Saturday, October 4, 2008
Don't Read This Unless ....
Want to stay deceived!
Today, Barack Obama will lie to the American people as he attacks John McCain’s health care plan (incidentally, a health care plan that his chief economic adviser Jason Furman advocated just two years ago: http://www.democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6466). As for today’s business, John McCain is in Arizona with no public events and Governor Palin is in Southern California. Now on to the news…
John McCain Delivers Weekly Radio Address:
· Listen To The Radio Address: http://www.johnmccain.com/Downloads/100308_wra.mp3
McCain-Palin Launch New TV Ad “Tax Cutter”
· Watch The Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bDXIcldmfo
The New York Times Details Barack Obama’s Relationship With Terrorist Bill Ayers
Twenty-six years after founding a terrorist group that bombed the Pentagon and US Capitol, Bill Ayers first met Barack Obama in Chicago…
At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol. Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors. – The New York Times
Joe Biden Was Caught Lying During The Vice Presidential Debate
It's hard choosing the worst in last Thursday's vice presidential debate: Sen. Joe Biden's continual untruths, his certitude in delivering them, or the free pass he got all night long. … Thankfully, the blogosphere has been having a field day cataloguing Joe's whoppers. First, as InstaPundit's Michael Totten instantly noted after the debate, Biden — the great, seasoned foreign policy expert who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — falsely claimed France and the U.S. "kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." … There was also Biden's accusation that John McCain is soft on regulation, when in fact he tried to beef up regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — an explanation for why he got so little campaign money from Fannie and Freddie over the years — under $22,000 — as opposed to the more than $126,000 Obama received in his short time in the Senate. Sen. Biden falsely claimed that Obama didn't pledge to meet with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; he falsely claimed Gov. Sarah Palin supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies; he said he's always been for clean coal in spite of his record of voting against it in the Senate. – Investor’s Business Daily
For all the focus on Sarah Palin's graceful performance in Thursday's vice presidential showdown, a more significant spectacle was taking place behind the other rostrum. That's where Joe Biden, speaking with the pompus self-importance befitting his 36 years in the Senate, told one baffling fib after another. – New York Post
Joe Biden Is A Product Of The Special Interests
Joe Biden brought up Bermuda in Thursday’s debate, but the real question is was there a connection between the millions Joe Biden received from law firms specializing in asbestos suits and the his votes “against legislation that would have severely cut into the asbestos-law firms’ profits”?
Employees of four law firms specializing in asbestos suits comprised four of the top 10 donors to Joe Biden's failed presidential campaign, records show. Among them was SimmonsCooper, a Madison County firm that has a close relationship with members of Biden's family. Campaign records and interviews reflect a long and mutually beneficial relationship between the Illinois law firm and vice presidential nominee Biden, who as a senator from Delaware has been a steadfast supporter of trial lawyers. From 2007 to Sept. 2, top asbestos-law firm employees donated $171,000 to Biden's presidential campaign. All told, Biden's Senate campaign funds have received $4.9 million from law firms since 2003, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group. On two occasions, Biden voted against legislation that would have severely cut into the asbestos-law firms' profits. The bill was intended to offer relief for companies facing an avalanche of asbestos-related suits, like the ones filed by SimmonsCooper. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes: Governor Palin Was A “Scintillating Success” At The Debate
Sarah Palin's scintillating success in last week's vice presidential debate with Joe Biden has made her an enormous asset (again) to John McCain's bid for the presidency. Now McCain must decide how to maximize her role in the campaign. Anything short of bringing her front and center makes no sense. McCain was thrilled by her debate performance. "The kind of excitement that she ignites, frankly, I have not seen before in American politics," he told talk radio host Mike Gallagher. Having gambled in choosing her as his running mate, he may be inclined to double down and give her equal billing in the campaign. He should. – The Weekly Standard
Must Reads:
Denver Post: McCain Rallies Supporters In Pueblo
Rocky Mountain News: Pueblo Crowds Rev Up McCain's Campaign
The Weekly Standard: Palin Comes Out Swinging
The New York Times: Obama And ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Madison County Law Firm Big Biden Donor
Investor’s Business Daily: Truthless Joe
New York Post: The Lies Biden Told
Schedule:
October 4, 2008:
· 2:30 PM PT: Governor Palin holds a rally in Southern California (Carson, CA)
Must Reads:
McCain Rallies Supporters In Pueblo
By Tim Hoover
Denver Post
October 4, 2008
http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_10629130
PUEBLO — John McCain visited this Democratic stronghold Friday, making indirect appeals to Latinos and promising he would "never, ever" try to take more of Colorado's water.
