With no serious qualifications or intellectual chops to speak of, all Governor Palin has to rely on is her instincts. And her instincts, as we've seen time and again, are to be nasty, vicious, and far below the standards we ought to expect out of our public officials.
John McCain may be the best apologizer in politics, but Sarah Palin better "learn from the foot of the master" on that score if she is to escape the election without being seen as anything but the talentless, risible cretin that she is.
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I'm inherently distrustful of a CNN article that claims NATIONAL REVIEW has "debunked the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship." National Review has been desperately tracing the route between Columbia quad and its Ed school to find evidence to back their latest goofy hypothesis that Ayers found Obama way back when the latter was an undergrad and the former was getting his PhD.
It is inconceivable to me that a presidential contender would even consider to have any relationship with a man who, to this day and beyond, has No Regrets about his desire to destroy the United States.
It is not only inconceivable but on the part of Obama deceptive and implies that he shares an agenda with him.
I expect in the near future, like Wright and others potentially embarassing, Obama will attempt to throw him under a Mack truck.
As for National Review read a couple of articles by Stanley Kurtz on the relationship between Obama and Ayers while on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that is barely coming to light due to attempts to hide it from the public. While some think the ties go back to Columbia and the Upper West of NYC the heart of the story is in Chicago.
It's odd how Obama seems to be the only person or institution who cannot shake hands with Ayers and Dohrn. Sidley Austin hired Dohrn even though she couldn't pass NY's character & fitness requirement due to her past; no boycott of Sidley. The University of Illinois hired Ayers and gave him tenure -- no state legislators defunding the University. Northwestern Law hired Dohrn to be a clinical professor; again, no big alumni organized to refuse to donate to Northwestern until she was kicked off the faculty. The Annenberg Foundation gave money to a project that they knew would involve Ayers heavily; didn't seem to give them pause. Ayers and Dohrn seem to be deemed socially acceptable right up until Barack Obama was on a board with Ayers and drank coffee Dohrn had made. I wonder why that is.
Oh, and Kurtz's whole "Ayers's educational philosophy is radically anti-American and would disqualify him from being a respectable person even if he hadn't bombed anything" is ludicrous. If that were true, why keep bringing up the bombings? He knows very well that he can't convince anyone except committed conservatives that an educational philosophy that emphasizes anti-racism is radical and anti-American. Moreover, Ayers's leadership has been in school movements that are now widely accepted, such as the small-schools movement that has become particularly important to minimizing the need for police-state style schools of metal detectors and armed policemen.
Kurtz also has no compunction about dishonesty with regard to Ayers. For example, he refers to "Ayers’ infamous conduct on 9/11," which refers to an article about Ayers that the NYTimes had interviewed him for several days before 9/11 and coincidentally published on that day, and with regard to which Ayers wrote a Letter to the Editor to clarify that the writer of the article had misunderstood Ayers's saying "we should have done more." Chicago Magazine reported that "just before the September 11th attacks," Richard Elrod, a city lawyer injured in the Weathermen's Chicago "Days of Rage," received an apology from Ayers and Dohrn for their part in the violence. "[T]hey were remorseful," Elrod says. "They said, 'We're sorry that things turned out this way.'"
Kurtz also neglects that Ayers's actions were property terrorism; the only people who died due to Ayers's actions were the nitwit Weathermen who accidentally blew themselves up.
If it was up to me all of those "fellow travelers" would be out of a job for hiring an unrepentant terrorist.
By the way Obama's sole executive experience was with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge spending spending anywhere from 50 to 150 million dollars (I've seen varying amounts). But he doesn't advertise this experience because the money was wasted and the education levels of Chicago children remained unchanged.
Why bring up the bombings? Because he has never apologized for them.
Because the agenda that led him to commit the bombings are still motivating his educational philosophy.
Small schools notwithstanding his basic philosophy is to utilize the schools (and the justice system) to undermine America as best as he could.
It is clear from Ayers' letter to the NY Times in 2001 wherein he states "My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy." he is talking not about his own bombings but of America's because he clearly does not consider himself a fanatic.
As for Ayers' apology to Elrod when one of my kids say essentially the same (e.g. "I'm sorry you got hurt") to their sibling or someone else I come down on their case: you have to be sorry for your action and intent and make amends for it.
Ayers clearly believes that he had "good intentions" that compensate for anything he did and thus he has no regrets.
As for the bombings being only against property read this article by a victim of their bombings. By the way one of the reasons the nitwit weathermen died in 1970 was the fact that the bomb was made with nails and screws whose only purpose, as Palestinians terrorists have found, is to kill. And Ayers in a letter to the AP later in 1970 promised to bomb some more.
Is this someone you want teaching your children?
Oh, those fellow travelers of communism at white shoe law firms! Ye shall know them by their pro bono activities.
1) If you're interested in a genuine, unbiased assessment of the CAC, try reading the Ed Department's report.
2) Obama has had other executive experience, though Republicans may find activities for improving a community or getting poor people of color registered to vote to be either laughable or downright dangerous.
* 1985-1988 - Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland on Chicago's South Side. While director grew the DCP staff from 1 to 13 and their budget from $70,000 to $400,000.
