Obama Campaign wants to silence critics

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Instead of complaining about the facts as they relate to Obama's past, his campaign would rather keep his past a secret.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/08/obama_campaign_confronts_wgn_r.html

DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.

Obama's campaign urged supporters to call the radio station to complain.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."

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@Woiyo9,

Anybody who thinks the 2'nd amendment is the only little piece of the bill of rights these guys want to get rid of is deluding himself.

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f312/Tonito44/ThatsRacist.gif

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@Woiyo9,

Kurtz is married to a well known GOP stategist in Sherri Annis. He scours the right-wing blogs, religiously consults Drudge, and listens to right-wing talk radio. He writes down all of the scurrilous filth he picks up there and copies it into his Washington Post column. His most frequently cited sources are Bill Kristol, Michelle Malkin, and various far-right bloggers. And then he angrily demands to know why the media isn't passing along all the attacks and manufactured scandals he heard from Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin. That's Kurtz's formula for "media criticism."

So there is little doubt that calling Kurtz a GOP operative and smear artist contradicts objective reality and as such ought not to be given a seat at the table as an objective reporter and at least have on the program someone who can rebutt his spin.

1 Reply

@kuvasz,

Instead of whining about it, the Obama campaign needs to explain their relationship. It is a legitimate issue

3 Replies

@Woiyo9,

Quote:

Instead of whining about it, the Obama campaign needs to explain their relationship. It is a legitimate issue

It has been, for anyone who can google, which you apparently can not.

Quote:

The Facts
The first article in the mainstream press linking Obama to Ayers appeared in the London Daily Mail on February 2. It was written by Peter Hitchens, the right-wing brother of the left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war supporter, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens cited the Ayers connection to bolster his argument that Obama is "far more radical than he would like us to know."

The Hitchens piece was followed by a Bloomberg article last week pointing to the Ayers connection as support for Hillary Clinton's contention that Obama might not be able to withstand the "Republican attack machine." Larry Johnson, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA and the State Department, predicted that the Republicans would seize on the Ayers case, and other Chicago relationships, to "bludgeon Obama's presidential aspirations into the dust."

The London Sunday Times joined the chorus this weekend by reporting that Republicans were "out to crush Barack by painting him as a leftwinger with dubious support".

The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.

In the short term, the person who has most to gain by speculation about Obama's acquaintance with a former terrorist is Hillary Clinton. The former First Lady likes to present herself as "tested and vetted" after years of exposure to Republican attacks, in contrast to Obama, a relative newcomer to hardscrabble presidential politics. Such arguments resonate with Johnson, the counterterrorism expert, who told me that he is a Clinton supporter, although not involved with the campaign.

But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?

Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and "passion for social justice."

"This whole connection is a stretch," Harrington told me. "Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html

1 Reply

@Woiyo9,

It is indeed. The fact that the Obama campaign seems absolutely frantic over any Ayers connection suggests that there may be some fire in the smoke:

As previously posted

Quote:

DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical who later emerged as a school reform advocate in Chicago.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding a school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded.
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/08/obama_campaign_confronts_wgn_r.html

Think the Obama campaign wasn't involved in this?

Quote:

DENVER -- Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he was attempting to take pictures of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.
(ABC News)
More Photos
Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Conventions/story?id=5668622&page=1

and this

Quote:

Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice Department, directly attacking the Dallas billionaire funding a harsh attack ad, Harold Simmons.

"We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the American issues Project, and we further request that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Howard (sic) Simmons for a knowing and willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits," he wrote.

He called the group's activities "patently illegal."

Bauer made the case that Simmons' group fulfilling its a real nonprofit charter because it hasn't spent any money on anything other than attacking Obama.

The American Issues Project released a statement responding to the letter.

"Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama's campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech," said Ed Martin, the group's president. "These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail."

The group said its ad would continue to air through the end of the Democratic National Convention. Simmons has spent almost $3 million to air the ad, which can be seen on the group's site.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Laura Sweeney, had no comment on the second letter.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Obama_camp_Prosecute_Simmons.html

As Woiyo posted, the ad that has the Obama campaign so exorcised, by the way, links Obama to Ayers.

While certainly the Obama campaign should have full right to counter and correct any misinformation anybody puts out there--if the information is lies, they have every right to publicly defend themselves and call the liars on it--these strong armed tactics do not put Obama in a good light. Will that be his MO? Simply sue or jail or otherwise punish anybody who presumes to criticize him or call him out on anything? Not a good image to contemplate.

1 Reply

@Woiyo9,

Woiyo9 wrote:

Instead of whining about it, the Obama campaign needs to explain their relationship. It is a legitimate issue

+1 The issue is legitimate.

Obama also needs to tell America what makes him qualified to be commander in chief.

2 Replies

@Foxfyre,

Calling on the government to perform its responsibilites to do its job can only be considered Stalinist by right wing whacko jobs.

and if you are calling obama responsible for arresting the abc reporter you also ought to accuse him of directing the denver police to arrest 200 left wing protesters on monday.

what's next with you knuckle dragging mouth breathers, demanding that obama take responsibility for hurricane gustav?

1 Reply

The entire Dem convention has been set up to suppress and control the flow of information.

0 Replies

@kuvasz,

No. Dems are not responsible for Hurricanes. The Dems blame the Republicans for that (Global Warming).

What Obama needs to do is explain his relationships with wackos like Ayers and Rev. Wright and Rezko.

Why is he afraid of telling the people about his past?

2 Replies

@Woiyo9,

Why can't you use google?

Why do you insist on repeating questions about things that a 9 year old could find out on the internet.

0 Replies

@Woiyo9,

Woiyo9 wrote:

No. Dems are not responsible for Hurricanes. The Dems blame the Republicans for that (Global Warming).

What Obama needs to do is explain his relationships with wackos like Ayers and Rev. Wright and Rezko.

Why is he afraid of telling the people about his past?

Agreed. When the MO again and again again is that "X" isn't the person I knew, it begins to sound really fishy. When he praised such people in the past and, ONLY after they became a political liability now, denounces what they stand for now, it comes across as really disingenuous. And if Obama surrounded himself with such nefarious characters in the past to get where he is now, who will he surround himself with now?

Bill Clinton, despite his glowing (obligatory) endorsement of Obama last night is described thusly in the Denver Post:

. . . .Bill Clinton has proved often over the years that he is among the most transparent of politicians. As president, people who wanted to know what he really thought simply needed to listen to his evening fundraisers, when he would regularly skate off-message with his unfiltered ruminations.

That's why aides are sharply limiting access to him now, until he has more time to put his feelings about Obama into perspective. Both Clintons declined repeated interview requests from Politico.

Bill Clinton believes the Democratic nominee, far from practicing a unifying, transformational brand of politics, has the political instincts of "a Chicago thug," one longtime associate said. Clinton has told people that Obama allowed surrogates to try to suppress Hispanic turnout in the Nevada caucuses, and played "the race card" in reverse against the Clintons in South Carolina and other states.

In a testy interview with ABC News during an Africa tour for his foundation a few weeks ago " one that convinced Clinton he should not give interviews for a while " he vowed that he would unload with his real feelings about the campaign after the general election: "I have very strong feelings about it." . . . .
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_10307565

The Obama campaign's strong arm tactics to deal with critics could very possibly emphasize that "Chicago thug mentality" and will do little to improve Obama's image as a 'big tent kind of President' who is trustworthy, dependable, etc. etc. etc. --

And his inability to defend any of his former mentors, associates, benefactors, champions, etc. should, sooner or later, raise red flags in just about everybody's mind. At least those who are not hopelessly blinded by the media-generated rock star image.

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@H2O MAN,

Quote:

Obama also needs to tell America what makes him qualified to be commander in chief.

Who better for CIC in the GWOT? Name one mofo who has more experience crashing planes into stuff than McCain? When it comes to fighting an enemy whose primary weapon is crashing planes into stuff, McCain is the MAN.

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How can anyone make a judgement on Obamas abilities when he refuses to discuss his past relationships and any accomplishments?

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@Woiyo9,

Great. Let us discuss Bush and the last 7 1/2 years of screwing up everything they touch. Mccain agrees with the Bush government all the way. Let us discuss that.

1 Reply

@Woiyo9,

Some folks are dazzled by rock stars and don't care about anything other than basking in the aura the rock stars design and exude.

In the end, all that will really matter has nothing to do with image or aura or eloquent speech or great sounding platitudes. It will come down to what those in power think and what they do. And all we have to judge is the person's track record, what they have said, what they have done, and the company they keep.

What Obama thinks and what he has done and what he is likely to do have been mostly declared off limits or are shouted down by his disciples. But we still keep plugging away at that track record, what he has said before it was deemed political liability versus what he says now; what he did before it was deemed political liability versus what he says he wants to do now; the company he kept before it became political liaiblity versus the kind of company he is likely to keep if he should win this election.

As has been pretty effectively documented today, Obama is actively attempting to silence any critics about anything. He is also using great sounding platitudes to describe some of his known agenda that we should all be paying attention to.

Is he in favor of the "The employee free choice act"? Sounds great doesn't it? And yet it would take away freedoms from millions of workers. Is he in favor of "The Fairness Doctrine?" Who could be against fairness? Unless you realize that it is a frontal assault on the First Amendment.

These are all things we should be able to pin Obama down on, and we cannot let him use ANYTHING to block scrutiny of anything pertinent to his qualifications to be President of the United States.

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/ca0819cd.jpg

1 Reply

@rabel22,

Rabel, by all means let's discuss McCain and what he wants to do, but please start a thread devoted to that subject. Let's see if you can make "McCain agrees with the Bush government all the way" stand up. (I guarantee you that you won't be able to.) We've been discussing George W. Bush ad nauseum for the last 7-1/2 years and there are numerous threads for which that discussion is still appropriate.

This thread is devoted to the Obama campaign's quite obvious attempt to silence any criticism of Obama or deflect any close scrutiny of Obama. (Sort of what you are kind of doing by trying to shift the focus to Bush and McCain?)

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Quote:

(I guarantee you that you won't be able to.)

I guarantee that we will. There are no significant differences between the two. McCain has abandoned every former position that was in disagreement with Bush, and has stated that he and Bush are in 'perfect agreement' on the major problems of our time. He voted with Bush 95% of the time last year, that is, when he could be bothered to show up and vote...

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

4 MORE YEARS!! 4 MORE YEARS!!

1 Reply

Obama Campaign wants to silence critics

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