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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Mark Bauerlein

McLiar Bingo

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

Having a debate-watching party?

Follow along with any of the FOUR McLiar Bingo cards created by John Sellers and Andrew Boyd of Agit-Pop Communications.

From Card 2:

“Obama “pals around with terrorists.” ACTUALLY: Obama was 8 when radical Bill Ayers planted bombs to protest Vietnam. Now a professor, he & Obama volunteer for the same charity. (CNN FactChecker)

From Card 1: “Obama wants to teach sex ed to kindergartners.” ACTUALLY: The bill Obama voted for in the Illinois Legislature helps protect children from sexual predators. (factcheck.org)”

You get the picture.

Posted at 07:40:31 PM on October 6, 2008 | All postings by Marc Bousquet

Comments

  1. Oh yeah, he barely knows Bill Ayers, despite coauthoring a report with him. A report a college attempted to bury.
    Next Marc Bousquet will have us believe that Barack barely knew Rev. Wright and barely knew Franklin Raines and barely spent all the money he was given by Fannie Mae

    — fg · Oct 6, 08:56 PM · #

  2. Well, actually, leaving aside the ridiculousness of this particularly sleazy guilt-by-association slur, there are two questions. A) Is Bill Ayers a “terrorist”? and B) does Obama “pal around” with him?

    I know lots of people who do “pal around” with Bill Ayers. Obama does not.

    Even if he did, it couldn’t possibly reflect poorly on him, any more it would on the tens of thousands of people who have had more contact with Ayers in his busy, generous life.

    Also, I’m just quoting the Agit-Pop bingo boards, each of which contains dozens of McCain distortions. You don’t like the Ayers distortion, pick another one.

    — Marc Bousquet · Oct 6, 09:29 PM · #

  3. It does seem that the Obama campaign has at last realized that the most strategic reply to the Ayers accusations is the highlighting of the “palling around” of the Keating Five….

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Oct 6, 09:46 PM · #

  4. I really wish the Chronicle would set up a new blog called Mouthstorm where all the political garbage could be posted for the next month. I’m deleting the Brainstorm blog from my reading list until after the election.

    — tired · Oct 7, 12:09 AM · #

  5. Yeah, Marc, we love Obama and McCain is ickky. But, most of all, politics is way cool! See you at the rally!

    I’m with tired.

    — T Paine · Oct 7, 12:23 AM · #

  6. With all due respect, Tom, Obama’s chief virtue is that he’s not one of the reining gang of thieves, war criminals and charlatans. You can read my personal thoughts about his warmed-over Clintonism (Clinton being one of the first to pimp Quality Management into government) in the comments in the crossposted conversation at The Valve.

    Of course, since the actual Tom Paine, unlike Obama, was a revolutionist who, to quote Palin, “palled around with terrorists targeting their own country,” I’m going to assume your disappointment in the post is that it didn’t point out the gaps between Obama’s soggy technocratic vision and the more, uh, serious responses demanded by a quarter-century of class war from above.

    Good for you. You might not want to be so subtle next time—I almost mistook you for shallow, right-wing and a bit of a jerk!

    — Marc Bousquet · Oct 7, 02:03 AM · #

  7. There seems to be plenty of mud to go around. It looks to me like everytime McCain-Palin lob some mud, the Obama and O’Biden campaign already has a rapid response ready to counter it.

    The appropriate responses to the Ayers charge is that independent sources clearly indicate that the relationship is not close + Keating Five + Palin’s association (and Todd’s membership in) the Alaska secessionist movement. And on character? How about getting Nancy Reagan’s opinion on John’s character? She was pissed at him over his unfaithfulness to his first wife and taking up with Cindy (while he was still married). Good judgement? Many people would not think all this adds up to the kind of good judgement that is needed.

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 03:57 AM · #

  8. I am not making this up….

    Sharon Churcher wrote an article for The Daily Mail entitled “The wife of U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind.”

    She quotes Carol McCain, John’s first wife, as saying:
    “My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens—it just does.”

    She reports that some of John McCain’s acquaintances during the 1970s portray him as a “self-centered womanizer.”

