The Swiftboating Begins

The past couple of days, there has been a commercial running rather often here in PA, questioning what we really "know" about Barack Obama, and bringing up his connection to William Ayers of the Weather Underground once again. They go into great detail about Ayers' terroristic behavior (emphasizing his lack of repentance), and try to scare folks by making it sound like he and Obama are BFFs and served together on a left-wing think tank.

The truth: Ayers and Obama are both strong public figures in Chicago (Ayers serving as a professor at the University of Illinois - Chicago; Obama as a state and now national senator). They did serve as colleagues on a board together, for the Woods Fund of Chicago. A word about the Fund's mission, from their own website:

The foundation works primarily as a funding partner with nonprofit organizations. Woods supports nonprofits in their important roles of engaging people in civic life, addressing the causes of poverty and other challenges facing the region, promoting more effective public policies, reducing racism and other barriers to equal opportunity, and building a sense of community and common ground.

Engaging people in civic life (hmm. . .seems the founders thought that was a pretty good idea), addressing the root causes of poverty, promoting more effective public policies (aka making government work better!), reducing racism and barriers to equal opportunity, and building a sense of community (as American as apple pie, if you ask me) are now radical left-wing causes, the support of which may imply you are an America-hating terrorist? Who knew?!

Oh wait, I forgot. . .as Dom Helder Camara said, if you just feed the poor they'll call you a saint. If you start asking why people are poor, they'll call you a communist.