Some Context

An excellent comment from a thread at John Cole's:

If Bill Ayers is such a scary terrorist, why are Bush, Cheney, and McCain just letting the guy walk around free? If he’s the most evil person ever, shouldn’t McCain spearhead some sort of operation to capture him? Laura Bush has killed more people than Bill Ayers. I think the only people to die from a weatherman bomb were a couple of people from the group who blew themselves up. I mean, we’re talking about terrorists named after a Bob Dylan lyric for Chrissakes.

I don’t want to defend any sort of bombing, but you gotta remember that during that period, black people would get KILLED for looking for a job in a white neighborhood. JFK, RFK, and MLK were all KILLED. the national guard KILLED students at Kent State. There dozens and dozens of riots. Uprisings at Ivy League schools. Even the daughter of William Randolph Hearst became a terrorist. It was a violent time in America. People drove through riot-burned streets only to go home and watch the news which showed their children coming home from the other side of the world in a body bag. There were concerns amongst the rightwing that the black soldiers coming home from war would be starting a guerrilla war revolution in the streets of American cities. It was a crazy crazy time. And Obama was about 8 when all that was happening.

Nylund October 9th, 2008 at 10:22 am

That Laura Bush line is the Quote of the Freaking Month. But it's true, these Weatherman guys were more Keystone Cops than al Queda—even the bombs they DID manage to plant, they called ahead to warn everyone to get out. And considering the state of affairs of the day, I'm not sure anything less would've attracted attention. [NOTE: Not a defense, morans.]