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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (263751)	8/29/2008 10:30:24 AM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793907

8/28/2008 OBAMA’S FULL COURT PRESS AGAINST FREE SPEECH Rick Moran RightWingNuthouse With many liberals cheering them on, the Obama campaign is putting on a full court press on several fronts to silence critics and quash Conservatives attempts to publicize the candidate’s relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. In effect, the Obama camp is putting the entire nation on notice; screw with us and we will make your life so miserable you will wish you had never heard the name “Bill Ayers.” I can sympathize with their frustration. Their attempts to carefully craft an image and narrative of a political moderate who could bring both sides together may not be able to stand the revelation that not only did Obama seek out radicals in his spiritual life by joining the church of a conspiracy minded bigot but also made alliances with political radicals like Ayers (and the Maoist New Party) to advance his career. We are still waiting for an explanation from Obama why in the name of all that is good and holy did he actually seek out and ask for the endorsement of a proudly Maoist organization like The New Party? Why did he knowingly, eagerly accept volunteers from this organization to staff his campaign for his first state senate run? What possessed this self proclaimed moderate to make common political cause with a group whose goal was to remake the Democratic party and infuse it with Marxist principles? Perhaps a better question would be why the press has failed in their responsibility to make this fact known to the public. How can it not be relevant to the debate over Obama’s claims to be a political moderate? If John McCain had sought out the endorsement of an avowedly racist organization and used their members as foot soldiers in his campaign, we could rightly question his fitness to be president. But here we have The Messiah cozying up to far left radicals and despite the fact that the information is available to anyone with a modicum of ambition to uncover Barack Obama’s murky past, (It’s right there on the New Party website ) the press seems singularly disinterested in the matter. Bias? Perhaps. But I take the much more realistic view that most of the press is just plain lazy. This causes them to miss as much stuff about McCain as they do Obama. They are – with precious few exceptions – lazy, cynical, ideologues who don’t want to be bothered with anything that changes the revealed truth they dispense to a public they care little about and indeed, see as ignorant yahoos not worthy of their brilliance. Conservatives have taken it upon themselves to fill the void. Enter Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons who created the most devastating ad of the political season so far, asking viewers “How much do you know about Barack Obama” and then proceeding to outline the colorful and violent career of William Ayers, terrorist. There is nothing untrue in the ad. Every fact about Ayers, every quote from him is on the record – much of it taken from Ayers’ own book! The Obama take on the ad is that it smears him by connecting him to Ayers bombings. I don’t see that at all and, in fact, the ad goes out of its way to connect Obama to Ayers in his incarnation as a professor of education at the University of Chicago. Judge for yourself: “Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?” is not violating the law by asking people to vote against him. If it is a violation, then every ad ever put out by Moveon.Org would have to be pulled and the Board of Directors arrested. It isn’t even close. But Obama decided to write the Department of Justice anyway and ask them to prosecute. They also asked Justice to prosecute Simmons. Can the DOJ really do that? Would they do that? Technically, they could. But in practice they almost never do. It is a damned effective strategy anyway because just the threat of a DOJ investigation is enough to scare a lot of people off – those without the deep pockets of Mr. Simmons who can’t afford the thousands of dollars in lawyers fees they would incur if Justice were to turn their legal eye in their direction. The Obama campaign knows this which is why it is so insidious. Obama is not asking Justice to enforce the law. They are using a Justice as a club to knock their opponents out of the game and to silence critics. In a similar manner, the gambit of using their lawyers to send letters to TV stations airing the ad is pure intimidation, nothing more. The Obama campaign can take no legal action and they know it. It is impossible to prove slander (in this case because the facts presented are all true) but again, the threat of using the legal system is usually enough to force those without the means to defend themselves against even a frivolous lawsuit to stop airing the ad. So Obama’s campaign against broadcasters like Sinclair and donors like Harold Simmons are not serious attempts to have the Department of Justice enforce the law but rather pure hardball politics, played to the hilt by people who evidently do not mind chilling free speech when it gets in the way of their ambitions. One can usually gauge how badly an opponents attacks are hurting a candidate by the virulence of their response. Nowhere is that more evident than in the additional campaign by the Obama camp to stifle opposition and keep the lid on the Ayers matter by, in effect, trying to shut down one of the most respected talk radio shows in America while using extraordinarily and unusually harsh language to describe a journalist. Milt Rosenberg’s talk show on weekday nights is a must listen for those interested in politics and culture. Sophisticated, urbane, witty, and intelligent, Rosenberg can be counted on for lively conversation with guests that run the gamut from best selling authors to bloggers. Last night. Rosenberg invited conservative journalist and intellectual Stanley Kurtz on to talk about what he had learned so far in his examination of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents that the University of Illinois released to the press on Tuesday. It was a foregone conclusion that the documents were going to make Obama out to be a dissembler – perhaps even a liar – about his relationship with Ayers. Despite Obama’s claims that Ayers was “just some guy in the neighborhood,” the two worked closely together, attending dozens of meetings together and even going on a retreat. But that didn’t stop the Obama campaign from calling Kurtz a liar: rest at: rightwingnuthouse.com