Clinton's McCarthyism (and my Brother Bill Ayers)
Read more reactions from Huffington Post bloggers to ABC's Pennsylvania Democratic debate
Until tonight's debate, I didn't really think Hillary Clinton would go so far as to attempt to sink the whole Democratic Party campaign in her struggle for power. But now it is clear that she has no limits. Barack Obama, attempting to take the high ground, gave her a pass on her despicable behavior.
The fact that she would drag up this pathetic red herring about Obama's alleged ties to so-called terrorist Bill Ayers (my brother!) brings her right down to the level of Fox News and the National Enquirer (which also suggested that Obama had murdered his gay lover). Obama needed to call this tactic for what it is: McCarthyism. This is the most base version of McCarthyism: Did you know this communist? When were you last with this communist? Did you denounce this communist? When did you stop beating your wife?
This desperate strategy marks the kind of Republican tactics of the Clinton camp. We always knew Bill Clinton was the architect of the Democratic Party move into a Republican stance on policy. Now these so-called centrist Democrats are imitating the take-no-prisoners tactics of the Karl Roves of the far right.
The swift-boating of Obama over his remarks on the "bitterness" of white workers is a perfect example. You remember how the Republicans managed to make John Kerry, the Vietnam Veteran, seem like the weak soldier while George Bush, who hid out from the draft, was built up as the military guy. How do they manage that? Now Clinton is calling Obama the elitist -- Obama, the guy who worked as a community organizer while Hillary was raking in the dough on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors. She's got over $120 million and tags him as an elitist. Will the media really help spin this dreck? They will and do.
There's only one way to confront McCarthyism. Obama should have taken a page from Joseph Welch when he confronted the red-baiting senator during the Army-McCarthy hearings. He should have said, "Senator Clinton, are you really going to go there? Do you have no shame? Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. Have you no sense of decency, ma'am, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" That's the kind of language that Welch used to reduce McCarthy to the sputtering idiot he was.
Why give her a pass? Why claim that Bill Clinton had done something even worse, giving pardons to people from the Weather Underground. That's like trying to out-right the rightist Clinton. Have the courage to call her for what she is.
Read more reactions from Huffington Post bloggers to ABC's Pennsylvania Democratic debate
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Let's hope that Obama, like the Chicago Tribune editorial writer, will refuse to denounce his friends. Whenever candidates and the rest of us can no longer make that minimum act of courage our democracy is in grave danger. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorne are my friends. Gordon Quinn
HEY GORDO - YOU'RE TOO LATE ! Obama already threw Bill Ayers under the bus and good riddance. Ayers can do nothing for Obama other than ruin his campaign. This self appointed ambassador to every communist dictator on the planet never stood a chance of actually helping him anyway. I'm still pretty amazed that Barack chose to throw his Democrat coming out party at Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn's house in Hyde Park. If Obama doesn't know that Ayers was a terrorist and is a communist, all he need do is to look at Ayers own blog. I don't think he's calling everyone "comrade" just to be cute. So it kinda leaves on wondering if Barack isn't maybe a member of Billy's little club. Come to think of it - he would look pretty natural in a Che' Beret.
PS - I just have to ask. Are you really saying that you're proud of the fact that you're a friend with this scum?
PennP thanks for your post that included the WSJ link.
However, more needs to be said about that article though in regard to this Ayers issue:
Hillary Clinton was beginning her run for Senate. Pres. Clinton and she were being pressured by the Puerto Rican politicians who represented a 1.3 million constituency to gain clemency for the 16 members of FALN. First, Mrs. Clinton supports the clemencies. There is a public outcry. Three weeks later she disputes the clemencies. THEN, the Puerto Rican politicians say this is a "horrible blunder" and that "She needs to learn the rules". So, Mrs. Clinton then expresses dismay that she did not consult those Puerto Rican politicans to better understand the issue at hand and that it would never happen again.
So, clemencies granted and Sen. Clinton's got the votes she needed. She pandered to those that supported the terrorists at the expense of the "trivial" few who were killed or hurt by those terrorists. It was a numbers game for her. She and Pres. Clinton figured that the little people would not create enough of a stink, because we all know that us little bitter people don't believe we have power anymore, thanks to Washington politics.
So, Sen. Clinton speaks out of both sides of her head, to get votes. Wake up. No politician is perfect, but some are better. Sen. Clinton is most definitely not. She and Pres. Clinton sell us out to the terrorists.
You forgot to mention rapist:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID=9E8CD8A7-E90B-4311-8AA9-AEFD014A14B2
Barack has Ayers. Hillary, the FALN.
"...The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.
