Each day on his nationally-syndicated radio show, Sean Hannity talks about Barack Obama’s connection to former member of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers. He brings up how Obama “launched his career from Ayers’ living room,” about how he is a “good friend” of Ayers, and how he sat on a board with this known, “unrepentant” terrorist.

So incensed is Hannity by Obama’s ties to this man, that he even got George Stephanopoulos to include a question on Ayers for an ABC-sponsored debate during the primaries. Obama answered the question then, noting that he had served on a board with Ayers at one time (along with several Republicans), and that he was eight years old when the Weather Underground conducted its bombing campaign. This was not enough of an explanation for Hannity, and he has kept the Ayers pressure on for the last few months. The charges kept resounding in the Republican media echo chamber, and they recently became a major part of McCain’s campaign against Obama, with the ultimate sound byte becoming Sarah Palin’s oft-repeated phrase that the Democratic candidate “pals around with terrorists.”

This attack came before the second debate, but McCain did not mention it at that time.

However, last night, Bob Schieffer gave McCain an opportunity to finally make this accusation to Obama’s face, and initially McCain balked. Instead, McCain played the victim card:

And the fact is, it’s gotten pretty tough. And I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns. But the fact is that it has taken many turns which I think are unacceptable.

One of them happened just the other day, when a man I admire and respect — I’ve written about him — Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful.

Obama responded by noting that 100 percent of McCain’s ads have been negative (that was only partly true — he should’ve said McCains ads from the last two weeks), and that, “now, I think the American people are less interested in our hurt feelings during the course of the campaign than addressing the issues that matter to them so deeply.”

Then there were several interchanges between the two candidates regarding Lewis, and Obama mentioned how Palin had said nothing when some supporters at a rally started calling Obama a terrorist and to “kill him.”

But it wasn’t until at least ten or fifteen minutes had passed that McCain finally seemed angry enough to bring up the Ayers issue, and he did it after the full discussion when there was really only time for quick rebuttal. But he did bring it up:

Yes, real quick. Mr. Ayers, I don’t care about an old washed-up terrorist. But as Sen. Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship.

We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. The same front outfit organization that your campaign gave $832,000 for “lighting and site selection.” So all of these things need to be examined, of course.

Here is Obama’s full response on these two points, just so we all can be done with it:

Bob, I think it’s going to be important to just — I’ll respond to these two particular allegations that Sen. McCain has made and that have gotten a lot of attention.

In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Sen. McCain’s campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let’s get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.

Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan’s former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg.

Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of The Chicago Tribune, a Republican- leaning newspaper.

Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers.

Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they’ve done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.

It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

Now, the reason I think that it’s important to just get these facts out is because the allegation that Sen. McCain has continually made is that somehow my associations are troubling.

Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I’m interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. And I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Sen. McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.

I could not in my wildest dreams have come up with a better closing line than that — “I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Sen. McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.”

Perfect.

McCain’s response? More attacks. McCain continued to press the ACORN issue, and then so suddenly switched course that my wife and I burst out laughing as we watched, and Senator Obama gave a big smile and looked like he was trying to stop himself from laughing out loud himself:

And my campaign is about getting this economy back on track, about creating jobs, about a brighter future for America. And that’s what my campaign is about and I’m not going to raise taxes the way Sen. Obama wants to raise taxes in a tough economy. And that’s really what this campaign is going to be about.

Oh man… You just gotta love it.

So did all the Ayers attacks and responses satisfy Sean Hannity? My guess is, of course, a big fat no. He will continue on his crusade, but thankfully all he is doing by harping on this is helping to bring down any chance McCain has of winning over independents.

If you looked at the CNN “real-time ratings” during McCain’s Ayers attacks, all the bars went down except Republicans. On MSNBC, talking with undecided voters in Missouri, one woman was asked why she felt so negative toward McCain while he talked about Ayers. The woman said she felt it was an “old issue,” and that it had been adequately addressed and answered before this debate.

Shorthand: No one cares.

Hannity, the question has been asked and answered.

So keep talking about ACORN, keep talking about Ayers. People are realizing that you’re just distracting from the real issues people care about, and you and all the other right-wing talking heads did a horrible disservice to the McCain campaign in continually asking him to bring up this issue and attempt to influence his campaign to make this a central part of the McCain message.

Independent voters have a diminishing view of McCain due to his negative advertisements and the inability of his campaign to describe how he will help voters should he become president.

