FACT CHECK: Ayres Obama "Palling around"

[Busted]

Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'?
Posted: 09:00 AM ET
 
Gov. Palin commented about Sen. Obama and William Ayers at a rally in Carson, California Saturday.
The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Watch: Is Obama a terrorist's pal?

Get the facts!


The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers.

In the 1960s, Ayers was a founding member of the radical Weather Underground group that carried out a string of bombings of federal buildings, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, in protest against the Vietnam War. The now-defunct group was labeled a "domestic terrorist group" by the FBI, and Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn — also a Weather Underground member — spent 10 years as fugitives in the 1970s. Federal charges against them were dropped due to FBI misconduct in gathering evidence against them, and they resurfaced in 1980. Both Ayers and Dohrn ultimately became university professors in Chicago, with Ayers, 63, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Obama's Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked.

CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN that after meeting Obama through the Annenberg project, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him that same year when then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor. LaBolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.

The extent of Obama's relationship with Ayers came up during the Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year, and Obama explained it by saying, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood … the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago — when I was 8 years old — somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

The McCain campaign did not respond Saturday to a request for elaboration on Palin's use of the plural "terrorists."

Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Filed under: Barack Obama • Fact Check • Sarah Palin

[2ND COMING]

we should have a "fact check" from few wedge issues from both sides, stickied.

[shootfighter1]

They didn't do anything 'innapropriate' together but worked together on several occasions.  Aryes also hosted a fundraising event for Obama early in his political career.  Thats enough for me.  I would refuse to work with an Anti-American asshole like Aryes in any fashion and sure as hell wouldn't let him fundraise for me.
Also, have you read the details about Annenburg?  Its appauling.  Both of them worked on this project together with grant $.  They had a similar idea to improve education, which completely failed, and introduced cultural and political bias to school aged kids.  Innapropriate and pathetic.

[Busted]

They didn't do anything 'innapropriate' together but worked together on several occasions.  Aryes also hosted a fundraising event for Obama early in his political career.  Thats enough for me.  I would refuse to work with an Anti-American asshole like Aryes in any fashion and sure as hell wouldn't let him fundraise for me.
Also, have you read the details about Annenburg?  Its appauling.  Both of them worked on this project together with grant $.  They had a similar idea to improve education, which completely failed, and introduced cultural and political bias to school aged kids.  Innapropriate and pathetic.

So every person Obama had met in his life he should have asked  for a biography on them?    What would you do if someone you worked with who the Mayor of your city worked with on a regular basis, and was a very respected professor in your community and you found out 10 years later did some shady shit 40 years earlier??  Looking for a intelligent response....

[shootfighter1]

The fact is Ayres is a well know domestic terrorist with wildly radical views.  I wouldn't work with him and certainly wouldn't share the same educational agenda.
They do not appear to be close buddies...thats the repub spin.  Still its too close for me.

[Busted]

The fact is Ayres is a well know domestic terrorist with wildly radical views.  I wouldn't work with him and certainly wouldn't share the same educational agenda.
They do not appear to be close buddies...thats the repub spin.  Still its too close for me.

I guarantee you never heard of him before recently, I follow politics HARD and I never heard of him in my life before 6 months ago.  His education Bill sure seemed to be "non radical" and was passed pretty easy in Illinois...

Gotta love the "domestic terrorist tag" but hes a free man... hmmmmmmmmm

[y19mike77]

I guarantee you never heard of him before recently, I follow politics HARD and I never heard of him in my life before 6 months ago.  His education Bill sure seemed to be "non radical" and was passed pretty easy in Illinois...

Gotta love the "domestic terrorist tag" but hes a free man... hmmmmmmmmm

If you have not heard of him till 6 months ago the your not following politics "HARD".

What if McCain's career got started in the living room of the kkk leader? Then proceeded to refer to him as a friend and work with him.

Needless to say McCain would not have a political career at this point.

But it is dif for Obama.

[Parker]

If you have not heard of him till 6 months ago the your not following politics "HARD".

What if McCain's career got started in the living room of the kkk leader? Then proceeded to refer to him as a friend and work with him.

Needless to say McCain would not have a political career at this point.

