Bill Ayers admits he wrote "Dreams From My Father"

[Upchurch]

Why don't you simply try to deal with what you can see Ayers actually say in that video

You first. Don't forget the context.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/andersen_claimstwo_sources_for.html

On Monday morning, Mancow Muller arranged for me to question author Chris Andersen on The Mancow Show.

Andersen's largely benign new book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, now tops the New York Times best seller list.

Andersen claims that the "hopelessly blocked" Obama turned to the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers to help him write his much acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.

When I asked about Andersen's sources, Andersen said that he had two separate sources "within Hyde Park" but, understandably, would not elaborate.

Andersen, who was gracious throughout, insisted that he had made no claim that Ayers wrote Dreams but he did not deny Ayers' deep involvement, conceding that Dreams is much the better book than Obama's 2006 Audacity of Hope. This, of course, has to trouble the Obama acolytes who insist that Obama is a uniquely gifted writer.

 

[Upchurch]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/andersen_claimstwo_sources_for.html

Vague statements about unsubstantiated sources? What's not to believe?

 

[BeAChooser]

Isn't it interesting that author Christopher Anderson (mentioned earlier) said that Michelle Obama convinced Barack to get help on his book from Ayers. And in a separate incident back in October of 2009, Ayers told Anne Leary of “BackyardConservative.com” at the Reagan National Airport that "I wrote ‘Dreams From My Father' ... Michelle asked me to." And a few days later he told Will Englund of National Review: “Yes, I wrote Dreams…I ghostwrote the whole thing. I met with the president three or four times, and then I wrote the entire book. And now I would like the royalties.”

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/u...all&adxnnlx=1219053908-VcFdybAPM7rwCrHwpmE/MQ

“Barack is worth millions now,” Mr. Osnos said. “It’s almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one’s life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it’s a stunning fact.”

Or a stunning deception.

 

[mysteronyx]

When I asked about Andersen's sources, Andersen said that he had two separate sources "within Hyde Park" but, understandably, would not elaborate.

Understandable, indeed.

 

[mysteronyx]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/u...all&adxnnlx=1219053908-VcFdybAPM7rwCrHwpmE/MQ



Or a stunning deception.

Why are you going off topic? His financial gain has nothing to do with who wrote it.

 

[Thunder]

Why don't you simply try to deal with what you can see Ayers actually say in that video..

he is joking in the video.

we get it. the audience in the video got it.

...but for some reason, YOU don't get it.

I wonder why that is?

 

[mysteronyx]

he is joking in the video.

we get it. the audience in the video got it.

...but for some reason, YOU don't get it.

I wonder why that is?

As evidenced in this thread, he thinks there are sources documenting the ghost writing. No matter how obvious Ayers made the joke, BAC would take it seriously.

 

[cyborg]

I“Yes, I wrote Dreams…I ghostwrote the whole thing. I met with the president three or four times, and then I wrote the entire book. And now I would like the royalties.”

Yes BAC, he wrote the whole thing and now he wants the royalties - before he just gave it to Obama as what... a gift?

Seriously?

 

[headscratcher4]

So, putting aside the fact that Ayers was joking, what you're saying and (pretending to?) actually believe, is that Ayers was part of some larger conspiracy to elect Obama as a stealth candidate (on a mission to subvert the U.S.) and that Ayers wrote the Obama autobiography (in secret, because, obviously, though he was trained to be a stealth, "manchurian" candidate, Obama would be incapable of writing the propoganda or planning it, himself). So, now, three years into their plan for taking-over the country via their nefarious plot, Ayers stands up in front of an audience where cameras are rolling and admits the essence of the plot? Doh (hand slapping forehead)!

 

[timhau]

So, now, three years into their plan for taking-over the country via their nefarious plot, Ayers stands up in front of an audience where cameras are rolling and admits the essence of the plot?

Hey, it's not his fault that conspiracies always include superhuman intelligence, unspeakable malevolence, and dumbfounding stupidity?

 

[Upchurch]

So, now, three years into their plan for taking-over the country via their nefarious plot, Ayers stands up in front of an audience where cameras are rolling and admits the essence of the plot?

Well, as all conspiracy busters know, nefarious plots fall appart and are exposed if one can just ask those involved a direct question. If someone in the press would just ask Obama specifically where he was born, the truth would be revealed. If someone with camcorder would just ask Ayers if he wrote Obama's book, the truth would be revealed.

It's just common sense. When you ask someone you suspect of lying a direct question, you can take their answer at face value so long as it is in agreement with your suspicions.

 

[gnome]

If Ayers were now pissed off at Obama, hard to imagine why he'd "jokingly" say he wrote the book and then tee-hee afterwards to "send a message".

Is such subtlety typical of Ayers? I would have expected "Hey, you know what, Obama, I WROTE your book, remember that? I think the power's gone to your brain."

 

[Spindrift]

Well, as all conspiracy busters know, nefarious plots fall appart and are exposed if one can just ask those involved a direct question. If someone in the press would just ask Obama specifically where he was born, the truth would be revealed. If someone with camcorder would just ask Ayers if he wrote Obama's book, the truth would be revealed.

It's just common sense. When you ask someone you suspect of lying a direct question, you can take their answer at face value so long as it is in agreement with your suspicions.

