Bill Ayers v.s. Obama’s Fight The Smears

Golly gee willickers what’s up with this? The Chicago Tribune reports:

In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, describes President-elect Barack Obama as a “family friend” and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the 1960s.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends

But right-wing commentators tried to use those connections to smear Obama, he says.

Yeah, we were so mean to be concerned that Obama was friends with unrepentant terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. It was terrible of us to suggest that Obama was being less than forthcoming about their relationship.

Here, in fact, is what Obama’s Ayers page on his Fight The Smears website has to say about the relationship:

The Truth about Barack Obama and William Ayers

Smear groups and now a desperate McCain campaign are trying to connect Barack to William Ayers using age-old guilt by association techniques. Here’s the truth: the smear associating Barack to Ayers is “phony,” “tenuous,” – even “exaggerated at best if not outright false.”

William Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with whom Barack served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990’s. According to the Associated Press, they are not close: “No evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago …”

Smear groups and the McCain campaign are trying to connect Obama to acts Ayers committed 40 years ago – when Barack was just eight years old. Here’s what the New York Times reported on the connection:

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.”

Barack has publicly denounced Ayers’ radical actions from the 1960’s:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.

Fight back with the truth: make sure anyone who has seen this smear also sees this page.

From the looks of it, Obama seemed to be asking his minions to fight back with the weak talking points the Obama campaign was feeding his water carriers in the media. But unfortunately, the talking points aren’t squaring at all with what Bill ayers, himself, is now saying: “(We) knew one another as neighbors and family friends…”

AP: “No evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago …” —(OOPS!!!)

NYTs: But the two men do not appear to have been close.—(OOPS!!!)

The Obama Camp went even further in their denials with this memo (via the Obama Report) that was released on October 6th:

LIE: Obama and Ayers ‘palled around’ and have a meaningful relationship.

FACT: Multiple independent fact checkers and investigative reporters have concluded that the link between Obama and Ayers is “tenuous”  and that there is “no evidence of any relationship.”

OOPS!!! It turns Palin was actually right, they WERE “pals”.

The memo goes on to reproduce many MSM dismissals of the charge that Obama and Ayers are “pals”. Nobody seemed to ask Ayers about it though.

Now about that non-fundraising “coffee”. The Obama Campaign’s memo stated:

As the New York Times confirmed, previous coffees had been hosted for Obama’s State Senate campaign.  State Senator Alice Palmer, Obama’s predecessor, introduced some of her longtime supporters to Obama at Ayers home.  That’s it.  It wasn’t even a fundraiser.

Wait….but let’s go back and review what Bill Ayers said in that new afterward to his book. After all, it was HIS house.

Huh!:

(We)  held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

Well, now I’m very confused, because that would totally contradict what The New York Times “confirmed”. I mean, Ayers even claims to have made a donation, himself.

Gosh! How embarrassing for the New York Times! Why didn’t they just ask Bill Ayers about the fundraiser? He would have told them.

Too obvious?

Say what you will about Willian Ayers’ unrepentant terrorism, and radicalism… at least he seems to be a straight shooter. It sure does look like Obama’s been lying through his teeth about all this, though, with the help of his water carriers in the media. It’s enough to make you wonder what else on Obama’s “Fight The Smears” website is utter bullshit. Pretty much all of it? I’d say so. But the b.s. is still there, for everyone to see.

From this conservative’s point of view, Obama’s been proven to be an inveterate liar.

From an Obama koolaid drinker’s point of view, though, this is just par for the course.

It’s gonna be an interesting four years.

UPDATE:

Well! It seems that Mr Ayers has been introduced to the official “Fight the Smears” talking points, because his story changed dramatically on Good Morning America, this morning:

Note the unbelievably tortured explanation of his Obama as “family friend” characterization:

“I’m talking there about the fact that I became an issue unwittingly and unwillingly in the campaign and I decided that I didn’t want to answer any of it at that moment because it was such a profoundly dishonest narrative, but…I’m describing there, uh, how the blogosphere characterized the relationship. I would say…uh…really that we knew each other in a professional way, uh, again, on the same level as thousands of other people … uh, and I am a guy from around the neighborhood, incidentally.”

Huhhhhhhhhhhh???

Wow. I take back what I said about him being a straight shooter. Talk about “profoundly dishonest”.

Also note how the event at his home that he had previously described as a fundraiser, and where he actually donated money to Obama, has become just a small “coffee”, per the Fight the Smears talking points.

Ayers also says that the “coffee” was the first time he had met Obama.

Guess what? I don’t believe him. Why should I?

Ayers says at the end of the interview, that it’s a credit to the American people that they rejected the “politics of fear”.

I wonder if the American people who voted for Obama are proud to have been so complimented by the unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers?