Chicago Daily Observer

Backing a major-party candidate for president would have been anathema to Michael Klonsky 40 summers ago, when the organization he led, Students for a Democratic Society, urged young people to spurn elections. “By ’68, our line was ‘Vote in the Streets,’” Klonsky told me last spring. “We thought we had to fight with Eugene McCarthy and those people.” In August 1968, protesters clashed with police outside the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago—but far from being political innocents who took to the streets to protest Vietnam War hawks’ capture of the Democratic presidential nomination, many of them never supported antiwar candidates McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.

In America we believe in redemption and even self-reinvention. And we don’t usually require stagy Stalinesque recantations. But Dohrn and Ayers test the limits of that generosity. They remain spectacularly unrepentant, self-indulgent, unreflective—still bloated with a sense of entitlement, still smug with certainty. They are dead to irony. Dohrn declared her contempt for the judicial system but wanted into the bar association. The two of them encourage young people to “be outraged.”

Ayers and Dohrn never posed any real threat to U.S. national security. Their asinine chatter about killing people and their anti-American sloganeering were as ineffective as their bombs. But they did real harm. Their victims were liberals: the millions of people who were part of the mainstream antiwar movement and who later voted against Ronald Reagan. These people opposed the Vietnam War but didn’t hate their country.

Larry Johnson, a rock-ribbed Hillary Clinton supporter, has pulled together some of the finest and most reasoned critics of Obama’s radical kitchen cabinet: Ayers/Rezko/Wright/Dohrn & etc.

Domestic Terrorist Billy Ayers ‘walked out of jail’ and into Academic circles by dint of his Daddy’s ComEd power circle that embraced University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Woods Fund, Sidley and Austin Law Firm, and any number of left-sensitive political animals. Ayers’ insulated life allowed him to leap from ‘Underground’ to Hyde Park influence without so much as time out for his decades of crimes against America.

A funny thing happened to Bill Ayers in the years between his first headline-grabbing activities and his cameo role in the 2008 presidential campaign. He became a pillar of the very establishment he had once conspired to bring down.

Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed Ayers, an educational consultant to the city, “a valued member of the Chicago community.”

Ayers, 63, was less charitable about Daley’s father, who was mayor in 1968 when Vietnam War activists tried to disrupt the Democratic National Convention.

“White and fleshy, he reeked with the stench of evil,” Ayers wrote of Richard J. Daley in his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days.”

Billy Ayers, the Trust Funded, Insulated, Media Pampered Hyde Park Domestic Terrorist, who still, mercy sakes alive, has a job at University of Illinois Chicago Campus is the tack on the chair of Senator Obama’s Senate Seat.

Senator Obama is up and moving about the country weaving rhetorical flourishes to the people who think that Stanley Fish matters and that MSNBC provides information. While Senator Obama has been out of his seat, Illinois laughing-stock and Check Kiting Bob Creamer’s Bonnie Parker, Congressperson Jan Schakwosky is trolling for the chair – which would be Jan’s via appointment from Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Guv has problems. Jan Schakowsky, like most self-absorbed posers, is unaware of her problems. Her husband, Bob Creamer recently got out of the Federal Pen in Terra Haute, Indiana for check kiting and immediately wrote a boffo book on Progressive Politics and ran Camp Obama for the Obama ... Read More...

Bill Ayers is a funny guy.

Well, maybe not so funny when he was saying things like: ’‘Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”

But his memoir—Fugitive Days, an accounting of his life on the run in the 1960s and 1970s as a chieftain of the radical and violent Weather Underground—is funny. I know, we’re supposed to be taking Ayers seriously ever since he showed up as a contributor to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) But a read of his 295-page book suggests he is a bit more notorious than he deserves, and a lot more comical.

Considering the controversy that Ayers has stirred up, I thought that his book might provide needed insight. But getting through it was like a slog through a used clothing store crammed with bellbottoms, psychedelic ... Read More...

The Chicago Tribune, which once employed Barack Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, is refusing to publish the truth about a Weather Underground terrorist bombing that killed a policeman. The paper apparently does not want to tarnish the image of Obama friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were allegedly part of or had direct knowledge of the bombing plot that also injured several other police officers. The Tribune considers Ayers an education expert and has published various articles by him.

His father was a stern, law-and-order man whose 21-year tenure as Chicago mayor will forever be associated with the 1968 Democratic convention protests over the Vietnam War.

