[Galveston1]

I hereby predict that if Obama is elected, (God help us!) that he will appoint Bill Ayers as Secretary of Education in his cabinet. Or someone with the same mind-set.

[Wondergirl]

And what, pray tell, is Ayers' mindset?

(Please at least spell his name correctly.)

[Galveston1]

He is an education "reformer". Given the fact that he "wishes he had done more" in reference to his past terrorist activities, I think I can safely assume that he would like to educate children to think like he does. Does that bother you any?

[Wondergirl]

He is an education "reformer". Given the fact that he "wishes he had done more" in reference to his past terrorist activities, I think I can safely assume that he would like to educate children to think like he does. Does that bother you any?

His protest activities (he was not a terrorist) were 40-some years ago. That has nothing to do with his current activities in education. Have you even bothered to find out anything about his ideas on education?

P.S. Trust me. He doesn't know Ayers well enough to choose him to be Secy of Education.

[excon]

Hello Gal:

It seems that even John McCain thinks Obama is a decent American. He's had to contradict his own campaign today, TWICE, when people called Obama a terrorist and an Arab. Poor McCain. He got booed by his own people when he said that.

Too bad you buy into the terrorist slime.

But, maybe McCain DOES have some character after all. Vote McCain.

excon

[Wondergirl]

Hello Gal:

It seems that even John McCain thinks Obama is a decent American. He's had to contradict his own campaign today, TWICE, when people called Obama a terrorist and an Arab. Poor McCain. He got booed by his own people when he said that.

Too bad you buy into the terrorist slime.

But, maybe McCain DOES have some character after all. Vote McCain.

excon

Yup. I'm a-thinkin' McCain is startin' to smell the coffee or watchin' the fat lady enter the building. Maybe some of that buried patriotism and character shone through today.

And those shouting about "guilt by association" better remember that street runs both ways.

As for Ayers, from blogs.tnr.com:

Good grief, I can't belive anyone could even care about Ayers. 1970 was a different time and I can't really fault Ayers for doing what he thought had to be done. I was lucky enought to be born after the establishment of my country decided to fight a pointless war using unwilling draftees as cannon fodder. The 60s and 70s have enough real villains without focusing on one mans, misguided, attempt to fight against an intolerable and unjust system. I wasn't even born and Obama was 8 and John McCain was busy crashing jets in Vietnam in an attempt to belatedly gain favor in the Navy. It was a long time ago.
October 10, 2008 2:19 AM

[tomder55]

Ayers has a long paper trail of his education intentions. I don't have time to detail them but put it this way. He is training the next generation of radical education teachers in his position at U of Il. From a reformed follower of liberation theology I know where he comes from .His speech at the World Education Forum in Venezuela in 2006 told a lot about his education philosophy.

I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can't have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.” ... Capitalism promotes racism and militarism ....Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion! .... We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”... .Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome....We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.
Viva Mission Sucre! Viva Presidente Chavez! Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

This is what passes in the words of Tom Brokejaw at the last debate as a school reformer.He is as much an education reformer as Mao was an agricultural reformer .

This aging Marxist lunatic is educating the teachers that will educate your children.He and Obama worked together to distribute $160 million in school-improvement grants to spread his philosophy.
Obama said that Ayers was just “a guy I know in the neighborhood”.Now he more recently said that he had just assumed Ayers had reformed. In other words he now confesses that his St. Peter like plea of not knowing the man was a complete lie.

The good thing is that this radical buddy of Obama would never survive the confirmation process.

[excon]

The good thing is that this radical buddy of Obama would never survive the confirmation process.

Hello tom:

I knew I wouldn't have to look far to find your prevarications and slipshod reporting of the facts... Like I said, they're important to you when McCain says them, but not when Obama does.

Poor tom, the right wing water carrier.

excon

[tomder55]

I'm only saying facts ;not the lies on Obama's web site. He now has a number of contradictory things he has said about Ayers and when I have more time I'll try to construct a timeline that you will understand. But today is a nice sunny morning in NY in the autumn. Time to put on my hiking boots.

[Wondergirl]

I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can't have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

Now you tell me that all my years of teaching to eliminate racism and to make social changes and to improve relations between cultures and to upend the status quo (my own private revolution) in order to improve education was WRONG??

You see hot-button words like "revolution" and "inclusion" and "empowerment" and freak out without really thinking about what is meant. Or do you like the status quo with kids who can't diagram a sentence and who can't write legibly and who don't know where and what Albany is?

[Galveston1]

His protest activities (he was not a terrorist) were 40-some years ago. That has nothing to do with his current activities in education. Have you even bothered to find out anything about his ideas on education?

P.S. Trust me. He doesn't know Ayers well enough to choose him to be Secy of Education.

Excuse me?? Setting bombs off in public buildings and in a home where a family was sleeping is NOT terrorism?? What are you smokin'?

[Galveston1]

The good thing is that this radical buddy of Obama would never survive the confirmation process.

Probably, Tom. That's why I wrote the last sentence.

You know, old sayings get to be old because there is a lot of truth in them. Remember the one, "a man is known by the company he keeps"?

[Wondergirl]

Excuse me??? Setting bombs off in public buildings and in a home where a family was sleeping is NOT terrorism??? What are you smokin'?

