Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends,” but there’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation. . . .
“I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now — so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community,” said Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who has known Obama since the early 1990s and supports his campaign.
“Not only is Obama the opposite pole from radicals like Ayers and Dohrn at least as one point were, he’s not a conventional left liberal by any means,” he said. . . .
Obama’s campaign dismisses the notion that his relationship with Ayers should be seen through the lens of the latter’s violent past, or his present lack of regret for the bombings.
“Sen. Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence,” said Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton. “But he was an 8-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost 40 years ago is ridiculous.” . . .
As Bloomberg News reported recently, Obama and Ayers have crossed paths repeatedly in the last decade. In 1997, Obama cited Ayers’ critique of the juvenile justice system in a Chicago Tribune article on what prominent Chicagoans were reading. He and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago for three years starting in 1999. In 2001, Ayers also gave $200 to Obama’s state Senate reelection campaign.
Many details of the 1995 meeting are shrouded by time and by Obama’s and Ayers’ refusals to discuss it.
The exact date is not known, but it was in the second half of 1995, before Palmer’s decision — late in her losing congressional primary against Jesse Jackson Jr. — to jump back into the special election for her state Senate seat. (Her decision produced a rift between her and Obama, who was able to get her thrown off the ballot on technical grounds.)
“That’s too long ago — that’s ancient history,” Palmer said, when asked of the meeting.
Dr. Young and another guest, Maria Warren, described it similarly: as an introduction to Hyde Park liberals of the handpicked successor to Palmer, a well-regarded figure on the left.
“When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn,” Warren wrote on her blog in 2005. “They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”
Contacted by e-mail, Warren declined to describe the meeting further and later blogged of her concern that Republicans would use accounts of the event for “left-baiting.”
Young described the gathering as a matter of “due diligence” for Palmer to introduce her chosen successor to constituents. “Many of us knew him already,” he said.
They, like others in his old Chicago world, now consider him a bit too “conservative” for their liking, as Warren wrote recently.
I am shocked. Someone at VC actually has a reasonable point of view on something.
You better watch out Lindgren, you are risking being kicked off VC. I think they want only anti-Obama pieces, no matter how unreasonable or petty.
Of course she also worked at Sidley &Austin, the same place poor little Michelle Obama worked before she could become proud of America.
No wonder we attorneys have such a poor image to most Americans.
Give me a break. I think a few of the posts are wrong and unfair, but as blogs go, this one is about as fair as they come. Plus, the blog posters don't delete even strong criticisms of their posts. If you want a strong pro-Obama blog, go to Washington Monthly or Andrew Sullivan's page.
False.
The information has been deleted from the Wiki page because it is not true. The misconception appears to have come to be because someone cited a non-comprehensive list of Illinois lawyers that she was not on.
According to the Wiki discussion page, here's her official bar listing:
Inactive status is normal for lawyers who want to do something other than practice law. It lets them avoid CLE requirements and may allow them to avoid high regular registration fees.
I dunno, there seem to be a lot of new posters here all of a sudden, all saying "Awful tone! So unworthy!" A cynic might scent troll.
I have no problem Obama and Ayers crossing paths on more than one occasion. I am even willing to entertain the notion that Obama's worldview has in some way been shaped by this connection. So what? I've crossed paths with Noam Chomsky and Robert Bork. I've had conversations with both of them and my worldview undoubtedly has been influenced by both of them. Does that mean that I should be shunned by both the Left and the Right now?
The problem here is with double standards. No, the media is not more protective of Obama--if anything, the media has been most protective of John McCain of all the candidates, even before McCain secured the nomination.
Here's an example. Only a couple of days ago, USAToday had an investigative article claiming that Obama is not as distant from lobbyists as he wants everyone to think. Their evidence? Obama has 38 lawyers working on his campaign that work for firms that have lobbying interests.
WoW! What a concept! This is the ultimate guilt-by-association smear, considering that McCain has more than that number of senior campaign staff who are actual lobbyists! Did USAToday mention this fact in the interest of full disclosure? Of course not! It's so much more fun to poke wholes in Obama's popular image.
