Is the McCain campaign (or Sarah Palin) getting background information from the World Net Daily? Or are they trying to rekindle the 1950s Red Scare witchhunts?
Back in bad old days of the 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy made a name for himself by labeling people as Communists because they associated with known Communists. The process was "guilt by association."
This week, Palin accused Barack Obama of hanging out with terrorists on a daily basis because he once served on the same board as a former member of the 1970s Weather Underground. That same member, Bill Ayers, is now a university professor.
According to this logic, I am a supporter of oppressive, corrupt dictators. I was in the same yoga class in college with Imee Marcos, daughter of former Phillipine ruler Ferdinand Marcos and the shoe-loving Imelda Marcos.
Utter nonsense. (In case you're wondering, though, Imee was -- and probably still is -- a really nice person. As for her parents, I can't say. I never met them -- two degrees of separation there. And I'm still waiting for that country to oppress -- my lifelong ambition.)
So I wondered where did Palin get the information to make this statement in Costa Mesa, California?
Obama "is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country. This ladies and gentleman, is not the kind of change that I think we should be believing in."
First, we need to clarify a couple of salient points. Obama was born in 1961; Palin herself in 1964. So while Ayers was planting bombs with the Underground, the two candidates had barely started elementary school. Obama was a precocious child.
In the process of writing this post, I came across a likely source for the terrorist meme. The World Net Daily. You betcha. Check this:
WND Exclusive ELECTION 2008 [I love how they get so breathless!]
Obama worked with terrorist
Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's existence
Posted: February 24, 2008
5:44 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000.
Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.
Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Now the WND (known by some as the World Nut Daily) is a right-wing Christian "news" and feature online magazine. Its commentators include intellectual powerhouses like Pat Boone and Chuck Norris. Wingnuts love this rag; it's like a born-again Fox News. Given the background of Palin and the other McCainers, it would not be too much of a stretch to imagine the source of the Obama smear was in fact the WND.
It would explain a lot. Perhaps the WND has also given Palin the background she needs to intelligently discuss global warming and foreign policy. If so, that's damn -- sorry, darn right -- scary.
(Today the WND is foaming at the mouth about yoga instruction in churches, corporations and classrooms. Imee and I are doomed to go to Hell now, because we associated with a "pagan" Sikh. Oops! My bad!)
--Crossposted at Wheat-dogg's World --