<<[Knute] is using the same guilt by association argument he is saying is invalid in the ayers-wright-obama trio.>>
Only in the typically malfunctioning brain of a right-wing ideologue would one be as guilty for associating with the KKK as one is for associating with Bill Ayers.
For the record, Ayers is one of my all-time heroes. He stood up to fascism bomb for bomb during the American war against Viet Nam, only his bombs were aimed at buildings only and tried to spare human life. By contrast, the bombs of the war criminal John McCain were aimed at, and took the lives of, thousands of Third World people whose only crime was to fight to free their homeland from foreign invaders, be they French, Japs or Americans. McCain's bombs burned them alive in napalm, men, women and children. In a just and fair world, McCain and his commanding officers would have been hanged long ago as war criminals and Bill Ayers would have received the highest award that a grateful and peace-loving world could have bestowed upon him.
To the extent that Obama enjoyed Bill Ayers' friendship, support and encouragement, IMHO he was greatly honoured.
Americans are prisoners of their own taboos. For some reason they are afraid to call McCain the criminal that he is, and even his political opponents feel compelled to offer praise to his "courage" and his "sacrifice" (the latter an allusion to his phony claims of torture) and "love of country." Americans need the courage to speak out against their own criminals, specifically those in the military and the CIA, to condemn their actions without reservation and to insist upon the supreme penalty for them. A criminal is a criminal is a criminal. And until they find the moral courage to do so, they will continue to live under the lash of fascism, racism and militarism, with none but themselves to blame.