3rd Presidential Debate 10/15: Will McCain bring up Ayers first?

If NEITHER candidate bring up Ayers, then McCain did NOT bring up Ayers first (because he didn't bring him up at all), and the question settles as "NO".

Barack seems to be suggesting that they bring it up: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5985237&page=1

But, with all the links that story has to ACORN, they would probably need extra time!

How ACORN got me into vote scam http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/news/politics/nuts__132771.htm
ACORN's canvassers filled out forms with fake names, addresses, officials say http://www.lvrj.com/news/30613864.html
Fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081009/ap_on_el_ge/voter_fraud
Nevada seizes ACORN records in voter fraud inquiry http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-voterfraud8-2008oct08,0,226752.story?track=rss

This Bill Ayers story is not just about a terrorist in the past, but his continued subversive activities in Chicago:
Obama and Bill Ayers Worked to Get ACORN Teaching Schoolchildren in Chicago http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/obama_and_bill_ayers_worked_to.asp
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

"Who’s Afraid of ACORN, and Why"
http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=27676

"The GOP voter-fraud vendetta might have remained exactly where Bush loyalists wanted it—below the radar of the press—had it not been for the scandal surrounding the firing of eight U. S. attorneys, including David C. Iglesias of New Mexico. Iglesias lost his job in December 2005 after he declined to prosecute a voter-fraud case against ACORN, which had been registering large numbers of voters in the state’s low-income and largely minority neighborhoods in 2004. Prominent New Mexico Republicans, including U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, had repeatedly complained to chief White House political strategist Karl Rove about Iglesias’ failure to bring voter-fraud indictments. Once Iglesias said he couldn’t prove a case against ACORN, his days were numbered.

ACORN became a target because of its successful voter-registration work. As the 2004 election approached, then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft launched a broad initiative to crack down on supposed voter fraud in battleground states, including Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and New Mexico, where ACORN was making headway registering voters. In all of those states, Republicans filed suits against ACORN for voter fraud, and, in every case, ACORN was exonerated."

"ACORN has registered over 1.3 million voters. Over 60% are people of color. This is a horrifying development for Republicans and the McCain campaign."

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law."

[...]

"Ken Blackwell is best known today for disenfranchising Democratic voters in his dual role as Ohio Secretary of State and chair of George Bush’s Ohio campaign in 2004. To see him shed crocodile tears for the integrity of the vote while making accusations about Barack and ACORN with absolutely no basis in fact is disturbing.

Blackwell’s attacks against ACORN and community organizers continue a vile Republican pattern of mockery and viciousness against this noble profession. Community organizers are the very individuals Republicans should be celebrating for helping people to help themselves rather than depending on the government."

http://fightthesmears.com/articles/20/acornrumor?source=sem-pm-fts-ac-search-us-yah

There is a good discussion on Ayers/Obama here:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/790/

I also see a McCain Aide is supposed to have said McCain will raise Ayers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/13/mccain-aide-i-expect-ayer_n_134259.html

@ ianochaye Thanks, great link :)

heh...here are a few examples of radical:
"[T]he Chicago Symphony, the University of Chicago, Loyola University, Northwestern University, the Chicago Children's Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association."

funny, Ayers wasn't a problem until Walnuts slid down the polls..
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/10/13/opinion/13kristol.html

Yeah, that Ayers is a class act guy: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/05/05/obama-s-buddy-bill-ayers-stomping-american-flag

Why wasn't Ayers important 5 months ago?

@deelilley: That is a good question. Here is my guess, maybe you have some ideas too:

This did not seem important to Democrats when they were vetting their canidates before the convention. Only the most active Democrats were really part of the process at that time. Now that the Democrat Party has chosen him as their nominee, they are asking all of America to look at him for one of their alternatives. With a different, wider, audience comes different, more diverse questions and different values, and so it is only recently that they noticed out far out of step Barack is from the mainstream. That's my guess - do you have anything to add?

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.

