Fox is sure pimping this hard.
If there really was anything to this, McCain and Palin would've used it by now. Now that we've learned the widow Annenberg served on the same board with Obama and Ayers, fresh material is needed.
But if this story isn't getting much play elsewhere (and does turn out to be true), it's the right reaping what it's sown. This kind of thing has been trotted out so often (Ayers, gay marriage for Kerry, the Brooks Brothers riots in Florida, etc.) that we've all become cynics. If it turns out to be true, I just don't think it moves many votes. We've seen this kind of politics so often it's lost its power.

Could it be because the voters don't want to face the truth because it doesn't feel good or makes them look like they aren't "culturally diverse"? I believe part of the problem is that our republican party isn't willing to get their hands dirty by looking like they too aren't "culturally diverse" and taking the trash to the voters. Lets take the gloves off and put the truth on the table even if it does make us feel uncomfortable or like we're being mean! Once it's gone (the America of a hard working population) it's gone forever!

sad to have to be so cynical.

Jack

Given what the McCains and Palin have issued forth on the stump this week, I don't think the Republicans have any problem getting their hands dirty.

Amen to Susan Collins, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Elizabeth Dole and a dozen other great women McCain should/could have chosen. But he chose the speaking in tongues multi-challenged unethical ditz.

Friday: McCain defends Obama as "decent man" to rabid, foaming town hall supporters, whipped up by irresponsible radio shock hosts. Gets booed.

Palin violated Ethics code: says 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats. Repeat: TEN REPUBLICANS on panel.And McCain campaign blames "Obama activists".

Acorn is stupid because it pays recruiters by the name. So they make up names to get 50 cents per. (They are corrupt in only some recruiters & only recently. Obama's main work with them was 13 years ago, along with the League of Women Voters and WITH the Justice Dept. But what voter fraud ensues? Which "fake voters" will actually go vote? I heard they signed up the roster of the Dallas Cowboys in Nevada to get their bonus-- so what? Stupid, but which of these linebackers will actually go vote Nov 4th in Vegas? None! None! No actual illegal votes will ensue. It is great that Acorn & other groups have added millions of REAL voters who have the right to vote to the rolls. Do you think that poor and homeless and black and Hispanic people should not vote because they are inferior to you? No real fraud at the polls. Get off it.

Republicans desperately want to distract us from the economy. Hence Ayers & Acorn.

Christopher Buckley, author and son of Bill endorses Barack Obama! Thus:
Little late to the party on this but it's still worth noting. Christopher Buckley, son of the late conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama.

With typical Buckleyan wit, the former Esquire editor and White House speech writer (Bush 41) makes clear he hasn't jumped ship and become a liberal. Instead his decision springs more from his disappointment with Sen. John McCain than any embrace of Obama's guiding political philosophy or agenda.

Here's an excerpt from the Daily Beast:

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times--I'm beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, "As I warned the world in my last column..."--a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don't--still--doubt that McCain's instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were "jerks" (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam--his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, "The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor." Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I'm about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no--bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don't see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was--sigh--then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, "We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us." This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget "by the end of my first term." Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain--who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

Of Obama, he says:

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a "first-class temperament," pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he's a Harvard man, though that's sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I've read Obama's books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I'm libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O'Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren't going to get us out of this pit we've dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him--I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy "We are the people we have been waiting for" silly rhetoric--the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I'll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Cue the harpsichord.

I find ACORN's track-record troubling beyond this election. It's clear that they've engaged in widespread and systematic voter fraud that has been ongoing for a while.

The only way it will stop is to put a couple of the leaders responsible behind bars.

This election, ACORN's actions will benefit Obama in the national election, but how many other local races will be affected that we'll know nothing about?

As for Chris Buckley, I could care less. He is not his father. I highly doubt that John Chafee would ever have endorsed Obama, but alas the son is not his father.

The latest commercials on Obama are not certainly not flattering. But they are factual.

Obama DID receive personal benefits from Rezko.

He did work with Bill Ayers on boards and had his help promoting his political rise.

Obama was on the wrong side of economic issues when it comes to Fannie Mae and he did ask for guidance from former CEOs of Fannie Mae.

Obama did work for ACORN.

So is it unfair to bring up these association? Not really.

I don't condemn Obama for all of his relationships. There is no evidence that Obama knew Rezko was engaged in illegal activities, so I don't really hold Rezko against Obama.

The association with Bill Ayers is more worrisome. Ayers was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. He is a terrorist. He still preaches radical theories about education that Obama appears to share.

I also think that Obama's position on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were just plain wrong. I don't blame him for his association with Franklin Raines or Jim Johnson. There is no evidence that Obama knew of or engaged in the fraud that was happening in Fannie Mae.

As for ACORN, I don't think anyone knows the extent to which Obama knew or didn't know of the groups practices.

But for a man who is so young, Obama has a troubling set of friends.

Through all his years, McCain's only "troubling" association was with Charles Keating and a formal investigation found that McCain had no knowlege of Keating's activites. Nor did McCain attempt to defend Keating.

So are McCain's ads negative? Yes. But are they are truthful.

Tying the voter fraud to Obama is a dog that won't hunt. This is about workers paid by the signature trying to defraud the company - these are fictitious names they use, with no relation to actual voters.