But it is dif for Obama.

KKK and Aryes are on TWO entirely diff levels...

Love the spin, nice try.

[headhuntersix]

I guarantee you never heard of him before recently, I follow politics HARD and I never heard of him in my life before 6 months ago.  His education Bill sure seemed to be "non radical" and was passed pretty easy in Illinois...

Gotta love the "domestic terrorist tag" but hes a free man... hmmmmmmmmm

Never heard of the Weather Undergound? Apparently both ur grasp of history and politics suck. I'd also have u dig deeper into his education bill.....


The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto....

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

[headhuntersix]

Ayers argues that the fundamental issue in American life is “white skin privilege” - that white Americans benefit from being white at the expense of blacks.

Ayers himself wrote on his website in a January 19, 2008 essay on school reform:

“The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. ‘Across the US,’ the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, ‘a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.’ This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood ‘racial achievement gap,’ and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy….Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up.”

[headhuntersix]

This guy launched the career of Obama, and I hate Obama just because he's Black Right ?   

[Soul Crusher]

FBI Raids Home of Obama Associate & Radical AAAN Leader in Terrorism Sweepby Jim Hoft
www.biggovernment.com

________________________ ______________________



Last Friday FBI agents raided the homes of far left activists in Chicago and Minneapolis who are linked to the FARC and Islamic radicals as part of a terrorism investigation.

The home of radical Hatem Abudayyeh in Chicago was raided in the terror sweep.



Hatem Abudayyeh protests against Israel in Chicago in January 2009. (Daylife)

The AP reported on the raid in Chicago.

FBI agents in Chicago took a laptop and documents from the home of a Palestinian-American anti-war activist in an attempt to silence his advocacy, an attorney said Sunday.

The FBI on Friday searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago, including the home of Hatem Abudayyeh, who is the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, attorney Jim Fennerty told The Associated Press.

“The government’s trying to quiet activists,” Fennerty said. “This case is really scary.”

More than half a dozen agents went to Abudayyeh’s home on Friday and took any documents containing the word “Palestine,” Fennerty said.

Abudayyeh, a U.S. citizen whose parent immigrated from Palestine, wasn’t home at the time of the raid because he was at a hospital with his mother who is battling liver cancer, Fennerty said.

Chicago activist Thomas Burke said he was served a grand jury subpoena that requested records of any payments to Abudayyeh or his group.


“The warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” said Steve Warfield, spokesman for the FBI in Minneapolis, where six additional homes were searched Friday… Burke said he received a grand jury subpoena requesting records of payments to Abudayyeh’s organization as well as two groups among the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

There’s more…
Hatem Abudayyeh is the executive director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). Hatem Abudayyeh has been with the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) since 1999, and was appointed Executive Director in 2003. The Arab American Action Network was founded by former PLO operative and close Obama family friend Rashid Khalidi. Obama was a director of the Woods Fund from 1994 through 2001, when the board approved a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network.

In 2003 Barack Obama was an honored guest at a dinner sponsored by the AAAN for former PLO-operative Rashid Khalidi. During the dinner a video was taken that shows Barack Obama celebrating with members of this Palestinian group who are openly hostile towards Israel. Barack Obama even gave a toast to a Rashid Khalidi at this going away party. The LA Times will not release the video from this Jew-bashing dinner.

Here’s a recent quote by Hatem Abudayyeh:

“The U.S. and Israel will continue to describe Hamas, Hezbollah and the other Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations as ‘terrorists,’ but the real terrorists are the governments and military forces of the U.S. and Israel. The vast majority of the world sees and understands this, and are in full support of Lebanese, Palestinian and worldwide resistance to Israel and the U.S.’s naked aggression, war, imperialism and occupation. As we have seen in Iraq, where the resistance is standing up to U.S. power, the U.S. military is not indomitable.”

Last Friday the FBI raided the home of AAAN leader Hatem Abudayyeh. He is Barack Obama’s friend.

It should be noted… FARC terror leader Mono Jojoy was killed in an attack on September 22. Several computers were seized by authorities after the Colombian jungle attack. The FBI raided the homes of the FARC terrror sympathizers two days after Mojoy was killed.