THAT’S what Gandy and Keenan got for stabbing Hillary Clinton and, well, WOMEN, int he back - visits to the White House. I guess there is something gained by selling your soul, though, personally, I don’t think it is worth it. But that’s just me.

Anywho - yes, the President of the SEIU, again, the union co-founded by the founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, is the TOP visitor at the White House. The SEIU has been in the news quite a bit, especially for holding California hostage - threatening that their good buddy, Obama, would not give the state any federal stimulus funds if it had the audacity to expect the union to cut wages like everyone else so the state wouldn’t go bankrupt. NOW we know how the union was able to do that. All those visits to the White House apparently paid off - for the union, not California, the state with one of the largest budgets around (as in 5th in the world). What makes this more egregious is that California pays a lot into the federal tax system and receives little comparatively speaking. And this union is allowed - by the White House - to hold it over a barrel. Yep, all those meetings seemed to do the trick!

Aren’t you just so heartened by all of this “transparency”? And by seeing who Obama is welcoming into our White House? Yeah, me, too. As long as the Obama Administration continues to thumb its nose at Federal Law, I reckon we should be “thankful” for this (no, not really - it’s BS that they are still sitting on so much information).

Oh, but if you can just GUESS who might else have been there and submit that form asking them, maybe you can confirm some other folks who have been there, too. Lemme know what you find out, okay? I am sure we would all just love to know…

But here’s the problem for me. I had really liked President Carter. I had a lot of respect for him, in fact. I was young and naive when he was in office, but certainly the work he had done AFTER leaving the White House was commendable. For instance, the work he and his entire family did for Habitat for Humanity has helped numerous people, including in my home town. I have experienced firsthand seeing the joy and pride the new homeowner as she looked at her house, and talked about what it meant to her. And the group of university students with whom I was working, all female, becoming more empowered, more sure of themselves, because they were helping to build someone a HOUSE, and the sense of pride and accomplishment that gave them.

The work Carter has done in Africa, helping to eradicate a horrible disease of worms that infiltrate too many areas there, doing horrible damage to the people they infest. Or his work in monitoring elections. Heck, even his recent decision to leave his church of many years because they will not ordain women.

My partner and I have visited the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, GA, a beautiful place in a calming and serene environment. I walked through that buildung filled with a sense of awe, seeing what he gave up, and subsequently his wife, when he left his commission as a Naval officer behind to go back to Georgia and help out the family. As I saw photographs marking historic moments, actual papers from events I had read about, or seen on tv. I was in awe as I saw his actual Nobel Peace Prize. And with pride, we have supported the Carter Peace Center for years now with monthly contributions…

(Photo by rachydachy)

But, things have been changed now. It began with some of his statements about Israel. Then President Carter inserted himself into the Primary Campaign, making some unkind remarks about my hero, “>Hillary Clinton. And now this. Being called a racist because I oppose the way by which Obama became President, but even more, because I oppose his policies. When someone calls me a racist, I gotta say (as we do down here in the South, “Them’s fightin’ words.” And so, I have written this letter to send to the Carter Center when my next payment is due:

Dear Carter Center,

Sincerely,
The Rev. Amy

What a sad day, for me personally, but also for this nation, when a former president makes such a grievous, and unfounded, charge against over half of the population. Because we have the audacity to judge the president by his CHARACTER, rather than the color of his skin, as Martin Luther King, Jr., charged us to do, we are called a heinous name. How sad, and how infuriating.

President Carter, as respectfully as I can muster after being called a racist, I would suggest it is time for you to go into retirement, and leave off sharing your political opinions. You are not doing yourself or your legacy any good, to be sure. Even more, you are not doing this nation any good. Rather, you are fanning flames that divide us, not unite us, all to provide cover for a man who, had he been properly vetted in the first place, and had the DNC followed its own rules, would never have gotten this far. Speaking for me only, I am judging Obama on the merits, not the color of his skin. I suggest you do likewise.

And that is why I took particular delight in Andy Borowitz’s most recent piece, “Obama Quits While Ahead; Prez Resigns After Hundred Days: “It’s All Downhill From Here.” Oh, if only:

In a move that stunned both political allies and foes alike, President Barack Obama resigned today after serving 100 days in office, telling the White House press corps, “It’s all downhill from here.”

The reporters seemed stunned by the President’s decision in light of the fawning media coverage he received during his first 100 days, but the hyperbolic nature of that reportage, ironically, may have been the prime motivator behind Mr. Obama’s shocking move.

“Let’s face it, I’m not going to get better coverage than I have to date,” he said. “The only guy with a higher approval rating is that dude who landed the plane on the Hudson - or maybe that other dude who escaped from those pirates.”

Click HERE to read the rest - it is pretty funny, especially to see who has higher poll numbers than Obama!

Sigh. I guess it is easy for him to have slightly better than half approval ratings when liberals and progressives ignore: expanded faith-based initiatives, a program we detested under Bush; keeping No Child Left Behind intact, a program we have all widely decried, especially teachers; and Obama’s EXPANSION of warrantless wire-tapping on American citizens. For added irony, here is a video from Keith Olbermann, of all people, on this very thing:

Then there is the attempt to nationalize our banks, firing the CEO of a private company, and the list goes on and on. These are just off the top of my head. I am sure there are more - feel free to add them!

The point is, someone who was inexperienced and unqualified was elected president as the result of the best marketing ploy I have ever seen. His connections to: Tony Rezko; Jeremiah Wright; Bill Ayers; Khalid Rashidi; Kwame Kilpatrick; Louis Farrakhan; and James Meeks, to mention a few, all ignored. Also ignored was his massive contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as was his his dearth of a record, both as an IL state senator and a US senator (or how he got to either one of those positions - getting the qualified people kicked off with the very thinnest of reasons). His sexist behavior, and his homophobic associates, all ignored by the MSM and his followers, people who ordinarily would never give quarter to such a person (and about which I have written extensively here. To find those posts, and other related articles by fellow No Quarter writers on those issues, and Obama’s associates, feel free to do a Search at No Quarter.).

Oh, what might have been. Below are a few very good videos on Hillary Clinton, the one who received the most votes in a Primary EVER, despite being outspent at every turn, and having the MSM expose its Clinton Derangement Syndrome at every turn. Still, STILL, she received the most votes of anyone EVER. That says something, both about her, and about the DNC’s choice to pick Obama over her, for all of their concocted reasons and unethical machinations to make it so. In recognition, then, of Obama’s 100 Days in the White House, I hope these will bring a smile to your face (though they also brought tears to my eyes):

Now, for the t-shirts (oh, the colors are great!).

Here’s the video up at Gerard’s, er Bill’s site:

There’s much, much more where that came from, at Gerard’s, er Bill’s site, including articles.

STEPHEN DIAMOND: I am a lawyer, political scientist and law professor. I teach courses and conduct research on the global capital markets, business law, international human rights and labor law. My blog is Global Labor and Politics. You may read my other posts at NoQuarterUSA.net here.

Obama is clearly losing goodwill points every day that Blago-gate drags on. Now it appears that indeed Rahm Emanuel was in touch with Blago and aide Harris about the senate seat though no evidence yet of malfeasance on Emanuel’s part.

The stench of Chicago machine politics now clings to Obama like a cheap cologne.

It did not have to be this way.

Obama started out his career firmly in the reform anti-Daley machine wing of the Chicago Democratic Party. That’s what it meant to be an Alinsky-ite Community Organizer in black south side poor and working class neighborhoods in the 80s (where, by the way, he first got to know the powerful Balanoff family of Tom Balanoff aka “SEIU Official” - the flag pole contact in the Feds affidavit against Blagojevich).

That’s what it meant to fight the Mayor’s office and the powerful school board and the teachers union simultaneously in the push for a school reform bill in 1988 which Obama did alongside his pal Bill Ayers. And Obama did that in opposition to mainstream black organizations like Operation PUSH and The Woodlawn Organization.

That’s what it meant to join again with Ayers in securing and then spending $160 million on education reform AGAINST the desires of Mayor Daley in what were called the Chicago School Wars. That’s what it meant to hold his initial campaign event in the home of his “family friends” Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. That’s what it meant to step into the shoes of outgoing state rep. and fellow traveler Alice Palmer.

In fact, that’s what it meant if your aspiration in political life, as it was for Obama, was to depose Richard Daley Jr. inspired by Obama’s hero, Harold Washington, the first black mayor of the city who died in office while Obama was a community organizer.

But at some point in the late 90s or so, Obama realized he had higher ambitions and perhaps becoming Chicago Mayor was not enough. At that point he began to establish relationships with the Chicago mainstream, including key business figures like Penny Pritzker and he even began cozying up to the Daley machine itself. These would prove critical in his rise to national prominence

And now he is stuck with them. Instead of taking advantage of his new national ties to the Kennedy family or VP-elect Joe Biden he immediately fell back on the Chicago crowd for his earliest appointments - Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, for example - while only leaving behind Jeremiah Wright and, hopefully, Billy Ayers.

For whatever reason Democratic Presidents seem too heavily dependent on the home team. Carter had his Georgia buddies as Clinton had his Arkansas cronies. Usually, however, it takes a few years for their inadequacies to shine through. Obama hasn’t even moved to Washington yet!

From my blog, Global Labor and Politics.

MORE ON ALINSKY:

Here’s a brief summary of Saul Alinsky’s relationship to Obama, via Wikipedia:

Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election.

[...]

Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago. Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.

Join Paulie at 9:00 p.m. ET to discuss Saul Alinsky’s legacy at No Quarter Radio!

Here’s a brief summary of Saul Alinsky’s relationship to Obama, via Wikipedia: “Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election. [...] Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago. Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.

The lines of evidence now converge: the founder of ACORN is Wade Rathke, who, like William Ayers, was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the student organization founded in 1960 as part of the New Left, was the gateway drug to the Weather Underground. In the early sixties, the SDS was idealistic and many reluctantly supported Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964, and grainy black-and-white pictures show clean-cut men and women registering southern blacks to vote. Tom Hayden was amongst this group. But that was then.

By 1969, their Great Society liberalism had been co-opted by Marxists, Maoists, Spartacists, and other assorted revolutionary groups. They were no longer interested in change, but overthrowing the government. It was during this time that Wade Rathke first came into contact with Bill Ayers.

Much has been made of Obama’s questionable judgment in befriending and working closely with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. Regardless of what Obama says, his political career was launched in Ayers’ home, Ayers served with him on Woods Fund, and promoted him to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, like Ayers, is a disciple of Saul Alinsky. Working for ACORN was an important step in Obama’s political career.

An article by Professor David Walls directly connects Rathke’s ACORN to Alinsky, ACORN’s mission of pressuring banks to issue risky mortgages, and the alliance between ACORN and unions:

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in 1970 as a spin-off from the National Welfare Rights Organization, founded by George Wiley, who enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in an Alinsky-influenced program at Syracuse University. From a base in Arkansas, Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado developed a replicable model of forming membership organizations and developing leaders in low-income neighborhoods — relying substantially on young middle-class staff working for subsistence wages. ACORN has established local housing corporations to rehabilitate homes, and has successfully pressured banks to provide mortgages and home improvement loans in low-income communities. ACORN has led “living wage” campaigns in many cities, and has forged alliances with labor unions.

