[Vision2020] An Obama Dilemma

[No Weatherman]

> Our legal system punishes methods, not agendas.

Clever move. You had a hidden definition in your vocabulary based upon
legal charges as opposed to plain English. Now you're being
disingenuous because most of the people in this forum, including me,
use plain English when we communicate.

> The particular crime
> they were responsible for involved a great deal of loud, explosive
> property damage; in other words, vandalism. Their methods intended to
> produce terror. I'm not saying that they were not responsible for a
> number of serious felonies; however, it insults both the memory of the
> victims of 9/11 and any sense of proportionality to compare them to
> the 9/11 hijackers.

You're the one exploiting their memories because if we apply your
logic to the 9-11 terrorists, which includes your definitions, then
they were ordinary vandals who also committed murder. By your
definition they were not terrorists. Try to be consistent, it'll help
you to appear honest.

> Doesn't your church still believe that the 9/11 hijackers were agents of God?

I understand a line of inquiry like this to be the fallacy of the
loaded question. I wish Joe were around to confirm my understanding.
Then, again, he couldn't keep from begging the question either.

>>> Incidentally, I don't see that you've made any further defense of your
>>> assertion that Liddy was a great patriot.
>>
>> Please show me where I defended Liddy or wrote that he was a great
>> patriot. I gave HIS justification for his behavior and made no attempt
>> to justify him.
>
> This is exactly what I mean by 'disingenuous,' Dale. You cannot
> preface an argument with "some would say" and then disclaim
> responsibility for having made it.

I asked you to show me, not paraphrase me. Here are my exact words:

". . . to be fair, if you read Liddy's biography, as I have, and if
you listen to him on the radio, as I do, then you'd know that Liddy
justifies his illegal activities by arguing that America was fighting
a two-front war at the time — one in Nam and the other on the streets
of the US.

"You don't have to agree with his argument, but it has its merits. For
example, the Weather Underground (known as the Weathermen at that
time) had declared war on America, ostensibly because of the Vietnam
War, and they served notice to the media that they intended to
detonate bombs at key strategic targets to make their point.
Obviously, this does not justify Liddy's illegal activities, but it
substantiates his point. America was fighting two wars though not
everyone recognized it. . . ."

http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2008-September/056536.html

>From this point I segued to Ayers, which was my intent all along. I
could care less about Liddy.

> Incidentally, this is exactly your
> problem with the 'natural born citizen' argument: disclaiming having
> made it by third-personing it.

If you read my post in context, I was not arguing that Obama is not a
NBC. My point was that the msm has not reported on many of these
legitimate questions surrounding his candidacy and I put together a
short punch list of some of those questions. Our exchange is proof
that we simply do not have many hard facts about Obama. But there are
some very interesting developments in that case as well as on the
Kenyan front.

>> I'm not inclined to use your experience as a board member as a
>> standard to establish Ayers' purity. He was a terrorist and fugitive,
>> and then all of a sudden Mr. "Kill Your Parents" wants to influence
>> children's education. Do you really think he planned to play by the
>> rules? Seriously, given your understanding who do you think appointed
>> the board?
>>
>> "We have given careful thought to the issues you raise in your letter.
>> We are working with Adele Simmons, Deborah Leff, and Pat Graham on
>> issues of management and governance to ensure that Chicago's Annenberg
>> Challenge =initiative is successful . . . . a five to seven person
>> Board of Directors of highly respected Chicagoans is being assembled.
>> Pat Graham, president of the Spencer Foundation, has agreed to serve
>> and is willing to work with the Board."
>
> The board was appointed by the people who claim they appointed the
> board; the only person listed by name in the letter: Adele Simmons,
> Debbie Leff, and Patricia Graham. Ayers used the "royal we" in
> reference to the organization, a phrasing that would be syntactically
> bizarre if he had been the only one working with Simmons, Leff, and
> Graham. If he had been referring only to himself, English *does* have
> a first-person singular pronoun.

The "royal" we is your interpretation that is supported by the same
evidence for my interpretation. And Ayers aint talking to nobody. You
could be right and I could be right. But we both can't be right. And
as stated before, these are the legitimate questions that a healthy
press would normally investigate. In Obama's case, however, such an
investigation would constitute racism because only racists hold Obama
accountable.

> If deliberately misread to imply that Ayers was involved directly in
> the appointment of the board of directors, this makes him a fourth
> member of the selection committee, not the person with the sole
> responsibility for selecting Obama. Incidentally, this, itself would
> be bizarre: board committees generally have an odd number of members
> to establish clear majorities.

THE WHOLE THING IS BIZARRE. What in the world was Obama doing with
Ayers? And any way you look at it, we know for sure that Ayers was NOT
just a guy who lived in Obama's neighborhood. Why did Obama lie about
that? If it's as innocuous as you maintain, why did he lie? If he
didn't know Ayers was a terrorist, why didn't he say so sooner?

These are the questions that no one is asking. But it sure looks like
he's hiding something to me.

>> "Graham, a prominent historian of education at Harvard, was President
>> of the Spencer Foundation at that time.  Thus, it is possible that
>> Ayers may have asked Simmons, Leff and Graham for ideas about board
>> members. But it was Ayers' responsibility to make sure an appropriate
>> board was, indeed, appointed.  That was not Graham's responsibility
>> nor Leff's."
>
> As I've pointed out (and below, you agree with) it is factually
> incorrect that the appointment of a permanent board was Ayers'
> responsibility.

I'm not sure I agreed, but I remember asking how you thought it went
down. I don't believe we have enough data to clear Ayers. Apparently,
you do.






>>>> Interestingly, I noticed that you ignored this salient point from Diamond:
>>>>
>>>> "In social science and law, written contemporaneous records are
>>>> considered a more credible source than ex post recollections by only a
>>>> small number of the individuals involved. I thought the same standards
>>>> applied in journalism as well."
>
> There's no ambiguity in the record. Diamond's purported 'proof' of
> Ayers' involvement in the board appointment is weak sauce: a letter
> written in his
>
>>> "A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated
>>> for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the
>>> creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated
>>> individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such
>>> private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3)
>>> organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or
>>> individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a
>>> personal and private interest in the activities of the organization."
>>
>> Right, Ayers is an upright citizen who was concerned about following
>> the letter of the law. I'm a believer.
>
> Ayers may not have been, but the Annenberg Foundation explicitly
> requires that board members of grantee organizations not have
> conflicts of interest. Any foundation that regularly disburses
> multimillion-dollar grants attaches a tremendous number of strings to
> those grants, including regular grant reports, grantor audits, and
> bylaw additions.
>
> A board beholden to a grantee agency, or the executive or officer of a
> grantee agency, is the very definition of a conflict of interest.
>
> -- ACS