OH NOES OBAMA IS A TERRORIST!!!!

defeating McCain. That would be great for the country!

Ms. Farley,

What are you smoking?  Your accusations are ridiculous and rather offensive. Why are you hell bent on this guilt by association with William Ayers and Obama?  As a former AP reporter you should be ashamed of yourself for spewing such trash.

for the associates of Barack Obama....

"Killerspin"

misleading about his relationship with Tony Rezko.

In the January debate with Clinton he told America that he "had only done about 5 hours of legal work" for Rezko - certainly suggesting that he barely knew the guy.

Well, that was a lie, too.

Oh my, what an awful terrorist communist group the Annenberg Challenge is, They FUND SCHOOLS!

Announced in December 1993 at the White House, Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg's $500 million "Challenge to the Nation" became the largest public/private endeavor in U.S. history dedicated to improving public schools.

Eighteen locally designed Challenge projects operated in 35 states, funding 2,400 public schools that served more than 1.5 million students and 80,000 teachers. Over 1,600 businesses, foundations, colleges and universities, and individuals contributed $600 million in private matching funds.

Barack better renounce and repudiate right away!

Well no, not really.

When Blackwell sought backing for his table tennis tournament in 2002, other politicians, including U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, offered support for the event. [...]

High-dollar tourism grants from the state are often reserved for events like the Breeders' Cup, an internationally known horse race that brought 50,000 to the Chicago area in 2002. But Blackwell and his allies promised good attendance, hotel bookings and international attention. Today, Illinois Tourism Director Jan Kosner lauds the state's decision to support the table tennis tourneys and dismisses the role that letters from politicians play in the grant-making process.

Oh teh noez! Not a silver bullet.

This note will likley be ignored but take it for what it's worth.  Many here like to point out the echo chamber nature of KOS.  While an Obama supporter I come here to see some diffrent perspectives on this nomination race.  I would just point out the fact that this site is starting to have a "jumped the shark" feel.  Recently comming here is like going to hillaryis44 or taylormars.  If you notice, right now at least 7 of the top 20 diaries are attack spots on Obama.  I'm fine with this, it does not hurt, frustrate or upset me.  I would just point this out bacause by contrast at KOS 1 of the current top 20 attack Clinton.  Perhaps it's time to take a step back and talk about the reasons you support your canidate more rather than tryin to demonize the likley democratic canidate.  ..

just saying..

Uhh, you know the Republicans associate the Clintons with the Weathermen more than Obama, right? It is just convenient they can use those attacks either way now.

Now, I want you to answer those same hard questions about Clinton's implicit support of the Weathermen and their activities. Does Senator Clinton and her husband support killing innocent babies and kittens, as the Weathermen have been rumored to have blown up and then eaten? Is that why President Clinton issued the pardon he did?

Linfar, thank you for your thoughtful diary. You've once again managed to make this a debate about this issues and not guilt by association.

Obama is an evil man hellbent on helping his terrorist friends. Clearly, this is not a democratic primary anymore. Its just one Democrat running against a terrorist and table tennis sympathizer.

I hope that this makes the rec list. Everyone on myDD should see this, because there arn't enough shitty diaries about this bullshit already.

Amazing.  Fox looks so tame compared to this.  Nice take on our probable nominee.  What is the point of this diary, to change hearts and minds in Indiana?  Guam?  North Carolina?  To affect decision-making by members of this site?  Maybe to scar him further for the GE out of a sense of revenge?  I can't figure out what this post expects to accomplish.

about Obama, and what the obama campaign is not prepared to address forcefully, is unfortunately the gift that will keep on giving to republicans.

I just get the feeling that we don't know Obama, and this kind of stuff is tip of the iceberg.  And on top of this, he doesn't want to debate.  Whether it is true or not, Obama gives the impression now he's got something more to hide.

Ayers and Dobrin HATE America.  It's simple.  They tried to kill their own people.

Obamas association with them is deplorable.

You are known by the company you keep

Obama, Rezco, Ayers, Auchi, Wright  .. all spewing AntiAmerican hate and letting their own freeze to death in apartments.

I don't see the fuss in "getting to know" Obama.  America deserves to know ALL there is behind the curtains .. we know all about Hillary, and if he wants to be President he should welcome any questions instead of whining and crying.

