23 Comments

1. Xixi:

There’s a lot of folks that should go to Washington and be on display now. I’m hoping code pink and all the nutters get a place at Obama’s table.

Nov 5, 2008 - 2:31 pm 2. Benj:

The money quote in the Ayers piece (if you’re wondering re Ayers is going to DC) was…

Ayers said that once his name became part of the campaign maelstrom he never had any contact with the Obama circle. “That’s not my world,” he said.

There’s a much more telling piece of elexction commentary at the New Yorker’s blog this week by William Finnegan. He’s the reporter who first brought O to national attention in a New Yorker profile before the 04 Convention speech. A lot of Clubbers who wonder “who is Barack OBama?” should know that folks were aware of his preternatural talent and promise back before he was famous. Finnegan recalls how he talked all that down rather than pumping up the hype…

The Distance

In the spring of 2004, Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Evanston, Illinois, told me a funny story about startling President Bush during a visit to the White House. She was wearing a big, blue “OBAMA” button. This was in the early days of Barack Obama’s campaign for the U.S. Senate. Bush “jumped back, almost literally,” Schakowsky said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’”

I included this anecdote in a Profile of Obama, a piece that probably served to introduce him to many readers—this was before his breakout speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. What I didn’t include was something else Schakowsky said. “I think he’s got it,” she told me. “He can go the distance. He could be the first black President.” The quote was too bald, too broad, too bannerlike. Lots of other people in Illinois, including some Republicans, talked up Obama’s extraordinary promise, his possible future on the national stage, and I did use some of those remarks. But just coming out and saying “first black President” felt not only absurdly premature but like bad juju. The road from here to there—or there to here, as it’s turned out—was long and unknowable and not to be glibly compressed.

Well, it was short and it was long. Those who knew him knew he had the brains, ambition, and pure political talent to compete at any level, along with an unearthly unflappability—Rep. Schakowsky used words like “regal” and “transcendent,” which I also didn’t quote. What nobody could know then was whether Obama had the stamina, timing, and simple dumb luck to arrive safely where he now has. I don’t believe that we as a country would have been ready to elect our first African-American President except in very unusual circumstances. Unfortunately, those circumstances were duly provided by a calamitous Republican Presidency and, now, by an economic crisis of terrifying depth. The challenges Obama will inherit necessarily shadow today’s celebrations. Still, it’s a great, great moment in America, and it’s not bad juju to say so.

Nov 5, 2008 - 2:49 pm 3. Fred:

Charlton Heston, in his days as the President of the Screen Actors Guild, used his position to arrange introductions for Dr. King to the leaders of the technical unions to get them to open up to minorities.

I can’t imagine Charlton Heston showing Rev Wright or Bill Ayers anything but the door.

Nov 5, 2008 - 2:54 pm 4. Gaffe Prices:

Maybe he could repudiate, or at least explain, academically of course, the reasons for dedicating his book, Prairie Fire” to Robert Kennedy assassin and murderer Sirhan Sirhan.

Nov 5, 2008 - 3:13 pm 5. Aristide:

Pilgraim Monument

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Please forgive me kaibegan.

Nov 5, 2008 - 3:21 pm 6. Aristide:

Benj posts the following…

Ayers said that once his name became part of the campaign maelstrom he never had any contact with the Obama circle. “That’s not my world,” he said.

Well, Steve Diamond at Global Labor would disagree…

The relationship between the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, the founder and leader of the now defunct terrorist organization Weather Underground, is deeper and closer than currently understood, according to an individual who has had a senior role in the Obama candidacy that has included direct contact with the candidate.

…

The source has stated that Obama and Ayers have a direct personal relationship that extends back to the 1980s and that there are now close ties between both Michelle and Barack Obama and Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, also a former leader of the Weather Underground. Global Labor believes the source to be highly credible but has not been able to confirm independently the comments made by the source.

The source has said that either Obama himself or his wife Michelle communicate with Ayers or Dohrn on a regular basis, up to “several times a week,” including discussions about the “vetting” of potential advisors to the campaign as well as potential appointments to staff positions in the new administration should Obama win the presidential race.

Ayers and Obama in regular contact says source close to Obama candidacy

Nov 5, 2008 - 3:55 pm 7. cedarford:

Ayers is more truthful about Saint Martin than most present deifiers care to admit. He started off fairly hardcore, with a group armed to the hilt, guns all over his house to shoot rival black leaders with, if necessary. He believed in armed struggle. It was a gay black man, Bayard Ruskin, that convinced him that preaching non-violence while remaining allied with violent revolutionaries at arms distance he could have plausible denibility about yet use as carrot and stick.