But ACORN isn’t just Alinsky-inspired. It’s a direct off-shoot of his revolutionary agenda:

Around 1970 several national networks began to coalesce and develop systematic and distinctive approaches to community organizing. These include the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), ACORN, Citizen Action, National People’s Action, PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation. Each was indebted, in greater or lesser degree, to Alinsky and his early organizing programs in Chicago through IAF.

Citizen Action, mentioned above, is not “officially” connected to ACORN. But Citizen Action, like Rathke’s ACORN and Ayers’ radical education projects, was founded by another member of the Alinsky-SDS milieu, Heather Booth. But it’s not just SDS and the City of Chicago that binds this group. As the screen capture below shows, Heather Booth’s husband was both a member of the SDS and Alinski’s [sic] Industrial Areas Foundation.

Of equal significance, Citizen Action reported paying Citizen Services, Inc., the shadowy ACORN group first exposed at No Quarter, over half a million dollars for campaign work. This is the Citizen Services, Inc. who has received nearly a million dollars from the Obama campaign:

(Expenditure reports also show an October 18 payment to Citizen Services (ACORN) of $590,526.10 for “Campaign consulting.” This is not enough information to determine whether this payment was also for signature gathering, which would make the per-signature cost ludicrously high, or for get-out-the-vote activities, or something else.)

According to the Associated Press, the FBI is now investigating allegations of voter fraud committed by ACORN. It should come as no surprise that ACORN is steeped in a culture of corruption, and the manipulative actions of ACORN dovetail perfectly with Alinsky’s Rules. Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, was forced out the organization after his brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled more than $948,000 from ACORN and Wade Rathke covered it up. His brother was running one of the 294 ACORN groups which Larry Johnson discovered are all linked through the same address:

139. CITIZENS CONSULTING INC.
1024 ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70117-8402 NON-PROFIT FOREIGN CORPORATION Name Type:LEGAL
Status:ACTIVE
Indiana Secretary of State

The New York Times reports:

The amount Dale Rathke embezzled, $948,607.50, was carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.

Wade Rathke, prior to Obama’s rapid ascent, was formulating ways to converge the Alinsky Left and take control of the power of the state. This was written in January 2003. He begins his essay with the classic exhortations of a Bolshevik pamphleteer, and his words could not be any clearer:

The oldest cliché of our vast peoples’ movement over the last generation or more has got to be that there are so, so many tasks to be done, that there is a job for everyone – and that means, you, too, brothers and sisters!

~snip~

So, you sit here reading this on the fly between one job and another, home and school, heaven and hell, and you say, “hey, bullshit, no way:” every ad for an “activist” is just looking for a canvasser; all of these groups are just gangs with their own cliques – another secret handshake high school behind a storefront window; and, so, you say, what does it matter what I have to say, what I think, or whatever – I’ll just do my thing, my way, and live my life out of the mainstream

Here’s my plea – let’s build a bridge in the sky that links our worlds together, while allowing us to stay autonomous and anonymous.

First, why, and then, how.

The power of the state is in fact fairly awesome.

*****************************************

Editorial note:  The opinions expressed here are only my own, no matter how many millions of people agree with me.  And when I use italics below, that’s me being sarcastic (I know, hard to believe).  All quotations of others are in block quotes.

*****************************************

Saturday morning, I woke up, stumbled to the table with bleary eyes, and sat down, as usual, to read the morning paper (Kansas City Star, of course). The big headlines were local, but below the fold on Page One I see this headline:

Divisive boomers,
make way for Obama
“Millenials” say they’re
ready to move beyond
presidencies defined by
grudges, partisanship.

I rubbed my eyes and read it again, just to be sure I wasn’t still dreaming. I slugged down some caffeine and read the story, written by “David Goldstein, The Star’s Washington correspondent,” whatever the hell that means.

My guess would be that he’s an intern, senior year of college, probably making his first trip to Washington to cover The Beatification of Saint Barky. They probably gave him $50 per diem, bought his tickets and sent him off by Greyhound.

Anyway, so the gist of it is that “baby boomers” are divisive, partisan, and bellicose.

Oh yeah!?  Well, ffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccckkkkkkkkkkk yyyyyyyyooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!

And just who is divisive?  The way I see it, the Obama faction divided the Democratic Party in half, overwhelming it with the worst divisiveness since the Civil Rights Act caused all the Dixie-Crats to turn into Republicans.

I looked at the Star’s messy website to see if this article is there on the online version, but I couldn’t find it, so if someone else can, I’d be glad to update this story with the link if you’ll post it.

[Update: here's the link, thanks to reader "leslie," with a gentlemanly bow in the correct direction!]

http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/985896.html

So here’s some of the gibber-jabber this David Goldstein wrote and somehow managed to get seven inches of front page space before the bulk was carried over to Page A4:

When President John F. Kennedy said the torch had been passed to a new generation in the 1960s, the baby boomers who were beginning to grow up then figured it was their time.

They spent most of the decade noisily trying to do just that in ways that have split the culture ever since.

Nearly half a century later, after voters under age 30 backed him in record numbers, Barack Obama will “pass the torch” to another new generation: the children of the boomers, most of them born after1980, known as “millenials.”

They, like the president-elect, have little patience for the simmering feuds and nasty partisanship of their elders.

So say goodbye to the ’60s, Mom and Dad. No one cares about Woodstock or the time you got maced at the 1969 March on Washington.

Oh, man! Hold me back! I want to turn him over my knee and give him a spanking in public.

So the kids under 30, born after 1980, think they have a better understanding of how the world really works than Mom and Dad, huh? These kids were born with a silver spoon in some part of their face, just a few years ago, as I recall.

They have no idea about WWII except that it was all done in shades of gray. They only know Dick Nixon as a funny Halloween mask. They think Bill Clinton was an old man when he took office because of his “white” hair.

The only thing they ever knew about politics before 9/11 was that BJs weren’t sex but they were somehow illegal cause the old president got busted for it.

After 9/11, they made the logical jump that nothing bad like the twin towers ever happened before Bush came along, so it must be his fault. They don’t know his father was also President George Bush, just that the name seemed familiar.

They get their news from The Daily Show, they are proud of this fact, and believe every word is true.

And this is who is now in charge? I don’t think so!

Let’s check out some more of this imbecile’s blather:

Young folks also might welcome the notion that President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both born in 1946, could be all the boomers will get. Baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. [edit out some garbage] To the millenials, Viet Nam, civil rights and other moments that defined their parents’ salad days are about as relevant as Pearl Harbor and the “Remember the Maine” battle cry.

“We’re the generation of 9/11, of Hurricane Katrina, of the Iraq War,” said Stephanie Young [Ha! Wouldn't you know!], a spokeswoman for Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan political action group that encourages young people to participate in elections. “We’ve had our things that define us… Obama is definitely new generation.”

Count Gen Xers in too. They’re the wave that followed the boomers and in which Obama, who’s technically a boomer, feels that he belongs.

OK, stop right there! Like Obama, talking out of both sides of his mouth, this mealy-mouth whippersnapper wants to have it both ways with Obama. He’s “technically” a boomer, being born in 1961, but he’s really not a boomer, he’s of their generation, not mine!

Let’s see, I was 10 years old in ‘61 and the oldest of four kids. I was born near the beginning of the boomer generation, but was still a kid when he was a kid. I know I wasn’t having kids back then, so I think he’s of my generation. The age of a little brother maybe, but not of my kids.

But the boomers seem to be something dispicable to this guy and his generation, so I can see why they think Obama can’t possibly be a boomer!

But wait, let’s hear some more of this punk’s wisdom:

A lot of Gen Xers and millenials preferred Obama to boomer Hillary Clinton because he seemed more tuned to what’s happening now. Clinton, who was born in 1947, made her campaign announcement on the Web. However, Obama, who was born in 1961, was on the Web too, making greater use of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, and text-messaging campaign updates to his supporters’ cell phones.

“What he did was really speak to young people in a language that they understood,” Young said.

Oh, great. Now I have this image of the comic strip Zits, with teenage Jeremy sprawled on the sofa with his laptop, cell phone, and Ipod. So tuned in. So clueless. The leaders of tomorrow, who think Obama is part of their generation because he uses the Internet. Duh!

How are those math skills, kids? Let’s try it again. Maybe if I text it to you, excuse me, 2 U, you might be able to grasp the concept. “Brn 1961=boomr.” Or more likely “bumr” to save that vital keystroke!

I mean, like, Hillary was totally old enough to be his mother, you know! And like, the whole Web thing is what makes a great leader to us, cause like it’s our time now and the boomers are like, you know, so old school. Our generation doesn’t believe in war. I mean, like, all this fighting is so stupid. We should bring all the soldiers home, you know, so they can, like, fix the roads’n’stuff. Do something useful instead of dropping bombs on innocent people.

I’ve got to throw in one more moronic quote from this bozo:

In the past 16 years, as America has had back-to-back boomer presidencies, the culture wars grew nastier, interest group politics turned more strident, and partisanship trumped all else.

Even this year, Republicans dredged up the ’60s one more time. They tried to paint Obama as a closet revolutionary by linking him to William Ayers, a Chicago neighbor and a former member of the Weather Underground, a ’60s radical group.

Bummer, weary voters finally said. Time to move on.

Like, Dad, why don’t you hurry up and die so I can have the BMW and the insurance money?

Jeezus, where to start? This guy actually believes that during the 90s and 00s, the culture wars were nastier than the 1960s? WTF?

And interest groups turned more strident? Oh come on! You mean, like, for the first time ever!?

And partisanship trumped all else? These kids have never seen a nasty political campaign!   So that Iraq War vote thing… nobody should have been partisan about that, you say? In that case, no doubt Obama would have voted for it. Chew on that.

And oh! Those evil Republicans! How dare they question the One about associating with people who endorsed the violent overthrow of the United State government?

What is their trip!? Ayers was just a neighbor! Their kids went to school together! Where have you been? And what’s so bad about being radical? I thought “radical” means cool, like “bad” means good. Who cares if these two shared ideas? How is that your business?

We need to get past those Nasty Nineties and chill out with the big O in the New Millenium!

Time to move on, Mom. Step aside, Dad. Let one of our people take over! We’ll show you how it’s done! We’ll end the wars, inflate our tires to stop using oil, tax the rich (people making more than us) to pay for everyone else’s bills, and never bicker with anyone anymore.

And if any of you asshole PUMAs don’t like it, we’ll kick your divisive asses!

So, let me ask you folks here at No Quarter and other PUMA or not-for-Obama blogs and websites:  haven’t you noticed how non-divisive, non-strident, non-partisan, and non-sensical Obama’s followers have been this last year?

