About Bill Ayers. Please discuss.

I personally think he is a decent man, with many faults like anyone else, who has done a LOT of good for the country and his community. He is being libeled unnecessarily and deserves more respect.

I understand it is politically dangerous for Obama supporters to have a strategy of defending Ayers, but SHOULD WE NOT IGNORE the blatant mischaracterizations of the man?

If the right succeeds in portraying Ayers as an "almost Osama," etc-- it won't matter how tenuous the contacts with Obama are, they will still hurt Obama.

I feel like a part of the strategy--perhaps not from the campaign itself--ought to be to debunk the mischarterization of Ayers.

--He participated in the Civil Rights movement, in sit-ins at places that would not serve African Americans.
--The alleged bombings carried out by his supporters DID NOT TARGET CIVILIANS
--He and his wife turned themselves in to the authorities in 1980.
--Since then he has worked on many social programs (e.g. his tie to Obama)
--He had became a distinguished professor at a major university.
--He HAS regretted what he had done. Albeit his condemnation of his past acts is not vehement, it is still regretful.
--He has NOT stated "we should have done more" . This is a horrible mischaracterization. He only stated that he thinks that "we" (the american people) should have done more to stop the war in general.

I am also concerned for his safety. HE WAS A NON ISSUE UNTIL THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN-- living as a private citizen in Hyde Park. Now people want to kill him.

FOR FUCKS SAKE. His politics are close to many of ours, and his character strikes me as very mature, reflective, and well-intentioned.


Okay now flame away.

scare his base and low info voters. Bill Ayers 2008 = OBL tape 2004.

Ayers' reputation as a "terraist" has certainly been greatly exaggerated, but at least he's a live human being. Not a Disney Animatronic robot like what was on that Osamabot tape in 2004. The real Osama went to meet his 72 virgins a long time ago.

and even more so, since it's an Annenberg Board that Ayers sat on.

Annenberg is a McCain Contributer, and was a close friend of Ronald Reagan, McCain's hero.

Sounds like in degrees of separation, McCain accepted money from a Terrorist sympathiser.

Republican Clears Obama On Ayers!(Audio)
by JustForTheRecord
Tue Oct 07, 2008 at 10:11:20 AM PDT

Uh-oh...Ayers won't work anymore (There goes the kitchen sink, I guess here comes the table)...Some republicans from Chicago are saying what most of us knew all along. Bill Ayers was a commonly acceptable figure in Chicago by everyone--Democrats, Independents, and even Republicans. Are they all America hating, terrorist loving traitors to America?!


"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. "It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."


.............

Second, there were people of all political persuasions working on this effort with this "terrorist" Ayers and who saw him as acceptable and Obama was no closer than any of the others.

...no one on the board or on the Annenberg Challenge staff remembers Obama being any closer to Ayers than to any other member of the board. The Annenberg board also included several civic, business and education leaders, many of them Republicans...


In fact one person close to the issue states:

"I don't remember ever hearing anyone raise concerns or questions or concerns about background," says Anne Hallett, who has worked closely with Ayers on the Annenberg Challenge grant and with Obama on education and other community and legislative matters. "And that included everybody I was engaged with," including prominent Republicans, and corporate and civic leaders in Chicago, Hallett adds.


Oh, really?!

So not only was Obama working on a Republican funded initiative, but prominent Republicans were involved on the board with Ayers. Do they all hate America so much that they are "palling" around with terrorist? He had been in their midst for years, why did not the republican's run him out of town.

Obama was new to Chicago. He hadn't been elected to anything. He really did even know where the bodies where truly buried in Chicago (evidenced by the thumping he received when he ran for the state senate). He just wanted to serve the community and do good work. However, Ayers had been there for years, building a reputation that was so mainstream that a life long Republican, who was a former Ambassador appointed by Nixon and Regan, allowed the release of $50 Million to let him, prominent Republicans, corporate, civic leaders, and a Harvard trained community organizer form a board to oversee the disbursement of these funds related to school reform.

Audio -
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95442902

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/7/131120/885/357/622049

mccain is tarring every politician, AND walter annenberg, with the terrorist brush.

and he's still going to lose. big.

bob dole without the class.

He was never tried or convicted of any acts of violence.

What exactly makes him a domestic terrorist?

He was an antiwar protester. I was an antiwar protester. If Ayers was a domestic terrorist then I am a domestic terrorist.

All they have is hate and bullshit.

There is no way the Obama campaign will try to defend Ayres. Although he has changed his ways, his past will not go away. Hillary correctly pointed out that the repubs would bring this up as an issue. It's better to ignore it as much as possible and have a good response ready for the next debate.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago.

Now he has written a book, ''Fugitive Days'' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it.

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

His bombings did not target civillians but his supporters did: See Cathy Wilkerson and Susan Saxe, also Chris Dobbs, Judith A. Clark and Samuel Brown.

So now the people who appointed Ayers and Obama in the positions they had are supporting McCain

security.

His dad was CEO of Commonwealth Edison, for gawd's sake

Swing voters didn't understand Ayers and th Ayers phenomenom in 1970. They are going to understand him now?

After Obama is elected, Ayers can have his own security detail. Until then... he's on his own. If he spent 10 years underground eluding he FBI he can take care of himself for three more weeks.

To dignify their various indulgences in make-believe as a 'campaign of terror', or even as serious revolutionary action, is an even greater joke, and one in worse taste, than they were.

That Mr. Ayers and his wife, Ms. Dohrn, have lived it down and emerged intact, as productive citizens, is fine and good. People deserve a chance to outgrow youthful folly, and it is inspirational when they do. Youthful folly is pretty general, after all, though it takes a variety of forms. Most of us who manage to reach a certain age intact have a lot to look back on, and marvel at our having come through without having paid the full potential consequences we exposed ourselves to.

This pair is hardly unique, especially in Chicago. We have a Congressmen, Rep. Rush, who was once the object of a police death squad, dispatched to massacre Black Panthers by the state's attorney, 'Mad Dog' Eddie Hanrahan: he is alive because he did not go home at the time he usually did one particular night. There is a fair chance he will become Mayor of the city in a few more years.

"Young men are incapable of good judgement, though they have good luck."

poseurs they were, and although Mr. Ayers and Ms Dohrn may not have carried out any acts that harmed people, their cohorts did.

Wealthy narcissists make poor revoluitionaries.

Indeed, by most indications it already has. It's hard to point to a quiet, intelligent distinguished professor of education, someone who's life for more than thirty years has been exemplary, and have any but the most rabid, ignorant yahoos realize just how much of a crock of s**t this whole thing is - and it points out just how desperate McCain and Palin have become (while highlighting their followers' own "stellar" qualities).

Ayers, unfortunately, is in a position where he'll need to get through the next month, and hopefully afterwards will avail himself of some legal assistance through the Dems to nail the bastards for libel and harassment.

and Ayers has the resources to take care of himself.

kick