Perhaps the media does not see it--they are not very good at collective navel gazing. But certainly VCers should recognize their own limitations. Unlike the public media, you have no legal obligation to your readers. However, I believe that most VCers do have concerns about balance (ok, I can think of two exceptions who are rather shameless in this regard), about being seen as fair. This does not mean that you have to examine McCain-Obama parallels every time you mention one or the other. But you should at least consider how a similar analysis would reflect on the other candidate. The same issue came up repeatedly in connection with Wright--not once did any VCer mention McCain's own pastor problem that si far more egregious than Obama's.
If you want to play a game of gotcha, be prepared for it to come back and bite you on the ass.
Nice try at changing the subject. The reason Obama is getting a lot of attention is because he and Hillary are engaged in a heated battle for the Democrat nomination. McCain has the republican nomination sewed up. His problem is getting noticed while these two Democrat party titans are battling it out.
Second, the reason Obama SHOULD be getting attention is because he is a blank slate. He came out of left field (pun intended) and no one knew anything about him. Thanks to the nomination process we are learning a lot more about him. And the people he hangs out with, and does business with, and whose church he goes to, and whose money he accepts. All the things that we already know about Hillary and McCain.
You get to know a person better by knowing who his friends are and who his enemies are than you do by hearing him speak. A good politico will tell you what he believes you want to hear. But his friends and enemies are a truer view into his soul. Keep this in mind as you judge people.
I realize that it is hard for those on the Left to find themselves subjected to the anal exams that only those on the Right have been subjected to by the MSM. The screams of anger have been heard from coast to coast. It amuses me that they MSM is forced into this by this pair of Democrats, each with their own sycophants in medialand.
It isn't surprising that Sidley Austin hired her: most biglaw firms hire law school graduates before they are admitted to the bar. And personally I don't have a problem with law firms hiring felons if the Character and Fitness Committee (or whatever they have in Illinois) has approved them. A felony conviction isn't supposed to be a lifetime sentence of starvation. In this case, I guess the Character and Fitness Committee didn't approve, however.
I leave to others whether it is appropriate for public or private universities to hire convicted terrorists, noting only that the lib/lab America-haters who staff the universities of course didn't see an issue at all, though the faculties protest pretty regularly whenever a prominent Republican official gets near a campus. What contemptible people university professors are!
"Having Black Friends": *In-Denial?) Racist:: "Voting for Obama":(In Denial?) Partisan Republican
Your entire attack is this: You're concerned about his relationship with Ayers. So you looked into their joint past. And there's not much there. And you looked into their connection at the Woods Foundation. And there's not much there. So you looked at where the money's gone to. And it's a combination of nonpartisan and traditional center-left charities like the Nature Conservative and the Urban Justice Initiative. Oh wait, and there's ACORN - a get out the vote effort that like any voter registration system targeting non-Republicans in the last 8 years has been wrongfully, and without evidence, accused of voter fraud, oooh, you're now terribly concerned.
Now the accusations against ACORN are about as silly as you can get - a person with even a passing interest and an IQ above 80 should be able to realize what's going on. ACORN pays individuals to go out into urban communities and get them to register people to vote. They can't exactly moniter these people's actions, so they pay them as independent contractors, by the name signed. The large majority of these people did their job, but certain enterprising young "contractors" decided it would be easier to just make up a ton of names to increase their dough. When ACORN found out about this in a couple instances, it was THEY who alerted the BOE and pushed for prosecution. But Republicans had a better idea -- and screamed voter fraud and pushed for voter laws that would hold ACORN legally and criminally responsible for the actions of their contractors. One can only wonder what the benefit of doing this is - other than to shut down ACORN, who some perceive as registering more Democratic voters than Republican voters, of course.
And guess how many of these fraudulent registrations tried to vote in the general election? If you guessed "1", try again -- go lower.
But Lindgren, who did so much research to find Obama's nefarious connection to ACORN, couldn't be bothered to do even the minimal research to to determine that the accusations of voter fraud against ACORN are themselves fabricated. But he voted for Obama, so you should be Really Concerned.
