on Mon 28 Apr 2008 05:39:10p
"leonard78sp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <leonard78sp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> posted
in
news:b49b2f48-4de4-488e-8f78-04946d571be2
@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
.com:
>
>
> Obama's Academia Nuts
> Obama's Academia Nuts
> By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
> Friday, April 25, 2008 4:20 PM PT
>
> Education: How exactly do former terrorists get to teach at
> America's universities? Unfortunately, Obama's friends William
> Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are just a few of the inmates running
> those asylums.
>
> Obama associates William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn,
> are more than former members of the Weather Underground,
> terrorists who engaged in bombings of American government
> buildings during the Vietnam War.
>
Posting this tripe a second time doesn't make it any less
dishonest, although it does indicate you are an imbecile.
----------------------------------{
Wa****ngton Post Fact Checker - February 19, 2008
"Obama's 'Weatherman' Connection"
by Michael Dobbs
<http://tinyurl.com/2j6xwc>
There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper
articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to
a former member of the radical Weather Underground
Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings
between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers,
now holds the position of distinguished professor of education
at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never
convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in
September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we
didn't do enough."
Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an
anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999
and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's
re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001,
as re****ted here. They lived within a few blocks of each other
in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the
same liberal-progressive circles.
Is there anything here that raises questions about Obama's
judgment or is this just another example of guilt by
association?
=============
= The Facts =
=============
The first article in the mainstream press linking Obama to
Ayers appeared in the London Daily Mail on February 2. It was
written by Peter Hitchens, the right-wing brother of the
left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war sup****ter, Christopher
Hitchens. Hitchens cited the Ayers connection to bolster his
argument that Obama is "far more radical than he would like us
to know."
The Hitchens piece was followed by a Bloomberg article last
week pointing to the Ayers connection as sup****t for Hillary
Clinton's contention that Obama might not be able to withstand
the "Republican attack machine." Larry Johnson, a former
counterterrorism official at the CIA and the State Department,
predicted that the Republicans would seize on the Ayers case,
and other Chicago relation****ps, to "bludgeon Obama's
presidential aspirations into the dust."
The London Sunday Times joined the chorus this weekend by
re****ting that Republicans were "out to crush Barack by
painting him as a leftwinger with dubious sup****t".
The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200
contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their
joint member****p of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers
did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting
clarification of the relation****p. Obama spokesman Bill Burton
noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education
at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor
Richard M. Daley, and continued:
Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of
the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence.
But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the
Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect
Obama with events of almost forty years ago is
ridiculous.
In the short term, the person who has most to gain by
speculation about Obama's acquaintance with a former terrorist
is Hillary Clinton. The former First Lady likes to present
herself as "tested and vetted" after years of exposure to
Republican attacks, in contrast to Obama, a relative newcomer
to hardscrabble presidential politics. Such arguments resonate
with Johnson, the counterterrorism expert, who told me that he
is a Clinton sup****ter, although not involved with the
campaign.
But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed
out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection.
Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted
Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue
Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is
worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign
contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?
Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the
Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund
Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington,
said he had been selected for the board because of his solid
academic credentials and "passion for social justice."
"This whole connection is a stretch," Harrington told me.
"Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected
legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here
who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his
campaigns."
======================
= The Pinocchio Test =
======================
The question is not whether a connection can be established
between Barack Obama and a former member of the Weathermen,
but whether it has any significance for the 2008 presidential
campaign. Could Bill Ayers become a political embarrassment
for Obama? Let me know what you think.
}----------------------------------
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