"…By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims."
. . .
"Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.
"Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners' delay in refusing to renounce violence "speaks volumes," she said.
"The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn't actually asked for clemency."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120277819085260827.html?mod=Letters
I served in Vietnam and when I returned I was involved in a number of efforts to try and persuade my fellow citizens that our involvement was a mistake. Unfortunately those movements also contained people like your brother. In my view the actions of people like him did enormous damage to our efforts to try and educate middle America about Vietnam and increase public pressure on our leaders to bring the war to an end. After reading your Brother's book I came away with the impression that he was still a sanctimonious self serving jerk who is far too impressed with his own sense of self importance. I realize that many people who have met him would disagree with me and they may indeed be correct. Quite frankly he doesn't really matter. The only thing that does matter is his potential to do damage to Senator Obama's campaign.
So what is the relationship of Senator Obama to your brother.
1. He attended a meet the candidate function at Bill Ayer's home in 1995 where the incumbent State Senator who wasn't running for reelection introducted him to influential Democrats who lived in the district.
2. Bill Ayers donated $200 to his State Senate reelection campaign in 2002.
3. They both served on the board of the Woods Foundation - a Chicago charity group - for three years.
That appears to be the extent of their relationship.
Hey Ayers, why didn't you tell me this before you invited me over to your brother's house? Now I'm going to be pegged as terrorist and brought before a special senate committee (or at least it appears that some of the people who have been posting comments here would be fine with that).
Explanation: I was one of Rick's students. Now I go to the University of Chicago (the school brought you Milton Friedman, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Barak Obama, and... Bill Ayer's wife Bernardine Dohrn who graduated with honors before going on to get her JD at the law school). I was invited over to there house once. Lovely people who are advocates of education and deeply care about the future of this country.
Oh no! I made a positive statement about a bomb making lefty! You know what they like to do to people like that in this town... Haymarket here I come.
Oh no! Far worse than what I said before, I used "there" instead of "their." I'm sorry for this offensive use of the English language.
Clearly you are a seditionist that must be dealt with.
;)
this may be trivial to you - and good on ya if it is
but this means something to me, to my people - I am a proud democrat, but I am not proud of the Weather Underground, what it stood for, what it did and how it and those like it pushed middle america to the right
tell me im wrong, dismiss my thoughts - but this, on top of rev wright, on top of Michelle Obama's angry hate for America, and now BO's perceived elitism - and well, there you go. You can beat Clinton down - push her out of the race - but half of the Democratic Party wants her and not BO - and the polls are showing BO dead even with McCain in this 'change' year election. You are in for the fight of your lives.
You're revealing your bias with the "Michelle Obama's angry hate for America" talking point. Your point can be made more solidly by laying out your argument not just your feelings.
Clearly the author of this post has his own agenda -- supporting his brother -- Obama's position in regard to Ayers, who is now a professor at a major American university, and so hardly a fringe character -- was to contextualize his association with the man and to point out that the Clintons (that two-for-one argument cuts both ways) had a much more direct, political connection and that granting pardons to members of the same radical organization implies, at best, a dismissal of their actions, and, at worst, acceptance of those actions. So, your first point, and I'm parsing your argument here to pull something out of it, that Ayers isn't trivial, and in fact, he and the Weather Underground are responsible for the right-leanings of middle America (at least partially) should rightfully be argued to Hillary and Bill Clinton, not Obama whose association with Ayers was contextually insignificant, especially by comparison.
And mathematically, less than half of the party want her or she'd be in a dead heat and not down by over a hundred delegates (and their proportional hundreds of thousands of Dem voters).
Y'all Clinton supporters keep saying half of democrats support her, and the race is even, but that's total crap. Obama is ahead in the delegate count and in the total popular vote, even though total voter turnout in caucus states is considerably less that in primary states. If the caucus states had been primary states, the popular total would be even higher in his favor. How do you figure it's even? Third grade math students could figure this one out. Saying it's even over and over can't change the real numbers.
That may be, but it isn't 1968 anymore. We as a people cannot be expected to continue to fight these battles because it is killing us as a nation. Vietnam did more to destroy us than just killing our soldiers to the tune of 68,000 dead, but it hurt us as a nation and is seen explicitly in the 1990's and currently. I will explain: There is much anger left with that generation, they hated each other, those that protested and those who supported the war: i.e. Newt vs Clinton, Bush v Gore, Bush v Kerry and the list goes on and the bitterness goes on as well. I suspect that generation is never going to get over their own personal anger. However, we can no longer be dragged into the gutter with you. Mr. Ayers is not my generations responsibility we cannot explain the problems then and we cannot go back and fix the obvious problems faced by America at that time. All we can do is go forward because that is what life is, it is going forward. Until your generation seeks to reconcile with itself and forgive those who disagreed with you on all sides your generation will never personally recover. The rest of us just want to go on, stop this war and rebuild our nation, we can only do that with everyone participating, not holding grudges, and working toward a better future without name calling and anger.