The dems are setting themselves up for a humiliating, crushing defeat in November if he is the nominee.   He's too green and he's too wimpy

Here's the kind of thing Obama has not brought up with Clinton but surely the Republicans will:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/he ndrikhertzberg/2008/04/after-pennsylva.h tml
Hillary has her own vulnerability in this general area, and it is larger than the fact, mentioned by Obama in his riposte to her, that her husband, on his last day in office, commuted the sentences of a couple of old Weather Underground jailbirds. (After a decade and a half in stir, they had been denied parole, apparently unfairly. Good for Bill.) What Obama did not mention was Hillary's internship, back in the groovy summer of 1971, at the Oakland law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. Treuhaft (Robert Treuhaft, husband of Jessica Mitford) had left the Communist Party thirteen years earlier, but Walker (Doris Walker) was still a member, and the firm was a pillar of the Bay Area Old Left. I assume that Obama didn't mention this because doing so would have rightly pissed off a lot of Democrats, because he is running as a non-kneecapping uniter, and because there is no evidence that Clinton has or has ever had the slightest sympathy with Communism. (Of course, there is no such evidence with respect to Obama and Weather Underground-ism, either, but that didn't stop Hillary from twisting that particular knife.)

My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets--from Bill's little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton "scandals" of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated--remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls "distractions." To take the most obvious example, the former President's social life since leaving the White House will become, if not "fair game," big game--and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a "there" where the Democratic Party really wants to go?

Tom Hayden:"Why Hillary makes my Wife scream"

"I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election. I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library.
And the reason that is important -- you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted; investigations that are squelched; contracts that are awarded; regulations that are delayed.

These are important questions. The people deserve to know. And we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected, because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080505/

Oops. My clipboard didn't clear

This is the Hayden quote

"Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties," Hayden writes. "She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an 'unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged.' She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. ... She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

"Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others 'tolerated communists'. Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. ...

"All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080505/

What I have learned about Obama supporters today is they want to shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message. Everything in this post is in the public record. There is no spin in the post. Obama is hurting himself everytime one of these issues comes to light.

This rabid "hitpiece" made the rec list?? good grief!

Foundation.  Straws. Grasping. Desperation.

Btw, didn't someone upthread just contradict the whole house of cards by saying Obama didn't do anything meaningful on that board, just his name was there as a resume builder?

Y'all can't have it both ways.  

To the untrained eye (that would be me) this shit looks ridiculous and boring as all get out.  In other words, no legs.

Rather than b*tch and moan about the so-called "hit piece", why don't you try and debunk it?  It's getting so tiresome reading all this whining about how it's not true, wah wah, Hillary's this or that, Hillary, Hillary, it's all her fault.  Why don't you just come back with FACTS??  Try and take her "hit piece" apart with real facts.  You can't, can you?  If all this was about Hillary, you'd be screaming at the top of your lungs why she isn't electable.  So puleaze, stop the BS and respond intelligently.  Do you not care to try and win over voters?  Or you just feel you have enough and don't care to bring the party together when the nominee is chosen?  

We have a winning candidate in Hillary Clinton. Let's forget about the other one, who isn't qualified in the first place.

More from Tom Hayden

"My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.
It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore."

----

But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are."

----

"It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic superdelegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080505/ha yden

He's a liar and a fraud.

First we find out that his start in politics was bankrolled by a notorious political fixer now being tried for bribing public officials.  Then we find out that he got his street cred in his heavily AA district by joining an extreme black liberation church.  Then we learn that his political career was launched when an unrepentant domestic terrorist introduced him to the uber-liberal, white guilt wing of the Chicago machine.

Whoever called Linfar a racist upthread is being absurd.  Every time someone critizes BO - either him, his surrogates or his online henchman pull the race card.  Knock it off.  With whom a politician associates with tells us volumes about what he/she believes.  As my grandmother said....tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.

Quit bringing up facts.

Yup, Obama is a phony.