“Mr. Mayor, I regret you won’t listen to my and other preacher’s message about non-violence and hiring more black municipal workers…I have done my best to hold off the angry Negroes who wish to riot and burn..but unless you agree I cannot guarantee I will be able to stop the irresponsible elements of Negroes..”.

MLK was also tied to Communist associates like his lawyer and tax advisor, Stanley Levinson. He took the Soviet line on the Vietnam War after 1965. He diverted funds, had mistresses in several towns, had his prostitute beating and alchohol issues.

Important to Ayers and Dohrn, King was an early advocate and supporter of their SDS. And revolution in other lands. And income redistribution. And unilateral disarmament of America.

Ayers is actually a good voice to remind us of the pre-sanitized, pre-martyr, Saint Martin. Yes, MLK was an angry red pilgrim.

His Nobel Peace Prize, given in a time when America excessively worshipped the UN and the Swedish Nobel Committees giving out Peace and Literature prizes as the Gold Standard of all humanity….gave him a fine patina of respectability. Just as it did a fine smattering of other revolutionaries, dash of terrorists like Arafat, and political hacks like Jimmy Carter.

Nov 5, 2008 - 4:01 pm 8. whiskey:

While Dr. King had his problems, he publicly spoke of a letter he received, from a little girl, who had prayed for him, when he was stabbed. The little girl was White, a fact she noted in his letter, and Dr. King said that specifically, a color-blind society was what he was fighting for.

Which is the thought at the heart of his Dream speech.

However, Blacks quickly repudiated him, for that, and chose Malcolm X’s separatism and nationalism. By the time of his assassination, King was already a man of the past and irrelevant. Blacks chose Obama’s racialist path, and cannot ever get off that path now.

A tragedy since America IS an Anglo-Celtic-African nation, a mixture of all three, with a smattering of Spanish/Mexican/Italian and other cultures mixed in as uniqueness, but really at the heart, Anglo-Celtic-African. It is what makes us both great and uniquely American.

Nov 5, 2008 - 4:18 pm 9. Aristide:

Benj correctly identifies the money quote, but misses what it really means.

The money quote in the Ayers piece (if you’re wondering re Ayers is going to DC) was…

Ayers said that once his name became part of the campaign maelstrom he never had any contact with the Obama circle. “That’s not my world,” he said.

Steve Diamond takes that quote and points out the following…

Now the “maelstrom” really only began a few weeks ago when Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” which indeed was one focus of the interviews today.

So unlike the millions of people that Ayers compared himself to in the interview … we know now from both Obama and Ayers that their relationship existed and continued into the campaign period itself.

Nov 5, 2008 - 4:40 pm 10. J Charles:

I see it coming… Billy Ayers, Secretary of Education, along with a host of other Cabinet luminaries.

Nov 5, 2008 - 7:22 pm 11. Benj:

Thanks for your comment which indicates that STeve Diamond is a fantast. The “malestrom” re Bill Ayers did not begin with Sarah Palin. The subject has been out in there since the spring (at least). (You will recall the debate durng the dem primaries and Gibson and Stephanopolous pressed O on Ayers and the flag pin and…) In September, Obama said he hadn’t talked to Ayers in a year and a half…Consider this – in contrast – In recent weeks, Obama has talking with Paul Volcker – that revolutionary socialost – a couple times a day…

Nov 5, 2008 - 9:26 pm 12. Mike Sylwester:

Jack Cashill points out that Ayers and Obama apparently shared a similar experience in New York City.

[quote]

A newly discovered anecdote from Bill Ayers’ 1993 book, To Teach, solidifies the case that he is indeed the muse behind Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father.

In the book, Ayers tells the story of an adventurous teacher who would take her students out to the streets of New York to learn interesting life lessons about the culture and history of the city.

As Ayers tells it, the students were fascinated by the Hudson River nearby and asked to see it. When they got to the river’s edge, one student said, ” Look, the river is flowing up.” A second student said, “No, it has to flow south-down.”

Not knowing which was right, the teacher and the students did their research. What they discovered, writes Ayers, was “that the Hudson River is a tidal river, that it flows both north and south, and they had visited the exact spot where the tide stops its northward push.”

In his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama shares an intriguing story from his own brief New York sojourn.

He tells of meeting with “Marty Kauffman” at a Lexington Avenue diner, the man from Chicago who was trying to recruit him as a community organizer. After the meeting, Obama “took the long way home, along the East River promenade.” As “a long brown barge rolled through the gray waters toward the sea,” Obama sat down on a bench to consider his options.

