Whose Associations Are More Unsavory: Obama's or McCain's?

chipmunk stew

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Since the general election apparently is going to focus heavily on character assassination and guilt-by-association (because that's all they've got against Sen. Obama) let's start taking a look at the associations of the distinguished gentleman from Arizona, shall we?

G. Gordon Liddy
McCain told Mr. Liddy at the end of an interview:
"I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family, I'm proud to know your son Tom, who's a great and wonderful guy, and uh, it's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."
Liddy considers McCain "a good, personal friend."

Liddy is best known as the mastermind of the Watergate burglary that brought down President Nixon. He served 4 1/2 years of a 20 year sentence for that crime.

Liddy plotted the murder of reporter Jack Anderson (although the plot was never carried out.) He still believes it was the right thing to do: "We had to get the people who wanted America to lose [in Vietnam.]" Including killing columnists? "If they were traitors, as Jack Anderson was, directly helping the enemy, then yes."

Other Liddy quotes:
Listening to Hitler "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before."
"At assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm."
Liddy believed the US was "too soft" on the Viet Cong: "I wanted to bomb the Red River dikes. It would have drowned half the country and starved the other half. There would have been no way the Viet Cong could have operated if we had the will-power to do that."
"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." ... "They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches."

The principles and philosophies that keep our nation great...


Coming up:
John Hagee
Charles Keating
 
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Interesting. So McCain is "proud" of a Hitler-lover?

It's tempting, but maybe McCain simply didn't know about this side of Liddy (I didn't know, although I'm not of the generation that has a personal recollection of Watergate)?

But I agree that this McCarthyist guilt-by-association type of smear could cut both ways.

Right now I don't hear republicans talking about any real issue like the war in Iraq. All they want to talk about is Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers.

Stanley Fish has an article on this.

In 1952, when McCarthyism was at its height, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas labeled the investigative techniques of the junior senator from Wisconsin “guilt by association” (Adler v. Board of Education). Douglas added that McCarthyite tactics were “repugnant to our society” because, despite the absence of any overt wrongdoing, the pasts of those attacked were “combed for signs of disloyalty” and for utterances that might be read as “clues to dangerous thoughts.”
More than a half century later, “McCarthyism” was joined in the lexicon by “Swiftboating,” the art of the smear campaign mounted with the intention not of documenting a wrong, but of covering the victim with slime enough to cast doubt on his or her integrity. Now, in 2008, after a primary season increasingly marked by dirty pool and low blows, “McCarthyism” and “Swiftboating” have come together in a particularly lethal and despicable form. I refer to the startling revelation — proclaimed from the housetops by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns — that Barack Obama ate dinner at William Ayers’s house, served with him on a board and was the honored guest at a reception he organized.
Confession time. I too have eaten dinner at Bill Ayers’s house (more than once), and have served with him on a committee, and he was one of those who recruited my wife and me at a reception when we were considering positions at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Moreover, I have had Bill and his wife Bernardine Dohrn to my apartment, was a guest lecturer in a course he taught and joined in a (successful) effort to persuade him to stay at UIC and say no to an offer from Harvard. Of course, I’m not running for anything, but I do write for The New York Times and, who knows, this association with former fugitive members of the Weathermen might be enough in the eyes of some to get me canned.
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Making the case for Obama's associations being the less savory, let's turn to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Obama's own website claims they are "mainstream Chicago liberals":

Bill Ayers And Bernadine Dohrn "Became Respectable Fixtures In Mainstream Liberal Chicago Years Ago." Alexander Cockburn wrote in and (sic) op-ed for the Las Vegas Review Journal, "Late last week, the Clinton campaign was leaking stories about support for Obama from the former Weather Underground couple Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, both of whom became respectable fixtures in mainstream liberal Chicago years ago."
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The New York Times has some interesting quotes from the pair:

Ayers:

"I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.''
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"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon."
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''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."
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Dohrn:

''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''
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and more Dohrn:

There’s no way to be committed to non-violence in the middle of the most violent society that history has ever created. I’m not committed to non-violence in any way.
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From a Weather Underground Documentary:

"Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks."
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Dohrn, Ayers and their buddies in the Weather Underground planted dozens of bombs around the United States, causing significant property damage. Dohrn served seven months in prison for contempt of court for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigation of a failed Brinks robbery that resulted in the deaths of a security guard and two police officers. She was, in all probability, an accomplice to that operation before the fact, according to this column.

Investigators tracked the identities on two licenses for the getaway cars. The names belonged to women who had shopped at Broadway Baby in December 1979. But they weren't robbers.

And who was the manager of Broadway Baby during that period of the customer ID theft?

Dohrn, the future wife of Ayers, identified by investigators as taking customer information from one, and possibly both, of the women shoppers. Dohrn was never charged in that case.
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Puppycow said:
But I agree that this McCarthyist guilt-by-association type of smear could cut both ways.

Right now I don't hear republicans talking about any real issue like the war in Iraq. All they want to talk about is Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers.
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This is the whole point. I want to smear McCain with all his unsavory associates (like Clinton and McCain have been doing to Obama) until the absurdity of this manner of judging a person becomes clear. I don't believe McCain is a fascist any more than I believe Obama is a commie. But it sure is easy to paint him that way.
 
