Cynacism Should Not Be A Campaign Tactic

When John Murtagh was 9 years old, Bill Ayers' friends tried to kill him.

"I remember my mother's pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside," wrote Mr. Murtagh in the April 2008 issue of the City Journal.

It wasn't personal. John's dad was a judge presiding over a trial of the Black Panthers. The next morning, after the bombs exploded, John still remembers the red graffiti on the sidewalk: "FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS."

To the best of John's recollection, Bernardine Dohrn, who is now Bill Ayers' wife, first claimed credit for bombing John's home - along with other targets - in November 1970.

Today John Murtagh is a lawyer and Yonkers' city councilman who is running for the New York state Senate on the Republican ticket this November. I reached him this week through his state Senate campaign. It wasn't hard. Has Barack Obama ever tried?

Barack Obama was only 8 years old when Mr. Murtagh's house was bombed. Mr. Obama has nothing to do with the terror and the trauma John Murtagh and his family went through.

"It's a sensitive issue for us. My mom is still alive - she's 83. She literally had to snatch her children out of the house in the middle of the night because her house was on fire," John told me.

But Barack Obama was not a child - he was a grown man - when he decided his personal path to power and influence lay through Bill Ayers' connections.

In the Chicago establishment, which unfortunately embraced former domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers and his wife, Barack Obama was encouraged to look beyond the obvious - John Murtagh, his family, their terror, the lawlessness, the attacks on policemen, judges, Army outposts - to embrace larger goals.

What were these goals? How does Barack Obama come to continue to associate with a man who cannot bring himself to say to John Murtagh or to John's mother or any other kin of the attacked: "I'm sorry. I was wrong. It was a terrible thing to do."

Mr. Obama's campaign is busy fudging. That's a polite word for "lying." Barack Obama's top political adviser claims he simply didn't know Mr. Ayers' history when they first met. Bomber? What bomber?

Right.

"If that's true, Obama has to be the dumbest man who ever graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School," snorts Mr. Murtagh. "I don't buy that at all."

Mr. Murtagh believes the relationships between Barack, his wife, Michelle, Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine, go back 20 years, to Michelle's time at Sidley Austin, the famous Washington, D.C., law firm that also employed Bernardine Dohrn.

Mr. Murtagh doesn't blame Mr. Obama for what Bill Ayers and his friends did and supported. He blames Mr. Obama for picking a man like Mr. Ayers as a friend and mentor - and then covering up the friendship.

In politics things get complicated. Truth becomes hard to find. But when you are about to elect someone commander in chief, it would be good to know he can lay his hands on some of the stuff, in case he ever needs it.

"The night they attacked our home, they also firebombed an army recruiting station out in Brooklyn and police patrol cars outside of Greenwich Village," notes Mr. Murtagh. "Three weeks later they accidentally blew themselves up. They intended to attack the officer's club at Fort Dix."

Lay your cards on the table, Mr. Murtagh wants to tell the man who would be president. "Obama's free to associate with Dohrn and Ayers; that's his right," he tells me. "But don't hide the relationship, and be forthcoming and let people decide the significance of it for themselves."

-- Maggie Gallagher, giving voice to someone the "compassionate" and "fair" folks want to remain voiceless, in the Washington Times.

"Senator Government" Has Gone Too Far

Television news is insane. Right now I'm watching CNN, Hillary Clinton is speaking, and in the lower left bumper it says: "Fact: John McCain says Barack Obama's policies are 'class warfare.'" Well goodie. What does that tell you? Does it tell you if John McCain is lying? What is the "fact" CNN thinks they're informing us of? That John McCain spoke? Well how helpful, huh?

Flipping between three stations (CNN, MSNBC, and FOX) not one station so far, and I've been watching now for about a half hour, has mentioned the many lies Barack Obama told - with Obama openly denying his career started in Bill Ayers's home being the biggest whopper. All three stations are discussing how the candidates looked, like the reporters have no responsibility to inform anyone of anything. I mean, on CNN I'm counting 17 "journalists" around a table, and not one of them is dissecting the truthfulness of the answers. So why are they there? Are they all just window dressing? CNN must have a lot of money to throw away, if they're just paying people to sit in front of computers onscreen for nothing more than us to look at them.

