Schizophrenia
Oct. 10th, 2008 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdSo on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catsittingstill's journal I replied to an entry about the Obama-Ayres issue with this question:
Would you sit on a charity board with OJ Simpson?
I was baiting her a bit, because I figured (apparently correctly) that she believes OJ is guilty of murder. If you believe that he did it, you would not want to be in the same room as him. I happen to believe in innocent till convicted in court, and OJ was acquitted. I don't accept the civil case as a conviction, primarily because it violates the spirit of double jeopardy, and partly because the rules of evidence in a civil case are not stringent enough.
I would serve on a board with OJ.
Ayres, on the other hand, was let go on a technicality. A very serious one - illegal wiretaps were used to collect the evidence against him - but he certainly was involved in helping build the bomb which killed his girlfriend and two others, and was intended to be set off among people at a military dance. Even if he stopped trying to kill people after that, and only intended to blow things up, he's criminally insane to think there could not be another accident.
Now for the punch line. All I think it shows about Obama is a lack of common sense. Common sense says if you serve on a board with someone, you find out a little bit about them. I don't mean hire an investigator, I mean put the guy's name in an Internet search engine. We're talking about the year 2000, not 40 years ago. It would have taken Barak all of 30 seconds to find Ayres's past incendiary activities.
It wouldn't keep me from voting for the guy, but that's mostly because the Senate will have to approve any major appointees, and someone with Ayres' history wouldn't make it to the short list anyway.
After he was let go, he went back to school, got a Ph.D., taught and did work which supported education. That's good.
catsittingstill's journal I replied to an entry about the Obama-Ayres issue with this question:Would you sit on a charity board with OJ Simpson?
I was baiting her a bit, because I figured (apparently correctly) that she believes OJ is guilty of murder. If you believe that he did it, you would not want to be in the same room as him. I happen to believe in innocent till convicted in court, and OJ was acquitted. I don't accept the civil case as a conviction, primarily because it violates the spirit of double jeopardy, and partly because the rules of evidence in a civil case are not stringent enough.
I would serve on a board with OJ.
Ayres, on the other hand, was let go on a technicality. A very serious one - illegal wiretaps were used to collect the evidence against him - but he certainly was involved in helping build the bomb which killed his girlfriend and two others, and was intended to be set off among people at a military dance. Even if he stopped trying to kill people after that, and only intended to blow things up, he's criminally insane to think there could not be another accident.
Now for the punch line. All I think it shows about Obama is a lack of common sense. Common sense says if you serve on a board with someone, you find out a little bit about them. I don't mean hire an investigator, I mean put the guy's name in an Internet search engine. We're talking about the year 2000, not 40 years ago. It would have taken Barak all of 30 seconds to find Ayres's past incendiary activities.
It wouldn't keep me from voting for the guy, but that's mostly because the Senate will have to approve any major appointees, and someone with Ayres' history wouldn't make it to the short list anyway.
After he was let go, he went back to school, got a Ph.D., taught and did work which supported education. That's good.
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Date: 2008-10-11 06:17 am (UTC)The point I was trying to make at the time wasn't whether Keating Five was greater or worse than associating with Ayres... yes, I do think that the Keating Five matters a bit more (taking Palin into account, it's another sign of poor judgment).
But no, that's not what I was trying to get at... it's more the argument that McCain/Palin were trying to make that Keating shouldn't matter because that was 20 years ago when what Ayres did was almost 40 years ago.
But yes, I will concede that the Obama campaign should have looked into both Ayres and Wright and had responses ready when they came up... in a sense they did have a response for Ayres, since they didn't roll out the Keating ads until McCain went negative with Ayres... but that's not the sort of response I mean.