Jack Kelly Sunday

One last chance.

Jack has one last chance to smear Senator Obama before the election and in this week's column he does his darnedest to cover at least most of the bases. To his credit he doesn't dirty himself (or the P-G) with the laughable "Ayers wrote Obama's book" meme or the embarassing "Obama's birth certificate is a fraud" meme.

No. He just goes for the jugular with this:

Less is known about Barack Obama than about any major party candidate for president in modern history. His public resume is thin -- eight years in the Illinois Senate, four in the U.S. Senate, with two of them spent running for president.

And no candidate for president has had more problematic associations. Barack Obama's first major financial backer was Antoin "Tony" Rezko, currently awaiting sentencing on corruption charges. For nearly 20 years Mr. Obama attended services where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached hatred of the United States, and of white people. The radical group ACORN has been committing voter registration fraud on a massive scale. Mr. Obama taught classes for ACORN organizers, and represented the group in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois. The most significant managerial responsibility Barack Obama has ever had was as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a project conceived of by unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers.

These associations have been less explored by the mainstream news media than has Joe the Plumber's divorce and a tax lien against him.

All presented as statements of fact. And that's all they have left: Rezko, Wright, ACORN, and Ayers.

Guilt by association, the GOP way.

For the record, the corruption charges facing Rezko had nothing to do with Obama. Wright is long gone from the campaign and of him Obama has already said:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Further, Obama was joined by the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE in that lawsuit against the State of Illinois forcing that state to comply with already existing federal laws intended to enhance access to the polls. They won.

And the "training" Jack trumpets? Two hours:

Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for Acorn, said Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for Acorn’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said.

Two whole hours over three whole years! Ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod!

And that Chicago Annenberg Challenge? Left out of Jack's prose is the fact that the money for the Challenge was put up by the radical Walter Annenberg - founder of such radical publications as TV Guide and Seventeen magazine. Oh, and he was Richard Nixon's Ambassador to the UK. It was the radical Annenberg who introduced Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher.

Ayers and TWO OTHERS; Anne Hallett and Warren Chapman came up with a draft of a grant proposal. That draft was then revised the draft into a formal proposal. The story is here.

Of course if you just read Jack the plan was COMPLETELY conceived of by Ayers. The reality, as always with Jack Kelly's columns, is much different.

One last chance to smear, Jack. How do you think you did?