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.

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.

If You Couldn't Gather From The Cradle Of Life Music . . .

. . . John McCain thinks Barack Hussein Obama is Muslim or at least has a Muslim name or at least wants YOU to think he is Muslim (if for only one day next Tuesday):


Just when I think John McCain's campaign could not disgust me more, he reinvents himself and reaches new heights in election year destestability.

New Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby poll just released: John McCain is now within the margin-of-error from being a vomitous cretin. Just 5 days to go! You can do it, John. Go get that Los Angeles Times tape. You know, the one where Barack Obama is probably - just speculating here, I mean I know what the Los Angeles Times reported about the tape in detail back in April - burning an American flag and shouting "Death to America." Maybe he has a bomb strapped to his chest. Maybe Ayers, Khalidi and Obama are "three sheets to the wind," reciting windy passages from The Communist Manifesto and spinning maudlin yarns about the halcyon days of the proleteriat.

Keep pushing for tapes, sound bytes, clips, affidavits, photographs, forensic evidence, fortunes from cookies, "magic 8 ball" revelations, testimony from psychics, smoking guns, Elizabeth Hasselbeck's "thought" (singular - cannot generate multiple thoughts), whatever, showing Barack Obama cannot stomach America and seeks to shred the fabric of democracy from within.

If you try hard enough, Bob McRumpson, you may browbeat Fake America into unqualified capitulation. We'll hate gays, stretch the necks of abortionists and keep all of our money upstairs with the top 1% (you know, the conservative elite) and hope some of it trickles down when the rich are overwhelmed by a fleeting spasm of munificence (call me if there's a hurricane, tsunami or tornado. Other than that? Get off my lawn!).

We'll read the Constitution literally and dogmatically (even if that provision counting one black as 3/5 of a vote should rear its mildly controversial head again). We'll support strict constructionist judges who interpret words with their plain meaning as long as plain meaning comports with their world views.

We'll elect officials imbued with the holy spirit, to win the kulturkampf against the secularists and bring them to their knees . . . in prayer. Oh we will pray. We'll pray in school, pray before every class, pray before bed, pray before meals, pray before Kirk Cameron, pray we are not speaking Chinese in 20 years, pray the terrorists leave us alone, pray that God intervenes in this election, pray for the big, bad storms to leave the Gulf of Mexico, pray not that America is on the side of God, but that God is on the side of America (I may have muddled that).

Most of all, we will pray that God rids our country of the scourge of science, the dark magic of scientist-idolaters foisted upon our good citizens, with its hocus-pocus and artifices, misrepresenting the world as 4.7 billion years. We will pray that intelligent design is taught in our schools rather than this sham sorcery, along with bible study in the time slots normally reserved for such impious pursuits like physics, chemistry or biology. We will pray that our history books contain colorful graphics - like a caveman riding a T-Rex.

We will "drill, baby, drill" at the behest of America's foremost energy expert, and suck up that teeny-weeny drop of Alaskan crude, mainline it into our automotive vein and then go back to desert sheiks, hat-in-hand, asking for a bit more of the Arabian black sniff because it's 2020 and our gas-guzzlers are decidedly out of gas.

We will never look to Europe or beyond our borders for ideas and innovations. Limeys and frogs - keep your universal health care. Our 42,000,000 uninsured don't want any of your socialist quackery. We prefer to amputate our gangrenous limbs with a butter knife in the comfort of our housing project thank you very much.

We will not read newspapers. We'll stay woefully uninformed. We'll embrace hypocrisy. We'll demand the end of abuses of power as we abuse power ourselves. We'll shake things. We'll ruffle feathers. We'll be mavericks or reformers or maverick-reformers. We'll prop up clods like Joe the Plumber, deify him and buttress his astute political commentary - that our opponents would seek the death of Israel - with soaring "USA" chants. We will put a boot in EVERYONE'S ass on Toby Keith's command.

Etc., etc., etc., etc. . .

Thanks for the reminder, John, of what I should do on November 4. I look forward to your next campaign ad.

Obama Assassination Plot Foiled! UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS

AP wire reports the ATF intervened in a plot by neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Barack Obama and murder 102 African-American individuals in Tennessee.

That's building racist energy turned kinetic. You see it on the far fringe of the Republican base - the very far fringe. Same intolerance that justifies bombing an abortion clinic, holding up a placard stating "God hates fags," and decreeing a man's middle name is indicative of a connection to Islamofascism.

The only saving grace?: Almost all of this fringe element are too lazy or disaffected to put crazy into motion. Almost all.

***UPDATE***: Some of my conservative peers are livid, angry at the purported intimation of this post - that I am conflating a despicably racist group of skinheads with a living component of the Republican base.

I will not retract my statements, but bring them into focus.

No. These pitiful nihilists, these sub-citizens who bring our democratic enterprise down and defile it, are not part of any Republican party I know.