What makes Hillary Clinton more qualified than Barrack Obama? If she is running on her record, Nancy Regan, Roslyn Carter, and Jacquline Kennedy should've run for president.Let's face it, how do we know who is more qualified, have we personally interviewed both candidates?Have we seen them work under pressure? Do we know exactly know how many friends each has in the senate, congress, and legislature, to further their agenda, no. Are we experts in the running of our country, no. I do know one thing, guilt by association will never hold up. That is what this diary is all about. I'm sure if someone brought up The Rose Law Firm, or Vince foster's name, The Hillary people would would be running for he bricks and stones to start throwing.

yeah....I think we have seen them both work "under pressure" during this primary season. And I have seen enough of BO to know that he can't handle the job.....how can he when he can't even handle two itty bitty little reporters asking questions in a debate.  Forget that he didn't have decent answers for why he has chosen to associate with the likes of Rev. Wright and Ayers.  Even more concerning that these lapses in judgment is the way he bungled the substantive questions on the economy.  Really, really scary.  

It seems very amusing that the Obama supporters are so eager to call Hillary a liar while turning a blind eye to their beloved candidate's own lies, well doccumented by the media in the past months.

Truth is not a hit piece, and if you seriously WANT to reopen all of your friends Rove and the republicans' attacks on Hillary, remember this: they already spent millions of dollars in the nineties on this shit and found out nothing.
Hillary and Bill made their fortune from legitimate business, as attested by the US congress. Obama made his fortune from political endorsements, bribing his wife's employer with taxpayer money, and so on. The difference is staggering.

Obama got his career started and supported by a known and unrepentant terrorist. Bill Clinton ( who isn't running) pardoned 2 people who served time for what they did as opposed to Ayers. Not even close.

Hillary worked for Wal Mart? So did Michelle Obama ( for Treehouse Inc). Say what you want about Bill, he never had to bribe anyone in order to get his wife a more than double salary. Fact, and doccumented.

No, what is happening to Obama is not Hillary's fault. It's his own fault for being an incompetent arrogant creature who thougth he could get to be POTUS by way of affirmative actions and his brainwashed supporters.

Fact: you are supporting a guy who is disenfranshising 2 million voters. Counting those votes, your guy is no longer ahead.

Fact: your candidate is scared shitless of a debate. What happens when somethign really bad happens and he is president? Will he hide under the bed in terror?

Fact: your candidate is corrupt, lacking judgement and dishonest. However, he's good at teleprompter. Too bad that's not good enough for the POTUS job.

How much does your guy have to lose for you guys to get it? Or do you seriously think that being a member of a minority is good enough a qualification to be POTUS?

If one is not in it to win it, they should stay home. That simple.

A fleeting thought in the end: Axelrode has already managed two losing campaigns. here's to the third.

Is the Obama church open yet or what?

on this diary and have nothing to say about it.

It's better to get all this stuff out in the open now, so that you're not shocked with it during the general.  I've said time and again that I don't think either of these candidates have been sufficiently vetted.

Thanks from the Weekly Standard

"While all of this cocktail party supposition is unproven since the actual general election is months away and spring primaries are very different contests from fall elections, the damage to Obama has been done. Weeks from now, when the dust settles after a few more final primaries and the odd Clinton tactical victory, the pre-convention rubbishing of Barack Obama will be complete and the credit for most of it will go to Hillary Clinton.
She is likely to pay a price for it in the future, when it is likely she will at least try to run again. She will face a penalty for wounding a presumptive Democratic nominee and helping make a general election race far more competitive than anyone thought it would be.

In fact, if the GOP has a large Bronze medal of distinction, we should cast one at once and gleefully award it to Mrs. Clinton for her meritorious service to our cause. For seldom has the generic environment looked so bad for Republicans. November will still be difficult and much is now uncertain, but is does appear that a perfect storm could be brewing. First, the nomination of John McCain, a different kind of Republican in a year where only such independence can survive. Second, a long and damaging Democratic primary pitting one vital part of its base in deadly combat against another and continuing that fight long beyond a sensible conclusion. Mrs. Clinton's hand alone is on this throttle of Democratic fratricide and she appears to be accelerating the engine of Democrat destruction rather than easing it back.

Clinton's motive is not hard to understand. Politics at the top is an uncertain business where dogged perseverance is often rewarded. Her campaign, mathematically now so improbable, runs on nothing more than the fumes of a possible Obama crack up. Some horrible gaffe or Cook county scandal surfacing in time to doom Obama in the few remaining primaries and spark a superdelegate turnaround that would crown Hillary Clinton the Democrat nominee. Since, as every superdelegate knows, stripping Obama of the nomination for anything short of committing a felony or making a praiseful remark about Dick Cheney would tear the Democratic party into pieces, such a reversal in Mrs. Clinton's bleak fortunes is very unlikely.