I understand the Kennedy/Nixon effect, where Kennedy beat Nixon because he looked healthier than Nixon, but this is 2008 - not the advent of television - so why are the news channels still limiting themselves to that crazy standard? "Who looked better?" How about who told the truth? Barack Obama did say he would take matching funds - he lied. Barack Obama did say he would do 10 town halls "anytime, anywhere" - he lied. Barack Obama denied he was going to fine small businesses over healthcare - he lied. He denied he started his career in Bill Ayers's home - he lied. Barack Obama made like the founders of the Annenberg Foundation served on a board with he and Bill Ayers - rather than just awarding a grant to "professor" Bill Ayers without knowing who he was - which was a lie. Barack Obama didn't deny funding ACORN through The Woods Foundation. Are you catching my drift?

Seriously, as I'm watching - and I almost hate to admit this - the most informed pundits on television news, so far as I've seen, are the pundits on FOX: Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, and Karl Rove. They seem to be the only talking heads who know the landscape of the Ayers issue, for instance; knowing it's not merely an issue of who Ayers killed in the '60s but what the terrorist got Barack Obama to do today: namely dispensing the Annenberg's $50 million in funds for Ayers, allowing the terrorist's radical ideas to be disseminated in schools with no educational benefits what-so-ever for the children of Chicago. That covers four issues negatively for Obama: character, judgment, intelligence, and effectiveness.

So what did I think of the debate itself? I think Obama was smoother, but in the end, it'll be good for McCain because he got the ready soundbites for video - "Joe The Plumber" is going for John McCain and we'll be seeing a lot more of him as "The Average Joe". Obama's clear lies will be exploited - especially Obama's Senate roll-out in Ayers's home, etc. Basically, I think the question of trust is still hanging over Obama, which opens up other opportunities for the McCain campaign in the next 19 days. And with Hannity, Morris, and Rove hammering home the truth, this race is wide open and Barack Obama's got problems.

So McCain did what he had to - and Obama's, still, got some 'splaining to do.

Barack Obama: Terrorist "Educators" Are O.K.

“I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,...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.’"

-- Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, on Barack Obama's association with Bill Ayers, in Scott Shane's pre-emptive strike against further end-game criticism (which was oh so helpfully released on a Saturday) in the New York Times.

In the same article, Tom Hayden (Crazy NewAge Jane Fonda's former husband and also a radical leftist) adds:

“If Barack Obama says he’s willing to talk to foreign leaders without preconditions, I can imagine he’d be willing to talk to Bill Ayers about schools."

Isn't that sweet? Like an unrepentant terrorist being put in charge of the education of children is just fine. What's next? An arsonist running the fire department? This article is such bullshit. A total attempt at a whitewash.

Barack Obama once said he met Bill Ayers when he and Ayers were picking up their kids from school. Are we to believe that Barack Obama, who has two daughters in elementary school, and a guy who was blowing up the Pentagon when Barack was 8 years old have kids the same age? Barack's obviously lying (or spinning) and, of course, Ayers won't talk - but we're supposed to believe Ayers would let a young inexperienced Barack (who the NYT claims Ayers hardly knows) run Ayers's multi-million dollar foundations, would roll out Barack's political campaigns at his house, and also make financial contributions to assist him in same? Would YOU do all that for somebody YOU hardly know? And why does Barack's story keep changing? Why won't Ayers talk? Why is everybody closely involved with Obama a crazy radical? What are they all hiding? (Check out that last link)

How stupid do these people think we are?



This shit just don't wash. Not for the presidency. The office is too important for the issue of an unrepentant terrorist and socialist, determined to spread his radical ideology through our schools, not to be cleared up, 100%. Barack Obama has nothing but radicals, socialists, and communists in his background - that much is clear - and he has to answer questions about them, completely, before he can be seriously considered dog catcher. That's how it's always been and there's no reason to change the rules because some people have got a bug up their asses for a black president. Show me another presidential candidate who made it through with the same type of questions and associations hanging over their head.