    The McCains met Ronald and Nancy Reagan through Ross Perot (who had paid for Carol McCain’s surgeries after her tragic automobile accident in 1969), and Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing (and employed her in various capacities for several years).

    Robert Timberg, a McCain biographer, said that by the mid-1970s “John started carousing and running around with women,” and McCain admits to having had several girlfriends around this time (while he was still married).
    In fact, he was still married when he met and began “seeing” Cindy. Timberg reported that “the Reagans were quite shocked.”

    John McCain divorced Carol and married Cindy a few weeks after the divorce was final.

    Ted Sampley, a Vietnam veteran who claims to know John McCain personally, is quoted as saying: “There is something wrong with this guy, and let me tell you what it is—deceit. When he came home” to Carol “he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.” And: “This is the guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake.”

    But Ross Perot reportedly believes that both Carol and the American people have been deceived by John McCain. He is quoted as saying: “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory. After he came home Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.”

    How do suppose this story would play with women who stress moral values? How do supporters from the religious right feel about John working in his new father-in-law’s beer distributorship, and about Cindy’s fortune being based on selling beer? Maybe that is pretty good for the wild hard-drinking snow machine guys, but for their “hocky mom” wives? Probably not so much….

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 09:47 AM · #

  9. Care to elaborate, Marc, on who might belong to your “reining” [sic] gang of war criminals and what actions you propose to bring them to justice? Or are you just spouting “revolutionist” screed?

    You must know that Obama launched his political career at an arranged party at the Ayers-Dohrn residence. And there’s much more to be had in investigating the collaboration between Ayers and Obama on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that dumped tens of millions into trying to radicalize Chicago schools.

    — emt · Oct 7, 10:02 AM · #

  10. I see so Ayers is not a terrorist anymore? He did plant bombs and he says to this day his is not sorry, he wishes he could have done more. The fact that Obama was 8 when he planted the bombs is irrelevant. He is still an unrepentant terrorist and Obama hung out with him as an adult not an 8 year old.

    Also they did not “volunteer for the same charity.” They worked together for years on the board of directors of a charity that had $100 MILLION dollars to distribute. This isn’t serving bread at a soup kitchen here. Obama’s “coming out party” in Chicago politics was at AYERS’ HOUSE! If you’re going to “fact-check” at least be honest about it.

    The Chronicle is really becoming a left-wing rag.

    http://rightwingprofessor.blogspot.com/

    — rightwingprofessor · Oct 7, 12:29 PM · #

  11. The true fact is that “hung out with him” is not an accurate portrayal of what happened. Was Ayers ever convicted of any crime? No. Why not? Because of the illegal activities of the government he was attacking way back when so many of us were so frustrated with a war we had no way to win and from which we had no exit strategy. I do not agree with Ayers activities, and Obama has also declared that those activities were unacceptable. Part of the role of a community organizer is to identify people and organizations in the community that are currently making constructive contributions to the community. Whatever destructive things Ayers did occurred long before he and Obama knew each other at all.

    So how about sticking to things the candidates themselves really did. For example, Sarah Palin never actually joined the Alaska seccession movement of which her husband was a part. Her association with him does not make her guilty of anything.

    McCain running around on his first wife was well known, and he started an affair with Cindy while he was still married. He owns responsibility for that. While I don’t think that should be used against him to any appreciable extent, he clearly was cheating. If you don’t care about such character issues, fine, don’t care about them. For some people this takes him down a few notches, but I don’t know how many other men (including any of us) would not have found a pretty 25 year old difficult to resist—when we were 40 and maybe not entirely pleased with our lives. “It happens.” (As Carol McCain said)

    And the Chronicle SHOULD be a “right-wing rag?”

    Give me a break….

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 03:22 PM · #

  12. For me, the Ayers connection simply suggests that Obama is willing to work with people to get things done. In politics — especially foreign policy — that’s a fact of life. The whole ridiculous discussion of Iran and diplomacy without “preconditions” stinks of an attempt to sound pure: “I won’t talk with Iran [but I’ll have officials representing me talk with Iran].” A politician who hasn’t worked with some shady people would worry me.

