The Facts on Obama and Ayers That Some Don't Want You to Know

...in 1995, Ayers hosted a "getting to know you" gathering at his house as Obama was preparing for his first campaign, a run for the Illinois Senate. The incumbent state senator, Alice Palmer, had announced she would run for Congress.

To help Obama in the Democratic primary race to succeed her, Palmer organized a few informal meetings to introduce Obama to her supporters in the fall of 1995, including the gathering at Ayers' house. It was not a fundraiser, as some reports have stated. And it was not the meeting that launched Obama's political career, as other Obama critics have alleged.

The meeting at Ayers' home was arranged by Alice Palmers.  This sheds a whole new light on it.  It's not like Senator Obama knew the Ayers family well enough to ask him to host a get together himself. 

They also worked on boards together.  Many people note that it's hard to work in helping poor children in Chicago without working with Ayers.

Still NPR reports that:

Other prominent Hyde Park neighbors don't remember Obama and Ayers as being particularly close...

Is William Ayers a terrorist?

The US government has in fact determined that Mr. Ayers is obviously not a threat to the nation now, and people on the left and right in Chicago look at his unrelenting work to help the poor and let bygones be bygones.

More from the NPR report:

Walter Annenberg, a lifelong Republican and former ambassador who was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Reagan, funded an ambitious program to reform urban education in many cities in the mid 1990s. Ayers was an important member of the group that developed and wrote the grant proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

I mentioned Annenberg before in relation to the Annenberg foundation's FactCheck.org.  I didn't know if he had a favorable relation with Reagan and therefore didn't mention that one, but apparently they were on good terms, too.

From Washington Post report "Former '60s Radical Is Now Considered Mainstream in Chicago ":

"It's kind of laughable for people who have worked with Bernadine and Bill in the most boring and mundane settings and recognize that they're absolutely upstanding establishment citizens today," said Lawrence C. Marshall, a Stanford University law professor. He recalled a juvenile justice project: "Judges who were lifelong ardent conservatives had no trouble recognizing that the work that Bernadine and Bill are now doing is completely divorced from anything in their background."

The US hasn't been remiss in picking up old radicals and jailing them if they want.  Sarah Jane Olsen was picked up when they found her, tried and given a 14 year sentence (most sentences are reduced by half for good behavior these days and she should get out next year) for a failed car bombing attempt on a police car.  Other members of the Symbionese Liberation Front, who were even more complicit in acts that killed were put away too.  I don't know how many years Emily Harris was given, but she's cooling her heels in prison now.  Harris was palling around with Disney when she was caught.

And lets not even mention Guantanamo Bay. 

I grant you today's radicalism is more talk talk talk, like right wing militia leaders did for Timothy McVeigh until the impressionable young man carried out their desired aims while the talkers got off scott free (and the man who is less willing to die silently about who may have egged on the duo and even aided them, also got a pretty good sentence).  The hate and fear talk about "others"by right wing leaders and politicians are more about getting a good haul than anything they plan to do themselves.  But, you know if Muslim or liberal leaders were pushing the kind of violent threats we often hear from right wingers people would be going to jail. 

Groups like the Alaskan secessionists may inspire violent fantasies in their followers, but don't take part themselves, and hopefully, even after a visit by rising Republican star visited their meeting, who adds to their credibility, none of their radical followers are going to think that violence is the answer.

Hey, if the US government says Ayers is okay.  Who are we to disagree?

And if Sarah Palin wants to attend meetings of an Alaskan secessionist party to which her husband belonged for a lot of years, that's her right.

If Ms Palin attended a church service in which a guest speaker said that Israel, itself, is to blame for attacks by Palestinians on it's citizens, and did not walk out of the service, it says something about her view of Israel, but it's perfectly okay.  (This is according to Ms. Palin herself, who seems to forget that Barack Obama wasn't at services in which Reverend Wright made the more extreme statements the right has recorded.)

Ayers is not advocating violence today, and seems to be working very hard to make up for his past.  And the US government seems to agree that that's enough.

So, if Sarah Palin says that Barack Obama is "scary" then she must be reffering to some other reason he 'scares' her.  I wonder what that (cough) Southern Strategy (cough) reason could be.