McCarthyism, it’s back!

Keep it up, asshole!

Let’s Get Real: Judge Obama by the Company He Keeps

by Carl Thomas

I wish the tone of this campaign were different and it might have been if Obama had accepted McCain’s offer months ago to do 10 town hall meetings around the country. But Obama chose otherwise. His problem is that he is trying to portray himself as something he is not (moderate and mainstream) while portraying McCain as something he is not (out of touch and uncaring).

One can be known in part by the company one keeps. William Ayers is not somebody who just did evil things when Obama was eight years old.

They have an adult relationship and Ayers has been a booster of Obama’s and they have worked together on “education issues” in Chicago.

Let’s have some perspective here. What do you suppose the mainstream media reaction would be had McCain been associated with an abortion clinic bomber? You know what it would have been. The big media would be editorializing that McCain was not fit to be president. But Obama can associate with a man who belonged to Weatherman, a Communist-driven splinter faction of Students for a Democratic Society. Characterizing Weatherman as “an American Red Army,” Ayers summed up the organization’s ideology as follows: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.” He has never apologized for those remarks or said he has a different world view today.

As recently as 2001, Ayers said America makes him “want to puke.” Nice.

Ayers boasts that he “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.” Of the day he bombed the Pentagon, Ayers says, “Everything was absolutely ideal. … The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

The Obama campaign says if the McCain campaign continues to dredge-up Ayers, they will start mentioning Charles Keating and McCain’s association with the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s and early 90s.

After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle (all Democrats) had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn (a Democrat) and John McCain (the lone Republican) were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised “poor judgment”.

McCain long ago apologized for his poor judgment. We await a similar confession from William Ayers and his candidate for president, Barack Obama.