So we shouldn't investigate McCain simply because he is not a blank slate? How ridiculous. If you want to smear Obama by guilt by association, then let's also do it with McCain. And McCain has certainly courted the religious right wingnuts to a degree that should make anyone pause.
If you treat a sensible post like it's from Bernstein or Kopel, you're going to convince everyone that it doesn't pay to be sensible.
Does she now admit that it's wrong to kill people, though? I don't have a problem with someone hiring felons, but hiring unrepentant felons is another thing.
I understand your pain Fearless. But you must be patient. Once Obama is elected
ruler for lifePresident no negative comments about him will be allowed anywhere.Thank you for once again making the media look like the tone deaf morons that they are.
It seems to me that the controversy here appears to be Professor Ayers' unrepentance with regard to terrorist and seditious acts of which he admits leading. Are you somehow equating "vile element[s] of the evangelical community" with admitted (though unconvicted) criminals?
Your supposition that Barack Obama's worldview has been shaped by interaction with Bill Ayers may be correct.
By the way, neither Noam Chomsky nor Robert Bork is connected, much less led, any organization committed to the overthrow of the government. So yes, you might be shunned, but not by willfully interacting with an avowed
educatorterrorist.I'm a big fan of balance. If you have evidence that John McCain is involved in any way with individuals who advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government, trot it out. I'll bet it will get a fair hearing here.
Unless (as to Bork) you count the Nixon administration.
Aardvark is right. Any similar scrutiny of McCain's associations over the years would dig up much more real dirt than the current "guilt by association" attacks on Obama. (Can you say Keating Five?)
As Anderson said, Justin's bashing of a sensible post does not make sense.
And Randy R is right to criticize Moneyrunner's paranoia about a liberal media conspiracy. McCain has long been a media darling, and it should not be unreasonable to expect "equal opportunity" smearing of all the candidates by the media.
Maybe the media think that they are being fair if they dig up the same size pile of dirt on each candidate. They may be feeling that Obama's dirt pile is still too small.
The 60's SDS and Weather Underground accomplished _nothing_. Working in concert with the Nixonian right, they have demoralized and weakened our nation with a toxic brew of multiculturalism and racial/ethnic preferences and separatism. Obama was campaigning as a post-racial candidate, but he is stuck in 1968.
Your comment begs the question is why a member of a terrorist organization was ever permitted to join a law or any other college faculty?
Given the calls for UC to remove Yoo from the faculty of UC Berkeley School of Law, this observation is interesting on a different level.
William Ayers was a member of the terrorist organization the Weather Underground, which bombed and murdered people to "protest" the Vietnam War. The University of Illinois at Chicago hired and tenured Ayers as a Distinguished Professor of Education.
With exquisite timing, Ayers told an interviewer right after 9/11 that he did not regret his bombing campaign and wished he could have done more. UI took no action to fire Ayers. Indeed, UI had not comment at all about one of its faculty wistfully wishing he could have bombed and murdered more people.
In comparison, John Yoo wrote a memorandum of law.
Are those of you condemning the faculty at UC for not condemning and shunning John Yoo for writing his memo willing to condemn the faculty at UI and Northwestern for not condemning and shunning the terrorist Bill Ayers and his fellow Weather Underground member?
Are those of you calling for UC to revoke tenure for and fire Yoo willing to also call for the same action by UI and Northwestern for not condemning and shunning the terrorist Bill Ayers and his fellow Weather Underground member?
Ayers and Dohrn were never convicted of killing anyone. The evidence the FBI gathered against them and their ilk demonstrates beyond doubt to any reasonable person that Ayers and Dohrn were accomplices before and after the fact to multiple terrorist acts that did in fact kill people. That this evidence is inadmissible in court does not vitiate its probative value for people making judgments outside of the legal system.
Joseph, your "substantive" riposte, contra McCain in a recent and related thread, consisted in mentioning the word "Iraq," along with some schedenfreude about a single incident in that theater.
Am not sure, but I believe it was the day of 9/11, or the day immediately prior, something along those lines and something BHO would most certainly have been aware of.