Brainster said:
Making the case for Obama's associations being the less savory, let's turn to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Obama's own website claims they are "mainstream Chicago liberals":



The New York Times has some interesting quotes from the pair:

Ayers:







Dohrn:



and more Dohrn:



From a Weather Underground Documentary:



Dohrn, Ayers and their buddies in the Weather Underground planted dozens of bombs around the United States, causing significant property damage. Dohrn served seven months in prison for contempt of court for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigation of a failed Brinks robbery that resulted in the deaths of a security guard and two police officers. She was, in all probability, an accomplice to that operation before the fact, according to this column.
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The difference is, Obama's supposed associates are all over the media already. McCain's are not. I didn't know about Liddy or Quinn until I went digging.

Also, your post stretches the truth. Obama's website doesn't make the claim that Ayers and Dohrn are respectable, mainstream liberals. The website provides a series of op-ed quotes. Obama has never heaped praise on Ayers and Dohrn or told them they adhere to the principles and philosophies that make our nation great.

They may be as despicable as Liddy, but McCain has the closer tie.
 
Here's another associate of John McCain's that you should be aware of, Colonel Bud Day.



George Everett "Bud" Day (born February 24, 1925) is a former U.S. Air Force pilot who served during the Vietnam War. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S. service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having received some seventy decorations, a majority for actions in combat. Day is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.
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Day served his country in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Shot down in 1967 over North Vietnam, Day was captured by NVA soldiers. He escaped and managed to elude capture for 10-12 days despite having a right arm that was broken in three places, and found his way past the DMZ to South Vietnam. Unfortunately, he was recaptured by the Viet Cong.

Karl Rove takes up the story today in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.
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Colonel Bud Day has endorsed John McCain for president.
 
Brainster said:
Here's another associate of John McCain's that you should be aware of, Colonel Bud Day.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_9777481887b0111ab.jpg[/qimg]



Day served his country in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Shot down in 1967 over North Vietnam, Day was captured by NVA soldiers. He escaped and managed to elude capture for 10-12 days despite having a right arm that was broken in three places, and found his way past the DMZ to South Vietnam. Unfortunately, he was recaptured by the Viet Cong.

Karl Rove takes up the story today in the Wall Street Journal:



Colonel Bud Day has endorsed John McCain for president.
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Brainster:

What exactly is the point here? So a decorated war veteran supports a war hero.

This is ridiculous, and to be honest, it is beneath you and Chipmunk to be doing this.

All the Candidates can pull out of their hats, admired, well known people who support them...So what.

Likewise, all the candidates can pull out of their hats, nasty, vile, despicable people that support their opponents...so what.

Really, I expect it from a few RW nutjobs that post here, but you always seemed to have intelligence and RELEVANCE on your side.

TAM:)
 
T.A.M. said:
Really, I expect it from a few RW nutjobs that post here, but you always seemed to have intelligence and RELEVANCE on your side.
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So when Liddy is brought up, it's "interesting". "go on.. go on". But when it's Day, it's irrelevant?

Interesting...

go on...go on...
 
T.A.M. said:
Brainster:

What exactly is the point here? So a decorated war veteran supports a war hero.

This is ridiculous, and to be honest, it is beneath you and Chipmunk to be doing this.

All the Candidates can pull out of their hats, admired, well known people who support them...So what.
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You seemed much more interested in the early posts to this thread, but suddenly it is beneath us?

Have you suddenly realized that perhaps a comparison of associations doesn't work to Barack Obama's benefit? There are plenty more to come; McCain's Jeremiah is Jeremiah Denton; his story will take your breath away.
 
I hate to point this out to you rabid partisans, but Rev. Wright is not a mere association (and thereby insinuating there is a guilt by association fallacy). Association fallacies are based on the fact that the associations aren't important.

The real smears have been the Tony Rezko association and the Ayers associations. And guess what, nobody is buying it.

I wish you Obama apologetics would get over the fact that the relationship with Rev. Wright is different than typical politician-supporter relationship.
 
corplinx said:
I hate to point this out to you rabid partisans, but Rev. Wright is not a mere association (and thereby insinuating there is a guilt by association fallacy). Association fallacies are based on the fact that the associations aren't important.

The real smears have been the Tony Rezko association and the Ayers associations. And guess what, nobody is buying it.
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Guilt by association is invalid only in certain circumstances:

1. The association is involuntary. Nobody is guilty by association with a relative, for example, because we cannot choose our relatives.

2. The association occurs before the associate's bad behavior is noted. Nobody blames people who were friendly with, say, Ted Bundy before he was arrested.

3. The association is indirect. Nobody would blame Obama if Obama's kids played with Ayers' kids.

4. The association goes one way. When the Troofers endorsed Ron Paul, he was able to deflect it by noting that they agreed with him, he didn't agree with them.

None of these apply with regard to Rezko. Rezko was known to be under investigation for influence peddling when Obama approached him about the land deal. The association was direct and voluntary. Ditto with Ayers; Ayers' past was well known in Chicago. Obama chose or allowed others to choose Ayers' house as the place where he was introduced to Chicago Democratic activists.
 
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