Bill Ayers, college professor; well-connected and socially prominent scion of a wealthy and privileged family, and unrepentant terrorist:
Posted on 10/05/2008 3:36:35 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Gov. Sarah Palin the pit bull showed up at the Home Depot Center in Carson on Saturday, taking shots at Sen. Barack Obama on taxes and on his association with a former member of the Weather Underground.
Palin, who has energized the Republican Party base since she was chosen as Sen. John McCain's running mate, fired up a crowd estimated at 15,000 people.
"There is a time when it is necessary to take the gloves off, and that time is right now," Palin said, adding that a staffer had told her, "OK now, the heels are on, the gloves come off."
Palin highlighted a report in the New York Times about Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weathermen who was involved in a series of bombings in the 1970s and is now an education professor in Chicago. Obama met Ayers through Chicago political circles, and has had to distance himself from the former radical throughout his presidential campaign.
Palin, the governor of Alaska, argued that the association shows that Obama sees America differently than most Americans see it.
"We see America as a force for good in the world," Palin said. "We see an America of exceptionalism. Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."
The Obama campaign responded that Palin's remark was offensive but unsurprising, and foretold a strategy of "Swiftboat-like attacks" during the campaign's final month.
Palin also charged that Obama would have to raise taxes to pay for new spending on social programs.
"The phoniest claim in a campaign that's been full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes," she said. "You're smarter than that. Barack Obama is gonna raise your taxes."
Obama has said he will cut taxes for 95percent of American workers.
In addition to the rally, Palin was scheduled to attend two $1,000-per-person fundraisers during her swing through California before heading to campaign stops in Florida.
The McCain campaign said 15,000 visitors had been screened by the Secret Service. Without bleachers, the tennis stadium holds only about 8,000 people, so the remainder had to watch the speech on a video screen in the adjacent soccer stadium.
The speech was a hit with supporters, many of whom came from Orange County to catch a glimpse of a fresh face in the Republican Party.
"Each time I hear her speak, she's becoming more confident," said Laurie Akey of Irvine, who said she'd be comfortable having Palin serve as president. "As far as being a heartbeat away: If it happens, I'd rest every night. She's better than Obama."
Supporters said they felt a deep personal connection with Palin. One teenage girl wore a T-shirt that said "Future Hockey Mom."
"She is the true American woman," said Jane Germaine, also of Irvine, who dressed up as the Statue of Liberty to see Palin's speech. "She's what a feminist is supposed to be. She's an honest person. She's an everyday girl-next-door. She's not in it for the power. She just wants to do what's right."
Meanwhile, a large group of counter-demonstrators held up signs and chanted slogans outside the stadium. One sign read, "Wicked Witch of Wasilla," in reference to Palin's hometown.
The California Democratic Party placed a mobile electronic billboard in the parking lot across the street from the stadium. Throughout the day, it displayed questions for Palin that had been sent by text message or e-mail, such as "Did you ban books from the Wasilla library?" and "Why do you make victims pay for rape kits?"
Early in her speech, Palin was momentarily interrupted by an anti-war protester. As members of the crowd started to chant "U.S.A.!", Palin said, "My son is over in Iraq right now fighting for the freedoms that that person is exercising." The remark was met with loud applause.
The protester, Pat Alviso, ultimately was escorted out of the stadium by sheriff's deputies. Afterward, she said she had held up a sign that said "Troops home now," but had not otherwise tried to disrupt the rally.
Alviso said her son is a Marine about to deploy for his third tour in Iraq. She said she decided to protest after Palin said in Thursday's vice presidential debate that to withdraw from Iraq would be to "wave the white flag of surrender."
"What a horrible thing to say," said Alviso, 56, of Long Beach. "Military families are speaking out against this war, too."
Palin was introduced by Shelly Mandell, the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women. Mandell supported Sen. Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary, but has now endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket.
In thanking Mandell, Palin cited a quotation from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Palin had seen the day before on a Starbucks mocha cup: "There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't support other women."
(The quotation was slightly off. Albright used the word "help" instead of "support.")
After the cheers died down, Palin made it a two-fer: "Let's see what a comment like I just made, how that is turned into whatever it'll be turned into tomorrow in the newspaper."
In reporting Sarah Palin’s statements about the Obama-Ayers connection, MSNBC’s early morning C-teamer (can’t remember the goofball’s name) dismissively remarked that Ayers and Obama had merely served on the same board of directors some years ago. The network droid failed to mention the personal friendship of many years standing, their intricate and long-running business relationship on that board, that Ayers was in fact Obama’s boss at one time, or that its was in Ayers’s house that Obama actually launched his campaign.
Now, MSNBC has every right to support the candidate of its choice (and Obama is the media choice in every sense of the term). They do not, however, have the moral right to lie to the American people to advance that cause, nor do they have any moral or logical basis for claiming to be an objective source of news and analysis.
We will be in unknown territory when Obama attempts to revive the misnamed “fairness doctrine” as a payoff for MSM support. This, of course, will be a totalitarian censorship regime; aimed at suppressing, not simply opposition to liberalism, but every alternative to and dissent against the standard cultural model of the media-industrial complex. Many dictators have imposed such censorship in the past, or still do today, but there is no precedent for a censorship regime in which the commercial media themselves are the arbiters and controlling authority of that regime.