Ayers' interview with the Times was conducted in the weeks before 9/11 and published in a bizarre coincidence on 9/11. Unless you believe the Times or Ayers had inside info about the impending attacks while conducting the interview &planning the publication of the times that morning, a coincidence is all that interview is. Now this doesn't forgive Ayers' comments about not setting off enough bombs, but it should put to rest the notion that Ayers sympathizes with the 9/11 terrorists.
O. J. Simpson was never convicted of murder either, but would you be caught dead in the same room with him?
No, Michael, that is incorrect. What I have said in a few of these threads is that, in my opinion, it would be better if discussions about Presidential candidates focused on important substantive issues, such as Iraq, and not these substance-free "gotcha" talking points of the right wing.
If the post you are referring to is the post I think it is, the thread was about the "electability" of the candidates. I gave my opinion that Iraq would be a bigger problem for McCain than the "bitterness" remark would be for Obama. And I did mention two things in Iraq that had gone badly recently (I reject your catty term of "schedenfreude"): car bombings and desertions from the army.
As I stressed in my earlier posts, reasonable minds can disagree about what is happening in Iraq and/or their effect on "electability." Although, to support my point, I'll mention two more things. First, the most recent Zogby poll has Obama *even* with Hillary in PA. Other polls have Hillary still in the lead, but it seems that the "bitterness" issue hasn't hurt Obama they way some have hoped it would. Second, some new polls on public sentiment in Iraq have just come out, and the view of a majority of Americans does not seem as positive as those of Sen. McCain.
As I said on the previous thread, however, reasonable minds can differ on Iraq, the economy, and other important issues of the day. I just wish folks on this blog (and in national debates) would turn their attention to these issues, and not the manufactured "gotcha" issues that, fortunately, seem not to be getting that much traction in the real world.
Man, guilt by association is something else. Because I may choose to run for public office some day, I hereby denounce and disown any and all Clayton Cramer statements that might be construed as being anti-gay, now or in the future. I will continue to read his firearms postings, but I will chant afterwards, "Shame, shame, everybody knows your name," to take the curse off.
You don't have to be named Aubrey to notice that a fair number of people don't see the problem.
A good number of other people think that's a problem.
Among those not seeing the problem is BHO.
And he doesn't understand, not so he would think about it in a productive fashion, that others think that's a problem. He simply can't conceive of it as a problem--that he schmoozes with terrorists--and he's so far from seeing it as a problem that it never occurs to him that others might. So he is blindsided by it. A cannier pol would have figured out that a non-trivial portion of the electorate are against terrorists who blow up Americans, and taken some pro-active steps to deal with the issue.
All in all, I am no fanboy of Obama, but this guilt-by-association has altogether gotten out of hand.
Arguably, some have (sorry. I couldn't resist).
great. and i appreciate the response earlier to this. regardless, it is not a necessary requirement of being a terrorist, to have killed or injured somebody.
i have heard the same argument used to defend the ecoterrorists at the U of washington. the problem is the assumption is wrong. you can still be a terrorist and commit a terrorist act that does not involve death or injury.
it's semantical anyway. assume he isn't a terrorist. blowing up buildings is bad, whether or not that meets your narrow definition of terrorism
it is their tactics that make them terrorists. the fact that they weren't very good at being terrorists just makes them fools on top of being terrorists. or maybe that's redundant?
Bill Ayers tried stopping this injustice. Disagree with his methods, but there's no question who was the bigger perpetrator of injustice and evil during this time period. That was the US Government. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Are we going to denounce Menachem Begin? The King David hotel was pretty nice.
Obama keeps saying that he has the best 'judgment' to be President. What kind of judgment is it to not see the problem with socializing with unrepentant terrorists?
Who did they kill?
It has always been my understanding that the only ones killed in a Weather Underground bombing were 3 of the group themselves when a bomb they were making exploded.
Not that this doesn't mean he isn't a terrorist--but to what are you referring?
Umm, yes. That is kind of the point. Blowing up stuff doesn't make you a good person, in general.