Notwithstanding, I will not avert my eyes and disregard the patent correlation between the rancid intolerance bandied about by the outer most edges of the current GOP base (Karl Rove's, Rush Limbaugh's and James Dobson's Frankenstein collective) and the impetus to commit harm held by misanthropic groups like the Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan or skinheads. I agree - the dogma birthed by such defective thinking is not exclusive to the Republican party. The Democratic base is no more immune. Its far left extremities also meddle with black principles of radicalism, anarchism and fascism. On the rare instance, these doctrinal underpinnings are seized by beyond-the-pale factions to promote equally aberrant acts (think PETA or the faceless, feral mobs protesting the WTO).

There are domestic terrorists - and many of them have a ideological bent, whether right or left. The Council for Foreign Relations and the FBI classify them accordingly:

The FBI classifies domestic terrorist threats mostly by political motive, dividing them into three main categories: left wing, right wing, and special interest.

And the right-wing extremists share a predictable dynamic:

What is right-wing domestic terrorism?

Attacks committed by people who favor individual freedoms over governmental regulation are classified as right-wing domestic terrorism. Such extremists may be motivated by issues of race, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or other issues, such as opposition to abortion or immigration. According to the FBI, right-wing terrorists often take “racist and racial supremacy and embrace antigovernment, antiregulatory” platforms. Far-right movements often blend political rhetoric with racial undertones, despite recent attempts to reach a broader audience by eliminating racial language. Authorities do not categorize people with extreme right-wing political ideals as threats unless the group they are affiliated with demonstrates a real potential for violence.

Once this threat for violence manifests itself, the bastards have no place in the Republican tent. I concede this. Even the right, militant fringes recoil and reconvene, far away from these pariahs.

No - I do not conflate extremist groups with the Republican base. Even the most abhorrent sub parts of the Republican base. However, if you cannot find at least a tenuous link between the credos or ethos of the farthest right wing of the GOP and the folks that fall off the party's edge into the criminal abyss, then allow me to recommend a 24 hour cable news network you may enjoy.

Are the bovine hoards lumbering through McCain-Palin rallies, documented by video in various states, shouting filth like Obama is a "negra," "Muslim" (as if it's a bad thing), "Arab" (as if it's bad thing), "terrorist" and today, within earshot of Governor Palin, "n*gger," [see UPDATE 3 below] not an ostensible appendage of the Republican base? Are they not an old vestigial tail lingering on the larger Republican organism, doddering into the evening of this election cycle? Even a single drop of water is a constituent part of the greater ocean.

Do you not find an ill-informed, ignorant, intolerant sect infecting the base of the greater GOP at this moment in history? Do you not believe Pat Robertson and James Dobson hate homosexuals when they say they hate homosexuals or blame "abortionists" for the fate of 9-11? Do you not think Phil Berg and Andy Martin, who spout lies that Obama is Muslim and previously schooled at a madrasa, are not sympathetic to some segment of Republicanism in vogue? When Hannity and Limbaugh happily grant them a mainstream audience, amplify their slimy rhetoric and impassively condone their message without factual challenge or providing context?

Yes, the Democrats have their proximal fleas as well. Scroll down to my post about Reverend Wright. I mention him in the same breath as Ward Churchill and Cindy Sheehan, a cabal of far left pernicion. However, the assassination plot hits closer to the Republican home.

If Pat Robertson wants to say abortionists caused 9-11 and Ward Churchill speaks of folks who died in 9-11 are "little Eichmanns," then they can sleep together. I'm not making a distinction. I only note that if hate-mongering devolves into hate-crimes, you can normally locate the perpetrators banging on either the Republicans' or the Democrats' front door as if they belong inside. And you know which door is which.

***UPDATE***: According to David Duke, Obama's candidacy is a "visual aid" for hate groups.

***UPDATE***: I reported erroneously based on other erroneous sources that "n*gger" was shouted at a Palin rally a few days ago. Apparently, the word screamed was "redistributor." Even the pinkos over at Daily Kos make the concession. However, I continue to stand behind every other word of my post and the gravamen of my complaint against the farthest right fringe of the GOP and the farthest left fringe of the Democrats.

Why We Pick On Palin

Because it's always "opposite day" for Governor Palin on the campaign trail. And it's shameless.

We will stop abuses of power, yet I abused power according to the Branchflower report regarding "Troopergate" - the very first finding.

We will stop government corruption, yet I've been part of the corruption as Governor of Alaska, doctoring expense reports to justify travel and accommodations for my children using taxpayer money.

We will stop cronyism and reform government, yet my government's cabinet is littered with cronies and high school chum, and I permitted my husband to wield the power of the governor's office.

I'm part of the middle class, an average Hockey Mom, just like you (wink wink), yet the expenditures on my couture over the past two months rival the value of some embattled mortgages.

I'll tell you that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists and believes America is imperfect, yet Todd and I were affiliated with secessionists who not only think the country is imperfect, but want no part of it.

Why do we pick on Palin? Hypocrisy. The worst kind.

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!