Was Obama ever "way to the left" in the sense that Keating uses the word?  He certainly isn't now and I don't really get the impression he was in the past.  He certainly believed in grassroots community organizing (for a while) but that is a different kind of politics, not all "left" in the tradtional sense.

Wait, is this the Frank Keating of the Keating 5? He was elected gov. of OK?

Main Street or Wall Street?

jhildner,

Right. On.

Well if you use the Republican "very loose" guilt by association tactics he could be the same Keating.

Charles Keating was the eponym of the Keating Five Scandal. Not Frank.

And this is rich, since Obama admitted experimenting with drugs in his first nationally bestselling book.

Beyond the precise substance, the intended implication is clear. "The street," "left," and "cocaine" are meant to put the word "nigger" in any white listener's mind's eye without actually saying the word out loud.

And why the hell isn't the Ice Queen Cindy in jail for forging prescription drugs to feed her habit, a habit she had while her husband was in the Senate and she was a full time mother? Cindy McCain, junkie, woman of the street, home wrecker (she got her wedding license before John had even gotten his divorce finalized). Please asshole Republicans, go down this route, so I can shove pillpopping Cindy down your throats.

The only difference is that Demos ADMIT to using drugs in their youth....Republicans never admit to anything (Bush, Cheney, Cindy McCain, Larry Craig, et al) in their youth or otherwise.

I prefer honesty to deception.

Pardon me while I barf up my spleen.

Cindy has already served her sentence for her crime, blackton.  We have the rule of law in this country, you know.   We don't have gulags where people serve indefinitely.

cal80....

Cindy didn't serve any time for her drug fraud. She worked a plea bargain with the DEA for rehab. It only became public when the McCains tried to cover up her crime when the diary kept by her charity's director of government relations was made public.

So as far as Cindy and John getting away with breaking the law in this country versus Obama's admitted recreational drug abuse. Obama never committed a crime. McCain on the other hand have bought his way out of trouble one way or another. He's as petulant if not worse than Dubya is.

Yes, Barack Obama SHOULD finally admit he experimented with cocaine!  Other than writing it in a book, he hasn't been at all forthcoming on this vital issue!

I'm really saddened to see Frank Keating spouting this stuff.

Look the guys either from "the street" or an organic food co-op - can't the Republican's just pick one.

Hehe.  Of the street...  What street is that?  Central Park West?  Lake Shore Drive?  Obama used cocaine at Punohu High School, the most prestigeous school in Hawaii, and/or and Columbia U.

Which is it, GOP?  Is Obama an Ivy League elitist born with a silver spoon in his mouth or a B-Boy street hood?  The truth, of course, is that he's neither, but if you're going to lie about your opponent, at least make the lies internally consistent.

Arson, they'll pick when they decide whether he's a Muslim or a follower of Jeremiah Wright.

Stop saying "stay classy", TNR. You say it too much.

Another sign of the panic gripping McCain's top-tier advisers, and general strategic breakdown: solo kamikaze attacks. We will see more of this for the next 10 days by which time top, middle and bottom tier officials will be jumping ship, crying "he/they did it." Watch and see.

Holy Cheeses, thank you Frank Keating! Now I know that if Obama is elected, millions of crack-smoking Maoist Jungle Bunnies bearing AK-47s will catapult over the walls of our sacrosanctified gated communities to gang-sodomize Hockey Moms just as they're about to launch into their Home Schooling For Dummies class on "Intelligent Design."

Which, if you think about it, might be a nice break from this incessantly dire financial news we're getting lately. As long as it actually happens, that is: this Culturius Warius Interruptus is getting kinda old. I mean, I know everybody's been all "Hold your fire" and whatever, but ain't it about time somebody drops his/her Glock by accident and the ensuing pop triggers Civil War: This Time It's Hella Bloody?

Remind me to lay in some saltines and sardines (Tiny Tots are the best!) and crank up the old internets. I hope Gil Scott Heron was wrong, and the revolution WILL be televised, or at least interneted.

Or shall we put it off a few months and combine it with the Great 2009 General Strike/Food Riot?

By the way, which side are you on?

cal80: "Cindy has already served her sentence for her crime, blackton.  We have the rule of law in this country, you know."

Interesting that you bring up the rule of law.  The rule of law includes a presumption of innocence, which seemingly doesn't sit well with people who want Obama's relationship with Ayers to count against him, despite the fact that Ayers has neither been indicted nor convicted of any crime.

Looks suspicious to me, John McCain hanging out with his wife, a known drug dealer.  I just don't accept marriage as a defense.

Thanks, Rhubarbs, for clearing that up.

williamyard is my hero.  And cal80, you been schooled.

Cal: thanks ever so much for the Repug lines - without you, we'd have only the bile of POWPOW and the unsubtle racism of Dennis Miller to go by.

What, three four weeks ago, we all knew this was coming: Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Nigger.  And so it has come to pass.  And it is going to get worse still, as the Dow numbers and POWPOW's popularity head south.  The pugnacious lawyer in me wants Obama to hit back and hit hard; the political realist understands, however, that the 30 minute airtime on NBC and CBS, plus the next debate, is going to put the nail in the Charlatan McCain's coffin.  And good riddance.

I told you all the man had neither honour nor dignity.  Too bad, really bad that I was proven right.

irony:  In fairness, I believe Ayers was charged, forcing him to run for several years.  He eventually turned himself in.  The charges had to be dropped because the FBI's tactics in infiltrating and disrupting dissident groups in the 60's, including the Weathermen, were found to have been illegal.

I don't think there's any doubt that Ayers participated in several bombing attempts and was a leader of the Weathermen.  He's admitted it.  My understanding is that nobody was killed (other than members of the group themselves while they were making a bomb), that very few, if any, were seriously injured, and that they always warned their targets ahead of time.