I know I have!

Recently, Soldier4Hillary had a powerful piece on this very Bill Ayers Op-Ed, “Quiet Storm.” In it, she decried this domestic terrorist being treated as “Hail, fellow well met” by major media outlets. I could not agree more. We are not alone, thank heavens.

The other day, Paul Greenberg, the head of the editorial board for the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette, had this piece: HE’S B-A-A-ACK! Yes, the one to who he is referring is none other than “Not in prison on a technicality” Weatherman, Bill Ayers:

He lay low during the presidential campaign, and for good reason. His various connections to a neighbor named Barack Obama would have embarrassed both of them.

To hear Sen. Obama tell it during the campaign, this was just somebody he would occasionally pass on the street in Hyde Park, their upscale enclave back in Chicago. No need to go into detail about the various committees and fundraisers they’d put together for their mutual benefit. It wouldn’t do for a presidential candidate to acknowledge the depth or variety of his associations with an unrepentant terrorist out of the literally explosive 1960s.

But now that the campaign is over, Bill Ayers has resurfaced. In the New York Times, of course, where his latest apologia appeared earlier this month. Like so many distinguished old terrorists, he now denies he ever was one. A founder of the Weather Underground, which he once described as “an American Red Army,” he now says it was guilty only of “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism.”

I’m sorry, but “extreme vandalism”?? Seems like he’s still on those ’60’s drugs if this is how he now chooses to frame the terrorist activities of his “posse”:

Euphemism is still the last resort of the violent. The Weathermen, the talented Mr. Ayers explains, were guilty only of “attacks on property, never on people. … But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.”

He could have fooled me. In Weatherman’s heyday back in 1969 Chicago, aka the Days of Rage, its members attacked police and civilian targets alike. Is he now saying that they killed and injured people only discriminately?

The rhetorical distance between Bill Ayers’ old memoir, “Fugitive Days,” and the mild persona he’s now adopted on the op-ed page of the New York Times is impressive mainly for its sheer chutzpah. For in his book, which might as well have been a confession in full, he wrote proudly of having “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.”

Of the day he bombed the Pentagon, Bill Ayers recalled: “Everything was absolutely ideal. … The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

See? Nothing but a little “vandalism” going on there! Who could possibly claim that Ayers and his little gang were actually terrorists?? I mean, c’mon already! Oh, wait, Ayers wasn’t finished:

There’s a lot more of that kind of thing in his rhetoric: “There’s something about a good bomb. … Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever again stand innocently fixed in my mind. Big buildings and wide streets, cement and steel were no longer permanent. They, too, were fragile and destructible. A torch, a bomb, a strong enough wind, and they, too, would come undone or get knocked down.”

Mr. Ayers’ earlier defense of his terrorist past had appeared, with perfect timing, in an interview in the New York Times published on the morning of September 11, 2001. The events of that day rather took the shine off his remarks. Or were those terrorists just practicing “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism,” too?

Lest we forget, people were killed during the Weatherman’s reign of terror, notably three Weathermen — including Mr. Ayers’ then-girlfriend, Diana Oughton. They blew themselves up accidentally in their Greenwich Village town house while preparing a bomb that had been intended for an Army dance at Fort Dix.

Just because terrorism is incompetent doesn’t make it any the less terrorism. As a more honest Bill Ayers once admitted, that bomb could have done a lot more damage if it hadn’t killed the terrorists themselves, “tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people, too.” Instead, it tore through the terrorists. There is a raw justice in these matters.

I see - so attempted murder doesn’t count, then, right? Because of their own incompetence, the Murtaugh family, particularly NY State Supreme Court Justice Murtaugh, in Manhattan was not killed when they firebombed their house. So, that doesn’t count in the reign of terror - oops - “vandalism.” Oh, of course not. We were all just taking this Weather Undergound thing a little tooseriously, at least according to the BIll Ayers of today:

But the greatest violence Bill Ayers has done, and continues to do, is to the language. He now presents a campaign of terror as just vandalism, and his old speeches as just a lot of posturing. (”Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”) Today, thanks to his remarkable forgettery, he can’t even remember saying such things.

Bill Ayers may be willing to twist the simple meaning of words, but he can’t seem to admit their power, and take responsibility for the effect his own might have had on impressionable young minds. Naturally he’s now become a professor of “education” at the University of Illinois. If he couldn’t destroy American society in his youth, maybe he can undermine the next generation in his advancing years.

And that is, in a nutshell, one of the major concerns about Bill Ayers. Not only is he completely unreprentant for his deeds, and is now trying to couch them in far less incendiary language, but it is what he is imparting to this generation (you nkow, Obama), and the next.

And speaking of Obama:

It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say Professor Ayers never made an appearance during the late presidential campaign. Fox News sent a camera crew to waylay him outside his nice home in Hyde Park. The newsmen found him wearing a shirt adorned with, of course, a big red star. And he did not welcome their attention. “This is my property,” he told them, ordering them off the place. Then the old Weatherman and cop-baiter called … the police.

The professor would seem to be all against vestiges of the old, oppressive capitalist order like private property — unless of course it’s his. His guiding philosophy isn’t communism, it’s hypocrisy. Bill Ayers’ politics and maybe life can be summed up simply enough: He’s the personification of the spoiled brat as ideologue.

Now that I’ve written this column, I almost regret it. If I hadn’t spotted his self-righteous little act in the New York Times, I might have spared both you, Gentle Reader, and me this brief review of his miserable career. The man isn’t worth wasting good time and words on. But attention must be paid, a record kept. So some future innocent won’t take his type, and hype, seriously.

Well, amen to that, but the vast majority of the media is far too complacent, even encouraging, of Ayers’ “type and hype.” Yes, vigilance is required to keep an HONEST record of what this man did, of what his group did, and how terrorized people were byt his organization. For Ayers to try to claim now that it was essentially just some spirited hijinks on his part is not only disingenuous, but dangerous. We must remember the truth, and not let him get away with his revisionist history (or that of Obama’s relationship with this man). It is far past time this man was held accountable for his actions, no matter his words.

There have been reforms in the state, most notably a new ethics law designed to limit the impact of money in politics. It was approved only after Obama, a former state senator, called his one-time mentor, Senate President Emil Jones, and urged its passage.

His “one-time mentor”? Are you freakin’ KIDDING me??? How about the Kingmaker who put Obama’s name on legislation on which he had not worked?? Oh, wait, that’s just too close to the truth of Obama’s lack of experience/qualifications. No way can the AP get that close…

Ahem. But of course, the ONLY reason The One made the decision to begin his political career in Chicago, apparently, was to clean up Illinois politics. Hahahahaha! Yeah, and that’s why he endorsed Blagojevich - TWICE. And worked on his campaign. But why quibble over past history, right? RIGHT??

That does seem to be the MO around anything related to BO. It is really amazing to me. In my opinion, though, the only way someone can deny Obama is a Chicago-style politician is flat our ignorance, or flat our denial of reality. Take your pick. There is NO way from the stories that have come out about Obama, his relationships to Blagojevich, Rezko, Wright, Meeks, Ayers, et al, that he is above typical Chicago politics. The Rezko thing ALONE is indicative of his involvement. And there is no way that Blagojevich JUST became corrupt as of Nov. 5th when Obama, with the help of ANOTHER corrupt Chicago political institution, ACORN (there have been so many stories on ACORN, and their actions this year, it is hard to single out just one, but here’s a YouTube video, and here’s another. There are many more videos on this subject. If you want more article information, please feel free to use the”Search” function at the upper right hand corner of this page.), helped him become PEBO.

Yes, I know the MSM has been a HUGE help in both regards - ignorance and denial. But not ALL reputable sources were completely in the tank for The One. The New Yorker, for instance, had some impressive pieces, particularly this one,The Political Scene: “Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama. The article title alone is indicative of the effect of Chicago-style politics on Obama. The author, Ryan Lizza, published this article in July 21, 2008, so like I said, the information was definitely available…

Many of us have heard of Alice Palmer, one of the first people (of whom we are aware) thrown under the bus by a power-hungry Obama. There was another woman, too, Toni Preckwinkle, who had a whole lot to say about the young Mr. Obama on his ascension into Chicago politics:

One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, an influential politician named Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago’s South Side, where politics had been upended by scandal. Mel Reynolds, a local congressman, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. (He eventually resigned his seat.) The looming vacancy set off a fury of ambition and hustle; several politicians, including a state senator named Alice Palmer, an education expert of modest political skills, prepared to enter the congressional race. Palmer represented Hyde Park—Obama’s neighborhood, a racially integrated, liberal sanctuary—and, if she ran for Congress, she would need a replacement in Springfield, the state capital. Obama at the time was a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, university lecturer, and aspiring office-seeker, and the Palmer seat was what he had in mind when he visited Alderman Preckwinkle.

“Barack came to me and said, ‘If Alice decides she wants to run, I want to run for her State Senate seat,’ ” Preckwinkle told me. We were in her district office, above a bank on a street of check-cashing shops and vacant lots north of Hyde Park. Preckwinkle soon became an Obama loyalist, and she stuck with him in a State Senate campaign that strained or ruptured many friendships but was ultimately successful. Four years later, in 2000, she backed Obama in a doomed congressional campaign against a local icon, the former Black Panther Bobby Rush. And in 2004 Preckwinkle supported Obama during his improbable, successful run for the United States Senate. So it was startling to learn that Toni Preckwinkle had become disenchanted with Barack Obama.

Well, I’ll be damned - Obama DIDN’T win all of his races! Amazing how we have RARELY (if ever) heard about his “doomed” race. Or that some people who know him, really know him, no longer are delighting in his glow:

Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro. She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicago’s City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley. For anyone trying to understand Obama’s breathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witness—a close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obama’s life to which he rarely calls attention.

Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”

Well, again, if anyone could see the trajectory of Obama’s career as anything other thank opportunistic “stone-stepping,” it is only because they did not WANT to see that Obama was a driven POLITICIAN.

But here is my point: Chicago politics. This is a major foundation the MSM and Obama worshipers/supporters refuse to acknowledge - because it does not fit the narrative they have created:

On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” As we talked, it became increasingly clear that loyalty was the issue that drove Preckwinkle’s current view of her onetime protégé. “I don’t think you should forget who your friends are,” she said.

Others told me that Preckwinkle’s grievances against Obama included specific complaints, such as his refusal to endorse a former aide and longtime friend, Will Burns, in a State Senate primary—a contest that Burns won anyway. There was also a more general belief that, after Obama won the 2004 United States Senate primary, he ignored his South Side base. Preckwinkle said, “My view is you have to bring your constituency along with you. Granted, you have to make some tough decisions. Granted, sometimes you have to make decisions that people won’t understand or like. But it’s your obligation to explain yourself and try to do your supporters the courtesy of treating them with respect.” Ivory Mitchell, who for twenty years has been the chairman of the local ward organization in Obama’s neighborhood—considered the most important Democratic organization on the South Side—was one of Obama’s earliest backers. Today, he says, “All the work we did to help him get where he finally ended up, he didn’t seem too appreciative.” A year ago, Mitchell became a delegate for Hillary Clinton.