I think you forgot to add a <sarcasm> tag
What utter bullshit. What multiple terrorist acts killed people that might be attributed to the Weather Underground (not just Ayers and Dohrn)? And what is the evidence that implicates Ayers and Dohrn? I wouldn't believe FBI assertions on this unless the evidence is forthcoming. The FBI of the time was totally corrupt when it came to dealing with the far left.
I too reserve the right to point out the hypcrisy of condemning one candidate's past associations without similarly condemning the other candidates' past associations -- regardless of whether the Republican candidate supported by most of the bloggers and commenters here has sewn up the nomination.
The hypocrisy is not cured by the posture of the nomination process. Obama and Clinton are currently running against each other, but all the candidates are simultaneously running against each other, as well. If that wasn't the case, for example, McCain wouldnt have chimed in about the "bitter" comment.
But, overall, the substance of this post is emminently more fair than most Bernstein posts, which simply seek to smear those with whom he disagrees. As an Obama supporter, I was curious to leanr the facts behind the Ayers and Wright relationships. The facts are out, and they don't change my vote.
Who did the three who blew themselves up kill? No one. You liar.
the american heritage dictionary
terrorism n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
bill ayers own words: "guilty as sin...free as a bird"
"Kill all the rich people. ... Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents."
again, the fact that he was incompetent and never managed to kill anyone is hardly evidence in support of him being an upstanding citizen and not a terrorist.
(apologies for the troll feeding. i'm feeling stubborn today.)
The weathermen bombed numerous buildings across the country including the pentagon, a judge's house, the New York State Department of Corrections, national guard offices, electrical towers, police stations, and the U.S. Capitol and threatened to bomb more all in order to advance their political agenda of terrorizing the citizens of the US. Any reasonable definition of terrosism would include these actions as terrorism.
They killed themselves.
Aside from his own military service in WWI, Adolf Hitler never killed anyone with his own hands either.
I am pretty sure he did not actually kill anyone with his own hands in WWI either as he was a bike messenger.
You've just described the US government.
You've just described the US government.
Not true when Congress gives authorization thereby making the use or threatened use of force lawful.
I'm sure you have a piece of software that maps some very interesting social network graphs about the Clintons, too.
Only if you assume that the phrase "a person or an organized group" means the same thing as "societies or governments". I don't see any indication of that in the american heritage dictionary.
In any event, your argument is irrelevant to the topic of whether Bill Ayers is a terrorist or whether Barrack Obama has significant ties to him (or even if other candidates have similar, unreported ties).
I am pretty sure he did not actually kill anyone with his own hands in WWI either as he was a bike messenger.
That figures. What a sissy!
Bill Ayers tried stopping this injustice. Disagree with his methods, but there's no question who was the bigger perpetrator of injustice and evil during this time period. That was the US Government. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Are we going to denounce Menachem Begin? The King David hotel was pretty nice.
Nice to see Osama Bin Laden posting on this blog now.
Ahh. Those Radical Chic events. Who do you call to give a party?
Hmmmm...that echoes the awfully familiar defense asserted at the Nuremberg Trials.
Indeed it does! I'm non-partisan in the approach. In order work out bias -- actually, to measure bias and weight it -- I used Bill Clinton as another subject. I haven't run McCain or Obama through it yet because the spider is still being worked on. It's also easier to gather information on current and former presidents than it is to get on candidates (that will change soon).
Regardless, I think a lot of people would be absolutely shocked at the connections you can uncover.
How dare you find fault in the Democrat's Christ-Child, Barack Hussein Obama. Don't you realize that he is the long-awaited Messiah who will usher in a new religion that will be written in gospels according to St. Markos Moulitsas, St. George Soros, St. Jeremiah Wright, and St. William Ayers?
You should run your software on the Kennedy men. I'll bet one will see a lot of mafiosos and women who died under mysterious circumstances in their network.
This is as true as the story that the reason John McCain survived the POW camp when others died is that he was a Viet Cong spy.
Actually, that's not even a story that I've heard. I even made that up. But as long as truth doesn't matter, the sky's the limit.
Being unfair to Hitler is a challenge, but this manages to do it. He was a messenger, but you couldn't ride a bike in the trenches where he was going to &fro with the messages. I believe "runner" is the more correct title.