The Republican presidential hopeful spoke to a crowd of more than 2,000 at the Massari Arena on the campus of Colorado State University-Pueblo.
He entered the arena as Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" (theme to the movie "Top Gun") played, and supporters leapt to their feet, chanting, "USA! USA!."
"How about Sarah Palin last night?" McCain began to wild applause, referring to the vice presidential debate Thursday night.
"Viva la Barracuda!" McCain said in reference to his running mate's nickname from her high school basketball days. Palin is scheduled to hold a private fundraiser on Saturday in Centennial.
In the town-hall style gathering that has come to symbolize the McCain campaign, the candidate on Friday repeated many of same themes he has touched on throughout the season, including the question of his experience vs. that of his rival Sen. Barack Obama.
"Sen. Obama has the rhetoric, not the record," he said.
Democrats fired back later, saying in a news release that "John McCain's town hall in Pueblo was loaded with the kind of lies, distortions, evasions and pandering that has come to dominate his increasingly erratic and desperate campaign."
McCain made a splash with the crowd when he talked about one of the most controversial topics in Colorado.
"As a citizen of the great state of Arizona," McCain said, "I want to say on behalf of all my fellow citizens: Thank you for the water."
In August, McCain said in an interview with The Pueblo Chieftain that the Colorado River water compact should be "renegotiated," a comment that brought immediate attacks from the state's top Democrats and even a terse response from Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Schaffer.
McCain later said he did not support a renegotiation of the water compact.
He elicited applause when he emphatically told the audience in Pueblo , "I will never, ever see the renegotiation of the Colorado River compact."
Democrats said it was backpedaling.
McCain on Friday also reiterated his support for "clean coal technology," and said, "We've got to drill offshore, and we've got to drill now."
On Iraq, McCain said he wanted to bring home troops "with victory and honor."
"My friends, the surge is succeeding in Iraq, and that's a fact," McCain said.
McCain was introduced by Vera Ortegon, a Pueblo city councilor who appealed to the area's significant Hispanic population. She said Hispanics share many values with McCain, a love of country and a belief that "life starts at conception."
Neither she nor McCain mentioned immigration reform during their remarks.
After the speech, though, Ortegon said it wouldn't be easy for McCain in Pueblo.
"I'm not sure necessarily that McCain can win Pueblo, but I can tell you McCain can win Colorado," she said. "And he will get more votes (in Pueblo) than people think."
Darris Taylor, 57, of Pueblo West came in a hockey jersey he bought while on a fishing trip to Anchorage, Alaska, a few weeks ago. He had a few hours before his flight, so he went to see Alaska Gov. Palin at a public appearance and bought the jersey.
It said "McCain-Palin" and bore an illustration of a pit bull with lipstick. Taylor pointed to the sleeve, which was signed by Palin.
Can McCain win Pueblo? Taylor said "yes."
"I'm not seeing many Obama signs stuck in people's yards, even though we're pretty high Democratic," said Taylor, a real-estate broker.
Some in the audience like Mickey Colb, though, were still undecided on whom to support. The 63-year-old orthodontist from Pueblo said he didn't agree with everything he'd heard.
"I don't believe life begins at conception," Colb said, but said he liked McCain's comments about treating veterans well.
"I think McCain is probably stronger (than Obama) as far as national security," Colb said, adding, though, that neither candidate seemed to have a great plan for the economy.
A small group of Obama supporters squared off with McCain backers outside the arena, holding signs that said "No More War" and "Human Dignity."
###
Pueblo Crowds Rev Up McCain's Campaign
By Todd Hartman
Rocky Mountain News
October 4, 2008
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/04/pueblo-crowds-rev-up-mccains-campaign/
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, seeking to rebuild campaign momentum after a recent rough patch, got a boost from an unexpected source Friday - a working-class southern Colorado town typically labeled a Democratic powerhouse.