While sitting, he noticed a black woman and her young son against the railing. Overly fond of the too well remembered detail, Obama observes that “they stood side by side, his arm wrapped around her leg, a single silhouette against the twilight.” The boy appeared to ask his mother a question that she could not answer and then approached Obama:

“Excuse me, mister,” he shouted. “You know why sometimes the river runs that way and then sometimes it goes this way?”

The woman smiled and shook her head, and I said it probably had to do with the tides.

Obama uses the seeming indecisiveness of this tidal river as a metaphor for his own. Immediately afterwards, he shakes the indecision and heads for Chicago.

[unquote]

http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/nautical_metaphors.htm

Cashill argues that the similarity of these two stories indicates that Obama’s book was ghost-written by Ayers.

I suggest that the similarity might indicate also that Obama and Ayers shared the experience while they both were studying at Columbia in the early 1980s. One such incident in about 1983 was a part of both men’s lives. Perhaps Ayers heard about the teacher’s lesson and then told Obama, who then told the boy.

If so, then I wonder whether Ayers included the incident in both books as an obscure but compelling proof that he indeed did ghost-write “Dreams of My Father.” Ayers would not have expected that anyone else ever would notice this particular similarity in both books, but in his old age Ayers himself eventually would be able to point it out as proof of his ghost-writing role and also as proof that he had associated with Obama in the early 1980s.

Nov 5, 2008 - 11:24 pm 13. Mike Sylwester:

By the way, it has been difficult to identify many people who knew Obama during his years at Columbia University. Perhaps the reason for continuing concealment is that Obama’s main associates were Ayers’ circle of associates.

Therefore researchers perhaps ought to refocus on trying first to identify associates of Ayers during that period. For example, perhaps someone can identify the female teacher that Ayers mentions in this story in his book To Teach.

Nov 5, 2008 - 11:33 pm 14. Mike Sylwester:

Here’s another interesting article about the possible relationship between Obama and Ayers at Columbia in the early 1980s.

http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/1981-new-york-city-just-a-bizarre-coincidence/

[quote]

It’s 1981, New York City. Barack Obama is residing two blocks away from Weather Underground leader William Ayers. …. supposedly he transferred from Occidental College and completed undergraduate studies at Columbia University. ….

At Occidental, Obama belonged to Students for Economic Democracy (SED), a radical socialist “cousin” organization to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), of which the Weather Underground was an off-shoot. Did Obama continue his SED membership at Columbia? ….

In 1981, former Weather Underground members along with a few former Black Panthers are arrested in association with the robbery of a Brinks armored truck 20 miles north of Manhattan. …. One of the Weather Underground members arrested for the Brinks crime is Kathy Boudin, along with her boyfriend David Gilbert. Boudin is sentenced to 20 years-to-life. Boudin and Gilbert leave behind a 14-month-old son, Chesa Boudin, who ends up being raised by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn while his parents live in prison.

One of the former Black Panthers arrested in connection with the Brinks robbery is Nathaniel Burns, a member of the Black Liberation Army. Burns is also known as Sekou Odinga. Burns/Odinga is sentenced to 25 years-to-life for attempted murder of a police officer. (ODINGA, sound familiar?)

[unquote]

The name Odinga is interesting because Obama’s family in Kenya is related to the Odinga family.

Nov 5, 2008 - 11:47 pm 15. Ivan:

Perhaps the newly expansive Ayers with his tactical utterances can only be bought with some plum payoffs. Terrorists, unless they are of the calibre of Stalin surely want some limelight to relive the glory days. In which case I hope he demands a seat right next to Colin Powell. Then we’ll see how much honour Gen Powell really has, after all Ayers had worked for the death of the Vietnam GIs. I don’t particularly like Mr McCain but it was shameful to watch a supposedly decent man stab him in the back just three weeks before closing time.

Nov 6, 2008 - 3:21 am 16. Pat Patterson:

Ayers doesn’t seem to realize is that those deep seated grooves on his back, thought to be the tissue marks from a Swedish massage were actually tread prints left by that bus the President elect used so effectively.

The chances of Bill Ayers ever appearing before the House for confirmation hearings concerning his fitness for some appointive office are nonexistent. He might be allowed in at 1:00 AM through the tunnels but that all-is-forgiven photo op with other members of some blue ribbon panel of educational reform is more fevered delusions than hoped for possibilities. Even the NYT might have to run that photo of him in the Cuban baseball jersey from when Ayers was channeling the indefatigable George Galloway.

And the very odd thing will be this notion of ascending to the presidential choir will only indicate how much Ayers has lost touch with reality if he thinks it is a possibility.