Look at who these people are; monsters of vanity and ego, ruthlessly greedy, pathologically arrogant, isolated, ignorant in many cases of the most basic facts about the subjects they pretend to report.
We will be in the hands of devils if they gain the final measure of power for which this campaign sets the stage.
Let her GO...It will be hard for her AND above all for OUSSAMABAMA
Palin is at her best when she goes snarky.
God help her get it done !
Swiftboat politics: telling the truth about someone.
I like what she is saying, but I would rather she be saying it in Michigan than California.
Bill Ayers, college professor; well-connected and socially prominent scion of a wealthy and privileged family, and unrepentant terrorist:
I wonder if the Obama campaign is aware that "Swiftboating" is telling the truth about someone? It is important that voters know the facts and what has substance and what does not.
Swiftbboat Attack=Truthtelling about a communist thug.
Osama Bin Laden and Obama Bin Biden have at least one thing in common.....They both have friends that bombed the Pentagon.
Sounds like she is out hunting Joe Biden to deliver another smackdown in person. LOL
I guess she didn't mind it when Obama accused our men and women of the military of bombing and strafing innocent civilians?
Conservatives will have to take to the street and get better at pointing out these lies. Fliers could be printed and handed out, etc. etc. Get inventive. I think it’s high time we take action in this war with the LYING media. This is beyond acceptable. Harsh action needs to be taken. MSNBC needs to be called out next time a Republican/conservative appears on that channel for anything. They need to answer questions and held accountable. We cannot accept this any longer. It’s up to the Republicans in position to take the media to task and cite these blatant examples EVERYTIME they are on tv, interviews.
Gov. Palin is doing right in exposing this radical fraud Obama, but I think she could up it a notch and cite Obama choosing to kick off his campaign having Ayers host a fundraiser. She needs to make it specific. THAT is damning and doesn’t allow the press to pull their BS about crossing paths. Cite the fundraiser repeatedly.
She also doesn’t need to keep playing into the Tina Fey parody of being barely informed—as if she’d only learned about Ayers in the Times yesterday morning.
She’s our only hope and salvation at this point however, and it is amazing how good and good-natured her delivery is.
Bingo.
7 October 1969 – Bombing of Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago, apparently as a “kickoff” for the “Days of Rage” riots in the city October 8-11, 1969. The Weathermen later claimed credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”
8-11 October 1969 – The “Days of Rage” riots occur in Chicago in which 287 Weatherman members from throughout the country were arrested and a large amount of property damage was done.
6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO stated in their book “Prairie Fire” that they had did the explosion.
27-31 December 1969 – Weathermen hold a “War Council” meeting in Flint, MI, where they finalize their plans to submerge into an underground status from which they plan to commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO).
13 February 1970 - Bombing of several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department .
16 February 1970 – Bombing of Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen.
6 March 1970 – Bombing in the 13th Police District of the Detroit, Michigan. 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, during that period, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.
6 March 1970 – “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members die . The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails TO INFILICT MAXIMUM CASUALTIES UPON DETONATION.
30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO “bomb factory” on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO “weapons cache” in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.
10 May 1970 – Bombing of The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C..
21 May 1970 – The WUO under Bernardine Dohrn’s (Ayers’ current wife) name releases its “Declaration of a State of War” communique.
6 June 1970 – The WUO sends a letter claiming credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice; however, no explosion actually took place. Months later, workmen in this building located an unexploded device which had apparently been dormant for some time.
9 June 1970 - Bombing of The New York City Police Headquarters.
27 July 1970 - Bombing of The Presidio army base in San Francisco. [NYT, 7/27/70]
12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, break out and escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.
8 October 1970 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. [NYT, 8/10/70]
10 October 1970 - Bombing of Queens traffic-court building . [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]
14 October 1970 - Bombing of The Harvard Center for International Affairs [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]
1 March 1971 - Bombing of The United States Capitol . “ [NYT, 3/2/71]
April, 1971 – abandoned WUO “bomb factory” discovered in San Francisco, California.
29 August, 1971 - Bombing of the Office of California Prisons . [LAT, 8/29/71]
17 September 1971 - Bombing of The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY [NYT, 9/18/71]
15 October 1971 - Bombing of William Bundy’s office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]
19 May 1972 - Bombing of The Pentagon . [NYT, 5/19/72]
18 May 1973 - Bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York
28 September 1973 - Bombing of ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy . [NYT, 9/28/73]
6 March 1974 - Bombing of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco
31 May 1974 - Bombing of The Office of the California Attorney General.
17 June 1974 - Bombing of Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters .
11 September 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation).
29 January 1975 - Bombing of the State Department in (AP. “State Department Rattled by Blast,” The Daily Times-News, January 29 1975, p.1)
16 June 1975 - Bombing of Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York .
September, 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation .
October 20, 1981 - Brinks robbery in which several members of the Weather Underground stole over $1 million from a Brinks armored car near Nyack, New York. The robbers murdered 2 police officers and 1 Brinks guard. Several others were wounded.
1981 “Guilty as hel*. Free as a bird. America is a great country,” Ayers said when interviewed by David Horowitz.
September 11, 2001 “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers is quoted in a New York Times article.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.