I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed, poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

Barack Obama - 10/2/2002

Ahead of the curve...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/10/15/mccain_hints_he_may_raise_obama_ayers_ties_in_tonights_debate/

More on Ayers and Obama here:

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/barack-obama-black.html

deelilly,

Let's be honest here. Ayers has been an issue with people paying attention for many, many months...well over a year. The reason it is just now becoming public is the mainstream media...basically all that are not "fair and balanced"...can no longer keep this crocodile swept under the mat. 5 months ago, mainstream media didn't know who the Democrat candidate would be. They wanted Obama, as you could tell by the opinion articles they tried (and still try) to pass off as news reporting. They couldn't bring it up then and risk the almighty Obama losing the primary. Then when he won the primary, they were forced to keep it swept under the mat. Now, too many people know about it. It can't be hidden anymore. The mainstream media knows that this issue will almost certainly come up in the debate. Mainstream media already appear biased to most people. How much worse would they look when this comes up? The mainstream media would have again been proven biased and untrustworthy. Those that only get their news from mainstream sources could (and should) realize they are being fed a line of crap daily by those "news" sources. Those news sources would then be naked in the eys of the public and finally be seen as what they are...Leftist propagandists. Mainstream media must begin to report on this before it comes out in other ways or face losing the last ounce of credibility they have left.

That's why this is an issue now, but wasn't 5 months ago.

@ rightorwrong Don't you think that Clinton would be the nominee if all that were true? Ayers wasn't an issue 5 months ago because John (the economy is sound) McCain wasn't seriously behind in all the National polls. The response to his Red Alert has been tepid at best.

"At a time when a vanquished conservative president is nationalizing the banking system as his closing act, when millions of American lives are going off financial cliffs, when two wars strain the very thought of Pax Americana, we got this media-fed moment on Bill Ayers."

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/the-deal-sealed/?em

@deelilley: John McCain was not running against Barack Obama 5 months ago. The nominees had not been selected yet. The Democrat party was still vetting their canidates, and they chose to ignore Bill Ayers for whatever reason. After the nomination, they started to ask the American people to vote for their nominee, and that was when it became so apparent how far out of the mainstream Barack Obama really was.

@ notables, 5 months ago Clinton was indeed doing the vetting, and I bet if she picked a plumber to quote on National TV he and his employer would both have licenses.
'sides, Obama declared his candidacy in Feb. 2007; that was plenty of time for McCain to do some homework.

Furthermore, the Repugnican Party has a history of yelling "Fire!" when threatened.
Quite simply, they're pushing your fear button again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az7yl-UnsQQ

@deelilley:

Leaving Hillary to do the vetting is not my idea of "due diligence"!

Hillary has her own terrorist problems - for two examples:
Clinton Has Bigger Weather Underground Problem http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/04/16/clinton-has-bigger-weather-underground-problem/
The Clintons' Terror Pardons http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120277819085260827.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

So it would not be likely that she would want to start that discussion!

It took mainstream America to finally bring attention to these issues. John McCain did not want to bring it up, and even now he says he is more concerned with the character issue of why Barack Obama will not tell the truth about his relationship.

Don't you guys vet your Senators?

deelilley - as much has you rag mccain and you have to ask? i figured you would use a left wing blog for your response.

@dieseldog, No...maybe if I had Lexis, or maybe it's classified...it's easy to see why you can't predict things like 'a wide stance', but it seems to me that after all the paranoia of the last 7 years everyone of them would have been scrutinized by the DHD, the CIA (Hi Karl!), the FBI, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, and Abu Gonzales by now. Some of McCain's terrorist pals...

glad your in canada. we got to many liberals in the USA now.

I'm glad I'm in Canada, too. I've never seen the Fox Entertainment channel.
Um, there's a *lot* more libruls in the US than there were at your last election :)

"In the 13 battleground states that require voters to register by party, there are nearly 1.5 million more
Democrats than at this time in 2004. The comparable Republican numbers, by contrast, have fallen by 61,000 during that time."

"In Florida, there are almost 400000 more registered Democrats today than in 2004, while Republican registrants have grown by less than 150000 in that same time".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/19/AR2008101901921.html?sub=AR

Bill Ayers Dedicated His 1974 Book to RFK's Assassin
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/bill_ayers_dedicated_his_1974.html

Bill wrote in this book Prairie Fire

We are a guerilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. . .

We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society.