McCain’s campaign strategy may be hurting hurt him: Twenty-one percent of voters say their opinion of the Republican has changed for the worse in the last few weeks. The top two reasons cited for the change of heart are McCain’s attacks on Obama and his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate.

So I say to Hannity, Levin, Limbaugh, Savage and all the others: Keep it up!

I’m having a debate with a friend of mine about how valid are the complaints about ACORN signing up fake names during voting registration drives.

I guess I’m not understanding where the whole scandal is, apart from voter registration fraud. Some people handed in fake registrations. Now, I understand that carries some heavy legal penalties, but as far as I know, there is a big difference between voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud.

If I’m not misunderstanding this, all ACORN is doing is handing in the registrations after volunteers turn them in. It is up to the local officials — County Clerks, boards of election, Registrar of Voters, etc. — to verify and validate that these people can vote in the election.

What they might be doing that’s unethical is enticing people to register (or re-register) by paying for people to register. If you’re not sure if you’re registered and someone asks you, “are you registered,” you might say, “I don’t know.” So they reply, “well, we’ll sign you up anyway.” Is that fraud? OK, so in this case, things might have gotten a little further than that. According to ACORN, they always get the occasional “Mickey Mouse” registration. But by and large, they just collect the registrations and hand them in to the local officials for verification and enrollment in the voter rolls.

Now, voter fraud is something entirely different. For real voter fraud to take place given what ACORN has done, you’d have to believe they’re taking part in the following conspiracy:

1. False voter registration form is filled out and handed in by ACORN
2. Local officials verify and validate this fake name as an eligible voter
3. Someone has to keep track of where these fake people were registered and possibly create false IDs for each of them in case of challenges
4. Person who would commit voter fraud has to show up at this local polling place not knowing whether or not this fake name was actually validated, but they’d also have to be willing to face certain arrest if something suspicious was found about the original registration and the name was flagged

Seriously? Is this all they’ve got? Forget about electronic voting machines, do you know what a coordinated effort this would take to influence an election? Or am I just being naive?

It seems to me the reason volunteers turned in fake names was because they were probably lazy and had quotas to meet. They didn’t want to track down real people who weren’t registered, so they made something up. So now they’re going to do a 180 and get some ambition to steal an election?

Really?

Come on, people. This is a giant Red Herring. More mud to be thrown to create some swift-boat style confusion around Obama’s candidacy. “Oh, I heard something about dead people voting.”

Um, no, you heard the right wing talking heads trying to set you up for the post-election radio and television bitch sessions about how Obama was not elected legitimately. That’s all there is to it.

People who submitted false registrations should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

ACORN is possibly guilty of trying to get as many people registered to vote as possible by methods other than simple requests. They shouldn’t be paying anyone to register because that will only encourage fraud and the appearance of fraud.

But let’s not forget the difference between voter registration fraud, and actual voter fraud.

Whilst the right wing talk machine is fanning the flames of Obama’s supposed lack of judgment in having a tangential relationship with former Weather Underground member, William Ayers, the Huffington Post currently has an exclusive on the McCain presidential transition chief’s connection to Saddam Hussein.

According the the Huff Post:

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein’s government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

Timmons’ activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time.

Wow. Just… Wow…

The information in the article is pretty damning. Timmons claimed he didn’t know that the lobbyists he worked with were tied to Saddam, even though testimony from one of them to a federal prosecutor indicates that Timmons was specifically told of this. According to the lobbyist, Samir Vincent, Timmons was told that “we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in essence we have access and assure [Timmons] that any messages we were relaying between Iraqi and Tariq Aziz and anyone else, it was being transmitted to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq.”

The other lobbyist connecting Timmons with Hussein noted that within days, everything Timmons was doing on the campaign was ‘within days conveyed by Vincent to either one or both of Saddam’s top aides, Tariq Aziz and Nizar Hamdoon,” and that “Vincent also testified that he almost always relayed input from the Iraqi aides back to Timmons.

What the hell is John McCain thinking appointing someone like this to be his presidential transition team chief??

Yesterday, John McCain evidently realized he had better start calming down his more radical supporters before one of them decides to take matters into his (or her) own hands. I’ll credit McCain for finally toning down his message a bit. These statements are far from “who is the *real* Barack Obama?”

We’ll see if Mrs. Palin strikes a similar tone, or if she continues to be as incendiary on the campaign trail as she has been for the past week or two.