About 3,500 fired-up supporters packed Massari Arena at Colorado State University at Pueblo to cheer McCain, giving the senator another lift after an emotional town hall meeting in Denver and a credible - depending on who you ask - debate performance by his vice- presidential selection Gov. Sarah Palin the night before.
"How about Sarah Palin last night?" McCain asked, to kick things off. The answer came in the rally's loudest roar, accented with foot-stomping, sign- waving approval. "I almost felt sorry last night for my old friend Joe Biden. She did a magnificent job."
While partisans have disputed that assessment, the enthusiastic Pueblo crowd embraced it, delivering a much needed energy shot to McCain after more than a week of choppy waters. Even some Republicans, accustomed to their minority status in Pueblo, said they were surprised by the attendance and excitement at the event.
Southern Colo. 'critical'
The rally came as the country's economic crisis has given Democratic rival Barack Obama a lead in the polls. And McCain on Thursday surprised pundits by pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a signal he no longer believes he can carry that important state on the electoral map.
The move makes Colorado, already a much-watched swing state, even more critical for McCain, and he implored his backers to get out the vote. He called himself "an underdog" in the race, but added, "I've always loved being the underdog.
"This part of the state is going to be critical. You've got to get out all your friends, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, vegetarians," he said to laughter. "We must and will win the state of Colorado in November."
McCain's visit to Pueblo came as a surprise to locals. The Pueblo Chieftain reported that McCain was believed to be the first Republican presidential candidate to visit the city since perhaps President William Howard Taft stopped over during the 1912 campaign. The city has given its vote to Republicans just five times in the last 22 presidential elections.
But McCain's appearance here wasn't much of a stretch. Hispanic voters here make up a major voting bloc, and McCain often appeals to Hispanics because of his more moderate views on immigration. Even so, Obama enjoys a 2-to-1 lead among Hispanic voters, polls show.
McCain, a Vietnam War hero, is also a favorite of veterans. He asked all military veterans to stand up during his event - and Pueblo has a significant veteran population. His talk of bringing troops home from Iraq "with honor" drew more cheers.
"Pueblo is home of the heroes," said Kayla Monack, 20, a student at CSU-Pueblo. Monack, along with friend and fellow student Megan Schneider, 22, was impressed that McCain spoke about water and veterans - "Pueblo issues," they said - and appreciated his town hall-style format that saw him take four questions from people in the audience.
"I just think that it's amazing that he came to Pueblo and answered our questions. He picked people from our community and answered their highest concerns," Monack said.
After praising Palin, McCain almost immediately addressed water, a matter he's been talking about in Colorado ever since he told the Chieftain this summer that he thought the 1922 Colorado River Compact should be "renegotiated" over time. That comment drew fire from his critics in a state that fears it could lose water to downstream states. Democrats pounced on it and area Republicans warned him to back off of it.
He did so quickly, and has been emphasizing ever since that he has no desire to change the compact. He did it again Friday, noting "water is too precious," and thanking Colorado for the water it provides Arizona via the snowmelt that fills the Colorado River.
State's coal reserves
McCain, speaking as the House vote was unfolding to pass a Wall Street bailout plan, also touched on economics. He called the $700 billion plan a "tourniquet" to stop the country's financial bleeding, and emphasized that it's critical to stemming a credit crisis that's preventing people and small businesses from getting loans.
"I'm not interested in helping Wall Street in any way," he said. "But the innocent bystander, the homeowner, those have to be shored up."
McCain said developing America's energy independence would be part of driving the economy back up, and noted that Colorado, with its huge coal reserves, could play a key role in providing "clean coal" for electricity.
He also touted nuclear power, and the need to follow the lead of France, Japan and Britain in preprocessing spent nuclear fuel instead of treating it as waste.
###
Palin Comes Out Swinging
And keeps hope alive for McCain.
By Fred Barnes
Weekly Standard
October 4, 2008
http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15659&R=13C6CD44E
Sarah Palin's scintillating success in last week's vice presidential debate with Joe Biden has made her an enormous asset (again) to John McCain's bid for the presidency. Now McCain must decide how to maximize her role in the campaign. Anything short of bringing her front and center makes no sense.