    The important question might instead be: did Ayers and Obama get anything done through this charity?

    — Luther Blissett · Oct 7, 04:04 PM · #

  13. John McCain definitely did engage in “palling around” with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He wanted to get their blessing. Yet the nuts on the right don’t make a big deal out of that. Get this, Falwell and Robertson claim that Osama bin Laden was doing the work of God on 9/11, McCain ran to them anytime he needed advice (still pals around with Robertson), and there’s no outrage.

    Palin’s husband belongs to an anti-American political party, yet there’s no outrage.

    If Palin really does have some secret information about the Obama/Ayers connection, maybe she will have a press conference in which she takes questions from reporters, as a way to get rid of the media filter. She can speak directly to the American people about claims that she’s lying. I am sure that will remove all doubt about Obama’s associations.

    — me · Oct 7, 04:04 PM · #

  14. Annenberg trying to “radicalize” Chicago schools? What a laugh. Annenberg is not left leaning. Someone is getting a little paranoid….

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 04:26 PM · #

  15. Anyone who wishes to do so can check out the “Chicago Annenberg Challenge,” as well as the “Joyce Foundation” and the “Woods Fund of Chicago.” Obama served on all of these. Ayers and many other people, including the Republican governor of Illinois, were involved with these educational activities.

    To claim that some one is guilty of something because they knew or were in the same project or organization or lived in the same neighborhood is the bizarre kind of thinking we try to help our students overcome by trying to teach careful and critical thinking.

    It is small-minded and wrong-headed and suggests an inability to distinguish the important from the trivial. This sort of thing is used deliberately to deceive the most intellectually chakllenged and vulnerable in our society—those who lack critical thinking skills.

    Actually, Governor Palin attended meetings of the Alaska Independence Party and provided a video message for their convention. I’m not claiming she supported Alaska seccession, though her husband clearly did as a member of that political party. The association with an un-American and un-patriotic activity is much more troubling than Obama’s service on some education project boards. This sort of crap is not a winning tactic for McPalin….

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 04:55 PM · #

  16. Obama says terrorism, conspiracy, murder, and bombings are “unacceptable” (oh my, did he really have to be so harsh about it?)? Erwin says “we” (you and Ayers—who?) were “frustrated” (don’t cry, Joe, here’s a hanky) about the war in Vietnam though he doesn’t approve of Ayers’s “activities” (Ayers himself confessed to his guilt, though JE prefers a mealy-mouth euphemism for them). After this, Erwin whispers some gossip about McCain, as if there was the slightest degree of moral equivalence between murderous terrorism and spousal betrayal (if true).

    Stanley Kurtz is tracing what left-wing toilets Ayers and Obama flushed the Annenberg money down, so expect additions to his already sordid list of radical organizations like ACORN that sucked up CAC money.

    — emt · Oct 7, 05:34 PM · #

  17. Still waiting for the names the “reining” [sic] “war criminals” accused by Marc Bousquet. The only one prominent in the present exchange so far is Ayers.

    — emt · Oct 7, 05:41 PM · #

  18. —-“names of the above-mentioned”

