They start slinging mud and lying.

How much longer must this nation endure those corrupt, hypocritical neocon Republicans?

However, IMO, he didn’t address the issue of the extent to which he personally witnessed such tirades by Wright and what he thought and why he kept quiet and maintained his association as is. IOW, while he made sidelong reference to the general Wright issue, I don’t feel he took on the issue of what he has known and how he had or had not reacted previously.

He let us think this was all a sort of a surprise. That part I don’t buy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077.html

And that doesn’t include the numerous times he has spoke about it in interview after interview. Clearly, you have not been paying attention.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/members-of-frin.html

The ABC article tells us,

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she and her husband were once member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United State.
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And while McCain’s motto — as seen in a new TV ad — is “Country First,” the AIP’s motto is the exact opposite — “Alaska First — Alaska Always.”
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The proverbial sword cuts both ways.

I don’t get the sense that Barack Obama thinks the same way that Rev Wright thinks. So the association doesn’t bother me. We all understand that sometimes you associate with folks of a previous generation who just can’t get it about where the world has moved to. Doesn’t mean you disown them, as Obama has pointed out. Sometimes you take what they say with a grain of salt, tolerate their sore points with circumspection, and value them for all that they are worth despite their flaws and outdated perspectives on some things.

And clearly, if there’s any evidence that Obama was in attendance for the specific troublesome GDA speech, we’d have seen that by now. Yet if Obama was a regular churchgoer for 2 decades, it strains our credulity to think that somehow Obama has managed to miss every occasion where Wright has born witness to the giant chip he and his generation carries on their shoulder.

Obama is not going to get me to believe that somehow Wright’s more controversial views were all a great big surprise to him. I’d like to see Obama speak to what troublesome things he might have witnessed and how he reacted to them. I don;’t think he ever really has, which is what makes me feel that Palin’s comments are fair game.

Is Palin playing desperate VP attack dog? Of course. Does that make her raising of these concerns illegitimate? Nope. The “palling around with terrorists” remark is a bit more borderline. But again, surely Obama is aware of the history, worked with Ayers too often to claim they had no relationship whatsoever, and must have had some thoughts about such a figure. I’d like to know what he thinks.