What?? Obama not appreciative? Yeah - no kidding. He has made it abundantly clear that he will step on whoever whenever it is politically - I said, POLITICALLY - expedient for him to do so. And still:

The same month Mitchell endorsed Clinton, the Obama campaign reached out to Preckwinkle, and eventually she signed on as an Obama delegate. I asked her if what she considered slights or betrayals were simply the necessary accommodations and maneuvering of a politician making a lightning transition from Hyde Park legislator to Presidential nominee. “Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?” she said. “Is that the question?” She stared at me and grimaced. “I’m going to pass on that…”

Can’t say as I blame her. What does it say when someone who DOES actually know him has “to pass” on answering a question regarding Obama’s integrity? Or when the governor of his home state refers to him as a “mo***r f***er”?? These are the people who KNOW him, after all, not just who worship him from afar.

And then there is this (emphasis mine):

Chicago is not Obama’s home town, but it’s where he chose to forge his identity. Several weeks ago, he moved many of the Democratic National Committee’s operations from Washington to Chicago, making the city the unofficial capital of the Democratic Party; his campaign headquarters are in an office building in the Loop, Chicago’s downtown business district. But Chicago, with its reputation as a center of vicious and corrupt politics, may also be the place that Obama needs to leave behind.

Exactly. Chicago, with its long, long, LONG history of corrupt politics, is the city in which Obama decided to forge his political identity. One other interesting note on Obama and Chicago politics:

…David Axelrod, who has been Obama’s chief strategist since 2002 and is the foremost political consultant in Chicago, was a witness to all of it, first as a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and later as the chief consultant to two mayors: Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor and a hero of the Independents, and the current Mayor Daley, whose last name still carries negative connotations in the precincts of Hyde Park…

Uh huh. David Axelrod has shown himself to be a part of Chicago-style politics in the way he has run Obama’s campaign, that’s for sure. And no doubt, he will continue to use Chicago-style politics in the White House, too. Why change horses in mid-stream, right?

Oh, wait - that’s the wrong talking point. Ahem. Yes, Obama is trying to distance himself from Chicago politics NOW. Now that so many of its players’ wrong-doings are in the headlines, but those of us who have been keeping score know the real deal. Obama is inextricably bound to Chicago politics, and Chicago STYLE politics, as we saw this year with Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and John McCain. Basically, anyone who had the “audacity to get in Obama’s way experienced Chicago politics up close and personal, and it was not pretty.

There is much, much more to the New Yorker article, and I hope you will click HERE to finish reading it (it’s long, which is why I am not reprinting it all here). In it you will read about Obama’s contentious relationship with another member of the IL Senate, Rickey Hendon; his relationship with Rezko, Ayers, and Dorhn; how his community organizing REALLY went (hint: not as well as he likes to claim NOW), and much more. I will leave you with this passage:

Part of Obama’s political success is that he has been able to exploit relationships with important yet ethically dubious figures in Illinois while still maintaining his independence. In some ways, this is an Illinois tradition. When the liberal reformer Adlai Stevenson ran for governor, in 1948, one Democratic boss reportedly noted that he would “perfume the ticket.” The earnest Lincoln scholar Paul Simon stood out in the Senate for his moral rectitude and his commitment to good government even as his state wallowed in scandal. “The political bosses knew they had to have what they used to call in business a loss leader—the showcasing,” Don Rose, the Chicago political consultant, said. “The car that you sold for under its value for advertising purposes. While you had at the top of your ticket a shining star, under that it was like turning over a rock.”

Obama has said little about the scandals in his home state. Besides the Rezko and Blagojevich cases, there have been indictments and convictions against the Daley administration concerning hiring and contracting practices. Getting close to the sullied political leadership in Illinois was probably an unavoidable cost of winning the U.S. Senate seat. Emil Jones told me that another of the lessons Obama learned after his 2000 loss was the importance of political sponsorship.

You can say that again…

And they did a substantial amount of damage, over $1 million. What is more, people were actually inside the church at the time the fire was set. Thankfully, they were unharmed.

Now, this is not the first church (or other religious building) that has been targeted, not by a long shot, unfortunately. As many of you know, I am a retired UU minister, and a number of UU churches have been vandalized over the past few years, usually for two reasons: general support of the GLBT community, and for our open-mindedness regarding theology. One church in MD had its Peace Pole from its Meditation Garden ripped down and defecated upon by the vandals, other churches have had windows broken out, burning of leaves in the shape of a cross, and more. The worst was this year, the shooting in Knowxville, TNin which two Unitarian Universalists were killed, six injured, in the sanctuary during a service.

Many of you may recall that back in 1996, there was a rash of African American churches targeted by arsonists, primarily in Alabama, though 8 states in total were affected. By the time it was all over and done, over 30 churches were set on fire. It was a horrible time when racism reared its ugly, cowardly head. Sadly, a decade later, more churches were burned, some completely destroyed, in Alabama.

Synagogues in this country have also vandalized in the 21st century, one in Chicago on behalf of Palestine,two in North Miami had hateful speech written on the walls, and two in Boston had molotov cocktails thrown at them at the start of the Jewish New Year.

Even a Hindu temple in Minnesota was attacked, walls broken, windows shattered, statuary that took two years to receive destroyed. One of the trustees, Kumad Sane, said,

“We have had dreams to have this place for the past 30 years, we have worked so hard. Why would someone come here and do this type of action.”

Sadly, these are just a few examples of this kind of hate crime.

You know, it takes a particular kind of person to attack a religious institution. Check that - a particular kind of COWARD. Not for nothing, but it is missing the point just a bit from what it is SUPPOSED to mean to be a person of faith. Little things like, “Do unto others as you would have done to you,” or “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.” (Matthew,25:40). Or, when asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus said, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40 NIV) Regardless of the motivation, whether it be theological, social, or political, it is unacceptable. And cowardly.

The attack on Sarah Palin’s church was all of these things. With one big difference, though - it was also personal. There is not a doubt in my mind why THAT particular church was targeted for arson. It would seem that Palin is concerned this was a hate motivated action because of her, too, since she apologized to her church for this hate act, in the event she was the cause.

Now let me say, my theology is about as far apart from that of the Wasilla Bible Church as it can be. Heck, I’m not even a Christian. But, there are some places that should be off limits for political hate speech, and churches/synagogues/mosques are just such places. Regardless of one’s theology (and just to be clear, atheism is a belief system, too), to attack a building when there are people IN IT is reprehensible, to say the least.

But here’s the thing. If it is true this church was a target simply because Sarah Palin attends it, and it appears that is the case, this kind of behavior is an extension of the despicable behavior we saw by Obama supporters this entire election season. When The One fails, no, refuses to speak out against sexist, degrading speech, or tee-shirts; when He refuses to speak out against violent action (like burning American flags on top of a $70,000 car, urinating on it, burning it with cigarettes, and scratching “KKK” into it simply because it has a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on it), it gives tacit approval to these kinds of actions. We saw it during the Bush/Cheney years, especially in terms of GLBT people in this country. And those of us in the liberal sector of the country decried it. Now some of the same people who decried it under Bush/Cheney are engaging in that kind of behavior, and worse, under PEBO. They could have KILLED someone in that church. And for what, because Gov. Palin exposed some of Obama’s weaknesses? Because she was popular? What possible deluded reason could someone have for attacking her CHURCH? That is personal, and political (as things so often are), and sacrilegious. Whatever one’s faith, whatever one believes, attacking a place of worship is, simply, unacceptable.

The people who did this are cowards. And criminals. We can only hope that they are brought to justice.

One last thing - the human spirit is resilient. And when it is tested, the vast majority of the time, it comes out all the stronger for it. When targeted with hate speech, or destruction based on hate, yes, there is anxiety, or fear, or anger. But there is also resolve, a banding together of community, and hope. It is this for which I pray for the people of Wasilla Bible Church. I do not need to agree with their theology to stand with them as people of faith who did not deserve to have the place where they pray, where they bare their souls, where they engage in communion and fellowship with one another and their higher power, where they laugh, and cry, where they pass major life milestones, defiled.

I’ll let Rev. Chris Buice, the minister of the UU Church, Tennessee Valley, in Knoxville, someone who has lived through a hate crime perpetrated on his church, have the last word on this:

Obama is clearly losing goodwill points every day that Blago-gate drags on. Now it appears that indeed Rahm Emanuel was in touch with Blago and aide Harris about the senate seat though no evidence yet of malfeasance on Emanuel’s part.

The stench of Chicago machine politics now clings to Obama like a cheap cologne.

It did not have to be this way.

Obama started out his career firmly in the reform anti-Daley machine wing of the Chicago Democratic Party. That’s what it meant to be an Alinsky-ite Community Organizer in black south side poor and working class neighborhoods in the 80s (where, by the way, he first got to know the powerful Balanoff family of Tom Balanoff aka “SEIU Official” - the flag pole contact in the Feds affidavit against Blagojevich).

That’s what it meant to fight the Mayor’s office and the powerful school board and the teachers union simultaneously in the push for a school reform bill in 1988 which Obama did alongside his pal Bill Ayers. And Obama did that in opposition to mainstream black organizations like Operation PUSH and The Woodlawn Organization.

That’s what it meant to join again with Ayers in securing and then spending $160 million on education reform AGAINST the desires of Mayor Daley in what were called the Chicago School Wars. That’s what it meant to hold his initial campaign event in the home of his “family friends” Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. That’s what it meant to step into the shoes of outgoing state rep. and fellow traveler Alice Palmer.

In fact, that’s what it meant if your aspiration in political life, as it was for Obama, was to depose Richard Daley Jr. inspired by Obama’s hero, Harold Washington, the first black mayor of the city who died in office while Obama was a community organizer.

But at some point in the late 90s or so, Obama realized he had higher ambitions and perhaps becoming Chicago Mayor was not enough. At that point he began to establish relationships with the Chicago mainstream, including key business figures like Penny Pritzker and he even began cozying up to the Daley machine itself. These would prove critical in his rise to national prominence

And now he is stuck with them. Instead of taking advantage of his new national ties to the Kennedy family or VP-elect Joe Biden he immediately fell back on the Chicago crowd for his earliest appointments - Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, for example - while only leaving behind Jeremiah Wright and, hopefully, Billy Ayers.

For whatever reason Democratic Presidents seem too heavily dependent on the home team. Carter had his Georgia buddies as Clinton had his Arkansas cronies. Usually, however, it takes a few years for their inadequacies to shine through. Obama hasn’t even moved to Washington yet!

From my blog, Global Labor and Politics.

Tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET: Our View with Patsy and Sugar! (Patsy is also Soldier4Hillary!)

