The right wings obsession with linking Obama to Ayers has turned to paranoia. I came across an article on Powerline that blew my mind.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/print/021730.php

Simple links do not do it justice. Entire article below.

    Jack Cashill explores questions the authorship of Barack Obama's memoir in "Who wrote Dreams From My Father?" Cashill cites Obama's sophomoric stab at poetry from his days at Occidental. Obama concedes that it is "very bad poetry" and, Cashill observes, Obama does not sell himself short. I was previously unaware of Obama's "Underground," which Cashill quotes in part:

        Under water grottos, caverns
        Filled with apes
        That eat figs.
        Stepping on the figs
        That the apes
        Eat, they crunch.
        The apes howl, bare
        Their fangs, dance . . .

    "Underground" doesn't provide much of a benchmark for Obama's literary potential, and neither does Obama's unsigned law review note. (Obama's two published poems -- "Underground" and "Pop" -- are accessible in their entirety here.)

    Cashill relates the difficulty Obama experienced in producing his memoir. The difficulty prompted the publisher that commissioned it to abandon the book. "Then suddenly, somehow," Cashill writes, "the muse descended on Obama and transformed him from a struggling, unschooled amateur, with no paper trail beyond an unremarkable legal note and a poem about fig-stomping apes, into a literary superstar." Cashill compares the texts of Dreams of and of Ayers's infamous Fugitive Days to speculate that Ayers may have been Obama's literary collaborator. Referring to Ayers in Fugitive Days, Cashill writes:

        [H]e writes surprisingly well and very much like "Obama." In fact, my first thought was that the two may have shared the same ghostwriter. Unlike Dreams, however, where the high style is intermittent, Fugitive Days is infused with the authorial voice in every sentence. What is more, when Ayers speaks, even off the cuff, he uses a cadence and vocabulary consistent with his memoir. One does not hear any of Dreams in Obama's casual speech.

        Ayers and Obama have a good deal in common. In the way of background, both grew up in comfortable white households and have struggled to find an identity as righteous black men ever since. Just as Obama resisted "the pure and heady breeze of privilege" to which he was exposed as a child, Ayers too resisted "white skin privilege" or at least tried to.

        "I also thought I was black," says Ayers only half-jokingly. As proof of his righteousness, Ayers named his first son "Malik" after the newly Islamic Malcolm X and the second son "Zayd" after Zayd Shakur, a Black Panther killed in a shootout that claimed the life of a New Jersey State Trooper.

        Tellingly, Ayers, like Obama, began his career as a self-described "community organizer," Ayers in inner-city Cleveland, Obama in inner-city Chicago. In short, Ayers was fully capable of crawling inside Obama's head and relating in superior prose what the Dreams' author calls a "rage at the white world [that] needed no object."

        Indeed, in Dreams, it is on the subject of black rage that Obama writes most eloquently. Phrases like "full of inarticulate resentments," "unruly maleness," "unadorned insistence on respect" and "withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage" lace the book.

        In Fugitive Days, "rage" rules and in high style as well. Ayers tells of how his "rage got started" and how it evolved into an "uncontrollable rage -- fierce frenzy of fire and lava." Indeed, the Weathermen's inaugural act of mass violence was the "Days of Rage" in 1969 Chicago.

        As in Chicago, that rage led Ayers to a sentiment with which Obama was altogether familiar, "audacity!" Ayers writes, "I felt the warrior rising up inside of me -- audacity and courage, righteousness, of course, and more audacity." This is one of several references.

    Cashill's textual detective work is interesting. Among other factors, Cashill points to the two books' adept use of nautical metaphors. Cashill finds the "metaphoric thread" between the two books "just shy of conclusive."

    I don't know. Based on a similar metaphoric thread -- see the last section of "Guidelines for cross examination: Lessons from the cross examination of Hermann Goering" -- Cashill could also make the case that John Hinderaker and I qualify for recognition as Obama's secret collaborator. But then we weren't "some guy[s] who lived in [Obama's] neighborhood" at the time he worked on the book.

    Cashill concludes his intriguing column with the observations that "such speculation [could be put] to rest by producing some intermediary sign of impending greatness -- a school paper, an article, a notebook, his Columbia thesis, his LSAT scores" and that "Obama guards these more zealously than Saddam did his nuclear secrets."

Was surfing the conservative sites and came across this link to a WSJ article. Looks like the Grouchy Old People have decided the Lobbyist and Spanish language ads have gone too far with guilt by association. The nuclear option is now fully on the table.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/19/attack-by-association-viewed-as-fair-game-by-mccain-camp/

Don’t be shocked if you see the McCain campaign pull the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of mothballs in new attacks against one-time parishioner, Barack Obama.

McCain advisers say that they see “attack by association” as fair game now, arguing that Obama’s campaign has been using that technique to go after McCain. In particular, the Obama campaign has hammered McCain on the stump and in TV ads on the number of one-time lobbyists working for his campaign. (The McCain campaign is also angry about a Spanish-language TV ad that ties McCain to Rush Limbaugh on immigration, without ever saying that McCain took on Limbaugh and others to fight for comprehensive immigration reform.

Gladdened my heart to see this ad forcing McCain to OWN all the lobbyists in his campaign. Click the HuffPo link and enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/obama-ad-calls-out-mccain_n_125995.html

Gladdened my heart to see this ad forcing McCain to OWN all the lobbyists in his campaign. Click the HuffPo link and enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/obama-ad-calls-out-mccain_n_125995.html

Gladdened my heart to see this ad forcing McCain to OWN all the lobbyists in his campaign. Click the HuffPo link and enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/obama-ad-calls-out-mccain_n_125995.html

Gladdened my heart to see this ad forcing McCain to OWN all the lobbyists in his campaign. Click the HuffPo link and enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/obama-ad-calls-out-mccain_n_125995.html

Surprised TPM doesn't have an open thread for this speech. Leave thoughts on the speech and rec so others can as well.

Interesting article on ABCNews.com

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/strangely-timed.html

Criticizing Barack Obama for responding to the Bill Ayers smear during the Convention (Don't ask)... the writer asserts:

The spot is incorrect in insinuating that John McCain himself has brought up Ayers -- it is in fact McCain's campaign that has sought to use the Ayers association against Obama, and McCain spokesman Brian Rogers did so again upon learning about the ad.

Came across an interesting article on Thinkprogress:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/25/petraeus-mccain-victory/

Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. The sea change came last year from a series of movements now known as the Awakening. […] So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes.

Wonder if McCain still considers Petraeus his Numero Uno Wisest person in the world, or if the good General meets undercarriage of bus.

Was doing some oppo-reading at The Weekly Standard and came across an article that I suspect the Repub campaign will release closer to the election to show BHO as a crazy lefty liberal black terrorist, intent on raising "good folks" taxes and redistributing "your" income to these welfare moms. Article's called "Barack Obama's lost years".

It focuses on Obamas life between 1996 and 2004.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/386abhgm.asp?pg=1

On Obama's cognitive dissonance:

"What they portray is a Barack Obama sharply at variance with the image of the post-racial, post-ideological, bipartisan, culture-war-shunning politician familiar from current media coverage and purveyed by the Obama campaign. As details of Obama's early political career emerge into the light, his associations with such radical figures as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend James Meeks, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn look less like peculiar instances of personal misjudgment and more like intentional political partnerships. At his core, in other words, the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious, exceedingly liberal, free-spending even in the face of looming state budget deficits, and partisan. Elected president, this man would presumably shift the country sharply to the left on all the key issues of the day-culture-war issues included. It's no wonder Obama has passed over his Springfield years in relative silence"

On Obama as a post racial candidate:

"Obama has recently made efforts to preemptively blunt discussion of the race issue, warning that his critics will highlight the fact that he is African American. Yet the question of race plays so large a role in Obama's own thought and action that it is all but impossible to discuss his political trajectory without acknowledging the extent to which it engrosses him"

"On race-related issues Obama has stood shoulder to shoulder with Chicago's African-American politicians for years."

On Obama's post partsanship:

"In 2002, Obama himself could speak hopefully of plans "to move a progressive agenda" through the state legislature, and local observers commonly identified Obama as a "progressive." When it endorsed him for the U.S. Senate in 2004, the Chicago Defender proclaimed Obama "represents renewal of the liberal, humanitarian cause." The Defender went on to assure readers that Obama would support "progressive action" in Washington."

On Obama crime fighting:

"Also in 1998, according to the Hill, a Washington newspaper, Obama was one of only three Illinois state senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang. A year later, on a vote mandating adult prosecution for aggravated discharge of a firearm in or near a school, Obama voted "present," and reiterated his opposition to adult trials for even serious juvenile offenders. In short, when it comes to the issue of crime, Obama is on the far left of the political spectrum and very much in synch with his active political allies Ayers and Dohrn."

On Obama and poverty:

"Obama's fondest hope is to lead America into another war on poverty. Everything in his state-legislative career points in this direction, and Obama calls for a renewal of expensive national anti-poverty programs in his book The Audacity of Hope"

Their conclusion:

"he [Obama] is a big-government redistributionist who wants above all to aid the poor, particularly the African-American poor. Obama is eager to do so both through race-specific programs and through broad-based social-welfare legislation. "Living wage" legislation may be economically counterproductive, and Obama-backed housing experiments may have ended disastrously, yet Obama is committed to large-scale government solutions to the problem of poverty."

I have been concerned as I had not heard anything really damning that the Repubs had thrown @ Obama. Methinks this is being saved for later in October to try to paint Obama as a typical liberal.

This could sting as a meme depending on whether being considered a liberal is still a dirty word, thoughts?

Habitual lurker here... Saw a story on huffpost that I think needs to get pushed in the blogosphere that could have some major blow-back on McSame.

Individuals that are better than I on cross-posting perhaps could help push this story:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-romm/mccain-to-colorado-drop-d_b_119411.html

Some key highlights (I apologize ahead of time for my lack of HTML skills, "" will represent quotes)

"What epic gaffe could unite Colorado's Democratic Senator Ken Salazar -- "over my dead body" -- and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer -- "Over my cold, dead, political carcass"?"

ON water redistribution to lower basin States:

"That would be Arizona Senator John McCain telling The Pueblo Chieftan on Thursady that he wants to renegotiate the famous 1922 Colorado River compact to take water from the so-called upper basin states, including CO and NM, where the river originates and give it to lower basin states like his home state of AZ"

"Them's fighting words -- literally! The word rival, after all, comes from "people who share the same river." In the West they say, "Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting." See also "Warming Will Worsen Water Wars."

Just thought I would pass this along.

I try to keep abreast of what's going on the far Right, so for the last few weeks I have been keeping up on the nightly Fox shows. It really does amaze me how the man could be paid to do what he does.

Obviously, I understand that the man has strong opinions and can invite these folks that echo the twisted talking points. What cracks me up though is how seriously he takes on these "issues' with faux outrage.

His greatest hits this week are mainly on Obama's "radical" associations: Ludacris (because Obama thinks he's a "talented" artist), Malcolm X (because he read his books), Frank Marshall Davis (Chicago socialist/ Marxist that Obama read), Luis Farrakhan (Obama went to the Million Man march, but he's not sure they've met), William Ayers (They had dinners, many "associations").

I mean come now! I laugh out loud, snicker and say there's no way anyone believes this grunge right? At least I hope so because if other viewers believe this stuff then we all have to be REALLY afraid.

Hello to all,

I must preface this by saying that I am an avid Obama fan and, like most of you, I have done a lot of research on the man, his positions and his convictions. The more I have understood of his personality, the more I admire the strength of those positions...

He has been remarkably consistent in his belief that politics, US politics in particular, needs to be reformed and believes that this should be done on a grassroots level. BTW, if these sound like a series of rambling thoughts, forgive me, because these questions have bugged me for a while. I trust you guys to share your opinions as well.

He believes in empowering the electorate by mobilizing participation at the lowest level, believing that by allowing political participation people can change society from the ground up. I get it.

The question I have for you guys, and believe me I am not trying to blow smoke up anyone's rear end, but I believe the TPM bloggers/commenters are some of the brightest I have seen, is... what happens if this strategy fails? What if the American populace is so apathetic to change that they would rather go with the known (i.e McSame, McLame) and reject what they believe is radical change that is "too much, too soon."

What if he gets elected to office but sees that Congress is not as excited about making the tough choices: uprooting special interests, reforming healthcare, educating the populace, making America a more inclusive society, empowering minorities, tackling the energy crisis and climate changes. Then what? Will he give up?

I believe that the reason Obama jumped through the Illinois State Senate and US senate was that he saw the more he worked with "real" politicians that choose self interest and partisan appeasement rather than  true public service he chose to continue moving up the ladder in order to get to a place where he had the necessary level of power to institute real change. If he does get to the necessary office and still nothing changes, then what?