Gov. Palin Attacks Obama On Ayers Ties; Media Covers For Obama

This is something that the McCain campaign should have done months ago, but it's better late than never. Sen. Barack Obama has worked closely with Bill Ayers, a Weather Underground terrorist whose cohorts bombed the Pentagon, sought to bomb the US Capitol, and attack numerous other institutions and individuals involved in tracking down and bringing those terrorists to justice. His cohorts firebombed the house of a judge involved in the case against several of the terrorists, nearly killing the judge and his family (including an eight year old who recounts the story here).

Of course, that isn't how the New York Times and CNN would like to portray the situation. No, they think that working together on multiple charitable boards over a period of several years, being introduced to politics at the house of Ayers (and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers wife and fellow Weather Underground terrorist), counts as a passing acquaintance.

So, Breitbart runs a story about Gov. Palin attacking Obama on his questionable associations, and has the stones to question Gov. Palin about where she got the information based on the fact that she didn't answer a question in an interview with Catie Couric over what papers or magazines she reads. Palin cited the New York Times in referring to Ayers:

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Palin, Alaska's governor, said that donors on a greeting line had encouraged her and McCain to get tougher on Obama. She said an aide then advised her, "Sarah, the gloves are off, the heels are on, go get to them."

The escalated effort to attack Obama's character dovetails with TV ads by outside groups questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama live in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that develops community groups to help the poor. Obama left the board in December 2002.

Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group of which Ayers was a founder. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s.

Palin cited a New York Times story published Saturday that detailed Obama's relationship with Ayers. In an interview with CBS News earlier in the week, Palin didn't name any newspapers or magazines that had shaped her view of the world.

Summing up its findings, the Times wrote: "A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.'"

The Times clearly downplays the longstanding role that the Ayers took in Obama's early political career, and the fact that the true extent of that relationship is being hidden from view by all those involved. If Obama ever did express comments in support of Ayers overtly, it would mean the end of the Obama politically.

The sad fact is that the media is in the tank for Obama and refuses to truly dig into these relationships. Maybe it's because the Illinois and Chicago political machines have so readily accepted Ayers into their own circles - to consider it acceptable to engage in terrorism against our nation one day, and to be worthy of running multimillion dollar charitable foundations doling out money to failed education schemes for Chicago's public schools the next. Perhaps Obama didn't think anything of the Ayers links at the time because everyone around him was so accepting of Ayers. After all, he somehow managed to become a college professor and was actively engaged in politics.

The problem with all that is that Obama should have known better that to associate with Ayers precisely because of his terrorist past. But for a botched prosecution, Ayers and Dohrn would have been rotting away in prison for their activities. Ayers first wife was killed when a bomb Ayers designed blew up as she and two others were assembling the bomb. [ed: that bomb was actually meant to be detonated at Fort Dix in New Jersey.]

All of these attacks are factually based and go directly to Obama's character and fitness to serve as President of the US. There is no way that someone who is entrusted to protect the nation from all threats, foreign and domestic, should ever have associated himself with a terrorist who wanted nothing less than to start a revolution here in our country. The fact that both Ayers and Obama are appearing to hide the extent of their relationship and friendship is suspicious and disconcerting.

And if you're wondering who that guy in the photo is, that is Bill Ayers standing on a US flag for a photo spread associated with an article in Chicagomag.com. The article, written for the August 2001 edition, notes that Ayers is unrepentant about his terrorism and how he wished he could have done so much more, even though he claims that he never sought to kill anyone with his actions. That's utter bunk as the firebombing of the judge's family shows.

UPDATE:
As if to hammer home the point of the media bias at the NYT and CNN, Stanley Kurtz, who is trying to sort through all those records at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Obama and Ayers were working together for several years, notes that CNN completely whitewashed his statements on the situation, and had the audacity to claim that National Review was trying to debunk Gov. Palin's statements. In fact, it's just the opposite. National Review is trying to shine light on the Ayers-Obama ties that the media refuses to do in any meaningful way.

UPDATE:
Don Surber doesn't mince words on Ayers and his longstanding terrorist ties.

UPDATE:
As I wrote at LGF a short time ago, there's a good reason why Obama didn't think there was anything wrong with Ayers.

Ayers had been recycled and rehabilitated by the academic leftists who allowed him to become a professor at a major university. Politicians in Chicago didn't seem to have a problem with his terrorist past.

Ayers was enabled to become a major player in Chicago politics, and Obama wouldn't think anything of Ayers for that reason. I think it's a damning indictment of the academic system and Chicago politics that they would think to mainstream Ayers at all.

Obama's problem is that he didn't do his own homework on Ayers to find out his background or anything else about his terror past (or if he did, chose to continue associating with him and working closely with him for all those years at Woods and the CAC).

Now, we face a situation where Ayers and his past are being downplayed by the media, the left, and the very institutions that enabled Ayers to become a player in Chicago politics. Pointing out those connections is going to ruffle plenty of feathers - which is precisely why we're seeing the pushback from the media on this.

Oh, and Obama is going to try and claim that McCain is too erratic to make sound policy decisions? Are you kidding me? Obama could have made that argument against his running mate - Joe Biden!

UPDATE:
Charles at LGF points out that Obama and Ayers served on the Woods Fund Board at the time that Ayers did that interview and took the photo above. Their paths overlapped at the board for three years. Again, this isn't merely passing acquaintances, but a pattern of working together on various projects:

Deborah Harrington, president of the Woods Fund, a philanthropic organization in Chicago, said Obama was a director from 1994 through 2001. That overlaps Ayers’ time as a director by three years. It also means Obama served with Ayers for the final months of 2001, after Ayers made his comments to the New York Times.

It means that Obama knew, or had reason to know of Ayers terror ties even at that late a date.