The views and opinions are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of NQR

Reading earlier this week an opinion piece on the editorial by Ayers in the New York Times on a blog called The Moderate Voice titled: Prediction: The Ayers haters still Won’t be Satisfied,” reading the recent transcript, and viewing the actual footage on Hardball with Ayers, reminded me of my last deployment to Iraq and an incident that happened. I had just pulled my vehicle to park in the back of our TOC (Tactical Operations Center) with my TC who rode with me to pick up the mail. There wasn’t much that day so on the way back we stopped at the main PX that was located on another camp to get a carton of cigarettes since they always ran out at the small one on our camp. My TC who was also one of my tent mates wanted to smoke before we went in by the barriers, but we had to smoke five feet from the TOC, which was in front of one of our LMTVs, so I told her we should take our bags in first. Instead of walking around we decided to just cut through the TOC because it was quicker. We did not even make it inside all the way before we heard the whistle of a Mortar, the sound it makes when incoming. And the next thing we heard and felt, was that mortar as it hit the vehicle parked behind us, where not even a minute prior we had just left. It took out the truck, caused the chapel ceiling to cave in, and hit inside our camp, directly behind the vehicle we just left and in the exact place we had formations each and every day.

Mortars & IEDs. It was what people on convoys never want to encounter when they are convoying on dark roads since we ran our convoys at night. It is what you would hear while in the shower, in your sleep tent, while eating or when they constantly and consecutively attempted to hit BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) which was close to our camp, all the time. From mortars you can hear and IEDs you cant even see, till this day I have yet to see a non issue “friendly bomb” mortar or IED. There is no ducking or running for cover. Just like you are unable to dodge or outrun a bullet. When you hear that whistle you are screwed and can only hope where it hits will not happen in your vicinity and have you end up dead. I used to say that I would rather be in my tent sleeping if it hit us and not know it. Then to be awake taking a shower, eating or working, hear it and know what is coming next. These people who do this don’t care about who you are, what you may do or who you may be, the only thing that they care for is to cause destruction because of there cause. For them, if they take out even one of us, they consider it winning.

Because they are fighting for something which we don’t understand or believe in. They were not fighting against us, they were/are fighting for there cause, their beliefs, their ideology. And whether we were there in there country or not, they will continue to fight for their beliefs and will continue to strap bombs to themselves because it is not just about dying for them, it’s about believing in their cause to the point their death does not even matter. But I know and knew all of this when I reenlisted two weeks after 9/11. I knew it 10 March 1998 when I joined. I knew it when I deployed to Kuwait. I knew it when I deployed to Uzbekistan. I knew it when I was in Bagram in Afghanistan after 9/11, and I knew it when in Iraq on my last deployment. I was in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda in 02 when 10th Mountain Division, the US Special Forces groups from USSOCOM, JSOC and CIA’s Special Activities Division and 101st Airborne Division, as well as other allied forces, went in to the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. Our task force from Fort Bragg, one of the many battalions in the rear which was part of the command of the former Coscom Commander General Dunwoody, was pulling base logistical support from fuel, ammo, water and running the SSA in Uzbekistan before we picked up to move down to Bagram to fall under 10th Mountain. Where part of your briefing was “if you didnt drop it, don’t pick it up” because of the amount of unexploded ordnance left from when they were fighting the Soviets could be found any and everywhere. When paths walked every day, walking in the wrong spot on a path you have been on daily, had the possibility to become deadly.

I knew this and I understood it, but we were fighting against something that was much bigger than my fear. It was a sacrifice worth making and I know it and still do till this very day. Which brings me to my point. What I do not know, do not understand, and will not even attempt to, is why in the hell anyone would give a man a platform to explain the ideology of their organization who is giving the impression that “bombs” are just a form of self expression. When I read the words of this portion of the exchange between the recent interview of Chris Matthews and Ayers I literally became sick to my stomach:

MATTHEWS: What’s the lesson of Vietnam for America?

AYERS: Well I think one of the lessons is that we should be, very, very wary when the United States government tells us that we must invade and occupy a country. We should be very wary of led down, being led down that path. And we should be rethinking, right now, most of all, we should rethink America’s role in the world. Do we have to be the policemen of the world? Do we have to be the one and only superpower? Or could we imagine ourselves a nation among nations. Could we imagine a foreign policy based on justice, rather than power.

MATTHEWS: Yeah. Aren’t you scared a little bit, I certainly am, by the willingness of the American people to assume language, brand new language like “weapons of mass destruction,” “Homeland Security,” all these references to a new kind of foreign policy? “Forward leaning.” “A preemptive, preventive war.” Preventive war sounds like an oxymoron to me. But aren’t you scared that the American people bought every one of those words, bought the whole argument that we had to go to Iraq?

AYERS: I actually think that those are contested. And I think you’re right to worry about how much we did buy into that. But on the other hand I think we should be very hopeful that people rejected quite, a month ago, rejected eight years of the politics of fear, the politics of terror, the politics of violence and war and said, “Let’s turn in a different direction.” So we’re, we’ve ended the era, I think, of 9/11, or at least turned a page on it.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

AYERS: And we’ve entered an era of “Yes We Can!” But the question remains, “Yes we can, what?” And in foreign policy can we become a nation among nations? Can we become a nation who believes in justice for everyone.

MATTHEWS: Yeah well those are good things. I think you’re a different man. I think you’re a different man than the one that was in the Weather Underground and you’ve said so. Let me ask you are you concerned that the centrist positions of the people, Senator Obama, President-elect Obama has named – Senator Clinton, Jim Jones, General Jim Jones, Bob Gates, the holdover Defense chief – are you concerned that she’s putting establishment figures, who, who, who supported the war authorization in Iraq in powerful positions of influence over him? That the people in the room, all around him now, will be people who disagreed with him and you about the Iraq war? Are you worried about that?

AYERS: A bit but I think that people like you and me, and probably most of the people who watch your show are suffering a kind of postpartum depression. That is we were so used to reading the polls and getting agitated about every nuance of what was happening that we now don’t know what to do with ourselves. So we try to read the mind of the President-elect. I think it’s much less important that we do that, than that we pay attention to building, on-the-ground, forces that want to rethink-

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

AYERS: -and, and re-imagine what America could be.

Attempting to explain why they deemed it necessary to set bombs and actually have people not only explaining his actions but rallying to this man’s side is unbelievable. But to have the goddamn nerve to ask an individual about positions in the new administration as if his opinion counts? Unbelievable. I am amazed. I am astounded and I am furious. What in gods name are we coming to when this new Pro- Ayers media and bloggers have the audacity to insinuate that we, the people, are considered “haters” and that something is wrong with us for believing placing a bomb inside of a building is not some form of freedom of expression? Have they lost there minds? Do they even know what it is like to pray daily you will come home the same way you left when deployed? Or to pray daily for those once you left, for those still there? Have they ever seen the damage to a person who has been on the receiving end of what they are giving justification for? Seen what shrapnel can do to a person’s face? Their body? Their arms? Their legs? I have, as well as so many others who are watching this shit play out in the court of public opinion. It’s one thing to have injuries you can see as a daily reminder, this I know, but to hear explanations is entirely different.

They will send the message to those who would do our country harm that if they have a “valid reason” for their actions, they will be excused because pundits, commentators, and the MSM says it‘s a non- issue? We are fighting against something in which they have the gall to explain and give justification. And no one will say a word in fear the majority will label them “racist”. That they will be blacklisted, shunned or taken apart in the mainstream media if they have the audacity to question those who are considered the majority. I will not be held hostage by the label “racist” to keep me from speaking up or defending what is right. For the MSM to give this man a platform, for bloggers to make excuses for what he has done, and political parties to remain silent feels like a betrayal. What so many see as a “non-issue” is a very big issue for me because I do not see the difference in his type of “expression” and the same type of “expression” I have seen overseas.

What makes his type of bombs any different from anyone else’s? If his name would have been Akbar Jamal Muhammed and he did the exact same thing Ayers did, but did it in 2001? Would he have the opportunity to write opinion pieces to garner support in the New York Times? Would he be on a book signing tour? Have Democrats & Republican pundits, and commentators agreeing it was harmless while saying it’s racist to bring it up, asking advice on national security and appointments like he is qualified to do so, while lining up to the closest microphone and spotlight on his behalf to use that “non-issue” word? Or would he have the opportunity to do guest appearances on “Hardball” and “Good Morning America?” Chris Matthews deserves to be fired. We have not reached the level of desperation where we need to solicit the opinion of a domestic terrorist on national security or on how our government should govern.

Our elected officials are becoming next to worthless for not calling the media out on this. I want change but not at the cost of compromising what I know to be right. I want our country to prosper, but not at the cost of turning into a spineless wimp who cant do their job because they have seen how they destroyed others who didn’t cater to a certain campaign and the MSM. We don’t make friends with terrorists. We don’t listen to terrorists’ ideology. We don’t allow them to explain there actions. We don’t make excuses. We don’t attempt to sympathize, condone, attempt to believe, justify or encourage their form of “expression” when it involves anything that could do this country or the people harm. And I could care even less about the biased shill, in the pocket, media because they are just another organization that has to pay the bills to keep the lights on just like we do but thiee paycheck comes from ratings.

But what they do not realize, is that what is given to them, can be taken away. They may be bought and paid for but no one owns me and I refuse to join the crowd that lacks a spine, and a backbone who can’t form their own opinion without checking with the media first. I want someone to get up and say enough is enough and send that man back to the hole, rock and bridge he crawled out from under and do us all a favor by staying there. Either you are against terrorists who go about using bombs to get their message across or you are for it. Anyone wanting to sympathize and become buddies with terrorists, foreign and domestic, in my opinion should pack their damn bags, get a strip map for their training camps from officials in India and head to the goddamn borders of Pakistan or the mountains in Afghanistan. They can blog and report the news from there. This is the final straw for me.

There is no man or woman that walks on this earth, put their pants on the same way that I do, that can instill this type of fear that would make you compromise your integrity. I could care less. I was born from dissent and was told years ago the first time I was deployed to a combat zone and touched ground that no weapon ever formed against me shall prosper. And each time I stepped off a C130 when I made it home safely, I knew it to be true. But it was not and will not be at the expense of fighting terrorists in a foreign country just to see one on every damn channel on tv or writing editorials and doing interviews in the newspaper while whining about how they are misunderstood and done wrong. Who will the MSM interview and drag out next? Bin Laden? Will we have to listen to how its really our fault for not understanding his beliefs? Do we get to read his editorial in the New York Times? Will he do “Hardball?” Or maybe “Oprah” or “Good Morning America?” There is a quiet storm building over this and I cannot wait for the day the binds that currently hold me no longer exist. And any party, pundit, or person believing this will be the new way to fight the war on terrorism, is to relate with the enemy and attempt to explain and understand their cause may need to step back and realize that everyone does not care about being part of the majority.