    — emt · Oct 7, 05:51 PM · #

  19. “emt” were you around during the Vietnam war? I was and had already finished my army service by the time I voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. HOWEVER, then I met and talked in great detail with people who returned from Vietnam. Many of them told of the terrible things they had been involved in and the lingering psychological consequences they were living with. They also told of the impossibility of identifying the enemy most of the time and the impossibility of avoiding collateral civilian casualties. Some regarded all Vietnamese as sub-human. Others had nightmares about the things they had been involved in ( like torturing people they captured and throwing them out of helicopters, etc.). Some had come to enjoy killing and could not control their violent inclinations. It was a very, very rough time. By 1968 I changed my party affiliation and voted for Eugene McCarthy. Our best efforts within the law were unsuccessful at getting political action to end the war. I had friends who assembled arsenals and were planning an armed rebellion. I slept in the headquarters of the SDS headquarters in Berkeley the night before it blew up. I marched with other students and faculty from UC Davis to Sacramento to attempt to get then Governor Reagan to cease his war against the students at Berkeley. None of it worked worth a damn. The SDS people I knew were nuts, and we suspected them of being CIA or FBI plants. We suspected a lot of things. We were paranoid as hell, and some of the time the paranoia was supported by law enforcement actions. So, some people took things to the next level and engaged in violent acts. It is my impression that the violence was not justified, but only made things worse. I did not support violence then and I do not support it now. I can understand how those who decided that violence was warranted rationalized that violence might have helped had it been better planned and differently directed. One of the reasons I remained opposed to violent protests was that I thought they were not only ineffective but actually made things worse. By the late 1970s and early 1980s there were still nuts running around the hills on the west coast (and other places, I suppose) planning violent anti-government actions. By that time it seemed to be mostly drug related (grass and cocaine), but I imagine it all morphed into meth. The movement of which Ayers was a part bred a criminal subculture that has continued into the present. Should he regret having been involved? I think so. Should he have remorse? I think so. Should he have learned a lesson and spent the rest of his life engaging in positive nonviolent action? Yes, I think so. Should he have been ostracized and not allowed to do positive things? No, I don’t think so. Should Obama have shunned him lest mere association be held against him in a future political campaign? Why? What sort of gutless reaction would that have been? Obama lived in a very real and very imperfect world and participated in activities that were terrifically constructive and beneficial to Chicago neighborhoods. And people who have probably done very little by comparison under much less challenging circumstances are quick to criticize in superficial and partisan ways.

    “Spousal betrayal (if true)” Sorry, emt, McCain has openly admitted it. It is a fact, and what do I care? I might have done the same thing, who knows? But it is pretty hard to see how someone who behaved that way has any right to criticize someone else’s character for having associated (slightly) with someone who did bad things many years before. I don’t know, maybe you think marrying a good looking beer heiress showed pretty good judgement. If so, you have that right. You can vote however you want to, emt. Isn’t diversity wonderful?

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 06:49 PM · #

  20. Thanks for your army service before you ran away and joined the leftist circus, JE. I enlisted after early college graduation in 1968 (in part because of disillusioned and misguided radicals like yourself) and served in the 1st Signal Brigade based in Long Binh. Perhaps your radical associations exposed you to more reports of atrocities (and some merely lurid inventions) among disaffected “winter soldiers” and radicals than I. In my later academic career I’ve heard many such self-exculpatory stories from ex-radical colleagues (most were draft-dodgers) who once bristled with pride at their heroically radical, law-breaking actions, but today most are plainly embarrassed or ashamed of their previous follies and crimes and say so. Not Ayers. Obama’s campaign manager Axelrod, as with Obama’s previous prevarications about Wright, tries to say Obama knew nothing of Ayers’s murderously violent past when they first became allies in 1995 over launching Obama’s political career, but Axelrod’s answers (and the disingenuous way he answered reporters’ queries) leave little doubt that Obama is lying yet again. Your true words about Ayers are as well applied to Obama’s alliance with Ayers:

    “Should he regret having been involved? I think so. Should he have remorse? I think so.”

    — emt · Oct 7, 07:50 PM · #

  21. “Leftist circus?” “disillusioned and misguided radicals?” “radical associations?” I think you are projecting something onto me that you are just imagining. And apparently you think my Special Forces friends did not really cut peoples’ ears off and then throw them out of helicopters or burn villages to the ground (on orders) just in case they might be harboring VC, etc, etc. The other thing, as many of my “radical” friends were radical right as were radical left, and most of them who had seen real action in SE Asia had suffered serious and enduring mental and emotional trauma. Several of them were pretty eratic and pretty lethal. Many were really remarkably talented and some were certainly psychopaths—the kind of people one would rather have as friends than as enemies.

    But I think you have a point about the some of the “heroically radical” people. There was lots of peer support for being antiwar and too much playing at violence. The violent radicals might have shared some personality traits with some of the wildly heroic combat troops who dug that game.

    I see a lot of “playing at protest” in some of the more recent wildly “left” anarchists and Maoist revolutionaries in some other places.

    I don’t see any evidence that Obama had any sort of “alliance with Ayers.” Look at it a little more carefully without filtering everything through your ideological perspective.

