Bateman to LA Times: Release the Hounds, er, Tape

So Sam Donaldson wrote an editorial on ABCNews.com today about "Video Tape That Won't Be Released"-gate. This is what our friend over at The Kansas Citian referenced in some of his comments on our site yesterday.

Apparently, this is the situation:

The McCain campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release a videotape it possesses of Sen. Barack Obama attending (and speaking) at a dinner for Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American activist, many years ago when Obama was in the Illinois State Senate. Also at the dinner was the Weatherman co-founder William Ayers.

Apparently at this dinner, Khalidi said many things that Americans, particularly Jewish-Americans, would not find very appropriate or amusing. Sam Eyebrows continues:

So, why won't the Los Angeles Times release the tape? Because it says it obtained it on condition that it wouldn't. The Times points out that it was the news organization that brought the matter to public attention in the first place by doing a full story. And as far as its agreement not to release the tape, the paper says, "the Times keeps its promises to sources."

Now, it IS interesting that this story didn't gain much traction until the last few days. Hell, I'd never even heard of this alleged tape until very recently even though the Times apparently did a story about it last April - although it should be pointed out that I often don't hear about news until it bops me on the head.

So Donaldson goes on to say that the GOP has a point - the tape should be aired so everyone can see what exactly is on it - but that the Times' promise to its source is more important, because nothing should trump journalistic integrity and the Times promised to keep the tape confidential. Thus, concludes Sam I Am, they are doing the right thing, end of discussion.

Respectfully, Sammy, I disagree. I'm a raging liberal - have been since my days in that barbershop quartet back in Skokie - but there are limits. This is not painted as the usual case of protecting a source. When a source's name or identity is protected by the media, due to danger of reprisals or the like, that is one thing. That sort of thing must be protected in order to allow people to come forward. This situation, however, is not the same.

Unless disclosure of this tape would without question implicate the person who provided it as the source (which seems odd - was he the lone person with a camera in the room?), keeping a promise to keep the tape confidential is protecting nobody but Barack Obama (potentially).

This is not keeping the name of a whistleblower secret. This is keeping the contents of a tape secret from the American public at a time when they are going to be electing their next leader. One of the allegations tossed around is that Obama pals around with terrorists and harbors sympathies for Muslim extremists. This tape seems to me to be the most direct evidence to date that some of that might have some traction (discussed further below). But yet we are not going to have an opportunity to see it and decide for ourselves.

I'm usually a hard-line liberal, but sometimes you must step back and use common sense. Unless disclosure of this tape could potentially harm the source of the tape in some obvious way (in which case, I retract my comments), the LA Times should not be able to hide behind the "confidential source" chestnut tree in this game of "hide and go seek Obama's terrorist pals." Honoring a source's request that you keep something from the public eyes seemingly "just because" is not good enough.

I am going to the polls on Tuesday. My vote is for Barack Obama. But if the Senator has been at dinners and, to paraphrase Governor Palin, "palling around" with divisive elements such as Mr. Khalidi, I have a right to know about it. And that right - along with the right of the other 250 million folks like me - trumps the "confidential source" protection in this situation.

Now, let's be fair here: Khalidi denies being a PLO spokesman, as many have accused him. He is a respected scholar even if his views on Israel and the Middle East are not the same as most Americans. Is he a terrorist? No, I don't believe that he is. But he most certainly is a divisive and somewhat inflammatory figure in the ongoing discussion of the Arab-Israeli question, and we have the right to know what Barack Obama's relationship was and is with him and to what extent.

However, let's also be fair about this on the other side. John McCain has a prior relationship with Khalidi as well. As HuffPo reports:

During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars. A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."

So let's be fair. The LA Times tape is not a smoking gun story. This is not video of Obama strapping up suicide bombers in Ramallah. McCain's had affiliation with the guy too. But it is something that should be added to the overall mix of information out there. There are times for discretion. There are times for full disclosure. It is important that our media outlets have the good sense to discern one from another, especially with everything at stake on Tuesday.

Is It Time For The Nuclear Option: Reverend Wright

The game is getting away from John McCain as Obama opens up a double-digit margin in some polls. Ayers, Joe the Plumber, Muslim, Socialism, pallin' around with Ayers, wealth redistribution, worked closely with Ayers, ACORN, Barack Hussein Obama, "Arab fear," anti-American, inexperience, some more Ayers, texts with Scarlett Johansson - nothing sticks to the Teflon Democrat, or everything sticks, but the folks are too busy licking their personal financial wounds to give a rat's ass.

13 days until the election, not to mention early voting has begun in many states (with a reportedly strong turnout by the Democrats).

What's an old Navy man to do in desperate times with bilge water rising?

Desperate measures.