Or care about being on the “winning side” with the MSM. Because the only “winning side” to be on is the side with this country and the American people on it. They have ALL failed the test the minute these elected officials, who we gave jobs with our vote to represent us, lost their minds, lost their voice, their credibility, and their common sense the moment they lost their backbone to stand up and represent us. If they can’t even fight for a cause here in our own damn country, they are going to get run the hell over by people in other countries. I want elected officials willing to fight, not watered down individuals scared to say or speak the truth because they need the majority to stand behind them. I don’t want to be Bff’s forever and couldn’t care less if the so called “enemy” in third world countries hate our guts. They should hate us . We don’t need to cater to or understand their beliefs or work on our nations social standing with them, they need to work on there social standing with us. We should not bow down to any individuals in any country. We don’t have anything to prove, they do, and if they dislike us even more so be it. That just means we are doing something right. Because when they begin to want to be buddies and best friends for life, then we have something to worry about.

Look at them. In the news acting as if government positions or no better than powerball tickets waiting to see if they bought and paid for enough while hoping they are the ones to have the winning number. Acting as if this is a high school student council instead of our governing body of our government. While other countries are dealing in politics, we look like fools who don’t know what politics actually is. We are not sending a message of strength. We look weak. I want individuals willing to stand up and take on the MSM for this, by calling them out for what they are doing by promoting these type of actions. It is wrong. It’s pathetic. Just because they don’t have the heart or strength to execute what they were elected to do, because they are too scared to do their job for fear of being labeled “racist” by “the report nothing and do nothing” MSM does not mean we, as a whole, should suffer.

All because they want to be on the “right side”. The “right team”. With the “right crowd”. There is no way on gods green earth will I listen to them hype this man up for the next four years. There is no way in hell I will watch individuals get smacked in the face daily by those explaining this man’s organization and what they have done as a “non-issue”. I don’t care if this man is best friends with the king and queen of England and considered royalty. What he did was wrong and there are no explanations in the world that can give legitimacy to his actions. If they want to sell their souls to the devil to prove they are not racist by embracing him that is their choice. They can stand behind and defend whoever they want, in their own warped thinking, thinking that speaking highly of him based on his past perceived association will gain them favor. By hiding behind the facade that they are standing behind this country and what is best for it by not questioning his actions so it will not reflect negatively on the President Elect. Bullshit. Theodore Roosevelt said it best:

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiently, or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

Oh, he’s had watermelons (Rezko, Ayers) and apple boxes (Wright, Auchi, Kilpatrick) thrown at his house of cards, too, but the MSM has been fast to rebuild it. Just like they are now in scrubbing news sites of stories following the election about his meeting with Blagojevich regarding his Senate seat. No, I am not kidding you. News sites that just yesterday had the story now have a recant that they didn’t mean it. I am not making this crap up. Just look HERE (h/t to AmericanGirlinItaly for this link). Which country is this again, when we have news sources scrubbing their own sites of news that might cast aspersions on Obama by TELLING THE TRUTH when he is lying - from public view?? Wow. I think it is safe to say when that happens, we no longer have a Fourth Estate, but a government-run propaganda arm. I didn’t think that was supposed to happen in a democracy.

Oh, right - we no longer have a democracy after this year, which is how Obama even got to be the Democratic nominee. If we did, he never would have BEEN the Democratic nominee because his lying (which we are seeing daily on the whole Blagojevich thing), cheating, stealing, and nefarious associates would have brought him down LONG ago. As well they should have. And it WOULD have, had this indeed been a democracy in which the people’s voices, and VOTES, mattered. But, hey - why quibble now - that’s what the Obots say! After all, Obama is the President-Elect now, so we should all band together and sing his praises! Um, no, not me. Because democracy actually matters to me. And how someone got where they are matters to me.

Anyhoo, I don’t know that the PEBO can actually scrub the FBI files, and that may be the watermelon and apple box to his House of Cards. One can only hope. He has gotten by with too many lies, too many deceptions, too much duplicity by the colluding MSM as it is. If it takes a federal agency to expose Obama for who he is, more power to them. Their record of the two-hour conference call with Blagojevich and his buddies discussing the whole Obama replacement - with “the various Washington advisers” should make for some interesting reading, I would think…

And he can’t scrub the governor’s site, either, which has a little press release about discussing the whole Senate seat thing. Oopsie daisy!! Ahem. Do you think that Gov. Blagojevich is going to keep any secrets now that Obama, who WORKED FOR HIS ELECTION AND RE-ELECTION, is now calling for Blagojevich’s resignation? Uh, yeah, no. Should be an interesting few days.

This is an Open Thread. What’s on your mind?

Listen to the video in its entirety because Matthews describes further how VERY near he was to where that bomb went off. And Ayers (of course, this was not discussed today) is a free man solely because his attorneys managed to prove the FBI improperly conducted wiretaps. (I have MUCH MORE TO SAY about this below, and ask you to read along and then share YOUR reactions and add your own knowledge and your own impressions of what occurred, shamefully, on MSNBC.)

I can only imagine what Concerned Mother would have to say about this travesty.

It is unconscionable to me that we and the MSM constantly RAGE about O.J. Simpson, who murdered two people, but not reject Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, now president-elect, who has associated freely and over a long time with a man who could have killed dozens and dozens of people.

On his remarkable radio show a few weeks ago, Nocturnal Warrior made a brilliant point about PEBO’s selection of numerous former Clinton White House and cabinet members. Warrior said that PEBO has to select such people because he has almost no FRIENDS or LONGTIME ASSOCIATES to appoint to any serious jobs in his administration. This is a situation that has NEVER occurred in the history of the presidency of the United States. Heretofore, every U.S. president has had a rich collection of friends, associates, and allies from whom he could select many qualified for high-ranking administration positions. But not Barack Obama. You faithful readers of No Quarter know of many of Obama’s real longtime associates: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Allison and Cullen Davis, Penny Pritzker, Bernardine Dohrn, and on and on, only a very, very few of them suited for any respectable position at any level in an administration. (I’ve clicked several Categories to provide you with a list.) And now, this week, we learn more about other Obama longtime associates like Rod Bagojevich and his wife.

William Ayers’ Crimes, and Additional Perspective History

The SOLE reason no one died is because Ayers et al. were piss-poor bomb makers. What is the sentence range these days for an attempt to commit murder? And don’t forget all the other bombs that nearly killed many others. Including the judge, his wife, and his children — while they slept — simply because that judge was doing his job: Handling the trial of a Black Panther. I’m not generally in favor of the death penalty, but Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s attempts, repeatedly, to kill as many people as possible in the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations, and a judge’s home are the works of people so dangerous that those people should never be freed, and may be eligible to be charged with a capital offense.

Ayers has famously said, “Free as a bird, guilty as hell, ain’t America great.” (From Larry Johnson’s must-read article, “A Statement by a Retired FBI Agent Re William Ayers.”)

Dear readers, please understand this: All that, to Matthews, is just some history. It has some import to Matthews, given that he might have been blown up himself, but apparently not much since the conversation flows easily and reasonably amicably, and Matthews, at the end of the interview, gladly flogs Ayers’ book. THEN, after this interview, Matthews has his panel on. Matthews asks Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor, why Ayers — who appeared today to be “confessional” in his tone — didn’t do that during the campaign. Ms. Walsh LAUGHS with a SMIRK on her face, and says, “I think he wanted to stay out of it entirely, and not dignify what the McCain campaign and others were doing.”

Thank you, Ms. Walsh. We now know who the real criminals are. Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Walsh, please share your opinions with John Murtagh. Well, of course. That’s unfair. You don’t know who John Murtagh is.

Uppity Woman can tell you, in her story, “When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home.”

If I may, I will contrast the actions of William Ayers and the rest of the sociopathic members of the Weather Underground to the actions of a man who — unless you’re my age and you closely followed anti-war activities during the Vietnam War — you’ve probably NEVER heard of, and will not hear of in the MSM.

After all, he didn’t make bombs. He didn’t befriend a future president and excite the easily excitable rightwing. He simply did the hard work of truly changing history and he paid the price that true, albeit boring, heroes do, in anonymity.

His name is David Harris.

He was the resident counselor in the boys’ dormitory across the street from my girls’ dorm. Many of us sat at his feet as he modestly told us his stories about traveling to the South in summers past to try to help black people get the right to vote. He also shared with us the music he’d learned about in the South — the blues. He told us about Muddy Waters and more. We were entranced. With him, with his stories and the very REAL danger he was in during those summers when white racists wanted to kill him and every white college kid who dared to fight for blacks’ right to vote.

He ran for student body president and I worked on his campaign. He ran on the sole condition that, if elected, he would not serve. He won in a landslide. And did not serve.

Then his draft number came up. (My memory is vague these days, but I believe he tried all the normal routes available back then, such as conscientious objector status, and so on. All of those routes failed.)

So he went to prison. Leavenworth. About seven years ago, I did a search on him, curious what his life had been like. I discovered that he had written a book about his time in Leavenworth, along with his then-wife Joan Baez. I bought the book, and read it. It was a heart-wrenching account. I had no idea that being an inmate in Leavenworth was such a horrific, maddening, insane experience.

It is a simple story, really.

He refused to fight for a war he did not believe was right.

The U.S. government tried him and sentenced him to prison.

He served roughly three years, as I recall.

You may disagree with his decision, but he decided to take the punishment like a man.

He had a father who, as I remember it, was an attorney in Fresno, California. His father surely had some means, but not enough to prevent his son from going to prison.

Bill Ayers had a father who was Chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a mover/shaker in Chicago politics, the arts and education. His father had the means to hire a cadre of attorneys who successfully prevented his son from spending a single day in prison.

David Harris did not build bombs.

He tried to help blacks in the South get to vote, at great risk to his own life.

He helped educate and watched over younger students attending the university, which was often a tedious task, listening to those 18-year-olds’ angst and fear and uncertainty and their various problems with and anxieties about their classes.

He helped the students with the difficult reading for the required freshman class, The History of Western Civilization, because he had read all of those works, including all of Plato, Socrates, and more, and he could — and did — explain those works to those anxious students. He spoke with them patiently and kindly and always very softly.

He was a hulk of a man with broad thick shoulders and a large angular head and a blond mustache but he was, as they say, a gentle giant.

He did not teach the younger students to build bombs or burn down buildings.

He taught the students about giving black people the right to vote and about the blues and about philosophy and about literature and about political thinking and about peaceful protest and about Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He marched and sang folk songs with his wife, who bore their son.

What a dull man.

Doubtless, Chris Matthews will never invite David Harris for a feature interview.

If only he’d built bombs and then buddied up with a future president, he’d be a sought-after guest.

At least he has an entry in Wikipedia.

:::::::::::

Via Google News results:

Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ – NewsBusters

Chris Matthews invited on Bill Ayers on Wednesday night’s “Hardball,” and actually confronted him about his bombing of Capitol Hill during his days as a member of the ’60s terrorist group Weather Underground, as the former Capitol Hill police officer emotionally observed: “I was a Capitol policeman at the time, so I was one of the guys that could have been killed obviously at the time you put that, your guys put that bomb in there. So I have a little personal interest. It wasn’t just vandalism. To me it was life-threatening to the guys I worked with. And there were some pretty good guys working there.”

