Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers, who Obama now says was just another acquaintance "passing through his life, no, I didn't really know him, seems like a nice neighbor", Ayers said when acquitted, "Guilty as hell, free as a bird--America is a great country".
Ayers is now a university professor and must have exulted all over again after reading Saturdays front page story in the New York Times. The article explored the putative relationship between Ayers and Barack Obama during the time they worked together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a five year philanthropic venture that, starting in 1995, distributed over $160 million in school-improvements grants to Chicago's public schools. Ayers wrote the grant proposal that secured the seed money for the schools and ran the implementation arm of the project. Obama became the chairman of the board that distributed the grants.
Not only did the Times exonerate Obama of having anything like a "close" relationship with Ayers-their paths merely "crossed" while working on the the Challenge, but the Times also bestowed the honorific of "school reformer" on the ex-bomber.
Calling Ayers a school reformer is like calling Joseph Stalin and agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous NYT reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930's, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, (so the millions murdered were happy?) productive collective farms.)
If Ayers did all these commendable things including hosting a major Obama fundraiser why is Obama now denying any real realtionship with this Chicago "school reformer".
Thrice denied?
Most of this article comes from my archives and from "Notable and Quotable" by
Sol Stern at the City Journal Website.
More "snake oil". Obama derided Governor Sarah Palin by stating that his campaign budget of $440 million compared to her paltry campaign budget showed that he knows how to manage budgets better than she. Ok, why didn't he say she also as Governor of Alaska handles a budget 37 times as large as his campaign budget? He, as a typical campaigner would have others raising and managing "his budget".
OK, agreed. Neither one actually "handles" these budgets but Palin's budget is 37 times larger than Obama's. If he had a point he lost it to everybody but the liberal media.
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