* 1992 - Led Chicago's Project Vote! push. This effort resulted in a record number of voter registrations, over 600,000 in Chicago. (1990 population of Alaska = 550,043)
Ayers wasn't there when Elrod got injured (it's not even clear if Elrod actually got assaulted or if he hurt himself tackling a Weathermen member; the police witness who claim it was the former identified a juror as the assailant). And Elrod understood that even if you don't. Ayers demonstrated a much more significant capacity to feel sympathy for another person's pain than did, say, Rush Limbaugh when he referred to the Abu Ghraib tortures as a bit of "high spirits" on the part of the soldiers involved. Ayers's apology actually fits just fine with your guidelines for your kids: he stated that his intent was NOT that anyone get hurt, and he expressed regret that someone did. Only a psychotic parent would make his kid say he was sorry for intending to hurt someone when that never was the kid's intent.
The bombing described in the article you link to damaged only property, a car and the front of a building. Moreover, Ayers never was charged with the bombing of Judge Murtagh's house. Would you like to provide any evidence that he was part of the planning or carrying out of that act?
What is really interesting is how many millionaires/billionaires corporate leaders are into socialism for the simply reason that having the government create rules and regulations which hamper smaller companies but which larger companies can more easily handle allowing them to persist. Hampering smaller companies help to keep them small and allow the larger companies to persist despite inefficiencies.
Increasing the funding of a non-profit is not a objective sign of success.
Increasing the voter registrations in Chicago is a sign of successful management? In Chicago! Get real, the level of corruption is so high in Chicago that using this as an indication of successful management is pure dreaming. (Is this a reason why Obama won his Illinois elections beyond getting his opponents thrown off the ballets by going through signatures or having sealed divorce proceedings mysteriously unsealed?)
As for Ayers' apology by using the words he is sorry for how "things turned out" is vague and full of alternative meanings. As related in the article the intent of his apology is unclear.
As for Ayers culpability he was an accomplice and even if there is no direct evidence linking him to the Murtagh bombing or this pipe bombing which killed a policeman he clearly was involved, refuses to give information and promised at the time, after deaths, to do more.
Ah, we've moved from communism to socialism, socialism now being defined by the existence of "rules and regulations." I look forward to the explanation of how McCain's hero TR was a pinko for his support and use of the antitrust laws, which are one of the most far-reaching federal regulations of all types of business.
Increasing the funding of a non-profit is not a objective sign of success.
That makes about as much sense as saying that increasing share price is not an objective sign of success for a corporation. While neither the non-profit nor the corporation may actually be any more productive, obtaining an increase in funding for a non-profit or an increase in share price for a corporation is considered an objective measure of success, though obviously not the only one. Indeed, compensation for both non-profits and corporations may be tied to such increases.
If you don't know that increasing funding for a non-profit is part of being a successful executive at a non-profit, you're indicating your own rampant ignorance of the non-profit world. (I include in "non-profit" such things as universities; nowadays university presidents spend most of their time on fund-raising efforts. He who reaches the $1 billion capital campaign is a hero though the students may be no more well-educated for it.)
Increasing the voter registrations in Chicago is a sign of successful management?
It is if the stated goal of Project Vote is to increase the number of voter registrations. Are you sure you know what "successful executive" actually means? It isn't measured by your idea of how worthy the goal of the organization is. I may think that the sale of lottery tickets in a poor neighborhood is not a worthy goal, but if that is the goal set by a company and its executive achieves it, he is a "successful executive" regardless of my abhorrence of what he has achieved.
As for Ayers culpability he was an accomplice
This is the kind of misuse of legal terminology that is pervasive in the smears of Obama and drives me nuts. "Accomplice" has an actual meaning in the law, and if Ayers was an accomplice to a given crime, he could have been charged with having been an accomplice. If he wasn't charged for being an accomplice to a particular crime, given his prosecutors' lengthy and highly inclusive list of charges, then it's a good indication that there was no evidence that he was an accomplice to that crime. Please don't throw out the word "accomplice" to describe what you believe to be Ayers's moral culpability for being a Weathermen leader.
It reminds me of C.S. Lewis's complaint about the misuse of the term "gentleman," which had a specific socioeconomic meaning but had gotten distorted into a synonym for "nice." Law has a precise term for a person with liability for his part in a crime, and that term is "accomplice." If you want to go off on Ayers's moral complicity in every crime perpetrated by any member of the Weathermen, regardless of whether he had any part in its financing, planning or execution, find your own word for it.
What is communism but socialism writ large? To say anything else is to ignore the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, among other examples.
"....university presidents spend most of their time on fund-raising efforts. He who reaches the $1 billion capital campaign is a hero though the students may be no more well-educated for it."
This example of yours is the perfect reason why such parameters are not an indication of success. If an organization, such as a university in your example, is not educating the students then it is failing its mission despite an increase in funding.
Praising an increase in Chicago voter registration with its corruption with the dead voting and many voting early and often is the equivalent of Enron hyping the value of its assets.
Accomplice not only has a legal definition (which I presume is rigidly defined) but also a common definition. By his own admission he bombed various sites in America. He only avoided legal punishment due to misconduct by the prosecution, not by innocence. While he may or may not have had a hand in every last terrorist action by the Weather Underground he was an accomplice (and more) whether defined legally or commonly.
Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.
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