Cuz I'm sick of watching these people poison the well.

Your best diary ever, IMO. I'd rec it twice if I could.

If any terrorist wanted to damage America, he could aspire to no greater damage than to set it's people at each others throats. 9/11 pales next to an America divided by hatred.

And in this:

I don't want to live in John McCain's America.  I don't want my patriotism or "American-ness" to be questionable because of the people I've known.  I don't want to hold our leaders to such a standard that their opponents will imply they support whatever their ACQUAINTANCES have done.

In this, you speak for me completely.

You don't need to write statements such as " An honorable American, Barack Obama, had a slight relationship with William Ayers.  Was this a mistake?  Maybe so.  Does it speak poorly of Barack's judgment?  Maybe..."  There's no maybe about it, the answer is a resounding NO to both question.  There is no smoke and no fire in the relationship and absolutely no reason to turn on Bill Ayers and give any credence to this smear on both Barack and Ayers.  I understand the point you end with, but in the end it is wrong to paint the Republican Party with the McCain/Palin brush that I believe many good-minded Republicans are beginning to move away from.  After all, it was a bunch of Republicans who were instrumental in bringing Obama and Ayers in contact in the first place.

From yesterday's NPR piece highlighted in a DKos Diary by JustForTheRecord:

The Obama campaign says he first met Ayers in 1995, when Obama became chair of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million fund that awarded grants to groups trying to implement new programs to improve inner city education in Chicago.

Walter Annenberg, a lifelong Republican and former ambassador who was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Reagan, funded an ambitious program to reform urban education in many cities in the mid 1990s. Ayers was an important member of the group that developed and wrote the grant proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

...no one on the board or on the Annenberg Challenge staff remembers Obama being any closer to Ayers than to any other member of the board. The Annenberg board also included several civic, business and education leaders, many of them Republicans...

"I don't remember ever hearing anyone raise concerns or questions or concerns about [Ayers'] background," says Anne Hallett, who has worked closely with Ayers on the Annenberg Challenge grant and with Obama on education and other community and legislative matters. "And that included everybody I was engaged with," including prominent Republicans, and corporate and civic leaders in Chicago, Hallett adds...

Hallett calls this attack on Obama's association with Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge by further association, "a smear campaign. It's a political diatribe that has no basis in fact. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was an extremely positive initiative. It was well-vetted, thorough, and the fact that it is now is being used for political purposes is, in my opinion, outrageous."

"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. "It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."

It wasn't a mistake to sit on a board with Bill Ayers.  The whole thing is ridiculous.  Bill Ayers is a professor who has made a lot of positive contributions on educational policy.  Yes, the Weather Underground stuff was wrong, criminal, etc.  
But the entire Vietnam War was an inexcusable act of aggression against a nation that had done NOTHING against the U.S.  

If a candidate can confer with Henry Kissinger, a war criminal, one can certainly sit on a board with Ayers.

who ever said she was an honorable public servant?

This hurts our country more than Bill Ayers ever did.

I would think that the family of the police officer who died due to Ayers/Weathermen would differ with your opinion.

Recommended, with enthusiasm!

I heartily concur with your comments about talking to the other side.  If we don't, then we show total disrespect for the other side (North Korea, Iran, etc.), which is not a useful starting point for getting what we want from them.  We can talk with them - and, if things do not work out, having talked does not take away any of the other options available to us.  

We have really good evidence on how the "no talking" strategy does not work.  We've not talked with Cuba in decades.  After 40-plus years, no progress.  Even worse, our attitude has made Castro a hero in the eyes of his people.  

Wasn't it Einstein who said something about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, as a good working definition of insanity?

known as the Alaskan Independence Party.  A part of it platform is secession from our great national Union and the establishment of Alaska as an independent state.  

Sarah Palin accuses Barack Obama, for his harmless and casual association with William Ayers of palling around with terrorists.  But her association with the Alaskan Independence Party is in now way casual:

for google's 10th anniversary you can search google circa 2001, here's "william ayers"

http://www.google.com/search2001/search? hl=en&q=william+ayers&btnG=Googl e+Search

honestly, it's not the guy's defining trait

I don't see how someone can be faulted for sitting on a board of a public interest group with someone who, when he was young, committed crimes.  In his long political career, has McCain never sat down with some foreign official accused of far worse to conduct negotiations or to hammer out a mutually beneficial agreement?   Would McCain refuse to do so if he were to become President?  This is such an exercise in stupidity.

I really appreciate your diary.  It was well written and also from the heart.