Like that bullshit NYT hit piece about John McCain's "affair", this report is so soft-headed I can't believe they even bothered running it.

It's like they think they still have credibility or something.

Don't Paint The White House Black Just Yet

I've wondered why the media hasn't followed up on this since it happened:

Above is a video of the 3rd debate. Advance it to 3:30 and you hear John McCain accuse Barack Obama of launching his political campaign in Bill Ayers's living room, and Obama clearly saying, "that's not true."

But is it true? Of course it is - but, just like with the John Edwards Scandal, everything that bloggers have been discovering about Ayers and Obama is something somebody doesn't want the voters to know. Several mainstream media outlets and major newspapers - like the New York Times and the L.A. Times - have claimed that there is “no recorded basis” for John McCain’s statement that Obama launched his political career in Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn’s living room.

O.K., check this out:

Click on the image above and you'll see a recently-removed, full-sized, screen shot from a January 27, 2005 blog post that was on Maria Warren's liberal blog "Musings And Migraines". It was saved by Patterico, a blogger at "Patterico's Pontifications" and Warren's post clearly says:

"When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him–introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread." [Underlined emphasis TMR's]

So what do we have here? We have Obama telling a bald-faced lie to the American people in the third debate. We now know he also told a bald-faced lie to the American people in his debate with Hillary Clinton when he claimed Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood. We also now know Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn had to have had a much deeper relationship than Obama has claimed if Ayers and Dohrn were selling Obama as "the best thing since sliced bread." (Why would anybody say that if they didn't know a person well? TMR has traced them all the way back to 1987.) And now we know that all the other stories about Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn should be given much more weight - and journalistic study - than they have been so far.

TMR will be more than happy to answer any questions regarding Barack Obama's many lies, but, right now, I'm happy to finally be able to settle this one, and end a solid post with the time-honored street phrase:

Gotcha, bitch.

This Ain't No Game

The game mainstream media is playing while covering Barack Obama's campaign is just stunning. Is it that they don't want to do their job? Or they no longer know what their job is? Are they part of the "Obama Cult"? Being a news junkie, those are but a few of the many questions I'm left to wrestle with these days.

Take the language "journalist" Ron Claiborne (above) used in this ABC News article on the McCain campaign's decision to go forward with attacking the connections between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers:

"There is scant evidence that the two men were much more than acquaintances who happened to serve together on two not-for-profit boards several years ago."

Really? From what I've heard, their families have a relationship that goes all the way back to 1987 when Michelle Obama and Ayers's wife, the terrorist Bernadine Dorne, worked together in a Chicago law firm. Funny that the "girls" of The View never brought that up. But since it's out there, and documented as fact, do you think it's fair or accurate for Claiborne to report "there is scant evidence that the two men were much more than acquaintances"?

And why are reporters taking the word of Obama's supporters and ignoring his many critics, when his supporters have, repeatedly, been doing nasty things to keep the story quiet? Their ugly attempts to censor others, alone, should be a huge story considering the supposed intent and image of the campaign Obama claimed to be leading. But, for some reason, the MSM hears and sees no evil.

Barack Obama headed Bill Ayers's multi-million dollar pet project, The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and it was a complete and utter failure. Hardly the relationship of just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" that Obama described to George Stephanopoulos. Where are the TV news stories and newspaper articles holding up The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or The Woods Foundation, or the results of his housing policy, as proof Obama doesn't know how to run anything? Isn't that the media's job?

And why can I find all these articles but Ron Claiborne and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News can't? What are they doing with their time this election season? Apparently coming up with clever ways to say nothing so, if there's an Obama presidency, they're insured to have access so they can spew more blow-dried nonsense to the citizens of the country.

Check out the lawyer-speak Obama used when talking about Ayers:

"He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

So Obama admits he does "exchange ideas" with the commie terrorist; it just doesn't happen "on a regular basis", right? Maybe we've got some kind of "Manchurian Candidate" thing going on here?