Also on the same board of the Woods Foundation is Patrick M. Sheahan, Executive Director of Public Affairs for UBS, a major Wall Street bank. How a prestigious institution like UBS could employ a man such as Mr. Sheahan, who serves on the same board as Ayres, is beyond me. In my opinion, UBS should dismiss Mr. Sheahan for his involvement with William Ayres. I cannot see how UBS can maintain its good reputation while continuing to employ a man like Patrick Sheahan in such a prominent position.
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Of course, I'm joking. I mean, why would it be at all reasonable to hold Patrick Sheahan (or UBS) accountable for the past actions of William Ayres just because they both serve on the board of the same charity? The standard that presidents need to meet in their conduct should be higher than the standard that Wall Street executives meet. But just as certainly as it would be ridiculous for UBS to fire an employee over this fleeting association, it would be ridiculous for the American people to vote against someone like Obama for the same thing, someone who represents their economic interests so well.
Obama has been attacked for some supposed 'link' to 60's African American radicals who blew up empty buildings (the only people who died were bombmakers). What about Hillary's links to Puerto Rican radicals who also blew up buildings but actually *tried* (and succeeded) to kill people? (Armed Forces for National Liberation - the FALN.) They were pardoned by Bill Clinton in 1999, after an approach had been made to Hillary's senate campaign office. It was felt the pardons would secure the Puerto Rican vote and help HRC's efforts to become Senator in NYC. So Clinton granted the pardons.
If you think I'm making this up then just google 'Bill Clinton Pardons Puerto Rican Bombers'
I think he wanted to with all the humming and stalling. He just do not want to tear down the party. Many supporter of Clinton feel that Obama may not be able to stand the challenge of McCain. Give me a break! If he is facing McCain, it will be gloves off. I approved the way he handled himself. And not rolling in the mud with Bosnia Chick. With her millions, she has no class. Acting like trailer park trash.
ABC's questions were irrelevant. A wasted opportunity to explore the issues about the economy. Stagflation is huge. The falling dollar is vitally important. The number one issue is the economy. The scale of the problem is world-wide. The government bailouts of banks and foreign policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who cares about whether Pennsylvanias are stupid for voting for Bush and Bushlite. This is not John Kerry going kite boarding before the election. This country is in its deepest crisis since the 1930's. There are issues about the need for international regulation of global finance. There are issues about energy policy. Stephanopolis should not ask questions about patriotism and the Weather Underground - he should ask about the crisis created by globalization such as mass starvation in 33 countries around the globe. Journalism majors are too stupid to make it in any other field - that takes some intelligence.
Thanks for this article. Its nice to read an article that speaks the truth that the media refuse to deal with.There is much info out there,but they keep repeating the same crap over and over again. Thanks!
Until every American knows the complete history of the 1950's and 1960's in the US our democracy is at risk. The risk of repeating the mistakes of the past.
Mccarthyism
Civil Rights Movement
Kent State Killings
Viet Nam War
Anti War Movement
Black Movement
Watergate
Nixon Presidency Above the Law
Iran/Contra
Iraq/Gate
9-11
Pentagon Papers
October Surprise
Voter Caging
Attorney firings
Wounded Knee "uprising"
With the exception of 9-11, all those things were effective, successful efforts that bettered our country. As American as apple pie.
Bush 43 Presidency Above The Law.
We've considered those things and decided that shopping is more important to us.
Excuse me. Are you suggesting that the civil rights movement was "a mistake of the past"??????? That the anti-Vietnam movement was "a mistake of the past"?????? Would you like it better if we were still in Vietnam or Jim Crow still reigned?????
thanks for posting this, could you give more details about your brother's evolution from where he was then to where he is now? it would be handy to have a good bit of info ready to debunk the claims of 'terrorism' and the like being made against him...
Let's all listen to the guy defending his brother, the terrorist. Perhaps Obama should look for the support of bin Laden's siblings, too.
Support, financial and otherwise, from the bin Laden family, has served Pres. Bush and his father very well over the years. Nobody seems to mind. I wonder why?
Let's remember it was the brother of the unabomber that turned him in. Why shouldn't people listen to what he says?
You.......are the typical idiot that is keeping this country from moving forward.
You are a fine American, sir.
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