Ayers is of no matter anyway. He has had little to do with Obama. The Illinois politician who helped Obama get his start is named Alice. Betcha don't know 'bout her, do you??

[Cyprine]

In reality we can't be sure if Ayers had little to do with Obama, because of course the Obama campaign will do its utmost to keep his negative associations under wraps, even if they were buddy-buddies.
I think we should take this mans advice and find the facts for ourselves since the media won't do it.
YouTube - Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

[tomder55]

The Illinois politician who helped Obama get his start is named Alice. Betcha don't know 'bout her, do you??

The question was not which politican got him his start; it is which radical ally hosted his so called coming out party.Palmer also had a long time alliance with Ayers.

Palmer was a state Senator who decided to run for the vacated US Congressional seat of Mel Reynolds ;who had to step down for having sex with an underaged campaign worker.

She "introduced " Obama as her heir apparent at a party hosted by her and Obama's political ally and friend William Ayers .

But Palmer lost a special run-off to Jesse Jackson Jr. So she decided to run for her Senate Seat .

Obama would not graciously back down so she began to gather petitions to get her name on the ballot .Obama challenged to petitions and Palmer was bumped off the ballot.
He also managed to get all his competition bumped from the ballot and ran unopposed.

More on Palmer who chose Obama as her "heir apparent" .

Prior to her stint in politics, she had worked for the Black Press Institute and was editor of the Black Press Review. In the 1980s she served as an executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council, which the FBI identified as a Communist front group (and which was an affiliate of the World Peace Council, an international Soviet front). Palmer participated in the World Peace Council's Prague assembly in 1983 -- just as the USSR was launching its “nuclear freeze” movement, a scheme that would have frozen Soviet nuclear and military superiority in place.

In June 1986, the Black Press Institute contributed an article, “An Afro-American Journalist on the USSR,” to the Communist Party USA's newspaper People's Daily World. The article detailed how Alice Palmer had recently attended the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and had been greatly impressed by the Soviet system.

[ETWolverine]

His protest activities (he was not a terrorist)

Yeah, and the guys who flew airplanes into the WTC were "freedom fighters".

He planted bombs that murdered civilians. He bombed the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, and public parks. He's a terrorist, regardless of what you want to call him.

were 40-some years ago. That has nothing to do with his current activities in education. Have you even bothered to find out anything about his ideas on education?

Here are some quotes of his own description of himself.

"I am a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist... [Laughs] Maybe I'm the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs] We have always been small 'c' communists in the sense that we were never in the [Communist] party and never Stalinists. The ethics of Communism still appeal to me. I don't like Lenin as much as the early Marx. I also like Henry David Thoreau, Mother Jones and Jane Addams"

He also teaches classes on "urban education" and "social protest".

P.S. Trust me. He doesn't know Ayers well enough to choose him to be Secy of Education.

But he knows him enough to blurb one of his books and start his political career at his home?

Think again.

Elliot

[Wondergirl]

The question was not which politican got him his start; it is which radical ally hosted his so called coming out party.Palmer also had a long time alliance with Ayers.

This doesn't seem to be a good time to bring up McCain's friendship with G. Gordon Liddy who donated $1K to his campaign, so I won't. Wonder what role McCain will give Liddy if McCain makes it to the WH.

[Wondergirl]

He also teaches classes on "urban education" and "social protest".

But do you know what that means, really? Have you read any of the books he has written during his professor days?

I didn't think so.

[tomder55]

This doesn't seem to be a good time to bring up McCain's friendship with G. Gordon Liddy who donated $1K to his campaign, so I won't.

Ah yes ;the phony equivalence route again.That did not work comparing Obamas long term participation in Rev Wright's church compared to the incidental support of Hagee and it will not work in this case either .

G Gordon Liddy did not launch McCain's career and Liddy is not a major player in McCain's career .

G Gordon Liddy was an FBI agent not a terrorist . His crime was breaking into the DNC HQ not planting bombs and attempted murder.

He donated to McCain's campaign not as you Chi-town folks like to call "sent him" into politics. ("We don't want nobody that nobody sent" )

The alliance between Obama and the Ayers family (not just Bill but his father Tom and brother John also) has been traced as far back as the 1987 teachers strike.

But do you know what that means, really? Have you read any of the books he has written during his professor days?

I didn't think so.

By the way there is now heavy research ongoing into who the actual author of "Dreams from my father " really is . Evidence points to Ayers authoring the book .
Time Magazine has called Dreams... "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." But Obama's body of written work is very sparce before Dreams... He was never even published when President of the Harvard Law Review.

There were some poorly written poems before Dreams.. and a mediocre best seller bio The Audacity of Hope written afterwards which doesn't even come close in skill to that of his first memoir ,which has a completely different style ,and is superior in poetic rhetorical skills.(yes I have read both )


...

Also Tony Rezko is cooperating with Fitzgerald and he is naming names. That should make all Obama supporters sweat.However , Most likely the information disclosed will be suppressed until after the election .

[ETWolverine]

But do you know what that means, really? Have you read any of the books he has written during his professor days?

I didn't think so.

I've read some of his articles. They are quite fascinating in their naiveté, their cavalier assumptions about the desires of people in urban settings, race issues in general, and the role of government in education. Fascinating like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Elliot