Yet she stays in. Wishing and hoping and striving for political disaster to strike the campaign of Barack Obama, the near certain Democratic nominee. Anyone who once had doubts about Mrs. Clinton's loyalty to the interests of the Democratic party instead of to her own ambition now has their answer."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TW SFP/2008/04/richelieu_the_perfect_storm. asp

No wonder BO wants no more debates with Senator Clinton! The media should jump on this, but I bet they won't. They've had too much kool-ade. The people will get it eventually...and, hopefully, in time.

This is awesome.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the Annenburg Challenge somewhere else.. what could it have been.  The FBI's most wanted list?  No, that's not it.  Donors to the Williams Jefferson Clinton library?  No, that information is sealed.  Oh I know!

It was in a "made possible by viewers like you and..." list of sponsors for Sesame Street.

***sad trombone

Excellent diary.  Sorry the Obamabots have fallen into such vitriolic chaos.  It is going to be really painful for them over the next few weeks as they have to see their candidate be too afraid to debate Hillary and to watch as he further crumbles before their eyes.  Growing up is a hard thing to do.

William Ayers did not "employ" Barack Obama. They served together on the board of a charity which did a lot of good for the poor of Chicago, but hey, it appears some Hillary supporters have forgotten about caring for the poor. There were 8 other members of that board.

On the one hand we've got Hillary and her more vicious supporters, who are willing to apply a scorched earth policy on Obama with no chance of his not being the nominee, lending credence to the "2012" strategy theory.

On the other hand you've got Barack Obama, who they know is loath to apply this strategy to Hillary using the treasure trove of ammunition to use against the Clintons. Even Obama supporters, lead to some extent by the actions of the candidate, hesitate to torch Hillary, and the media, unwilling to appear to be piling on a candidate so obviously losing, hesitates to make an issue of Hillary's dirty laundry. But maybe this approach needs some rethinking.

I'm beginning to think that maybe Hillary should be hit with everything available at this point, with a preamble from Obama that he didn't want to do things this way, but that Hillary and her supporters had left him no choice.

we demand a higher standard form our leaders.

I hope you will then join everyone calling on the Clintons to reveal the people who have donated to the Clinton library, the Clinton charity, and paid Bill for speaking to see if anyone is connected to those who received pardons or other favors.

So what is the MyDD community going to do in the 90% eventuality that Obama wins the nomination?  Will it actually get it's act together and fight the Republicans?  Will it back McCain?  Or will it just become a ghost town? I'm genuinely curious.

I thought I'd pass this along:

What I anticipate is that I will be impressed by Hillary, who I know has paid her dues to the gay community. If Edwards wants to run through more versions of his folksy, ah-shucks confusion about gay marriage, he can kiss my lesbian ass. If Obama does not address the antipathy by blacks in general towards gays in general, he will just show once again he's not up to the job. Biden I am not familar with. And the same goes for Richardson and Kucinich and the others.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lin-farley /looking-forward-and-back_b_59763.html

Chompy, chomp.

Obama was on the board in a largely ceremonial role of an organization devoted to Chicago's public schools. Ayers helped write the grant funding it. To claim that Obama "worked for" Ayers is patently absurd. Here, read this:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/thisweeki neducation/2007/03/obama_and_annenberg.h tml

It's an earlier article challenging claims that Obama's directorship of the Annenberg challenge informed his bid for the presidency. To quote:

"There's lots of interesting stuff in David Hoff's EdWeek profile of Barack Obama and his education background (Obama's Annenberg Stint Informs White House Bid), but the Obama-Annnenberg connection seems like a reach.

First and foremost is the notion that Obama "led" the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in any meaningful way. "As a private citizen, he led Chicago's portion of the Annenberg Challenge school reform initiative financed by the late philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg--an experience that shaped Mr. Obama's perspective on the critical importance of principals and teachers."

If he did, it's news to me and a lot of folks in Chicago. I wrote a long report about the CAC in 2001 that failed to unearth Obama's name as anyone of any influence -- and never came across his name in an education context in the following six years during which I wrote a book about school reform in Chicago. Obama gets barely a mention in the Chicago Catalyst magazine, which goes back further and deeper than I do."

So, how should we characterize the connection between Obama and Ayers here? I'd say "acquaintance" is pretty accurate, in fact.