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 7, 10:47 PM · #

  22. Somehow it seems as though some unpunished crimes just aren’t problematic for some folks – if the perpetrator has his/her own television show years later rather than a college teaching position.

    Should Oliver North regret having lied to Congress about his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal? What are Nicaraguan lives worth anyway, right? They weren’t U.S. “Americans”, of course.

    Should he have remorse? I think so. Is contemporary association with Ollie a major stigma in the MSM?

    Not on your life….

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Oct 7, 11:02 PM · #

  23. Marc,
    That was a bit ad hominem (your #6) don’t you think? No Problem. But my point was (with —tired) that your oh-so-precious politics stuff is unworthy of our time.

    But you might consider (have you read my books?) that the successful rebel creates, and the unsuccessful rebel must be hung. He should not be found schmoozing about on the lecture circuit talking about his brave bombings.

    — T Paine · Oct 7, 11:09 PM · #

  24. It’s obvious, from the above revelations, that your denials, JE, of radical associations are false. No wonder that your “friends”— “lethal”, “eratic [sic],” but “talented”—some “psychopaths,” as you claim, should be a care to you.

    I don’t see any evidence against the view that Obama is allied with the most anti-American elements in our relatively free society—like the likes of the terrorist Bill Ayers; try to look a little more carefully without filtering your views through your ideological perspectives.

    — emt · Oct 7, 11:31 PM · #

  25. @emt: Just curious how you feel waking up each morning knowing that Obama’s going to win the election.

    Might as well get over it. The upside is that you’ve got a shot in 2012. And you might gain back some seats in the House and Senate in 2010.

    Don’t be too depressed. But this grasping at straws stuff only makes it worse. Admitting defeat is always a better strategy than wasting your energy on something you know is a lost cause. At least John McCain could have looked back in future years and been proud of the campaign he ran. Now he has to think about how badly he lost and how slimy he was.

    — me · Oct 8, 10:23 AM · #

  26. me: Not discouraged at all; it’s quite amusing to picture you ruffle-necked buffoons tripping behind the empty suit leading you.

    — emt · Oct 8, 01:12 PM · #

  27. On Comment 26:

    Ah, but some of us, at least, recognize that both of the major tickets are “empty suits” – that either way the American public will be choosing an emperor with no clothes. The major differences will be who is likely to veto (a Democrat with a Democratic Congress or a Republican with a Democratic Congress) and what kind of Supreme Court nominee might he choose.

    At this point, it only remains to be seen whether, once again, the American elections will display the shenanigans of the past (e.g., short-changing election districts in machine allocations, tampering with machines, etc.) which, were they to occur in a third-world nation, would be recognized for what they were.

    Is there someone in this nation who truly believes that the two men we saw in “debate” last night are the very best statesmen to lead this nation? No, our political system is so convoluted precisely to select only particular types of “challengers” for the race. And yes, Palin is the “exception” which proves that rule.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Oct 8, 04:23 PM · #

  28. AHA et al., it is more than a little cynical to assert that these guys are “empty suits.” Also, rather glib and oversimplified. But, at least there is no hypocrisy in your assertion.

    Actually, though, I do not wish to be too critical of you, AHA, because the bulk of your posts are quite substantive and well crafted. I believe you have both substance and style, and I always like to read your comments.

    But “emt?” Maybe not so much…. “Ruffle-necked buffoons?” We’re a bunch of “ruffle-necked buffoons?” I don’t even know what that is. “emt” must be astonishingly brilliant and experienced to come up with that…. And exceptionally clever to be amused by it….