"My friends . . . LOOOOOOOK!!!!!!!! BEHOLD!!!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS LUNATIC!!!!!! LOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!:




Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. JESUS CHRIST!!!!! Can I get that ballot back!?!?! Yes, yes, YES - I WANT TO CHANGE MY F**KING VOTE!!!!! YOU HEARD ME - GIMME THE DAMN BALLOT BACK!!!! AHHHHHHHHHH, PLEASE LET ME VOTE FOR MCCAIN!!!!! PLEASE!!!! I WANT MCCAIN!!! OH CHRIST, PLEASE GIVE ME THE BALLOT BACK YOU BASTARD!!!!! And, er, um . . . well . . . Palin . . . I have to vote for Palin too? . . . can't just have McCain . . . really . . . did . . . not . . . know that . . . ummmm . . . aaaaaaaah, oooh boy . . . let me see that clip again . . . hmmmmm . . . this is hard . . . okay, her too. Yes, McCain and Palin. Vote for both. Anyone who doesn't pal around with this nutcup.

Man, Reverend Wright should be an army chaplain on the Event Horizon. Liberate tutame, voters!

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.

Barack Obama: At The Adult Table

I remember countless holidays where I was banished to the kiddie table - out of range of civilized discourse, relegated to making armpit farts and flicking boogers. Worse was the adult folk patronizing me with their disgusted glances, mortified that their scion could belch the alphabet.

Tonight, Obama shook his head with disapproving maturity. Tonight, John McCain made fart noises with his mouth.

"Ayers, ACORN, Ayers, ACORN, Ayers, ACORN, Ayers . . . my campaign is about the economy." Did that just happened???? It did. I almost did a spit-take (I haven't done a spit-take since Palin's explanation about Russia's proximity to her foreign policy experience.).

Tonight, McCain would have been better served with honest questions: "Health care plan? In what respect, Barry?"

The split screen did him no favors. At one point, my girlfriend equated McCain to Vincent D'Onofrio's bug character in "Men in Black." Without pause, I eagerly equated McCain's visage to Jeffy Goldblum's fly character in . . . well . . . "The Fly."

The point?: McCain's skin was thinner than soy paper, absolutely ineffective at shrouding the curmudgeon beast below ready to shed its apocryphal mask of gentility at first prodding. He was petulant, irascible and disconnected. He spouted fluff attacks in rapid-fire succession as if trying to eclipse a world record. It was a haphazard carpet bombing of a hunkered-down Obama, prepared for every twist and turn. Hell, even the much ballyhooed Bill Ayers reference seemed trite and tortured - almost as if McCain doesn't have a bone to pick with folks "pallin' around with terrorists" despite his previous message.

I thought Palin was the death knell for McCain. I was wrong - ask yourself this fundamental question and let it govern your vote: Over the past three months, which candidate demonstrated the consistency of character and a never-failing steadiness in the face of tough questions, tough issues, tough matters and tough world events?

Like I said before - vote the man in this election, not the ideology. Vote for an original leader, not for a partisan soundboard. Vote for the candidate who makes very clear in these three debates that your issues will always trump the petty squabbles of the Autumn election cycle.

Full disclosure: For the first time since I became voter eligible I have donated money to a presidential candidacy. After the second debate, I pulled out my American Express Elite-Yuppie-Intelligentsia-250k-per-year Gold Card (a platinum card is too fringe, too extreme, too Sheehan, just too elite) and authorized a $50 payment to Senator Obama.

Why? Because he's consistent. Because he's steady. And because for all the money I will pay in taxes (being in that upper 5% Barack never speaks to), it is a pittance compared to the potential economic loss I suffer without a job, health insurance and affordable education.

Laud the free market. We all do. But it cannot exist in a vacuum. And whether you are Joe Six-Pack, Joey Danko or Joe Plumber, Mikey Dollar Signs will be quick to interject that you cannot draw blood from a stone and you can't siphon taxes from zero dollars of income, no matter how high the rate.

In closing, yes I'm drunk. But sober enough to see that the "October surprise" is just how damn optimistic I am about a major party candidate less than three weeks from Election Day.

If Richard Lowry had little starbursts for Palin, then count me as flaming gay for Obama. My starbursts come with energy independence in a decade.

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

Classy Enough to Leave Him at the Footstep of the Woodshed - Round 2 All Obama

I was hyper-critical of Senator Obama's performance during the first debate at Ole' Miss. He was diffident, impassive and projected an "aw shucks, don't say that" vibe that infuriated me and must have trigger unhinged bellicosity in the true believers of liberalism. He was playing "not to lose" - a tremulous, pussy-footing performance.

Not tonight.

And probably not for the rest of this election.

Barack Obama was downright presidential this evening. John McCain was a spent force eight years removed from the window's closing. A loyal soldier who served his country for 70 years, but retired in 2006. Please go with grace.