There really should be a name for that fallacy.

The "60 Minutes" fallacy?

 

[BeAChooser]

Wonder how many who idolize Obama's writing skill know these facts:

According to Tom Draper, someone who spent time with the Obamas (http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/fact_check_this_associated_pre.html ), after Obama became president of the Harvard Law Review, an agent named Jane Dystel got him a contract for a book to tell his life's story from Poseidon Press. He was given a "six figure" contract (Anderson said the amount was $150,000, Cashill said it was $125,000) and a $75,000 advance. The University of Chicago Law School, in hopes of recruiting him, also chipped in free use of an office to finish the book. But after two years, he failed to deliver so Poseiden finally killed the book. Draper quotes Obama telling Valerie Jarret in 1992 that "I just can't get it down on paper" … despite the fact that his book "required minimal research, no footnotes, and a narrative that needed not be factual as long as it was plausible."

Now doesn't that sound like someone who might have needed and sought help to finish his book? Hmmmmmmm?

The story continues. Next, Dystel resold the same book to Times Books for a $40,000 advance (Obama apparently just kept the previous $75,000 advance … an indication of his *character*?). But Obama still struggled to finish it. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said he retreated to Bali for several months with Michelle "to find a peaceful sanctuary where there were no phones." And indeed, that's where he and Michelle went (what a hard life you had in those early years, right Michelle? ). They dropped off the map, only to surface months later in early 1993, supposedly with book in hand.

But now there is a curious gap between returning and selling the book, which wasn't published until June 1995, two YEARS later. Could it possibly be that Obama was still struggling with the book, "blocked" as some reported, and finally went to Ayers for help? Anderson said that's what happened. And that's certainly consistent with what Ayers has repeatedly publically stated now. And isn't it a coincidence that Ayres chose Obama, a junior lawyer, to chair the multi-million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge with him in January 1995.

And isn't it amazing that a guy who wrote just one short article for the Harvard Law Review suddenly became so prolific?

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Now if you think, looking at his expression as he says he wrote the book, that he's joking, you're deluded. He says that in all seriousness. Sure, he tries to make light of it after the fact, but sometimes people do that when, like someone noted in the YouTube comments "they desperately want to reveal a secret that is eating away at them."

You in all seriousness referred to a YouTube comment as an authoritative comment about human psychology? Unbelievable...

 

[Thunder]

Wonder how many who idolize Obama's writing skill know these facts:

ignorant strawman.

 

[BeAChooser]

A 2008 observation by Jack Cashill ...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html

I bought Bill Ayers' 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days, for reasons unrelated to this project. As I discovered, he 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.

… snip …

To add a little science to the analysis, I identified two similar "nature" passages in Obama's and Ayers' respective memoirs, the first from Fugitive Days:

"I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city."

The second from Dreams:

"Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds."

These two sentences are alike in more than their poetic sense, their length and their gracefully layered structure. They tabulate nearly identically on the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), something of a standard in the field.

The "Fugitive Days" excerpt scores a 54 on reading ease and a 12th grade reading level. The "Dreams'" excerpt scores a 54.8 on reading ease and a 12th grade reading level.

… snip ...

To compare the two books, I selected thirty-sentence sequences from Dreams and Fugitive Days, each of which relates the author's entry into the world of "community organizing."

"Fugitive Days" averaged 23.13 words a sentence. "Dreams" averaged 23.36 words a sentence.

… snip …

Interestingly, the 30-sentence sequence that I pulled from Obama's conventional political tract, Audacity of Hope, averages more than 29 words a sentence and clocks in with a 9th grade reading level, three levels below the earlier cited passages from "Dreams" and "Fugitive Days."

… snip …

That much said, preliminary QSUM analysis supports an Ayers-Obama link. Systems designer Ed Gold -- with twenty years of high-level experience in image and signal processing, pattern recognition, and classifier design and implementation -- volunteered to run a QSUM scan on multiple excerpts from both memoirs. “I have completed the analysis,” he wrote me … snip … “a very strong match to all of the Ayers samples that I processed.”

Hmmmmmmm. Isn't it amazing that a guy whose own book, Dreams From My Father, says he only wrote an occasional journal entry and some "very bad poetry" suddenly became so eloquent?

 

[BeAChooser]

A 2009 observation by Cashill ...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/who_wrote_dreams_and_why_it_ma_1.html

In March 1983, Obama wrote an 1800-word article, "Breaking the War Mentality," for Columbia University's weekly news magazine, Sundial. Five years later, he wrote an essay titled "Why Organize," which was reprinted in a 1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.

In the Sundial article there are an appalling five sentences in which the subject noun does not agree with the verb. In some sentences, like the following, the punctuation and word selection are as random as the grammar: "The belief that moribund institutions, rather than individuals are at the root of the problem, keep SAM's energies alive."

Although "Why Organize" seems to be better edited, in neither of these two clunky essays does Obama turn a single phrase that is clever, concise, or even vaguely memorable. In 1990, he wrote an unsigned student case comment for the Harvard Law Review. The prose here, although reasonably well edited, is even more dull and leaden.

And yet we're to believe he suddenly and single handedly managed to write what some critics call the finest memoir of all time?