McCain was thrilled by her debate performance. "The kind of excitement that she ignites, frankly, I have not seen before in American politics," he told talk radio host Mike Gallagher. Having gambled in choosing her as his running mate, he may be inclined to double down and give her equal billing in the campaign. He should.
But there are still Palin doubters inside his campaign. Their attitude is relief that Palin got through the debate unscathed. Now they fear that elevating her role would be risky. She'd be vulnerable to the media wolves.
This thinking-that Palin might embarrass McCain-is what prompted the dubious decision to keep her tightly tethered for nearly a month following her rousing acceptance speech at the Republican convention. She gave a few interviews with carefully selected TV anchors, did poorly, and quickly became a burden for McCain, a running mate who failed the do-no-harm test for veep picks.
Her handlers were part of the problem. They gave her index cards on the issues she'd be allowed to discuss, instructed her to stay on message when dealing with the media, told her to echo McCain's thoughts and say little more. When she choked in the television interviews, they blamed her. Even McCain was miffed to find she wasn't reading newspapers and keeping up on daily events.
In 1984, President Reagan's advisers were accused of having "brutalized" him in preparing him for his first (disastrous) debate with Walter Mondale. They coached him to stress details, hardly his forte. Palin, too, was initially prepped to be someone she isn't, a political robot without a mind of her own. In the television interviews, her confidence, charisma, and star quality-her strengths-vanished.
But in the days before last week's debate with Joe Biden, new advisers arrived and Palin was set free-and her campaign task changed. In the debate with Biden, she had to show she understood foreign and domestic policy, could effectively tag Barack Obama as a high tax liberal and national security weakling, was ready to defend McCain and herself as reformers committed to change, and could appeal to middle class voters. She achieved all these while overpowering Biden with her personality.
The best measure of her success in the debate was this: She's been a national political figure for only a few weeks but made no serious mistakes, while Biden, a senator since 1973, committed a string of gaffes. In talking about the Middle East, he made "seven errors in 60 seconds," according to columnist Charles Krauthammer.
If she'd made even one or two of his mistakes, the media and the political community would have begun calling for her ouster from the McCain ticket. Biden, of course, probably won't be held accountable. That he won the debate on points, on substance, is the media's default position.
Her triumph gives her added value as McCain's partner. The question is whether McCain and his advisers will take advantage of her appeal to conservatives and to voters outside the Republican orbit. The early signs are that they will, but only up to a point.
Her public appearances, for now, are focused chiefly on the battleground states of Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and a few others. Her interviews on local TV will increase dramatically. She'll be a guest on the major conservative talk radio shows. She'll appear on Fox News. She'll be available for limited print interviews.
That, however, does not constitute the fullest and boldest use of Palin. As she demonstrated in the debate, she's smart and quick (smarter and quicker than Biden, for sure). She can handle bigger assignments, including appearances on the big-time network interview shows. She's learned the politician's trick of ignoring questions and making whatever points she wishes.
Palin, now that she's escaped her oppressive handlers, is hard to intimidate. Carl Cameron of Fox News asked her about the 18 lies that Democrats claimed she told in the debate. Anything she'd like to revise or correct? "I mispronounced General McKiernan," the commander in Afghanistan, and "I apologize for that," she said. "Other than that, nope."
She told Cameron that, with the debate out of the way, she wants to be more accessible to the media. She said she'd never been kept away from the press. "I beg to differ with the notion that I was reined in any way," Palin told Cameron. "But if there was any of that, it's over. And we got to be out there."
One more point. It's a waste of time and talent to have Palin stump jointly with McCain. Palin needs to campaign alone. She can handle it. Her crowds will probably be bigger than McCain's, but he's not likely to let his ego interfere with a strategy that improves his chances of winning the White House.
McCain should feel vindicated. His choice of Palin as his running mate has turned out extraordinarily well. There's never been a national candidate like her, a mother of five from the boondocks who grins as she skewers her opponents. More important, she's given a significant gift to McCain. She's improved his chances of winning.
###
Obama And ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths
By Scott Shane
New York Times
October 4, 2008
CHICAGO — At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol.
Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.
Their relationship has become a touchstone for opponents of Mr. Obama, the Democratic senator, in his bid for the presidency. Video clips on YouTube, including a new advertisement that was broadcast on Friday, juxtapose Mr. Obama’s face with the young Mr. Ayers or grainy shots of the bombings.
In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?”
More recently, conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”
A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”
Obama campaign aides said the Ayers relationship had been greatly exaggerated by opponents to smear the candidate.
“The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false,” said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood. He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park.
In the stark presentation of a 30-second advertisement or a television clip, Mr. Obama’s connections with a man who once bombed buildings and who is unapologetic about it may seem puzzling. But in Chicago, Mr. Ayers has largely been rehabilitated.
Federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges against him were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct, and he was welcomed back after years in hiding by his large and prominent family. His father, Thomas G. Ayers, had served as chief executive of Commonwealth Edison, the local power company.
Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform.
“He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview this week, explaining that he has long consulted Mr. Ayers on school issues. Mr. Daley, whose father was Chicago’s mayor during the street violence accompanying the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the so-called Days of Rage the following year, said he saw the bombings of that time in the context of a polarized and turbulent era.
“This is 2008,” Mr. Daley said. “People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.”
That attitude is widely shared in Chicago, but it is not universal. Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and “God damn America” sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers, whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired.
“I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,” Mr. Chapman said in an interview, speaking not of the law but of political and moral implications.
“If you’re in public life, you ought to say, ‘I don’t want to be associated with this guy,’ ” Mr. Chapman said. “If John McCain had a long association with a guy who’d bombed abortion clinics, I don’t think people would say, ‘That’s ancient history.’ ”
Mr. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a clinical associate professor at Northwestern University Law School who was also a Weather Underground founder, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Schools Project
The Ayers-Obama connection first came to public attention last spring, when both Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s Democratic primary rival, and Mr. McCain brought it up. It became the subject of a television advertisement in August by the anti-Obama American Issues Project and drew new attention recently on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page and elsewhere as the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the University of Illinois were opened to researchers.
That project was part of a national school reform effort financed with $500 million from Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. Many cities applied for the Annenberg money, and Mr. Ayers joined two other local education activists to lead a broad, citywide effort that won nearly $50 million for Chicago.
In March 1995, Mr. Obama became chairman of the six-member board that oversaw the distribution of grants in Chicago. Some bloggers have recently speculated that Mr. Ayers had engineered that post for him.
In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama’s appointment. Instead, it was suggested by Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based group whose board Mr. Obama, a young lawyer, had joined the previous year. At a lunch with two other foundation heads, Patricia A. Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation, Ms. Leff suggested that Mr. Obama would make a good board chairman, she said in an interview. Mr. Ayers was not present and had not suggested Mr. Obama, she said.
Ms. Graham said she invited Mr. Obama to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Chicago and was impressed.
“At the end of the dinner I said, ‘I really want you to be chairman.’ He said, ‘I’ll do it if you’ll be vice chairman,’ ” Ms. Graham recalled, and she agreed.
Archives of the Chicago Annenberg project, which funneled the money to networks of schools from 1995 to 2000, show both men attended six board meetings early in the project — Mr. Obama as chairman, Mr. Ayers to brief members on school issues.
It was later in 1995 that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted the gathering, in their town house three blocks from Mr. Obama’s home, at which State Senator Alice J. Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Mr. Obama to a few Democratic friends as her chosen successor. That was one of several such neighborhood events as Mr. Obama prepared to run, said A. J. Wolf, the 84-year-old emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel Synagogue, across the street from Mr. Obama’s current house.
“If you ask my wife, we had the first coffee for Barack,” Rabbi Wolf said. He said he had known Mr. Ayers for decades but added, “Bill’s mad at me because I told a reporter he’s a toothless ex-radical.”
“It was kind of a nasty shot,” Mr. Wolf said. “But it’s true. For God’s sake, he’s a professor.”
Other Connections
In 1997, after Mr. Obama took office, the new state senator was asked what he was reading by The Chicago Tribune. He praised a book by Mr. Ayers, “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court,” which Mr. Obama called “a searing and timely account of the juvenile court system.” In 2001, Mr. Ayers donated $200 to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign.
In addition, from 2000 to 2002, the two men also overlapped on the seven-member board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago charity that had supported Mr. Obama’s first work as a community organizer in the 1980s. Officials there said the board met about a dozen times during those three years but declined to make public the minutes, saying they wanted members to be candid in assessing people and organizations applying for grants.