I don't know that he killed anyone, but you didn't win the Iron Cross, 1st Class for being a sissy in WW1.
So Hamas is no longer a terrorist organization? I'll let the appropriate people know.
Since when do you call people who kill themselves "killers?" You are trying to call the Weatherpeople killers when, with the single exception of the Wisconsin bombing--the perpetrators of which were convicted and served time--they at most were guilty of property destruction. Do you think Ayers and Dohrn really would have been on the streets so quickly had they been involved in killing anyone?
As for the commenter who called me a troll, just because I disagree with you doesn't make me a troll. And the public conception of terrorist is one who kills innocent persons for political ends. You are twisting the meaning in order to accuse Barrack Obama of consorting with terrorists. You are guilty of two perversions--changing the meaning of terrorism from that the public generally uses and then using guilt by association to attack Obama. Disgusting but in tune with what generally appears on the VC blog in pieces about Obama (with the exception of this piece by Lindgren).
My understanding was he did both bike and running and that his fellow soldiers considered him both brave and lucky. I never called him a sissy, but from what I have read he never shot anyone during the war or anything similar. He got shot at a lot and barely missed being blown up on multiple occasions and was injured and gassed.
I think he did personally beat up people in the early years of the Nazi movement. This is just what I remember from reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich a couple of years ago.
so, therefore, I would not call you a troll, just morally twisted.
here is the first definition of killer from Answer.com: One that kills. You are seriously arguing that a person who has killed someone is not a killer. I have to give you credit for trying.
They are guilty of property destruction with bombs that were meant to terrorize people into enacting their political agenda. They said do what we want or we will start bombing stuff and then they started bombing stuff when the government did not do what they wanted. That is a pretty standard definition of terrorism.
It is amazing what lengths people will go to defend Obama.
i called you a troll for posting nonsensical rantings, even after presented with pretty obvious facts that negate your claims. say, for example, a dictionary definition of the word terrorism that clearly defines a terrorist as more than just one who kills innocent people. you can cling to your definition all you'd like - that won't make it true.
guilt by association? maybe. it seems like it would be fair to ask a presidential candidate to comment on his association with an unrepentant terrorist. i don't think this makes obama a terrorist. nor do i think him going to wright's church makes him an america hater. nor do i think his long association with rezko that he likes to fib about makes him a criminal.
i do think he has an amazing lack of judgement for who he spends his time with for a candidate who is supposed to be running on "judgement."
right- so it's okay to go around detonating explosives because the potential to not harm or kill anyone is present...
in each case of sitting on either board with these people- you didn't have to.
Little old ladies, maybe -- he carried a whip in the early days, but was never particularly brawny, to say the least.
Someone should figure out how many 5-year-olds Hitler could've taken in a fight. As opposed to having them shipped off to gas chambers.
17. What I really want to know is why Obama hasn't rejected and denounced Hitler beating up 5-year-olds?
Oh, please, Moneyrunner. I'm a little tired of the Right complaining about how the so-called LiberalMedia runs everything. That's a tired dog that has run it's course.
I recognize that you may have reading comprehension problems, and if they are genuine I am sorry for the affliction. However, I am fairly sure that you are using the typical Liberal trait of deliberately misstating what I said. If the Liberal media ran everything we would be bankrupt, a direction that is the logical end point of that leading member of the Liberal media, the NY Times.
What I said was that the Liberal media is no longer passing off the sins of either Hillary or Obama because both have adherents who are willing to highlight these faults despite the desperate cries from the Left of “let’s Move On.” How does it feel?
So we shouldn't investigate McCain simply because he is not a blank slate?
I have no problem with investigating McCain. In fact I’m sure that there will be a lot of that going on. In fact, the media was in love with “Maverick John” when he was putting his thumb in the eyes of Conservatives. It was the Right – in the person of Rush Limbaugh – who may well have been his most ardent critic. Of course that will change as soon as the Democrat blood bath is settled and the media takes its usual sides.
How ridiculous. If you want to smear Obama by guilt by association, then let's also do it with McCain. And McCain has certainly courted the religious right wingnuts to a degree that should make anyone pause.