But his son, current Mayor Richard M. Daley, has a much more conciliatory view about that history than you might expect. In an interview with the Financial Times, he declared off-limits attempts to make political capital out of links between two of his constituents – Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground radical group that bombed the U.S. Capitol and other targets in the 1970s. Mr. Obama has declared that he and Mr. Ayers have a “friendly” relationship and served together on a foundation board. Mr. Ayers has become controversial again because, in a newspaper interview that happened to be published on 9/11, he declared not only that he didn’t regret setting bombs but that he and his ... Read More...

‘The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.’

Actually, what doesn’t make much sense is how an intelligent man such as Barack Obama might not see how a relationship with Bill Ayers does in fact reflect on him and his values. Especially when Ayers’ response to his “detestable acts” is simply, “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Oh, really?

Of course, one can’t blame Obama for being so surprised or offended by a question he probably wasn’t expecting. For too long, the media have been complicit in polishing the images of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Kathy Boudin and the rest of their radical, violent ilk.

When George Stephanopoulos so rudely queried Sen. Barack Obama about his long-standing connections to unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers during a recent Democratic debate, many conservative newshounds cheered. At long last, Americans had been introduced to a name that only a handful of right-leaning news sources had previously explored. Obama challenged the question’s relevancy, carefully avoided details, and pivoted to another topic of discussion. The damage was done, though, and his campaign was forced to issue a “fact” sheet to debunk any nasty implications the “distraction” of a question may have raised. Team Obama informed readers that a) Obama himself is far too young to have been a member of the Weather Underground, b) The mainstream media consensus is that Obama’s ties to Ayers are irrelevant, c) All charges against Ayers were dropped, and d) Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are actually pretty “mainstream” these days. Three of these ... Read More...

Taking Stock of Barack

Time to take stock of Barack Obama. He lost decisively in Pennsylvania despite outspending Hillary a whole lot. Yes, she was expected to take the state, but not as handily as she did. Obama moved on to Indiana and North Carolina for his next test. It’s his to lose, but he’s on the defensive, and why is that?

Who is he anyway? And how many more surprises will come up between now and November? Already there are more than I can ever remember for a presidential candidate. With George W. there were the trumped-up charges on the National Guard and an October surprise low-speed drunk-driving charge in small town Maine. They used to be policy shifts, then secret plan conspiracy theories, then congressional witch hunts criminalizing policy, lately personal “dirt”. But who needs to pull any of that with Barack Obama?

Just Google the guy. Just ... Read More...

Broadway Baby was not mentioned during the Democratic infighting in Pennsylvania.

But Broadway Baby—once a chic children’s boutique in Manhattan’s Upper West Side—is the future, if Barack Obama is the presidential candidate in the fall.

This story involves two Chicagoans, former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn and her husband, William Ayers, both Obama supporters who blessed his initial foray into politics. Last week, the unrepentant Ayers became a flash point in Obama’s debate with Hillary Clinton.

Of the many ludicrous political discussions of the last six months, the most ludicrous may well be the discussion of the alleged association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground.

Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, have lived in the Hyde Park area in Chicago. So has Barack Obama. (So have I.) If you lived in Hyde Park for (say) a decade, there was a good chance that you’d run across Ayers, and maybe even be at a social occasion with him. And if you were a social person, or someone who was running for political office, you would meet a lot of people, and it’s pretty likely that you would run across Ayers, or be at some social occasion with him.

Katy says: How many people separate Barack Obama from Hugo Chávez? Yesterday’s debate between Obama and Hillary Clinton gives us the answer: two!

Barack Obama… sat on the board of the non-profit Woods Fund of Chicago with ‘60s radical and University of Illinois professor Bill Ayers, a friend of the Bolivarian Revolution and..

Chesa Boudin, a Rhodes scholar, one of the founders of chavista think-tank and PSF echo chamber Centro Internacional Miranda, who has an office in Miraflores Palace and is a key advisor of…

Hugo Chávez, autocrat extraordinaire.

In fact, if Ayers himself has a personal relationship with Hugo Chávez, then that’s one degree of separation.

Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don’t much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife’s limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

(From the comments, within Lynn Sweet’s blog posting piece defending Bill Ayers)

For those who have forgotten or weren’t born yet here is a list of a few of the activities. Just think if this were happening today:

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 claim credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”

8 October-11, 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 December-31, 1969 ... Read More...

Words Matter and so do the things that we do. In last night’s debate, Senator, you said that Senator Tom Coburn was like a domestic terrorist and punk.

Senator Barack Obama – On the Left -The aging Cub fan, with happening ear jewelry, is domestic terrorist Bill Ayers; the punk in the mug-shot knowing Daddy has the bail, juice and lawyers to get him off is a domestic terrorist bomber Billy Ayers; the Doctor holding the Baby is Senator Tom Coburn.