The Election Year Coda of Bill Ayers

With the votes counted, William Ayers, former leader of the Weather Underground, "unrepentant terrorist," Obama's "pal," speaks on his prior dealings with the President-Elect and inculpates Hillary Clinton as the but-for cause for GOP character assailments:

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.

He cannot resist the visceral urge to take a cruel, ironically radical cheap shot at John McCain:

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam . . .

The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.

And he visualizes the tableau conjured up by Governor Palin:

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.) The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.

Asked to comment on Bill Ayers's summation of the past few months, Reverend Wright bellowed, "NOT GOD BLESS, MCCAIN. GOD DAMN MCCAIN! NOT JOHN MCCAIN, BUT JOHN MC-K-K-K-CAIN. CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST! WOOOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOOOO!"

Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko could not be reached for comment.

John McCain At The Crossroads

The backwoods legend of Robert Johnson, the most notorious of the Delta musicians, steward of guitar black magic, led him to the crossroads in the swamps of Mississippi, near Dockery's Plantation at midnight, where his uncompromising hunger to master the blues entered him into the Devil's bargain. 10 years of celebrated euphony in exchange for his everlasting soul.

McCain seeks only 8 years from his unholy pact, but the consideration is the same as Johnson's offering. John McCain barters with his soul in this election:

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayres, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500."

McCain-Palin robocall, 2008 Presidential Election.

"Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain ... if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

Bush-Cheney robocall, 2000 GOP Primary Election

And as reported by Jack Knowledge, McCain's distinction between the two attack methods:

Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that -- things that this is -- this is dramatically different and either you haven't -- didn't see those things in 2000.

I am disgusted by John McCain. The man I would have supported in 2000? Gone. Devoured by the election cycle's witching hour. Consumed by his party's unapologetic philosophy - that even deceptive means are justified if the ends are the maintenance of power and ongoing control of the federal government.

That's anti-democratic. That's anti-American, Michelle Bachmann, you profligate whore of partisanship, in case you couldn't recognize it.

"Deceptive" is the appropriate word against a campaign that plays it fast and invidiously loose with rhetoric. McCain views the message "Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayres, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans" to be "legitimate and truthful."

The clear impression from this vile propagation of McCain's pliable "truth" is that Obama and Ayers conspired to bomb places in America. Obama worked with Ayers and Ayers's organization. That is not only a permissible connotation of the language selected, but the first meaning that jumps to mind. And that is the facial intent of the tactic - to make Obama terrifying, radical, risky, insidious. His party's "extreme leftist agenda" is idiomatic icing on the sinister cake of trepidation cooked up by these robocalls for unassuming, uninformed voters' consumption.

"Deception" is ethically worse than "lying." Deception is stretching, torturing, coloring a simple truth (eg., Obama is not a terrorist) until it becomes misleading and complex (eg., Obama "worked" with terrorists). Lying is an outright evisceration of the truth and much easier to ferret out.

McCain knows the difference. His limp outrage at the suggestion he has adopted tactics of his opponents in 2000 thinly masks a displeasure with himself and the candidate he has become. My opinion: John McCain is battling for his soul. His party wants it and offers the presidency in exchange.

As a side note, hasn't the Ayers-Obama question been asked and answered? McCain harps that we need to know the extent of the relationship, noting Obama served on a charitable board with Ayers which donated money to ACORN. Well, John, isn't that the extent of the relationship, unless you luridly suggest that our "need to know more" will expose Obama and Ayers soldering fuses and copper leads to bomb detonators in a dank, hidden basement furthering a clandestine agreement to reconstitute the Weather Underground.

Are you going there, John? If not, what else would you like to know? Did Ayers and Obama breath the same proximal oxygen within the confines of the Woods foundation's board room? They did, John. Are you satisfied yet?

Another member of the same civic board Ayers and Obama served on is a big financial supporter of John McCain. Does John McCain accept money from those who pal around with terrorists? A legitimate and truthful question.

Sorry to ask, John. But we need to know the extent of the relationship.

There's still time, John. To save your soul. It's dark out there, but not midnight yet.

**UPDATE**: A few more "legitimate and truthful" McCain robocalls buzzing the swing states:

"Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats got caught putting Hollywood above America. On the very day our elected leaders gathered in Washington to deal with the financial crisis, Barack Obama spent just 20 minutes with economic advisers, but hours at a celebrity Hollywood fundraiser. Where are the Democrats' priorities?"

You mean like McCain "rushing back" to Washington after suspending his campaign, but forced to detour to CBS studios in New York to chat with Katie Couric or speak at Clinton's Global Initiative? No shame.

"You need to know that Barack Obama ... opposed a bill requiring doctors to care for babies born alive after surviving attempted abortions ... Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats are too extreme for America."

This one is particularly distasteful and another slick deception from McCain. No mention that the state already had strong and unchallenged protections for the surviving child's protection in place and that this bill was a Republican Trojan Horse trying to bully through a bill that primarily robbed women of their right to choose.

The Blog of William Charles Ayer

Trolling the Internet for information on Bill Ayers, former head of the radical left wing organization the "Weather Underground, which orchestrated a series of bombings on government buildings in the early seventies, and whose connection to Barack Obama has come under fire from the Republicans in the past four days?

Oh, you're not? What's that? You're watching Real World/Road Rules: The Island? Um . . . well. Sorry to interrupt you then.

When the show ends (see, I'm DVR'ing it - Wednesday's rotation is The Island and Project Runway and I would gladly vote for Sarah Palin in exchange for Kenley's long-awaited "Auf Viedersehn" from fraulein Klum), why don't you measure the man, the purportedly sable silhouette of Mr. Ayers at his blog: http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/01/

Some intriguing posts by Mr. Ayers - some from his own voice. I found this tidbit worthy of comment from a post dated January 30, 2008 written reflexively to President Bush's final State of the Union address:

"The picture is grim: Empire resurrected in the name of a renewed and powerful jingoistic nationalism; war without end; identification of opaque and ill-defined enemies as a unifying cause; unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion and militarism of the entire society; white supremacy essentially intact and unyielding; the entangling of religion with government; the shredding of constitutional rights, the casual disregard for human rights, and the systemic hollowing out of democracy; corporate power unchecked and the ideology of the market promoted as the only true expression of democracy; fraudulent elections; a steady drumbeat of public secrets — obvious lies issued by the powerful, like 'we don’t torture,' whose purpose is both future deniability as well as evidence of power’s ability to have its way regardless of law or popular will . . ."

Makes you want to blow something up, huh? (Note: I can make this joke and avoid P.C. vilification simply because all of Ayers's erstwhile pyrotechnics resulted in no human death or harm - Ayers's claims an outcome by design - though I am horrified that he is not in prison and somehow resides in the lofty corridors of Chicago academia, and generally held in high regards. Only Professor Orenthal James Simpson being appointed Faculty Emeritus at USC's College of Criminology could disturb me more).

Dispatching levity for a moment, the blog is worth a gander.

Posted by Warm Apple Pie