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 8, 05:14 PM · #

  29. Joe, I still adore you. Keep writing to these posts. I miss you at Gina’s but look to find you elsewhere.

    — katie · Oct 8, 05:21 PM · #

  30. Hi Katie. See you at Gina’s.

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 8, 06:24 PM · #

  31. The films “The Candidate” with Robert Redford and “A Face in the Crowd” with Andy Griffith, though decades old, are still useful for the analysis of the “simulacra” (“empty suits”, “emperors with no clothes”, etc.) presented to us in modern and contemporary American elections.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Oct 8, 07:27 PM · #

  32. Got to give AHA’s copia and ingenium some credit, though leaving ACORN’s antic frauds, opposing voter photo IDs, refusing poll-watchers, etc. out of the category of election shenanigans are conspicuous omissions that may reveal a parti pris stance. And JE, what to you expect in turn when you casually drop references, for example, to Reagan’s “war against the students at Berkeley.” Many of these “students” were not acting as students, but common law-breakers and outlaws. In films with political point, I prefer the old 1933 “Invisible Man” with Claude Rains, especially the scene where he’s visually no more than a dancing, frolicking suit. Rains has presciently got Obama just right.

    — emt · Oct 8, 09:21 PM · #

  33. On Comment 32:

    The current ACORN problems indeed find their predecessors in the Florida and Ohio absentee ballot and voter list purging shenanigans. The “etc.” in Comment 27 covers a lot of territory….

    As for “Invisible Man”, unfortunately both the title and the image of the “frolicking suit” only serve to conjure up for the reader the raison d’etre for the Ralph Ellison classic.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Oct 8, 10:12 PM · #

  34. AHA and emt: I remain reluctant to accept the cynical “empty suit” label for either candidate. But that aside, who do each of you see as better choices? Do any of the following appeal to you?

    Lindsey Graham, Kay Bailey Hutchinsen, Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, Christopher Dodd, Diane Feinstein, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Mike Bloomberg, Melinda Gates, Sam Nunn, Robert Reich, General Powell, General Clark, Jeb Bush, others?

    Which of these are “empty suits,” and which are not?

    Or, does being involved in a campaign for President automatically cause evacuation of one’s garments? One might think that it would, instead, result in “filling one’s pants,” if you know what I mean….

    Somehow we should find a way for the “emperor with no clothes” and the “empty suit” to find each other. And how does “transparency” fit into all this?

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 9, 04:23 AM · #

  35. Oh! I left out Bob Barr and Ralph Nader. And Newt Gingrich, of course, who would, I understand, LOVE to be President….

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 9, 04:42 AM · #

  36. AHA: How about my “etc.” standing for the Daley machine’s hallowed traditions of electoral fraud and the shady patronage system in Chicago, the Big O’s political alma mater?—that’s one hefty “etc.”! Or could it also stand for students’ double-voting? Or . . .? JE: Part of the “empty suit” metaphor can refer to Obama, the frustrated ACORN operative or CAC cat’s paw of the shameless terrorist Bill Ayers, or the law “scholar” who’s never written a refereed article or book in his field, or the candidate for president who fancies that mere candidacy alone confers executive experience on himself, etc. (the “etc.” rescues AHA from reading further additions of “accomplishments” to the list). Or could the metaphor refer to this candidate’s lack of candor in releasing details and records pertinent to his candidacy? Or perhaps his protean shape-shifting on nearly every major issue? It might even be stretched to refer to columnists who spout war crimes charges and then remain inscrutable about who these in personam charges refer.

    — emt · Oct 9, 08:33 AM · #

  37. “to whom” rather than “who” in the last sentence

    — emt · Oct 9, 08:43 AM · #

  38. On Comments 34 and 36:

    Yes, of course, the “etc.” covers all that ground – and more! And “transparency” (e.g., the recording of the Senators’ votes, their statements in “debates”, etc.) has only helped to “inflate” the metaphors being used here. The country, indeed, the globe is facing one of its biggest economic crises, yet it is apparent that the two parties are simply re-arranging their deck chairs on the Titanic.

    Those who perceive the Democratic and Republican emperors as without clothes do have alternatives. Indeed, this is a perfect election for a third-party vote as, among others, Joseph Farah of World Net Daily suggests in a segment aired on C-SPAN this past weekend: http://feeds.radioamerica.org/rd-bin/rdfeed.mp3?GGL&cast_id=3749

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Oct 9, 08:53 AM · #

  39. “emt”: Do you feel the same way about everyone, or is there something about this specific individual that generates such hatefulness? Have you read DREAMS FROM MY FATHER? It must have just made you soooo angry. I don’t quite understand what you mean by your last sentence. To whom are you referring?