Maybe not. But wouldn't you think a real "journalist" would want to know what ideas a potential president of the United States is exchanging with an unrepentant terrorist who has said he's determined to bring down America and our capitalist system? Sounds like a front page headline for whoever gets to the bottom of all this stuff but, for some reason - after 19 months on the campaign trail - no journalist has seen fit to find out. Bizarre, isn't it? I mean, it's bad enough that Obama said it during a televised debate and neither George Stephanopoulos, most other journalists, or the general public cared enough to bat an eyelash, but considering that charges of cultism have been leveled at the Obama campaign for some time now, I ask you: what else could be going on here? Or am I to believe, when it comes to the highest office in the land and the most powerful position in the world, all these supposedly smart people just got struck with a bad case of stupid?

Ron Claiborne continues:

"What was known about Obama and Ayers' relationship was that Obama attended a political function at Ayers' home in Chicago in 1995. They served together on a couple of non-profit community service boards. Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's state Senate campaign in 2001."

This is just a bunch of easily disproven lies. That "political function at Ayers' home" was actually the coming out party for Obama's Senate campaign. Those "non-profit community service boards" were actually Left-wing organizations with a mandate to indoctrinate our youth with Ayers's ideology. And why would Ayers give any money to a guy he hardly knows, or thinks rejects his ideology? This story - and the reporting that's offered as "coverage" - stinks like a pastor smoking in church. What gives?

Claiborne again:

"The McCain campaign kept suggesting there was more to it. Whenever McCain officials were asked what more they knew, they would say only that they were certain the relationship was closer than Obama described it."

Wouldn't anybody think reporters would try to see if they're right? Get a little "Watergate" action going? What are they waiting for? Like Steven Colbert is going to get to work? Ayers is a terrorist, y'know? Why wait for the McCain campaign to sort it out? Is it just me or isn't running for office what political campaigns are supposed to do and investigations of terrorists what reporters are supposed to do? Could I be confused about that? All Ron Claiborne seems to want to know is what he ends his article with:

"Obama was at Ayers's house once 13 years ago. They served together on two boards. Their children went to the same school."

Sorry, bub, but, amongst those of us who still have working brains, that simplistic assessment of this particularly complex relationship just won't do:

This ain't no game.

The Challenge Of Exposing The Challenge

"The Obama campaign claims that his name was suggested [for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge] by a couple of other foundation presidents who were on a committee there, and that may or not be true. But the truth is that Bill Ayers was the most powerful person on that foundation and he was on that committee that selected the board members. It is extremely unlikely that Obama would have been chosen without Ayers’ say so. And I also published recently an e-mail message I got as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. You can read that message a couple of ways, but I think the most plausible reading is that the fellow who sent it—who used to the executive director of this foundation—was basically admitting to some people that he had been avoiding reporters’ questions about the full story about how Obama got chosen. I wish the press would follow it up, but at least it begins to look as though there might have been a cover up there about Ayers’ rule and choosing Obama in that—to be head of that foundation."

-- Stanley Kurtz, on one of the questions the press won't investigate (during a discussion on how the Obama campaign has used intimidation tactics to try and silence him) on Townhall.com.

"Ayers was the only individual,...with legal authority to select board members. He relied on advice from Leff, Graham and Simmons but only he had the legal authority to approve board members. Thus, legally, Ayers approved the selection of Obama as a result of meeting with him prior to the board meeting (in fact, even if they had not met or first met at the board meeting Ayers’ silence would be deemed approval). Thus, Ayers was “involved” and in fact had to have been given his role as the legal agent of the Collaborative.

If Ayers objected to Obama, Obama could not have become a member of the CAC board because no one else had the legal authority to approve his selection. If Ayers had come out of that lunch with Obama and expressed an objection Leff, Simmons and Graham would have had to go back to the drawing board.

While I have speculated that Ayers and Obama knew each other before the CAC, it is nonetheless clear to me that Ayers appointed Obama to the board and thus helped Obama’s career at a very significant point – just in advance of his first political campaign which as we know was launched at Ayers’ house a few months after these events. That impact stands apart from whether they shared a pre-95 history."