However Matthews, who paradoxically may not even be alive to conduct this interview today if the Weather Underground’s bombs were more devastating, devoted most of the interview tossing softballs Ayers’ way, as the two often agreed with each other on Barack Obama and Iraq policy as the “Hardball” host pointed out they only really differed on how to spread their points of view: “Well, Mr. Ayers, with all due respect, you agitate your way, I agitate my way.

Matthews, who back in October dismissed Sarah Palin’s mention of Ayers, as “the politics of distraction,” began the interview by setting up Ayers to play down any association he had with Obama: …

READ ALL: Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ — NewsBusters

AND READ MORE of NoQuarter’s treasure trove of materials on the bombings conducted by William Ayers.

Yes, Emily Yoffe, the writer, treats us to this informative study about emotions, and how Obama used them to bring in the masses. Now, many of us already knew it was rhetoric over substance, but here she lays it out for us in her Own way:

For researchers of emotions, creating them in the lab can be a problem. Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, studies the emotions of uplift, and he has tried everything from showing subjects vistas of the Grand Canyon to reading them poetry—with little success. But just this week one of his postdocs came in with a great idea: Hook up the subjects, play Barack Obama’s victory speech, and record as their autonomic nervous systems go into a swoon.

In his forthcoming book, Born To Be Good (which is not a biography of Obama*), Keltner writes that he believes when we experience transcendence, it stimulates our vagus nerve, causing “a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat.” For the 66 million Americans who voted for Obama, that experience was shared on Election Day, producing a collective case of an emotion that has only recently gotten research attention. It’s called “elevation.”

Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in “positive psychology”—what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, “Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental ‘reset button,’ wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.”

* Oh, isn’t she witty?? And way to keep the bias out of this “scientific” piece.

Ah - so Obama has learned how to hit the reset button so that normally thinking human beings will be transported into La-la land. Everyone has now donned their rose colored glasses, and let all the bad reality just slip away. Oh, see how much happier they are than those of us still stuck in the real world!

This is just the beginning, though. Seems this idea has been around for some time:

Haidt quotes first-century Greek philosopher Longinus on great oratory: “The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport.” Such feeling was once a part of our public discourse. After hearing Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, former slave Frederick Douglass said it was a “sacred effort.” But uplifting rhetoric came to sound anachronistic, except as practiced by the occasional master like Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan. And now Obama.

We come to elevation, Haidt writes, through observing others—their strength of character, virtue, or “moral beauty.” Elevation evokes in us “a desire to become a better person, or to lead a better life.” The 58 million McCain voters might say that the virtue and moral beauty displayed by Obama at his rallies was an airy promise of future virtue and moral beauty. And that the soaring feeling his voters had of having made the world a better place consisted of the act of placing their index fingers on a touch screen next to the words Barack Obama. They might be on to something. Haidt’s research shows that elevation is good at provoking a desire to make a difference but not so good at motivating real action. But he says the elevation effect is powerful nonetheless. “It does appear to change people cognitively; it opens hearts and minds to new possibilities. This will be crucial for Obama.”

Wait, say what? First we have “moral beauty,” character and virtue being exhibited by Obama in his speeches (or so it seems to his followers), written by the Bozo on the left:

Then we have an acknowledgment that people who voted for McCain are pretty much right that the extent of this “elevation” is pushing a button, concluding with the benefits to OBAMA of the mind control (well, what the hell else is it when it wipes the slate clean, making normally rational people start believing in a hope-y change-y rainbow unicorn??)? Wow - that is some massive movement, all within one paragraph: character not demonstrated but framed in “words, just words” which many did not buy into but good for Obama those who threw away their analytical, rational selves. Check.

There is so much about Obama in this regard, though:

Keltner believes certain people are “vagal superstars”—in the lab he has measured people who have high vagus nerve activity. “They respond to stress with calmness and resilience, they build networks, break up conflicts, they’re more cooperative, they handle bereavement better.” He says being around these people makes other people feel good. “I would guarantee Barack Obama is off the charts. Just bring him to my lab.”

I’m sorry, sir, but you seem to be caught up in the Rainbow Unicorn of Hope yourself. Obama has actually demonstrated he is NOT calm, but rather testy (examples here, here and here), quick to anger, and a bully. You are buying into the MSM definitions of him, not the REALITY of him. Just like when they termed George Bush’s arrogant smugness as “charm.” Despite the attempts by the MSM to paint Obama as the new Buddha, he has shown in debates and unscripted interactions who he really is. Maybe you shouldn’t be watching MSNBC while you do your “research.” Just a suggestion.

I barely know what to say about this next part, so I will just leave it to you:

It was while looking through the letters of Thomas Jefferson that Haidt first found a description of elevation. Jefferson wrote of the physical sensation that comes from witnessing goodness in others: It is to “dilate [the] breast and elevate [the] sentiments … and privately covenant to copy the fair example.” Haidt took this description as a mandate. Since it’s tricky to study the vagus nerve, he and a psychology student conceived of a way to look at it indirectly. The vagus nerve works with oxytocin, the hormone of connection. Since oxytocin is released during breast-feeding, he and the student brought in 42 lactating women and had them watch either an inspiring clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show about a gang member saved from a life of violence by a teacher or an amusing bit from a Jerry Seinfeld routine.

About half the Oprah-watching mothers either leaked milk into nursing pads or nursed their babies following the viewing; none of the Seinfeld watchers felt enough breast dilation to wet a pad, and fewer than 15 percent of them nursed. You could say elevation is Oprah’s opiate of the masses, so it’s fitting that she early on gave Obama her imprimatur. And that for his victory speech was up front in Grant Park, elevation’s moist embodiment, feeling so at one with humankind that she used a stranger as a handkerchief.

Thank heavens Haidt is such a dedicated scientist. Ahem. How else would we know why Oprah was so moved to use someone she didn’t know as her handkerchief?

Are we PAYING for this research, by the way? You know, with our tax dollars?? Just wondering.

Back to the research:

The researchers say elevation is part of a family of self-transcending emotions. Some others are awe, that sense of the vastness of the universe and smallness of self that is often invoked by nature; another is admiration, that goose-bump-making thrill that comes from seeing exceptional skill in action. Keltner says we most powerfully experience these in groups—no wonder people spontaneously ran into the street on election night, hugging strangers. “We had to evolve these emotions to devote ourselves into social collectives,” he says.

When you start thinking about mass movements, all those upturned, glowing faces of true believers—be they the followers of Jim Jones or Adolf Hitler—you don’t always get a warm feeling about mankind. Instead, knowing where some of these “social collectives” end up, the sensation is a cold chill. Haidt acknowledges that in “calling the group to greatness,” elevation can be used for murderous ends. He says: “Anything that takes us out of ourselves and makes us feel we are listening to something larger is part of morality. It’s about pressing the buttons that turn off ‘I’ and turn on ‘we.’ “

Thank heavens someone finally said it. I mean, besides those of us in the reality-based world. It is important for a scientist to be able to step outside him/herself. And with Obama, what we have is massive turning back the clock on women’s rights, race relations, transparency of our “elected” officials (a PEBO who doesn’t have to submit ANY paperwork for the greatest job in the world, but demands that and much, much more from his subordinates. I’d sure like to see this Haidt guy do some research on that. Or anyone in the freakin’ MSM.).

Your patience with this article is about to be rewarded:

Even at its most benign, elevation can seem ridiculous to outsiders. Think of how Obama’s opponents love to mock his effect on people. During the campaign, if your chest was contracting while all about you chests were dilating, you may be a Republican. If you were unmoved by Obama, watching your fellow citizen get all tingly, even fall into a faint (too much vagus stimulation, and you’re going down), was maddening. “Other people’s reverence seems unctuous and sanctimonious,” says Keltner.

Obama himself seemed aware of the dangers that too much elevation might pop his candidacy like a helium balloon hitting a power line. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer described Obama’s canny strategy to make his rhetoric more pedestrian for the final months of the campaign.

Or, one might still have one’s WITS about one, thus not being taken in by this charlatan, this snake oil salesman. But of course, anyone who was not moved to tears or into a faint by this lying, conniving, arrogant, bullying, race-baiting, misogynistic, homophobic unqualified first term senator was just because someone was a “Republican.” Newsflash: those of us who actually prefer qualified, intelligent, candidates who compose their own policy positions rather than steal them from others, and come up with their own words to use, not plagiarizing others, may simply be mature. I’m just sayin’. Despite the MSM’s characterizations of Hillary Clinton’s speeches, I attended two of them, and I am here to tell you she is moving, compelling, funny as hell, and brilliant. But not once did I feel faint. Nor did I ever feel faint when Obama was speaking, even as I watched his 2004 speech which seemed sufficient experience for those “elevated” people who swooned over his “borrowed” words. But that’s just me. And millions others. Whatever.

Oh, but you knew it wasn’t going to stop there. There had to be a way for the author to turn this back to Obama worship:

While there is very little lab work on the elevating emotions, there is quite a bit on its counterpart, disgust. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Paul Rozin has been a leading theorist in the uses of disgust. He says it started as a survival strategy: Early humans needed to figure out when food was spoiled by contact with bacteria or parasites. From there disgust expanded to the social realm—people became repelled by the idea of contact with the defiled or by behaviors that seemed to belong to lower people. “Disgust is probably the most powerful emotion that separates your group from other groups,” says Keltner.

Haidt says disgust is the bottom floor of a vertical continuum of emotion; hit the up button, and you arrive at elevation. This could be why so many Obama supporters complained of being sickened and nauseated by the Republican campaign. Seeing a McCain ad or Palin video clip actually felt like being plunged from their Obama-lofted heights.

Disgust carries with it the notion of contamination, which helps to explain the Republicans’ obsession with Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Jeremiah Wright and their frustration that more voters didn’t have a visceral reaction that Obama had unforgivably sullied himself by association with these men. But this time, elevation won. And expect that on Inauguration Day, even if the weather’s frigid, millions will be warmed by that liquid feeling in their chests. (Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or comments to emilyyoffe@hotmail.com)

Oh, yes - it was the REPUBLICANS’ problem that they, and all others not in the tank for Obama, were concerned about a CONFIRMED DOMESTIC TERRORIST, a convicted felon, and a racist in whose church Obama sat for over TWENTY years. And of course, it had nothing to do with the MSM downplaying those connections, even dismissing them )like Obama’s speechwriter groping a cut-out of the incoming Secretary of State of the United States), because those inconvenient people/facts did not fit their preconceived narrative of who Obama is. It wasn’t so much Republicans who wanted to highlight the nefarious associations of the PEBO, but AMERICANS who care about the sanctity of the Constitution, who care about with whom the PEBO chooses to associate himself. Unrepentant domestic terrorists, convicted felons (don’t forget Kwame Kilpatrick!), and anti-American racist ministers are not the kinds of people with whom a potential president should surround himself. In my humble opinion, of course.