We can debate nuances until the bovine, partisan cows come home. That's not what tonight was about, suprisingly - not the issues. It was about appearances. And, strangely, for the first time since President Clinton, a Democrat - a wonderful Democrat, his smile, oh that smile, did he just wink at me, oh my god, there are the little starbursts in my living room, I'm mesmerized, I am definitely sitting up straighter on my couch. Does this make me gay? - DAMMIT LOWRY, GIVE ME BACK MY KEYBOARD. GO BACK TO THE NATIONAL REVIEW AND ATTEND TO THE LAST SHRED OF ITS DIGNITY. Barry Goldwater has placed a coffin above his own coffin and Ronald Reagan's coffin. By the end of this thing, lots of coffins to go around. A funeral pyre for Karl Rove would be a nice closing ceremony.

Ahem.

As I was saying, a Democrat looked like next year's prototype, rakish and cherry, right off the factory line. The new model. The crusty, starchy Republican was a refurbished product, a collection of misfit parts, held together by spit and glue and the faint whiff of 20th Century cognition.

Obama sat there casually. Casually confident. And the "straight talk" express blew a tire and desperately needed a figurative and literal oil change (please see the previous post). The message was stale and message is king in presidential elections. The scuttlebutt is that Palin tried to storm the set with a life-sized poster of Bill Ayers, but secret service confused her for Cindy Sheehan and used the taser.

And you could smell the fear on the right-wing pundits in the post game. They see it slipping away. The Republican fembot on ABC conceded McCain didn't score "the knockout blow" or submit "the game changer." Yeah, no kidding. Even the conservative assassins on FoxNews tonight adopted a defeatist air. Glenn Beck, the very foundation of Goldwater's revolution, could only offer "we don't mind losing, but at least we want to lose fair" in the wake of McCain's lackluster turn and voter fraud allegations in Ohio from the RNC (losing like the Detroit Pistons in the 1990 Eastern Conference finals I see - not even shaking hands, walking off the court with time left in the fourth).

Voter fraud - we have no comment. But I (unlike some) can name a Supreme Court case: Bush v. Gore.

Let me remind you this playful parry comes from a registered independent. Check the rolls. I voted Nader in 2000 and Badnarek (be still my Libertarian heart) in 2004.

As things stand at 10:13 pm PST, I will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States of American on November 4.

The man and his core beliefs are certainly big factors, but more so: I vote for the future. I vote for my family (my girlfriend now 10 weeks pregnant). I vote for the former glory of America and may it return as the erstwhile beacon of light that guided a world. I vote for tolerance, intelligence and foresight.

Unbelievably, without a scintilla of mockery or hyperbole (can't believe I'm saying it) - I vote for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Who am I voting for you ask?

"That one." Thanks for pointing him out, John McCain.

Posted by Warm Apple Pie.

Obama Must Answer For Ayers, Then McCain Should Apologize To America

From Andrew Sullivan and his political blog, The Daily Dish at The Atlantic:

"The far right is obsessed with the question of Bill Ayers, much more obsessed than with the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or the Palin farce or the financial meltdown. Their obsession is unseemly but it is not, alas, without any basis in truth. I find Bill Ayers' refusal to disown his use of political violence in the 1960s to be repulsive. If I were forced to meet him, I would not shake his hand. Obama's fault, however, is not being a terrorist sympathizer, as Palin absurdly declares to mob cheers. Obama's fault is in being a go-along-to-get-along Hyde Park liberal. You can see why he made the decision not to wreck polite liberal society in Chicago by calling out these former thugs. But I do not admire him for it. It's a corner he cut. He deserves to be criticized for it - if not in the fascistic way Hannity does it.But the question of association raises broader questions."

Fair point by Sullivan. I too deem Obama's association with William Ayers worthy of discussion and in season - not because by hypothetical syllogism Obama approves of terrorism and violent means of protest (ie., Obama is to Ayers, Ayers is to terrorism = Obama is to terrorism), but as a reasonable question of his judgment as a public servant. It isn't guilt by association, but uncertainty by association. There would be no tenable smoke here if Ayers had peacefully protested and railed against the sixties establishment, or took it as far as non-violent civil disobedience. However, he made bombs and detonated them. That's terrorism by any definition and Obama shook the guy's hand, unwittingly in the beginning perhaps, but then with a full understanding and appreciation of Ayer's nihilistic past. Obama's surrogates must do more than mewl "smear tactics" and clumsily attempt to dismiss the connection out-of-hand (the "40 years ago and I was eight when Ayers committed these despicable acts" is almost Palinesque in its fumbling diversion).

Notwithstanding the Democratic dance here, the premediated methodology by which McCain-Palin uses the Ayers-Obama connection is the most abhorrent aspect to all this back-and-forth partisan rancor: Simply to engendered hatred/fear of Obama as a radical, a terrorist sympathizer, a dangerous appeaser of leftist criminal syndicalism and anarchy, or, hell, maybe even a "suspicious black fella" (whatever shoe fits for McCain to help undecideds make the "right" decision on November 4). This is dirty pool (or politics as a "tough business" as McCain offered on The View) and jettisons from the realm of legitimate political discourse. It's nothing more then slimy "politics as usual" in an election cycle climaxing in expected baseness.

posted by Warm Apple Pie