Hearing the tiresome "William Ayers" talking point over and over makes me feel like I'm dealing with an unfunded, less feral, far clumsier, and far less effective version of the winger's Mighty Wurlitzer.

It's the PUMA equivalent of Bill Clinton shutting down LAX to get his haircut -- a zombie talking point, repeated over and over and over again, gaining even its truthiness solely through currency. No advancement of the discourse, no analyis, certainly no analytical tools, no integration into any wider context: Just zombie-like repetition.

It's not even ingenious or interesting character assassination: At least the wingers can do that!

If this talking point came from the OFB, I'd assume they went to camp to learn the techniques, and then got texted by Axelrod. If it were the freepers, I'd classify it as just another circlejerk, and tell 'em to, please, wipe the spooge off the Cheetohs before passing them on.

If the point is that Obama associates with dangerous radicals, that's just smoke. Obama's a Villager who's going to govern from the center right. He's slightly farther from being a dangerous radical than Hillary is, meaning he's a Centrist.

If the point is a purity test, and "nobody fit to the President should associate with such people," then there's literally no candidate who's going to pass it, because they all "associate" with such people. That's how CT works and why foil sales are holding steady. Even in the most innocent case, there's always a six-degrees-of-separation connection to be made. The same can be said of both Bush and the Clintons. And the same could probably be said of most of us, on exactly the same principle. "Why won't [insert name here] deny that he fucks goats?"

And the amazing thing is -- and here's where teh stupid really, really burns -- there are all sorts of reasons, right or wrong, not to vote for Obama that are actually important. That have to do with real people's lives and real issues.

This New York Times article about Barack Obama is a must read. It's so full of interesting topics I am breaking it into parts.

In tommorrow's NYT: