John McCain is getting desperate. His last attempt at trying to become President, for which he has been willing to sell his soul, is looking irretrievably lost. He has become erratic (witness the "suspending" of his campaign to go to Washington to "help" with the rescue bill), snarky and disrepectful (his debate performance), and now, willing to outright lie. What little respect I had for him and his Barbie running mate is now completely gone.
Seeing the polls, and the election, slip away from him, McCain has decided to unleash Swiftboat-style attacks for the last 30 days of the campaign in a desperate gamble to get enough people to believe made-up crap to get him to the White House. So, the Karl Rove lie-making machine is now putting out ads, and Sarah Palin is now saying on the campaign trail, that the New York Times asserts that Obama has close ties to a terrorist. This is just beyond ridiculous.
Let's review -- Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a '60s radical group that did set off bombs in order to make a point about bombing in Vietnam. I'm not going to even begin to try to defend that, and neither does Obama. He has rightly condemned it. He was also 8 when it happened, a fact that the McCain campaign tends to forget. Ayers was never convicted of anything, and he went on to become involved in Chicago politics and education-related charity work (where he met Obama), and is now a professor at the University of Illinois. They are not pals, as Palin says, but simply were on the same board that distributes educational grants.
Here is the original New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?pagewanted=2&sq=barack%20obama%20ayers&st=cse&scp=3
And here is a followup they did today after Palin's remarks on the campaign trail:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/us/politics/05palin.html
Obama has so far played the gentleman and refuses to get into attack politics. I would not suggest that the Obama campaign indulge in this kind of thing -- but I am a little confused as to why they have not brought up the Keating Five scandal which nearly cost John McCain his Senate seat. That is a legitimate thing to bring up, particularly considering the savings & loan scandal has direct correlation to the current subprime mortgage mess. Not to mention, it's true, unlike McCain and Palin's attacks on Obama regarding his association with Ayers.
Maybe the 527's should put out the ad for him... but at least independent bloggers like myself can point these things out. It's up to the voters to Google it and find out exactly what faux "maverick" McCain really is all about.