Nov 6, 2008 - 4:14 am 17. Mike Sylwester:

Here is an explanation of why Nathaniel Burns, one of the perpetrators of the Brinks robbery, called himself Sekou Odinga.

http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/1981-new-york-city-just-a-bizarre-coincidence/

(Comment 111)

The father of Rail Odinga (Barack Obama’s cousin in Kenya) father was a man called Odinga Odina – he was back in the mid to late 60’s the vice pres of Kenya – he also came to the US on a state visit – while in either LA or San Fran. he met some of the Panthers and they were impressed by him – so that is why Burns called himself Sekou Odinga. There was also a song think by Dylan called Odinga Odinga.

Nov 6, 2008 - 6:05 am 18. Mike Sylwester:

Here is some information about Ayers’ activities in New York.

http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/1981-new-york-city-just-a-bizarre-coincidence/

(mostly from comments 103 and 117)

Son Zayd Atheola Dohrn/Zayd Douglas was born on April 26, 1977, in San Francisco.

Ayers and Dohrn moved to NYC sometime in 1978, renting an apartment at 520 W 123rd in December, 1979, where Malik was born on Feb. 1, 1980. They gave their previous address as a studio apartment at 457 W 46th. (Which may or may not be correct). They told acquantances they had moved from California. In NYC they used the names Christine Louise Douglas/Lou Douglas and Anthony J. Lee/Tony Lee.

During those two years in NYC, Dohrn worked as a part-time waitress at a restaurant/bar named “Teachers,” and from September 1979 until shortly before the birth of Malik on 2/1/80, at Broadway Baby, 2244 Broadway, near 82nd St.

Ayers first worked as a baker at The Bread Shop, a health food bakery at Broadway and LaSalle Street, before going to work at BJs Kids for $150/week.

Ayers went to BJs Kids a preschool on 85th Street to enroll Zayd and is hired by the owner BJ Richards: “He’s magical with children,” Richards says. “The moment he left, my co-worker and I looked at each other and said, ‘He has to work here.”’

On or around Nov. 13, 1980, Ayers and Dohrn packed up the kids and moved, telling their employers they had to return to Chicago because of an illness in the family. (Although Federal charges had been dismissed due “prosecutorial misconduct,” they were actually going to surrender to state authorities, apparently pre-negotiated, on outstanding IL state charges relating to the “Days of Rage” in ‘69).

At this time also living in the Upper West Side is Kathy Boudin under the alias Lydia Adams/Lynn Adams. Her address is 50 Morningside Ave. Her roommate is Rita Jensen is a reporter for Stamford (Conn) Advocate.

August, 1980 Chesa Jackson Gilbert Boudin/C. Adams is born to Kathy Boudin and another Weatherman, David Gilbert. Kathy Boudin applies for and receives welfare under the name Lydia Adams.

In December 1980, after negotiations with authorities, Ayers and Dohrn resurface. They soon return to New York City.

Late summer of 1981: Obama transfers from Occidental to Columbia for his junior year and moves to NYC. He lives at 339 E. 94th St with roommate Sohale Siddiqi.

Oct 20, 1981: Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert commit triple murder in the Brinks Robbery. The get-away car was rented with personal identifcation stolen from customers of Broadway Baby.

May 18, 1982: The New York Times reports that Dohrn refuses to testify to Grand Jury about the robbery. For refusing to testify, Dohrn is sentenced to jail for contempt. In October 1982, on a weekend furlough she and Ayers are married. The telephone directory lists their residence as 243 W 15th St. Ayers is enrolled at Bank Street Education College, near Columbia University.

Fall of 1982: Obama starts his senior year at Columbia. His address remains 339 E. 94th. per telephone directory.

1983: Obama graduates from Columbia. His address remains 339 E 94th St, per the telephone directory. He starts work at Business International Corporation.

1984: Obama works for NYPIRG at City College. Address is still shown as 339 E 94th.

Ayers received his degree in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College. He enters Teachers College at Columbia University.

Dohrn takes the NY bar Exam in Feb. 1984 and passes but is refused admission to the NY State Bar due to character and fitness concerns. She is a legal clerk at the New York office of the Chicago Law Firm of Sidley Austin, LLP.

1985 Obama moves to Chicago to take a position as a community organizer.

Ayers continues at Teachers College, Columbia University and Dohrn continues her employment at Sidley Austin in NYC.

In 1988 Ayers receives his degree and he and Dohrn return to Chicago.

BJ Richards moved to Chicago in the late 1980s and first lives at the 2473 North Albany Address (since vacated by Ayers and Dohrn) and then at an address in Oak Park (at duplex owned by John Ayers and Judi Minter). She runs a preschool/day care with John Ayers’ wife Judi Minter.

Nov 6, 2008 - 6:39 am 19. Mike Sylwester:

In Comment 12 above, I indicated that the Hudson River incident occurred in about 1983. Rather, however, it must have occurred in 1985, when Obama was struggling with his decision about whether to move to Chicago to work as a community organizer.

Obama was being recruited for such a position by “Marty Kauffman,” whose real name was Gerald Kellman, an employee of Chicago’s Calumet Community Religious Conference (ccrc), who was looking for a community organizer to run the group’s inner-city arm, the Developing Communities Project (DCP).
http://www.pickensdemocrats.org/info/TheAgitator_070319.htm

I speculate that Obama consulted Ayers about Kauffman/Kellman’s offer. In that conversation Ayers told Obama about the Hudson River flowing successfully in two directions. Obama expressed an interest in that story, so Ayers arranged for a Black woman and her son to show Obama that particular part of the river.

Later, when Ayers ghost-wrote Obama’s book, he changed the story so that Obama met the woman and her son near the river by chance.

Nov 6, 2008 - 6:50 am 20. Mike Sylwester:

It’s interesting that Ayers and Dohrn and their two children managed to live in Manhattan even though they were working in positions like bakery worker, pre-school teacher, waitress and toy-store clerk. How could they afford it?

Did Kathy Boudin, who occupied a Manhattan townhouse, have any job at all?

Is the explanation just family wealth? Or did the Weatherman make its money by trafficking in drugs?

In a previous Belmont Club thread we discussed the Pakistan connections that involved Obama during this period when he moved to New York to attend Columbia University. Obama arrived in Manhattan direct from a round-the-world vacation that included a rather long stop in Pakistan. Then when Obama arrived in Manhattan, he intended to move into an apartment that he intended to occupy alone during the school year. How did he intend to pay for it?

Nov 6, 2008 - 9:10 am 21. Mike Sylwester:

The previous Belmont Club thread I mentioned was
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2008/09/13/columbia-days/

In the summer of 1981 — between Occidental College to Columbia University — Obama traveled around the world. He visited his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia.

He then traveled to Pakistan and visited the home of Hasan Chandio, an Occidental schoolmate, in the city of Larkana. Obama then traveled to Hyderabad, in Southern India, to visit the home of Vinai Thummalapally, who had been Obama’s room-mate at Occidental.

Obama eventually arrived in Manhattan and moved into an apartment in Spanish Harlem. He lived alone there. After a while the landlord turned off the apartment’s heat, apparently because Obama had stopped paying his rent or because the landlord decided to evict him for some other reason.

Therefore Obama was compelled to move into another apartment, which he shared with a Pakistani named Sohale Hal Siddiqi, who was a drug addict. Obama had become acquainted with Siddiqi through the Pakistanis who had been his Occidental schoolmates. While Obama lived with Siddiqi, they had lots of money to visit bars, pick up women and generally party. Eventually, however, Obama moved out and lived like a monk by himself, and Siddiqi descended disasterously into further drug addiction.

I suppose that Obama moved in with Siddiqi during the winter of 1981-82. Since Obama moved because his landlord had turned off his heat, the weather must have been cold. The partying with Siddiqi perhaps affected Obama’s studies adversely, and so Obama decided at the end of that school year (after the spring of 1982) to move out and stop partying and live like a studious monk.

Meanwhile, after May 1982, Bernardine Dohrn was jailed because she refused to testify to a grand jury about the Brinks robbery. Ayers stayed home and took care of the two children.

I speculate that these circumstances might have brought Ayers and Obama together. They both found themselves rather alone and in situations where they felt determined to reform themselves drastically. In general, both became extremely interested in the process of personal education and reform.

Perhaps they had known each other previously or perhaps they became acquainted during this period. When they collaborated in writing “Dreams of My Father” several years later, however, they obscured their relationship.

Nov 6, 2008 - 10:30 pm 22. Mike Sylwester:

The Chicago job that Jerry Kellman offered to Obama in 1985 was made possible by a $25,000 grant from Ann Rudd at the Woods Fund at the request of Chairman of the Woods Fund, Bill Ayers.

Is Ann Rudd related to Mark Rudd, a founder of the Weather Underground?

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:vIEB3z2e5lQJ:www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2118258/posts%3Fpage%3D15+%22black+liberation+army%22+pakistan&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=29&gl=us

Nov 8, 2008 - 9:39 am 23. Ms. Know:

He got on the news and different shows yesterday, and all of the mainstream media illuminati were giving him a chance to talk, and he trashed the GOP, a man who killed Americans, and still stated yesterday, he didn’t do enough.

Nov 15, 2008 - 9:31 am

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