In conclusion, what this “research” highlights is that Obama followers really did drink the Kool Aide. Vindication for those of us who did not, and managed to keep ourselves in emotional balance. Now we can say, “Told you so!” But, they’ll probably be too busy polishing their rose-colored glasses and looking for the rainbow unicorn to notice…

Can you believe that about the school changing its name to Barack Obama Elementary?? Sadly, it is true. Here is the article: New York School Changes Name to Barack Obama Elementary,

Some public figures wait a lifetime — or longer — to see their names affixed to airports, bridges and public schools.

Not so Barack Obama.

In what appears to be a national first, the school board in Hempstead, N.Y., has voted unanimously to change the name of its 460-student Ludlum Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School.

Officials hope to hold a name-changing ceremony shortly after the new year begins. Such quick action could put the 47-year-old president-elect’s name on a public institution even before his inauguration Jan. 20. “I think we were still caught up in the moment,” principal Jean Bligen said.

Like many across Long Island, Hempstead students followed the campaign closely. Students at the former Ludlum School held a mock debate, and a straw ballot there in grades 3-5 produced 257 votes for Obama, 28 for opponent Sen. John McCain.

The school’s enrollment is 62 percent Hispanic and 36 percent African-American. Several students come from Africa, and many more come from El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Puerto Rico.

“For me, we made history,” said Teonte Jackson, 11, a fifth-grader who played Obama in the debate. “I feel really proud to have an African-American president. I don’t think it’s a racial thing. I think he will bring everybody together.”

Here’s the thing. If they indeed did follow this election closely, did it not ever bother any of these TEACHERS that Obama refused to provide his transcripts? ANY of his transcripts from any three of the institutions of higher learning he attended? It didn’t bother ANY of them that he treated women so poorly? It didn’t bother them at all that he PLAGIARIZED his speeches and policies?? All because he is half black, he gets a school named after him?? He has done VERY little on his own, as I have been saying for months, and as the video above details.

Oh, but you know there is more:

Clear Stream Avenue School in Valley Stream will also consider a renaming resolution next month, The Associated Press reported.

Eileen Garbe, who teaches fifth grade at the former Ludlum School, said the election provided a “monumental” opportunity to bring history alive for students. She plans to retire in about a year and a half after 20 years of teaching. “Isn’t this a wonderful way to go out?” she said.

A photo of Obama already hangs in the school’s office. Coincidentally, since September the school has been sending hundreds of books to an orphanage in Kenya, the home of Obama’s late father, even before the idea of a name change took hold.

The idea began to jell after another fifth-grade teacher asked students Jalani Johnson and Samantha Alburez, both 10, to write essays on why their school should be named for Obama.

Interim Superintendent Joseph Laria praised both students and adults for urging the name change at the Thursday school board meeting. The board’s vote was 5-0.

As he voted, board president Charles Renfroe thought of his own fifth-grade teacher, Artiebelle Lowe, who worked in a segregated, two-room schoolhouse in rural Alabama.

Renfroe still recalls her joy at the news in 1955 that a Montgomery, Ala., seamstress named Rosa Parks had defied Jim Crow laws by refusing to move to the rear of a bus. “I just wish she could be around today to see how far we’ve come,” Renfroe said of his former teacher.

“I think this will unite us,” said another board member, Betty Cross, who has differed with the board on other issues.

Hempstead Village Mayor Wayne Hall said naming the school after Obama is appropriate. “The fact that he was elected on Nov. 4 as the first African American is the achievement,” Hall said. “He doesn’t have to do anything else. The fact that he was elected is the ultimate achievement for all Americans.”

A Web search finds no mention of other schools or public facilities in the United States named for Obama, though such moves are being advocated in Calumet City, Ill., and Portland, Ore.

Geezy pete. JUST because he is half African and half American is sufficient. Wow. That seems like a mighty low threshold to me, but hey - maybe I expect too much. Again, it just shocks and appalls me that these teachers are completely ignoring the reality of how Obama got to where he is - the lying, cheating, stealing, misogyny, homophobia, and deception (to name a few). If they were truly following this election closely, they would have to know on SOME level that what they are doing is all about color of the skin, and NOT character. What the hell kind of message is THAT to be sending to our young people??? No wonder so many of our youth are cheating, lying, and plagiarizing - they see that success comes to those who cheat their way to the top, with no recrimination whatsoever. Wow.

And on a final note of disgust, this was the very end of the article:

In Antigua, the prime minister has said he’s taking measures to have the island’s highest peak renamed Mount Obama, according to the AP.

A school in Kogelo, Kenya, birthplace of Obama’s father, was named for the president-elect after he was elected senator.

ANTIGUA??? What the hell does Obama have to do with ANTIGUA??? Kenya maybe, but holy cow, these people have drunk way too much kool aide…

As in other recent interviews, he denied having a very close relationship with Barack Obama but at the same time he states that the residents in his neighborhood are very friendly, get together in each others’ homes and “laugh about the inflated rhetoric of the 60s”. Tell me, Bill, do Barack and Michelle sit in on these pow-wows? He says that the ads that Senator McCain aired about Obama’s relationship with him and his past activities were lies. He says that it is a credit to the American people that the ads didn’t work. Then it is good that Americans elected a president who probably agrees with your past activities and may even have some dangerous agenda in store for all of us?

Ayers denies that the Weather Underground was a terrorist organization but that it was a militant one.

So explain this to me: How is bombing the Capitol Building, the Pentagon, the NYC Police Headquarters and a judge’s home NOT terrorism? His reasoning is that they didn’t hurt or kill anyone. He says the police officer killed in 1970 was not done by them. He goes on to explain that the bomb at the Pentagon was a small one set in a restroom. It knocked out a computer and held off the air war for a couple of days. It was intended to harm property, not people. Give me a break!! A bomb is a bomb is a bomb!! What if someone had been in that restroom at the time that the bomb went off? Or standing next to the computer that was hit? These actions, he states, were “Extreme acts of Vandalism”. Gosh, I must be naive. I thought vandalism was like painting graffiti on bridges or turning over outhouses, as kids in my younger days did. I wouldn’t have labeled setting bombs as vandalism. Now, mind you” 9-11 was terrorism pure and simple”. Whew! I was glad to hear that!!

Regarding the statement that he has made, “I feel we didn’t do enough” he says that he was misquoted by he NY Times. When Terry Gross stated that people call him an “unrepentant terrorist” he responded that he would “need something specific to apologies for”. What say all of you? Can YOU think of any specifics?

Submitted by No-Nonsense Nancy
Here is the link to hear this interesting interview. It was an hour long but well worth the time.

Talk about amateurs at the controls!

See, Yogi usually ignored my warnings — and I bet Mr. Obama will too — and boy did Yogi get in trouble for that, and so will Mr. Obama. Dangest thing is that that Yogi, well, shucks, he also got away with it, as does Mr. Obama, and that part confuses me so much. This confuses Sean Hannity too, as you can see in both of these videos:

Here’s the second video:

AND HERE’s WHAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ME!

Yogi, Boo Boo, Magilla Gorilla, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry travelled around America in the half-hour series Yogi’s Gang. Debuting in 1973, the characters travelled in Ark Lark, a hot air balloon. They solved problems including Mr. Waste and pollution, Mr. Bigot’s bigotry, and other various issues.

Oh this last video. This is just for good ol’ time’s sake. I’m sure glad they remember me at YouTube. Boy, you kids and all your fancy gadgets. The kids who grew up watching me never had any of these things. They thought computers filled whole rooms! Which they did back then. Now there are computers in my toaster and a convection oven in my den! Sarah Palin’s bringin’ me some moose meat later today. Yummmm … yabba dabba!

It seems pointless to point out the obvious, especially when the majority of the country apparently doesn’t care if their Presidential Candidate lies to them, but I must follow up, anyway.

“In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a “family friend” of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama’s political enemies to “deepen a dishonest narrative” about the candidate.”

Ayers summarized his relationship with Obama: “[W]e had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.”

Obama had dismissed Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”

Also, Obama, during the final debate with John McCain, said flat out, when McCain said that Ayers kicked off his political career in his living room, that it was a lie. But yet, Ayers states quite clearly that he held an “initial fundraiser at his house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.”

So, what about that is untrue, according to Obama? As I see it, Obama lied repeatedly to the American people about their relationship. From the very first debate to the very last.

Now that Obama is the President Elect, Ayers feels free to discuss his relationship with Obama, and has now confirmed what many of us have been saying for months, Obama and Ayers are friends, and Ayers kicked off Obama’s political career in his living room.

This matters to me, because I find it interesting that someone who wants to be President of the United States, feels so comfortable *palling around with domestic terrorists*. I certainly wouldn’t be friends with a guy who bombed the Pentagon, or Capital, or family homes.

What is the difference between Timothy McVeigh and the Weather Underground? McVeigh bombed as revenge against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government. Isn’t that the same excuse the Weather Underground used?

Ayers, listens to Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. speak at Northwestern University during an event hosted by Northwestern’s Black Student Alliance.

Which brings me to another Obama lie. I know, you don’t care, but I do.

When the Reverend Wright tapes surfaced, Obama lied and said that he never heard those inflammatory remarks. When people questioned him, how he could attend a church and NEVER hear those kinds of remarks, he then came out and admitted that he heard a few of those controversial remarks. Then he gave his famous *race speech* and started a massive backtracking of how often he actually attended the church. But, as most of us knew, he used to claim that he attended Church every Sunday at 11am. And now, an old interview has revealed as much.

One is reminded of the scene with Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson in Chinatown: “she’s my sister, she’s my daughter….” Bill Ayers says Obama is a “family friend” but at the same time only a “professional” colleague.  

And he was just as ambiguous about when they met. Today Ayers said it was at the same time that Obama was active on issues related to job loss and education. Well, that would mean the late 1980s when Obama was a community organizer working with laid off steel workers and also on the same school reform efforts that Ayers helped lead. 

Cuomo did not pursue the ambiguity and Ayers was content to let it sit there, unresolved.

But the larger impression made is of the utter political idiocy of Bill Ayers.

He still wants to argue that his violent tactics as a founder and leader of the 70s cult Weather Underground somehow contributed to the peace movement at the time. Instead, of course, he and his wife in arms, Bernardine Dohrn, helped destroy a generation’s efforts on behalf of peace and genuine social justice.  But that has not stopped him from re-issuing his apologia for his life, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist, as well as co-authoring with Dohrn a new book that makes race the key explanatory variable for what ails America (”Race Course Against White Supremacy.”

The right wing tried, valiantly, to portray Obama as somehow tainted by his association with this political relic. But what is, frankly, more disturbing is how or why Obama would have believed there was any value, whatsoever, to spending any time listening to this guy or his wife, at all.

Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Ayers Speaks Out on Campaign ‘08 and His Tie to Obama