Laexile wrote: bunch of stuff about Palin...

I believe that anyone can believe or do whatever they want as long as it doesn't impact others.

In fact, it's my core belief that everyone's beliefs have equal value.

Laexile wrote:For someone not sure what it means you sure write alone. I have no idea what she believes. I've never spoken with her. I have no idea what you mean by everyone impacting others. Of course we do. How does that change the idea that anyone can do or believe what they want? Some people here seem to want a totalitarian society where people are prohibited from certain jobs due to their beliefs. While the left is justifiably trying to end intolerance against gays and minorities they push an intolerance of the religious, among others. They allow no room for differing points of view on so many issues these days. Intolerance used to be the ugly underbelly of the right and tolerance used to be an admirable quality of the left. The left was about showing the right what tolerance was. Instead they've become them.

[C]onservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”
...
That project was part of a national school reform effort financed with $500 million from Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. Many cities applied for the Annenberg money, and Mr. Ayers joined two other local education activists to lead a broad, citywide effort that won nearly $50 million for Chicago.

In March 1995, Mr. Obama became chairman of the six-member board that oversaw the distribution of grants in Chicago. Some bloggers have recently speculated that Mr. Ayers had engineered that post for him.

In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama’s appointment. Instead, it was suggested by Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based group whose board Mr. Obama, a young lawyer, had joined the previous year. At a lunch with two other foundation heads, Patricia A. Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation, Ms. Leff suggested that Mr. Obama would make a good board chairman, she said in an interview. Mr. Ayers was not present and had not suggested Mr. Obama, she said.
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Archives of the Chicago Annenberg project, which funneled the money to networks of schools from 1995 to 2000, show both men attended six board meetings early in the project — Mr. Obama as chairman, Mr. Ayers to brief members on school issues.

It was later in 1995 that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted the gathering, in their town house three blocks from Mr. Obama’s home, at which State Senator Alice J. Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Mr. Obama to a few Democratic friends as her chosen successor. That was one of several such neighborhood events as Mr. Obama prepared to run, said A. J. Wolf, the 84-year-old emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel Synagogue, across the street from Mr. Obama’s current house.

“If you ask my wife, we had the first coffee for Barack,” Rabbi Wolf said. He said he had known Mr. Ayers for decades but added, “Bill’s mad at me because I told a reporter he’s a toothless ex-radical.”

“It was kind of a nasty shot,” Mr. Wolf said. “But it’s true. For God’s sake, he’s a professor.”
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In 1997, after Mr. Obama took office, the new state senator was asked what he was reading by The Chicago Tribune. He praised a book by Mr. Ayers, “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court,” which Mr. Obama called “a searing and timely account of the juvenile court system.” In 2001, Mr. Ayers donated $200 to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign.

In addition, from 2000 to 2002, the two men also overlapped on the seven-member board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago charity that had supported Mr. Obama’s first work as a community organizer in the 1980s. Officials there said the board met about a dozen times during those three years but declined to make public the minutes, saying they wanted members to be candid in assessing people and organizations applying for grants.

A board member at the time, R. Eden Martin, a corporate lawyer and president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, described both men as conscientious in examining proposed community projects but could recall nothing remarkable about their dealings with each other. “You had people who were liberal and some who were pretty conservative, but we usually reached a consensus,” Mr. Martin said of the panel.

Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship.

“I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert, when we were together at Harvard Law School,” said Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Mr. Obama and who served as associate White House counsel under President Bush. Mr. Berenson, who is backing Mr. McCain, described his fellow student as “a pragmatic liberal” whose moderation frustrated others at the law review whose views were much farther to the left.

pacino wrote:what a load of bullcrap

Laexile wrote:

pacino wrote:what a load of bullcrap

Hypothesis confirmed. Thank you. I don't think anyone could have said it better.

Tolerance is respecting other people's points of view regardless of whether you agree with them or think there's any basis for that belief. Tolerance isn't allowing someone to harm another individual because that's their belief. There are, of course, conflicts between personal beliefs and societal norms. In such cases society needs to make those judgements. Respecting a polygamist’s belief that plural marriage is acceptable and allowing plural marriage may be considered two different things.

I'm a fan of Thatcher; I revere her; she saved my native country; she didn't just break a glass ceiling, she pulverized it into a million little pieces. And she did this, whatever you think of her policies, by always being accountable, always available, always engaged, always eager for an argument on the toughest of grounds, armed with facts and figures and passion. Democracies allow citizens as well as the press to question their potential leaders - rudely, aggressively, relentlessly. The exchange above was one of her lowest points, and she had many high ones. The reason I'm posting this is to remind American voters what a real democracy sounds like.

TomatoPie wrote:Well, I can't vote for Barry, and I'm tiring of McCain.

This may be the way to go:

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php_id=46832 ... p&altl=Qjf

'Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,' Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.
Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

pacino wrote:

'Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,' Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.
Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

I hate her so much. How can one get away with this crap?

The fund describes itself as "a grantmaking foundation whose goal is to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities in the metropolitan area, including the opportunity to shape decisions affecting them. 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.

TomatoPie wrote:

pacino wrote:

'Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,' Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.
Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

I hate her so much. How can one get away with this crap?

Facts that may trouble Obama supporters:

Obama's political coming-out party in the mid-1990s was hosted by Ayers and his terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn.

Ayers and Obama both took part in panel discussions that were organized by Michelle Obama.

The goodbye party for prominent Israel basher and Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi was attended by Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn.

Khalidi himself hosted a fundraiser for Obama's first Congressional campaign.

Obama and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund for three years, and continued to do so even after Ayers was quoted in the New York Times fondly recalling his days as a bomber, and despairing that he hadn't "done more."

The funds Obama and Ayers helped control at the Woods Foundation funneled thousands of dollars into both Khalidi's organization and the now-infamous Trinity United Church of Christ.

http://townhall.com/Columnists/GuyBenson/2...yers_fact_sheet