None of this makes it, or Ayers's worldview of yesteryear, okay -- not by a long shot -- and I am bothered that Ayers, while a rehabilitated and even respected member of the community (he was once Chicago's "Citizen of the Year" and has worked with that lefty radical Richard M. Daley on education), still doesn't *seem* fully repentent from what I've read and seen.  (That's not a whole bunch, by the way.  I didn't read his memoir.  I couldn't stomach the guy when I heard him interviewed on NPR.)

So, the reason the charge against Obama here is totally bogus isn't that Ayers is innocent.  It's that Ayers's militant radicalism has got zero to do with Obama.  They served on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge together.  Ayers, now an education academic, had written a winning grant proposal to the Annenberg Foundation to use money to help public schools.  The money was administered by a board that included Obama and, I believe, some Republicans too.  He is not friends with Ayers and the only time in which Obama knew Ayers was well after Ayers had reformed himself into an acceptable and respectable citizen whom lots of people of varying political stripes dealt with.

Finally, the news is coming out.  This over at Salon:

"During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory."

"Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sympathy for the Lost Cause. “Should the Confederate states have been allowed to separate and go their peaceful ways?” Chryson asked rhetorically. “Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States — however you want to refer to it — was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights.”"

www.salon.com/.../palin_chryson

Next time the Palin talks about "states' rights" in response to a question on the right to privacy, you know where it comes from.

Jhildner: where are the other Annenberg Board members?

I like the elitist street person. With a 9m in one hand and arugala in the other

icarusr, wikipedia entry on Annenberg is pretty good...

en.wikipedia.org/.../Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge

Jeez, Obama and Ayers weren't even on the same board of directors. They were on separate boards within the same program. Guess that's all they've got left. Noun, verb, terrorism.

There's a pretty well-sourced Annenberg-Obama-Ayers post on TPM as well:

tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/.../ayers-obama-and-the-chicago-an.php

Essential reading to understand that whole Weather Underground is Susan Braudy's Family Circle:  The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left.  It's about Kathy Boudin, a key figure of the Weather Underground who did not go legit and in 1981 participated in a Brinks armored car robbery that left two of the drivers dead.  She recently completed her sentence.  The book by the way isn't very well written, but it's a good story.

There's also the Weather Underground video that doesn't mention Boudin, but talks about Ayers and Dohrn.

Jhildner says about Ayers "I couldn't stomach the guy when I heard him interviewed on NPR."  The video and the book talk about the Underground's group sex, with Ayers and Dorhn pretty much being at the top of the heap - he he, pun intended.  I can see where someone who thought he was all that sexually may just have a characterological insufferability that sticks with him whatever he does, even if he and Dorhn are now monogamous.

Icarus, I hope the Salon story gets picked up by more "mainstream,"  viz,, popularly viewed media.  Alas, Salon sometimes just get sidelined (not that I read it a lot, either.)  I'm thinking of a few years ago when they broke a story about I believe secret prisons for A-rabs in Europe.  A year later, the Washington Post ran a whole series on it, with a nod to Salon.

jhildner:  Bascially, I agree.  The argument is not about Ayers per se but about whether or not you're allowed to associate with people for a particular legitimate purpose whose former ideas, or former actions, you don't share or approve of.

Also, in passing I'd note that "seeming" to repent is a curious thing.  We can't look inside people's hearts.  I'd rather have someone not so "seem," if they don't in fact repent, than develop a convincing line in repentance for the public consumption.

satyendra:  I'd like to point out that any connection between group sex and terrorism is a rather tenuous one.

Yeah, because it's not like any laissez-faire extremists on Wall Street have ever used cocaine. This is getting ugly.

Yard, the revolution will be no rerun brother, the revolution will be live.

Ironyroad, of course there's no connection between group sex and terrorism.  The way I interpreted JHildner's comment, rightly or wrongly, is that he thought Ayers was full of himself, that he still thinks he's all that. Ayers I believe is only mildly repentant, which means he's proud of himself and probably trots out all those irksome '60s homilies in a self-important way. But I haven't heard him speak, nor am I seeking him out.  Perhaps I'm describing an experience that JHildner didn't have.

irony:  Yes, and what's more, I doubt that Bill Ayers had a wikipedia page when Obama first ran into him.  My bet is that he didn't know his full story, and only had a vague sense that he was a reformed radical from a million years ago.  As for repentance, I simply can't imagine setting a bomb that could (even if you try to avoid it) kill or seriously injure an innocent person.  And I'm not sure they were always intending to avoid it.  The bomb that blew up while it was being made, which killed Ayers's girlfriend and others, had nails in it, according to that wikipedia page.  It *does* take a terrorist's mindset, it seems to me, to do that -- the view that nobody is innocent, especially if they're in uniform; the view that you are justified in starting a private war.  

When he was selling his book, I didn't hear what I think any decent person wanted to hear once they knew the facts: I was nuts, my views were warped, I was dead wrong, and to those hurt or scared by my actions, I can only beg forgiveness, and hopefully I can make up for what I've done on the cosmic balance sheet by doing good in my work and my family.  He's got an ego on him that prevents him from doing that.  I get the sense that the arguments that warped him as a kid still make some sense to him.  He's still defensive, and a little arrogant, about his bad old days.  So, forgive me, but if he's going to promote a book about his terrorist activities, he had better take full responsibility for them and make an effort to at least "seem" sorry.  We can judge the sincerity of his mea culpa once he gives it.

Has George W. Bush admitted he used cocaine? No he has not, though he DID use. Have the Republicans been bothered by it? No they have not.

So why should Obama come up?