    — Joe Erwin · Oct 9, 08:56 AM · #

  40. JE: I assure you that hate has nothing to do with it; Obama seems a pleasant and intelligent chap, though also a bit on the self-centered and furtive side. It’s just my contention that he’s spectacularly unqualified for the position he’s seeking. And his choice of allies and associates is highly questionable.

    My last sentence pointedly referred to comment #6 by the author of the original posting, Marc Bosquet, where he charges the “reining [sic] gang” with war crimes and then ducks answering my queries about naming names and proposing punishments for the criminals. I’m inclined to be charitable here; perhaps he just spouted off a bit of hateful screed that he later regretted.

    — emt · Oct 9, 11:05 AM · #

  41. Your post perfectly illustrates the issue in our public debate. You correctly point out that the references to Ayres and the kindergarten sex education law distort the reality – by giving a counter-explanation that also distorts the reality.

    Here is a provision from the law.
    “Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.”

    What is not clear from that is whether there are ‘comprehensive’ sex education courses, within the application of the statue that are given in grade K.
    If not, the rest of the provision would not apply, but then one must ask why the provision extends to K.

    What is clear however is that the simple idea that all the law could do is protect children understates what the bill seems to do. There is more work to be done to know what the law says and how it fits into the sex education program. Just saying as you did that it seeks to help protect children is not the real story.

    On the Ayres story, again, the phrase Obama ‘pals around with terrorists’ is wildly distorting, but your answer that he was 8 years old and leaves it at that is also distorting.

    What is most disturbing about Ayres’ is his complete lack of remorse or reflection about the Weathermen to this day. People were murdered in actions taken by the group he founded, participated in and still defends. Obama should have better distanced himself from Ayres – but frankly this is a less toxic illustration of Obama’s greater problem of having some bad people close to him, Reverend Wright, VP vetter Johnson , Mayor Daley, financier Rezko.

    If Ayres was alone, probably not worth too much attention, but taken within this pattern Ayres is more troubling and the point here, your dismissal of Ayres because Obama was 8 wildly underestimates the questions that Ayres and the others raise about his judgment – as Palin does about McCain.

    Which brings us to the real point.

    The problem this nation faces is that both sides in what is now little more than a shouting match by both sides, you included, see above.

    The two parties are locked in a death spiral that is undermining our ability to govern ourselves.

    Each side is so sure the other side is so corrupt and evil intentioned – rightly so – they think their own side must be on the side of the angels. Wrong. You are as bad as the people you condemn.

    Pogo had it right, “I have met the enemy and it is us.” All of us. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

    — Stephen H. Schwartz · Oct 9, 12:46 PM · #

  42. emt,
    “My last sentence pointedly referred to comment #6 by the author of the original posting, Marc Bosquet, where he charges the “reining [sic] gang” with war crimes and then ducks answering my queries about naming names and proposing punishments for the criminals. I’m inclined to be charitable here; perhaps he just spouted off a bit of hateful screed that he later regretted.”

    In all fairness I must have provoked Marc (in my #5) though I can’t imagine how. He suggests I might be a shallow jerk, and right wing at that. But I have Elliot’s ‘objective correlative’ problem with his motivation. So much passion over politics and my harmless little comment!

    And Stephen H. Schwartz: I agree. Even the most incompetent failed rebels should be dealt with severely or they will hang around telling war stories and become Professors of Education.

    — T Paine · Oct 9, 05:48 PM · #

  43. T Paine: I see both your points: first, that your remarks may have provoked MB but, second, that his reaction was quite over-the-top. I merely asked him to elaborate on and defend his charges. His original posting was partisan and reductive enough.

    — emt · Oct 9, 07:25 PM · #

  44. It is funny how nobody brings up the fact Sarah and Todd Palin were part of a movement to succeed Alaska from the united States. I guess that is not important. But, when the Republican Party knows they are losing and will lose the election, they will stop at nothing. Republicans are Sheep!!! The Republican Party could nominate Bozo the Clown for President and they would have Bozo Stickers on the bumpers of their vehicles. Get in line…Baaaaaahhhhh!!!

    — Anthony · Oct 15, 06:54 AM · #

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