Obama Responds On Ayers

Obama has an ad up "responding" to the criticism of his relationship with Bill Ayers.  Left unanswered:

1.  Why has he been covering this up before now? 

Obama's campaign manager David Axelrod told The Politico in February that

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," he said. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

Obama told George Stepanopolous during the Democratic debate in Philadelphia that

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from.  He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

The so-called "Fact Check" at the Obama website does not disclose that Obama and Ayers worked together on a failed education reform project from 1995 to 2001, and had probably first teamed up on education reform in 1987.          

ADDENDUM:  In May the NY Times had this (my emphasis):

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Not likely - per the workings of the political calendar the meeting would have been in the second half of 1995.  Obama and Ayers had surely met by March of 1995 when the Chicago Annenberg Challenge had its first board meeting.

2.   Set aside the fact that Obama was a mere lad when Ayers was setting bombs; today Ayers is an unreconstructed hard-left radical with dramatic views on education and society - as he explained to Hugo Chavez during a speech in Venezuela in 2006, "La educacion es revolucion!"

Obama worked for five years with Bill Ayers on education reform while they were both with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Are we being asked to believe that, just as Obama initially claimed to have been unaware of Jeremiah Wright's views, he was also unaware of Ayers current radicalism?

Coming soon - "That's not the Bill Ayers I knew".

So why the cover-up?  We can't know, since at this point we don't know the full extent of the Obama/Ayers relationship.  But at a minimum, I expect that the campaign is uncomfortable with the reality that their man of almost non-existent executive experience was in fact chairman of a high-profile belly-flop in education reform.  I doubt that soccer moms or anyone else will be thrilled to learn that Obama hung with unapologetic terrorists, talked about school reform, and achieved nothing.

MORE:  Headscratching and huzzas from the right side of the blogosphere - no one can see how promoting this story helps Obama.

Here we go - Team Obama is filing with the DoJ to squash dissent. 

Jim Geraghty is pleased that Obama characterizes Ayers as a "radical".

Jennifer Rubin calls it "the biggest goof yet".

AllahPundit says thank you to Team Obama.

THE AD:  A transcript might be here at TIME but the page won't load for me.

NO RADICAL LEFT BEHIND:  One of the first education reform grants made by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was to former SDS leader turned Maoist Mike Klonsky, a friend of Bill Ayers from back in the day who had a blog at the Obama site until he was outed.

Comments

[GMax]

Sounds like a taking without just compensation argument. Good that the court found a deal is a deal, and bad that idiots in Congress ( Democrats I am sure ) managed to put the US Treasury at risk by trying to expropriate these lease rights without any compensation what so ever. That is hubris that not even Hugo Chavez has worked up, yet.

[Jim Miller]

Jane - Yes, electing the speaker is the first vote taken by the new House. And I would say that Pelosi is safe unless the Democrats suffer a big defeat, and possibly even then.

[M. Simon]

And I would say that Pelosi is safe unless the Democrats suffer a big defeat, and possibly even then.

Depends on how big.

[M. Simon]

Alexi Giannoulias.

Hot Air

Politics West

[red]

McCain spent a lot of time with communists.... as he was being tortured by them.

[M. Simon]

Charlie,

Have you joined "Old Hippies For McCain"?

Any hippy old enough to vote for McCain is old enough to join.

[M. Simon]

2012 --Obama

Posted by: Semanticleo

What makes you think they will give him a second chance after seeing him fail the first time?

[M. Simon]

Not being left behind are Obama's daughters, who attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. There, tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school. When asked about it during last year's YouTube debate, Sen. Obama responded that it was "the best option" for his children. They had a choice Obama would deny others.

U. Chicago Lab. School

[M. Simon]

DOT,

Depends. If Obama is seen as disgusting enough the Ds could lose a lot of Seats rather than gaining.

[M. Simon]

Oy, planes down all across the country because the "flight plan computer" is down. It is a nationwide problem.

The old "flight plan computer" was supposed to have been replaced. I worked on the terminals for the old one in '67 at Raytheon Computer. It was a wire wrapped job. Repairs were tricky.

[M. Simon]

Sara says:

Hey, we invented the 21st century so you could sit on your a$$ and do nothing but spout crap you know nothing about.

Truer than you know. I invented the I/O board that went into the world's first BBS.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

M.Simon: Back in the ol' BBS days, I was online and all of a sudden I got a message from a guy who said, "What the heck are you doing in my computer?" That was in the days when we still used real names online and even posted addresses and phone numbers. Turned out the guy was someone from my teens whose family had a cottage up the road from ours for a couple of years. He was kinda creepy, but his older brother, Dave, looked just like Elvis and I had a big crush on him, and besides Johnny had a very fast woodie Chris Craft inboard and was always up for water skiing. I, of course, would not have stooped so low as to flirt with him to get a ski tow. LOL. Anyway, he had the coolest email address that started: pcxtc@....

[M. Simon]

Sara,

Remember FIDO Net days? I used to wait from 1 AM to 3 AM for the boards to update so I could see the replies to my comments.

[Wayne]

Linked to your post from Clues To Obama-Ayers Relationship Sealed Away In Richard J. Daley Library

[Wayne]

Linked to your post from Clues To Obama-Ayers Relationship Sealed Away In Richard J. Daley Library

[bobby b]

"Admit what you said was not thought out."

- - - -

Maybe I should have placed the "They meant well" end in quotation marks.

Was I excusing what they did - in the present sense - when I said that? Heavens, no.

What I meant, but didn't say clearly, was that having good intentions was supposed to absolve you of responsibility for the consequences of your actions, whether they were taken following due diligence or with not a single concern or thought except for "gosh, aren't I good?!"

Which is the root mindset that lets you feel virtuous setting in place a race-based payment and preference system, even when it's clear that you've mostly gutted an entire generation of blacks in doing so, and that lets you feel like you alone have compassion for others as you push for government to give things to people upon demand, even though that very giving will ultimately take away the government's ability to do anything, and that enobles you in your own eyes for your earth-saving impulses as you try to stop the use of fossil fuels even though such a stoppage would guarantee death through starvation for millions and millions.

Heck, it's the fundamental paradigm upon which socialism can take over, and eventually kill, a society.

So, yeah, I stopped short of bombing, and they didn't, but that's not a measure of how well we meant - it simply shows how far we were willing to go to get to what we thought was a good result. I meant well, too, but I was too lazy to be bothered to check on the likely result of my actions - and the kids who were slaughtered in Cambodia and thrown into the pit on top of their parents' and brothers' and sisters' bodies as a result of my actions never got the chance to educate me in time.

[J. Williams]

What a mess. Attacking a candidate based on tenuous relationships with "types" we don't like.

Forget the fact that no one can point to a *single* policy stance that is tied to these "types," nor can they point to how these "types" have influence the candidate's past voting record.

So we're led to the conclusion that the candidate is...what...a Manchurian candidate?

Make a point! Otherwise its a classic fallacy, lacking one.

[clarice]

Sure we can:
(a) He lied. Why?
(b) He had a longer relationship with a terrorist than anyone here would--\
why? He's said he didn't know he was a terrorist (than he's stupid) or if that's not correct he has rotten judgment
(c) He's worked with him on public education when Ayers sees education as but anothre revolutionary tool to use against a country he hates quite openly.
I'm begging you--have Axelrod send smarter trolls here.

[battery]

As a long term resident of Southern California, I can remember the high point of Olbermann's career. It was when he was a third rate sportscaster on a second rate local news broadcast. It's been all downhill from there.

[sophy]

I will thank for my friends bringing me in this world. I am not regret to buy habbo gold .