Obama's character

I'm on FIRE tonight.

I have a few things I want to talk about: health care, John McCain's housing plan, and the recent attacks on Barack Obama's character.

I'm going to do these as separate posts so they individually show up as individual topics in the blog list and don't get lost being posted together. I'm going to start with the character issues.

The latest thing is that McCain and Sarah Palin are questioning Obama's relationships with a man named William Ayers.

Ayers was a co-founder of a radical organization called the Weather Underground in the 1960s. This group was responsible for bombings at the Pentagon and the Capitol in the 1970s. He was obviously involved with some bad stuff back then.

Since then he has reformed himself. He's currently a "distinguished" professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1997 he was named Chicago's Citizen of the Year for his work on a project to reform schools, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. He's generally been an upstanding citizen since his transgressions more than 30 years ago.

Now, I'm not giving you Ayers background to dismiss his past. What he did many years ago was awful, regardless of his reasons (to protest the Vietnam War). But I wanted to give this information to give you an idea of the person that Barack Obama knew. Because when Ayers was terrorizing people in the 1970s, Obama was a child. When he did know him, Ayers was a reformed man, a respected citizen and college professor. So because, 30 to 40 years ago, Ayers performed horrible acts, that means that Obama is a supporter of terrorism?

Let's look at this a little more...

So what the McCain campaign is getting at is that Obama knew Ayers through a few different associations. In 1995 Ayers hosted a meeting at his home a fund-raiser for Obama when he was starting his political career. While that's nice, it doesn't mean that they were close. I'm sure there are all kinds of people who hosts all kinds of functions for politicians but that doesn't mean they are close friends. It just means they are a supporter. That's all.

Later they were both board members for the Annenberg Challenge Project. This is equivalent to being co-workers. Now, I can tell you, I like many of my co-workers. I talk to them, I have meetings with them, I occasionally have lunches with them, and other activities. However, if one of them goes out and commits a crime, am I guilty for that crime? Because they did it, does that automatically mean I condone it? Because they have radical views, does that mean I also have those views? No, it does not. And it doesn't mean that for Barack Obama, either, because he worked with William Ayers.

Now, if there was any proof that these two have been good friends, that would be one thing. But multiple sources have determined that Ayers and Obama have NOT had a close relationship.

From the New York Times: "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"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?scp=1&sq=obama%20ayers&st=cse

From the Washington Post: "The AP and other news organizations have reported that Obama and Ayers, now a college professor who lives in Obama's neighborhood, are not close but that they worked together on two nonprofit organizations from the mid-1990s to 2002. In addition, Ayers hosted a small meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995 as he first ran for the state Senate. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100901868.html

From Time Magazine: "Ayers and Dohrn are despicable, and yet making an issue of Obama's relationship with them is absurd....If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others--including Republicans and conservatives--who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810338,00.html

The Chicago Sun-Times: "Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s legislative campaign in 2001, but there is no other sign that he has actively aided Obama’s political career. "

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/900386,rad041708.article

From CNN: "There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/05/fact-check-is-obama-palling-around-with-terrorists/

So it has been proven that Obama and Ayers had no significant personal relationship. Yet the Republicans are still bringing up the point at rallies and accusing Obama of "palling" with a terrorist. And it's truly getting scary and downright offensive.

Sarah Palin was the first one to start it. At a rally last weekend she brought this whole issue up, saying, ""We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.""

The clear implication here is that Obama is a supporter of terrorists, turns a blind eye to terrorism, or is a terrorist himself or just flat out against America. This claim of Obama's relationship with Ayers has been brought up many times in recent days in interviews and rallies featuring McCain and/or Palin. And it's gotten downright dangerous. People at these rallies have been getting into a frenzy and yelling things like "He's a terrorist", "Kill him", and "Cut off his head". McCain and Palin have had their chances to stop and condemn these proclamations but they have not, there by showing that they have no problems with this line of attack and supporting these thoughts. How disgusting is that? Silence is consent.

I'm not even going to get into Rev. Wright or Tony Rezko, two other people with whom Obama's relationships are being overblown by the Republicans. I do not believe that Obama share's Wright's view (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/29/obama.wright/index.html?eref=rss_topstories) or that anything improper happened with Rezko (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/19/obamas-rezko-connection/) and there has been NO evidence to say Obama has done anything improper in either case.

So the Republicans are making up controversies to try to question Obama's character and relationships. Fine. Let's be fair. Let's talk about McCain's relationships and what they say about his judgement and character.

McCain was very close to Charles Keating, a disgraced business man who was convicted for defrauding investors in the late 1980s. McCain was involved in this by being part of a group of Senators that tried to get regulators to back off Keating. This was after Keating contributed money to the Senators. McCain was a personal friend of Keating's. He took trips with Keating and spent time together with their families, taking trips. McCain was censured by the Senate for his involvement in the matter. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five)

So you have a situation here where a personal friend of McCain's was performing criminal acts WHILE THEY WERE FRIENDS, as opposed to Ayers, whose criminal acts were conducted years before he ever met Obama. I guess McCain is a defrauder and supports that. He has questionable judgement. Guilty by association... REAL association and involvement.

McCain also attended a rally by the Oregon Citizens Alliance in 1993 where he addressed their delegation. The OCA is an ultra-far-right, anti-gay group. At that rally, Marylin Shannon, the vice chairwoman of the Oregon GOP, praised someone who had shot an abortion doctor. And McCain never condemned it. In any way. Then Shannon just attended the Republican National Convention this past month as a McCain delegate. So in the McCain/Palin world of guilt by association, I guess McCain is an anti-gay sympathizer of people who shoot doctors. You can read about this here: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_connections_coming_back_to_haunt_1007.html

The article also talks about:

• McCain has a friendship with G. Gordon Liddy, the mastermind of Watergate.
• His membership on the board of the US Council for World Freedom, which The Associated Press describes as "part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America."
• Sarah Palin's husband's affiliation with the Alaska Independence Party, a group that wants to secede Alaska from the United States. (Here's Keith Olbermann talking about this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qe0fgS7K8Q. I know... not the most unbiased opinion, but shows how guilt by association can work both ways to call someone a terrorist...) Here's an article about it with links to other articles: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/secessionist-palin-story_n_123310.html

So now let's talk about John McCain's character.

While he was a POW in Vietnam, his wife had a debilitating accident. She was left crippled and deformed. So when John McCain returned from Vietnam (and God bless him for his service and what he went through) he eventually cheated on his wife, divorced her, and then married his current wife, Cindy, one month after the divorce was finalized. There's character for you! His own kids wouldn't talk to him for years after he did that.

He also said he would not take on negative campaigning... which he obviously has. A truthful man!

When his wife was addicted to pain killers in the early 1990s, he called her names I don't want to reprint here. Caring!

He made a nasty joke about Chelsea Clinton calling her ugly. WARNING. This isn't nice: http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/25newsb.html Some judgement on his part, huh?

He offered up his wife at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD, for something called the Buffalo Chip Beauty Contest which is apparently a nude beauty contest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4X6XqNeF1o

So McCain wants to question Obama's character and judgement when his own is much more troubling. He's been involved in several controversies and with shady people. Much more troubling character issues. Real issues and involvement, as opposed as trying to make mountains out of molehills with regards to Obama and Ayers.

Palin is living in a glass house throwing stones when she herself is married to a man who belonged to an organization that wanted to leave the United States. That's quite un-American, isn't it?

So I think McCain and Palin ought to start thinking twice about questioning Obama's character because of guilt by association because of fleeting relationships without any proof. Their own associations make their own character questionable, if not even more so, because the actual issues in question are indisputable as far as their relations with shady characters.