“Smear by association” is a nice way of making his association with questionable characters off the table.
Have a nice day.
This is another tired dog considering we have the $10 Trillion Dollar Man in office...
Just from memory of Rise and Fall, since I do not have it in front of me, I think he was involved in several small riots and street brawls, usually against communist groups and speakers from other parties. I think he was even arrested for assault on one of these groups at least once in the years before the Beer hall putsch. I do not remember how specific the book was with the details of the violence and whether he actually attacked anyone personally.
no. you are lying, or at a minimum, misstating the position
terrorism is not defined by THOUGHTS. it is defined by ACTIONS.
thinking it is ok to blow up a building does not make you a terrorist. BLOWING UP A BUILDING (especially to promote a political agenda) DOES.
and yes, crimes against property CAN BE (and often are) terrorism.
ecoterrorists lighting up the UW research building certainly qualifies, for instance.
and again, it's SEMANTICAL. if you want to redefine terrorism to ONLY include acts that cause injury or death to others, then you can discount a LOT of terrorism. but again, that's just semantics. regardless of what you call them - they were bad d00ds who used explosives.
that's irrefutable.
no "thought crime" there.
"As for the commenter who called me a troll, just because I disagree with you doesn't make me a troll. And the public conception of terrorist is one who kills innocent persons for political ends."
again, false. the public (rightly) generally views acts like - blowing up SUV's in a car dealership, committing arson (as done recently in woodinville area to protest development), etc. is terrorism also.
i realize that many leftists think all property is theft, so is that why destroying property for political reasons, intending to cause fear is not terrorism in your eyes?
again, it's a childish attempt to redefine words. and it's largely irrelevant in that even if we accept your twisted definition, it does not minimize the evilness of these people. a terrible act is a terrible act regardless of what you call it.
if mcveigh had blown up the federal building when it was unoccupied, he still would have been a terrorist. but admittedly not as BAD a terrorist (or as good if you are on the evil inverse scale). if he had blown up himself in the process of trying to blow up the building, he still would have been a terrorist. lack of competence does not make you less a terrorist. just less a successful one.
i am not even addressing the obama/ayer connection. that's really not the point for me. the point is that i can't stand this (classic) redefinition and moral equivalence exercise.
Apparently, you are the one, Moneyrunner, who has comprehension difficulties in reading your own tripe.
No one is complaining about the media highlighting faults on HRC or Obama. The problem is making mountains out of molehills--something that has been the hallmark of Republican politics since Nixon.
Another problem--something you clearly do not comprehend--is that the media has collectively, and quite openly, continues to have a love affair with John McCain.
The fact that many newsroom-level journalists have liberal views is not surprising. But one should recognize that 1) just because it may be more common, it is not the only view in the newsroom and 2) professional journalists with liberal credentials usually do not wear their politics on their sleeves (unlike their more conservative colleagues who are only too happy to complain about viewpoint discrimination even when none exists).
We do not have--and likely never had--a "Liberal media". We now have an almost entirely Corporate media. And while the beat journos may be largely liberal, the editors and publishers, as well as columnists, are consistently conservative. So you're right--if the corporate media ran the economy, they'd be just as lousy at it as the current president or, for that matter, John McCain.
Debating with someone who believes that the MSM is not overwhelmingly and obviously liberal is an obvious exercise in futility.
The rest of your points are equally nonsensical.
But thanks for playing.
Don’t you get it yet? Your name is particularly apt.
Krugman, Dowd, Collins, Freidman, Herbert, Rich - consistently conservative?
I wish there was a more effective way for Obama's supporters to get the message heard. There will be true social justice once the really smart people are in charge. Sell it, baby!
Guilt by association is very, very bad, but guilt by implied association is just dandy. That's what I'm talking about. You guys are so smart, that I can't even keep up. I even missed the fact that GW Bush is running in '08.
Nice cherry-picking. Now take a look at the list of columnists at Townhall.com (all syndicated).
MR,
I rest my case. You are clearly and unequivocally superior to anything I will ever be. Can you ever forgive me for my doubts?