A board member at the time, R. Eden Martin, a corporate lawyer and president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, described both men as conscientious in examining proposed community projects but could recall nothing remarkable about their dealings with each other. “You had people who were liberal and some who were pretty conservative, but we usually reached a consensus,” Mr. Martin said of the panel.
Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship.
If by then the ambitious politician was trying to keep his distance, it would not be a surprise. In an article that by chance was published on Sept. 11, 2001, The New York Times wrote about Mr. Ayers and his just-published memoir, “Fugitive Days,” opening with a quotation from the author: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”
Three days after the Qaeda attacks, Mr. Ayers wrote a reply posted on his Web site to clarify his quoted remarks, saying the meaning had been distorted.
“My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy,” he wrote. But he added that the Weathermen had “showed remarkable restraint” given the nature of the American bombing campaign in Vietnam that they were trying to stop.
Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another. An accidental 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house basement killed three radicals; survivors later said they had been making nail bombs to detonate at a military dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And in 1981, in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in Nanuet, N.Y., that involved Weather Underground members including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.
In his memoir, Mr. Ayers was evasive as to which bombings he had a hand in, writing that “some details cannot be told.” By the time of the Brinks robbery, he and Ms. Dohrn had emerged from underground to raise their two children, then Chesa Boudin, whose parents were imprisoned for their role in the heist.
Little Influence Seen
Mr. Obama’s friends said that history was utterly irrelevant to judging the candidate, because Mr. Ayers was never a significant influence on him. Even some conservatives who know Mr. Obama said that if he was drawn to Ayers-style radicalism, he hid it well.
“I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert, when we were together at Harvard Law School,” said Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Mr. Obama and who served as associate White House counsel under President Bush. Mr. Berenson, who is backing Mr. McCain, described his fellow student as “a pragmatic liberal” whose moderation frustrated others at the law review whose views were much farther to the left.
Some 15 years later, left-leaning backers of Mr. Obama have the same complaint. “We’re fully for Obama, but we disagree with some of his stands,” said Tom Hayden, the 1960s activist and former California legislator, who helped organize Progressives for Obama. His group opposes the candidate’s call for sending more troops to Afghanistan, for instance, “because we think it’s a quagmire just like Iraq,” he said. “A lot of our work is trying to win over progressives who think Obama is too conservative.”
Mr. Hayden, 68, said he has known Mr. Ayers for 45 years and was on the other side of the split in the radical antiwar movement that led Mr. Ayers and others to form the Weathermen. But Mr. Hayden said he saw attempts to link Mr. Obama with bombings and radicalism as “typical campaign shenanigans.”
“If Barack Obama says he’s willing to talk to foreign leaders without preconditions,” Mr. Hayden said, “I can imagine he’d be willing to talk to Bill Ayers about schools. But I think that’s about as far as their relationship goes.”
###
South Florida's Jewish Voters, Traditionally Democrats, Mixed Over Obama's Qualifications
By Dianna Cahn
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 4, 2008
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-flpjewishvoters1004pnoct04,0,6194131.story
West Boca - Nancy Factor listened intently as Halie Soifer, Jewish vote director for the Barack Obama campaign in Florida, laid out the senator's steadfast commitment to Israel.
A Republican among Democrats at this gathering in Montoya Estates, she raised her hand.
"I came in confused and I am still confused," Factor said. "I guess my education is still based on hearsay. I keep hearing taxes, taxes, taxes, and the reverend," Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
Still, Factor said Soifer's talk in this Orthodox Jewish, predominantly Republican neighborhood was amazing and she was considering voting for Obama.
The numbers As a wavering Jewish voter in a battleground state, Factor is coveted by both campaigns in the lead-up to the Nov. 4 election. Though Jews traditionally vote Democratic, there is a small bloc of undecided clusters in Florida, where Jews make up 3 to 5 percent of the 18 million population, as well as Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other swing states.
"Any time you talk about presidential politics these days, you can't have the conversation without Florida and you can't have that conversation without the Jewish vote," said Joseph Geller, an Obama Democrat who is regional president of the American Jewish Congress and mayor of North Bay Village in Miami-Dade County.
span style="font-size
Posted by email from Pastor Gadgets Posterous
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