-- Steve Diamond, in an e-mail to the The New York Times "reporter" that interviewed him three times (but without the NYT printing his answers, or documents, revealing the multiple business connections between Obama and Ayers) while the rest of "the press" continues to act like Diamond doesn't exist - with his left-wing blog Global Labor and Politics.

Is The NYT Just Dumb - Or In The Tank?

“'The Times refused to discuss the written record that fills in this story, apparently because they did not understand what they were looking at (unless one wants to conclude that they are operating as part of the Obama campaign).]"

-- Steve Diamond, the main blogger the "bored" NYT discussed Barack Obama's connection to Bill Ayers with (three times) on his blog Global Labor and Politics.

Also, one thought that keeps leaping out at me, regarding the arguments of the Obama campaign, is the timing:

All of Barack Obama's legislative accomplishments (which weren't all his alone) took place in the last two years of his being an Illinois Senator (a job he held for 8 years, before becoming a United States Senator for 143 days, and then launching his presidential campaign). What was he doing for the previous 6 years? We know he voted "present" more than anyone else. And it was a talk with his political "godfather" in Chicago, Elvin Jones, that alerted him, if he wanted to become a United States Senator, he'd need his name on *something* to move forward, which seems to have been his only goal in government - not helping the country.

Obama has been trying to divert attention by saying he was only 8 years old when Bill Ayers was bombing the country, never mentioning he was an adult after 9/11, when Ayers said he "didn't do enough" bombing, and, together, they were serving on the board of The Woods Foundation. By that time, he had already served directly under Ayers on the board of the Annenberg Challenge (Steve Diamond, in the link above, says Obama was "hand picked" by Ayers) and it's been revealed that Michelle Obama worked with Ayers's wife, the terrorist Bernadine Dorne, all the way back in 1987 - proving the two families have a long history and share an apparent meeting of the minds when it comes to political goals. What are Ayers's publicly stated political goals? Bringing down America and destroying the capitalist system. I'd say, as the #2 guy to reap financial rewards from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - Obama got over $181,000 - Barack Obama is playing his role very well. John McCain, by comparison, got only $21,000 and is on record as trying to stop the mortgage crisis years ago.

The Obama campaign is throwing out the 20 year old Keating Five Scandal as proof John McCain is craven and doesn't understand the economy. What they don't mention is John McCain was exonerated in Keating Five and was completely transparent with reporters and the public when the verdict came back, exonerating him. So what's the point of bringing it up? To further distract the public from questioning who Barack Obama is and what he's been doing hanging with so many terrorists, criminals, racists, and other unsavory types.

I'll have much more later, but for now, keep an eye on the timing of Barack Obama's political moves: he hasn't been around that long - most people didn't even know his name until recently - so his campaign's lies (and that's what they are) are very traceable.

And he can't wiggle out of all of them.

Oh: It's Not Wrong if The NYT Doesn't Do It

"My name is Larry Grathwohl and I infiltrated the Weather Underground for the FBI. I had no idea when my journey began in August 1969 that I would see and experience the degree of violence and hatred of our democracy that existed in the Weather Underground. Bernardine Dorhn, Bill Ayers, and the other people I would meet had as their sole purpose the destruction of the United States. The fact that I ultimately became the only source of information regarding the activities of the Weather Underground and the fact that Bill Ayers now claims their goal was only to bring about the end of the war in Vietnam requires me to respond.

At least Bill admits the Weather Underground 'crossed' the line of legality but mitigates this admission by stating that the effectiveness of the 'symbolic acts of extreme vandalism' is still being debated. He further states that the selected targets were 'property, never people' and that their only purpose was to end the war in Vietnam. Bill is simply not being truthful and is rewriting history to reflect a completely different role for himself and the Weather Underground from what actually took place. 'Bring the war home, kill your parents' was the mantra being chanted when the group decided to go underground in December 1969 and there certainly isn’t anything anti-war in that statement. I’m also curious as to who is debating their status. When I think about the Weather Underground my immediate thought is 'terrorism and death.'"

-- Larry Grathwohl, with a “Response to ‘The Real Bill Ayers'" that The New York Times refused to run, but which easily found a home on Pajamas Media.

