The McCain/Palin campaign has been getting frankly ugly lately in their covertly racist attempts to tie Barack Obama to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. They have accused Barack of lying about the nature of his relationship with Ayers, have implied that Ayers is a close and trusted advisor, and that therefore Obama conserts with terrorists.
All lies, of course.
First of all, Bill Ayers is not a terrorist. The Weather Underground might be described by some as a terrorist group but that was about 40 years ago. As FactCheck.org puts it:
Setting off bombs can fairly be described as terrorism even when they are intended to cause only property damage, which is what Ayers has admitted doing in his youth. But for nearly three decades since, Ayers has lived the relatively quiet life of an educator. It would be correct to call him a “former terrorist,” and an “unapologetic” one at that. But if McCain means the word “terrorist” to invoke images of 9/11, he’s being misleading; Ayers is no Osama bin Laden now, and never was.
Then there is the issue of the relationship that exists between the two men. They are not close, they do not often come into contact with each other. They have worked together because they are both civic leaders and they happen to live in the same community in Chicago. Again, from the FactCheck.org article:
And far from palling around with Ayers, the two haven’t spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the Senate in January 2005, according to an Obama spokesman. He said the two last saw each other more than a year ago, when they accidentally met on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.
I’m not so sure it makes much sense to even be talking about this “old, tired terrorist group” that seems to be best remembered for blowing up themselves and a few empty public restrooms (again, see the FactCheck.org article), except that McCain/Palin want people to believe that Senator Obama “doesn’t see this country the way we do.”
And that’s true. They see this country in sort of the same way Mussolini once saw Italy. Barack Obama sees this country, I suspect, in much the same way that Thomas Jefferson did:
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
Interestingly, one of the principle fear mongers has recently been found to have broken the law while she was gaining all that executive experience they keep touting.
According to this article in the New York Times, an independent investigation authorized by the Alaska Legislative Council, a bipartisan body of House and Senate members that can convene to make decisions when the Legislature is not in session, found that Governor Sarah Palin violated the Alaska’s Executive Branch Ethics Act in her efforts (and those of her husband and her staff) to get State Trooper Michael Wooten fired.
Those “he lied” commercials seem to be a pretty blatant case of pots calling kettles black. Heh. So much for the north country maverick who bravely fought to bring ethics reform to Alaska.
Geez, the pit bull in lipstick looks more like Dick Cheney in drag every day …