Obama's NewAge Radicals: Here We Go Again

[Michael Klonsky], whose disgust for mainstream politics led him to launch a new, Maoist Communist Party in the 1970s, today supports Barack Obama so enthusiastically that until recently he was blogging on the Illinois senator’s campaign website. And boycotting this November’s election, Klonsky maintains, would be a “tragic mistake.” He notes that Barack Obama isn’t Hubert Humphrey, 2008 isn’t 1968, and the strong movement he served back then is “relatively weak” now. “My own support for Obama is not a reflection of a radically changed attitude toward the Democratic Party,” Klonsky recently explained to me. “Rather, it’s a recognition that the Obama campaign has become a rallying point for young activists and offers hope for rebuilding the civil rights and antiwar coalitions that have potential to become a real critical force in society.”

Michael Klonsky is hardly the only ’68 radical supporting Obama this year. In 1968, when Mark Rudd organized the student strike that shut down Columbia University, the SDS chapter that he chaired ridiculed Kennedy and McCarthy as “McKennedy,” claimed that “neither peace candidate offers an alternative to the war policies of Lyndon Johnson,” and suggested “sabotage” as an alternative to voting. Rudd succeeded Klonsky as national SDS leader, presiding over the organization’s metamorphosis into Weatherman and performing “a liaison function” for the plot to bomb a Fort Dix soldiers’ dance that instead killed three Weathermen, including two of Rudd’s Columbia SDS colleagues. Today, Rudd renounces bombs, embraces ballots—and supports Obama. “Probably the biggest difference between Columbia SDS people in 1968 and in 2008 is forty years,” Rudd explained in an e-mail. “Most of us have lived with compromise our whole lives. As kids we were raving idealists who thought that ‘The elections don’t mean shit’ was a slogan that meant something to somebody. It didn’t.”

Then there’s Carl Davidson, who was one of SDS’s three elected national officers in 1968, when the organization first urged young people to refrain from voting. His disillusionment with traditional politics became so pronounced that, in the post-sixties hangover that followed, Davidson joined Klonsky in rejecting traditional politics for fringe Marxist movements. More recently, he helped organize the 2002 rally in which Obama first spoke out against the Iraq War and now serves as the webmaster of Progressives for Obama. “The last thing we need is a simple repeat of 1968, which saw Nixon and the new Right as an outcome, as well as the defeat of [Humphrey],” Davidson contends. “One thing I’ve learned. Social change is not made by elections, but it certainly proceeds through them, not by ignoring them or chasing the illusion of end runs around them.”

Former SDS president Tom Hayden is also in the Obama camp. Hayden organized the made-for-TV protest outside the 1968 Chicago convention. But the catharsis of throwing debris at the Chicago police, the purer-than-thou sanctimony that tolerated no distinction between Lyndon Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, and the exhilaration of “voting in the streets” instead of in election booths combined to ensure liberal defeats. Hayden’s orchestrated anarchy proved more damaging to Humphrey’s presidential aspirations than any dirty trick Nixon’s henchmen could have dreamed up. Klonsky remembers Hayden plotting to spread nails on a highway; another SDS leader recalls Hayden encouraging activists to firebomb police cars. If the Democrats couldn’t run a convention, many Americans wondered, how could they run the country? “Did the radicalism of Chicago elect Richard Nixon?” Hayden asked, clearly pained, in his 1988 memoir. “Having struggled with that question for twenty years, I find there is no ‘neat’ answer.”

Now Hayden is one of the organizers of Progressives for Obama.

...Progressives for Obama resembles a Who’s Who of SDS luminaries. In addition to Hayden, Rudd, and Davidson, the group includes Bob Pardun, SDS’s education secretary during the 1966–67 school year; Paul Buhle, a radical professor who has recently attempted to revive SDS; Mickey and Dick Flacks, red-diaper babies who helped craft 1962’s Port Huron Statement, a seminal New Left document; and SDS’s third president, Todd Gitlin. Age and experience have mellowed some of the SDSers in Obama’s camp. Gitlin, for instance, has evolved into a respected Ivy League professor and milquetoast liberal. But others still glory in a past that can only damage Obama’s future. The aging New Left still practices a therapeutic politics that places a higher value on feelings of personal liberation than on restrained pursuit of political aims. ["Feelings of personal liberation"? That would be NewAge - TMR]

Obama has already taken political hits for his connection to Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. In the sixties, Ayers advocated that young people kill their parents, and Dohrn praised the Charles Manson murders. Alongside their Weather Underground cohorts, the pair declared war on the United States and participated in a bombing campaign that hit the Capitol, the Pentagon, and numerous law enforcement agencies. The couple eventually reinvented themselves—first as academics, then as players in Chicago-area Democratic politics. Obama praised Ayers’s book in the Chicago Tribune, sat with him on a foundation’s board, and benefited from a fundraiser held at the couple’s home. Ayers spoke at events organized by Michelle Obama; Barack Obama spoke at events organized by Ayers.

With the public revelation of this unseemly relationship—between unrepentant terrorists and the man who now seeks to oversee America’s war on terror—and the impact it’s already had on voter attitudes, one would think that other sixties extremists might be more reserved in proclaiming their support for Obama, knowing the damage such associations can do to his candidacy. As for Obama, he’ll need to do some distancing of his own. He protested that he was only eight when Ayers, Dohrn, Rudd, and company embarked on their bombing campaign, and that’s reasonable enough. But he’ll need to go further.

— Daniel J. Flynn, on why the connection between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers is important, if only to TMR and New York's City Journal

It's Not All About How You Want To Look At It

When Pope Benedict came to America recently, President Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network he agreed with the Pope's view that "there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies." This is one of the things I like about our president: say what you will about the details (understanding that in politics we have to be able to compromise, and he's a believer and I can't) but when it gets to the big picture - like the basics of right and wrong - we (all three, this atheist and those two commited believers, alike) can easily agree. President Bush always seems to know what's right in that regard, while most people I encounter, whether in my life or my reading, are floundering. He's much smarter than people give him credit for.

Moral relativism (assuming there's no such thing as "right" and "wrong" or they're kind of the same) is a big problem in this country, and the Pope's visit highlights one of my favorite examples of it.

As everyone knows, I'm no fan of religion, and that includes Catholicism. (Though I do enjoy reading The Anchoress.) But not being a relativist, it also includes Buddhism - and it's own spiritually-atheistic emissary, the Dali Lama. President Bush likes both men. But most Leftists treat the Dali Lama like there's something unique about what he's selling, while the Pope is just a hypocrite who shuttles around in a bullet-proof funny car, spouting a bunch of Thou Shalt Nots. It just isn't so. Long ago, I posted a quote from Patrick French's essay, "Dali Lama Lite", about what Lama-lovers either don't know or refuse to accept - here it is again:

"Tibetan Buddhism is not a values-free system oriented around smiles and a warm heart. It is a religion with tough ethical underpinnings that sometimes get lost in translation. For example, the Dalai Lama explicitly condemns homosexuality, as well as all oral and anal sex. His stand is close to that of Pope John Paul II, something his Western followers find embarrassing and prefer to ignore. His American publisher even asked him to remove the injunctions against homosexuality from his book, ''Ethics for the New Millennium,'' for fear they would offend American readers, and the Dalai Lama acquiesced."

That would seem to make the Dali Lama the exact same type of man as the Popes. But, actually, that makes the Dali Lama even less of a figure because the Popes haven't lied, or tried hide their shit, merely for the sake of good propaganda. They've been up-front about what they think, and if you don't like it, tough. The Dali Lama, on the other hand, is playing his followers for the incense burning suckers they are. It's just one big morally relativist spiritual party with him: I won't show you my hypocrisy if you won't show me yours.

I'm mentioning all this because my friend (and regular reader) Elizabeth Mika, just sent me two articles (from the Chicago Tribune) that highlight how moral relativism is being applied, regarding the presidential election battle between Barack Obama and John McCain.

In the first article, Steve Chapman takes John McCain to task for criticizing Barack Obama, regarding his friendship with the Weatherman Bill Ayers, when McCain is also friends with the convicted former Watergate conspirator - and now radio host - G. Gordon Liddy. McCain once told Liddy it was "always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." Chapman then says:

"Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn't disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?

Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history—and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as 'a prisoner of war.'"

O.K., you got all that? And I can tell you (as an old hand at this political game) it's all true: G. Gordon Liddy is a true-blue American nut case. How he ever got into politics, or inside the White House for that matter, is still a mystery to me after all these years and I know the guy's story pretty-fucking-well. My favorite Liddy tale, behavior-wise, regards an incident where he held his hand over an open flame for an extended period of time to prove he was "harder" than everyone else in the room.

I can hear some of you now (we've got him!) thinking because McCain associates with Liddy - and I support McCain - this is practically some kind of political double-play, that might have the capacity to shut me up, turn the election leftward, and gain some kind of advantage for Obama, the Democrats, and/or the Left. Well, I hate to bust your bubble, but no such luck. Let's finish dealing with Giddy Liddy, first, and you'll see why:

G. Gordon Liddy, despite all his faults (and, boy, are we talking about a guy with a lot of 'em) is an American patriot in the Ollie North mode. The kind of guy who, if his president (it was Richard Nixon at the time) asked him to crawl through broken glass to do something - he'd do it. Even crazier, if Liddy got an assignment that didn't require crawling through broken glass, he'd request that broken glass be added just so A) he could really show his loyalty to the president and the country B) he could show his courage was off-the-fucking-charts (compared to the rest of us "wimps") and C) so he could brag about it, for the rest of his fucking days, on that goofy little radio show of his.

Now keep in mind, to their credit, career Democrats in government (as opposed to anti-war protesting civilian weenies) are no slouches when it comes to the "crazy patriot" routine either. (I like patriots, y'all:) Richard Armitage (the guy who admitted he revealed Valarie Plame's CIA identity - not Scooter Libby - though I don't hear anybody screaming about that little fuck up,...) is pretty crazy too. My favorite Armitage story is from right after 9/11, when the government wanted to go into Afghanistan. Ol' Rich called up President Mussharaf and gave him an ultimatum - in the form of The Macho Response:

Join with the United States in the War On Terror or we'll bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age".

Mussharaf, a military general - who no one on earth would call a coward - got Armitage's message, loud and clear, and the rest is history.

My point is, we've got these guys - Democrats, and Republicans, who don't take crap and are batshit crazy - on our side. Totally insane or not, they are patriots, and G. Gordon Liddy, for all his crimes, never killed anyone (though he has proposed doing so, probably, every day) and he proudly went to prison with his head held high (mostly because he's so nutty he isn't capable of lowering it.). That's why he - and Ollie North - have got radio shows, speaking engagements, and millions of fans, despite doing time.

One of which is, apparently, John McCain.

On the other hand, Barack Obama's friend, Bill Ayers, was fighting against our government in an organization that got many Americans killed and (when you add in children, etc.) devastated more lives than I can calculate. When the Weathermen's (accidental) Greenwich Village townhouse explosion occured, they were building bombs to set off at a dance - at a dance! - for noncommissioned officers at the Fort Dix, New Jersey Army base. Three Weathermen (actually Weather-women) were killed in that "gory" blast alone. The rest went underground to continue their vicious nonsense and, when it was all over, Bill Ayers only escaped punishment on a technicality.

You can read the other Chicago Tribune article Elizabeth sent me for more on Ayers' illustrious "career".

My point, here, is to say that for anyone to suggest - in trying to assess the associates of Barack Obama and John McCain - that there's anything alike, between a terrorist like Bill Ayers and a patriot like G. Gordon Liddy, is just taking moral relativism to it's extreme. This example is an even much more outrageous use of moral relativism than when Obama compared his grandmother's comment (she, a white woman, once voiced her fear of a single black male to him, in private, family member to family member) to Jeremiah Wright's weekly paranoid ravings in front of a congregation of thousands, as well as on TV, radio, and on CDs. There's just no comparison, but, somehow - with Democrats using moral relativism - Barack Obama got away with it, and the Left agreed he did a marvelous job doing so.

I wouldn't let him do it again.