The Obama Flag - O Noes!

Over at DailyKos they've pointed out a column by Mark Levin at the National Review that decries, among other things, the existence of "special Obama flags."

Here's the flag they're talking about. Obama was seen speaking in Toledo with this flag behind him, and a number of right-wing loonies went nuts over it.

Hey Mark, in case you haven't heard: that flag has flown in those parts since 1902 and the O has nothing to do with Obama. It actually stands for Ohio. Not too surprising since it's their state flag! Obama had as much to do with that O being on the flag as he had to do with a backwards B ("for Barack," said the McCain campaign) scratched onto the face of Ashley Todd.

In Defense of Bill Ayers - and of the '60s

I found this article at The Smirking Chimp, defending Bill Ayers from the "terrorist" label Sarah Palin likes to throw at him (while refusing to hang the same label on bombers of abortion clinics and family planning centers), and revealing the attacks on Ayers for what they are: an attempt to recast '60s dissenters as unpatriotic when in fact they helped usher in the Civil Rights movement and get the US out of an ill-advised war that was destroying our country and damaging our standing in the world.

People over 50 remember that period very well, and many much younger people view it with envy and fascination. After all, today's youth listen to the Beatles, Stones, Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead, considering them their own. (We in the '60s rarely listened to the music of the '20s, '30s and '40s.) College students flock to courses on the '60s, viewing that decade as one of turmoil, excitement, and progressive change. The verdict's in: the war was wrong, segregation and all racism was wrong, sexism and homophobia were wrong—and the limited social progress as we've seen since the '60s is largely rooted in the tireless efforts of the activists of that decade. The '60s were good!

But McCain doesn't see it that way. Nor does Sarah Palin. She of course is 44 years old, but obviously atypical of her generation. There's no reason you can't be the popular governor of a state of 676,987 while expressing contempt for such '60s fixtures as "community organizers," sexual liberation and the questioning of wars of aggression. Palin, the lipstick-painted pit-bull, has chosen to attack Ayers as a "terrorist" decades after the demise of the Weather Underground, after he's become a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and received a Citizen of the Year award (1997) from the city of Chicago for his work on education reform. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of the infamous Mayor Daley who ordered the police attack on antiwar protesters at the Democratic Convention in 1968), who regularly consults Ayers on school issues, says: "He's done a lot of good in this city and nationally." But for Palin, he's a terrorist, present-tense.

Like the attempts to smear Barack Obama as a Muslim or an ACORN supporter or a Socialist, the attempts to link him with Ayers presume there would be something wrong with that if it were true - and any attempt to deny the purported connection only reinforces the implied evil of the person or group they're trying to associate him with (as in "No, he's not an Arab, he's a decent family man...").

What to do? For the next ten days, we have to content ourselves with pointing out the absurdity of the allegations; but after that, we need to work to correct the implicit (an sometimes explicit) slander against ACORN, Arabs, Ayers, and Islam. We also need to expose the creeps behind this stuff for the hypocrites they are. Most of the people who fall for their bullshit really are decent family people, after all. Their only error has been to put their trust in scoundrels who have led them down the garden path.

We may get some help from moderate Republicans and real conservatives, as they attempt to rescue the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt from the ruins wrought by "movement" Republicans - but don't count on it. As Shakespeare had it, "we have scotch'd the snake, not killed it." America won't be safe until Coulter, Hannity, BillO, Rush, and their hate-mongering ilk are rejected even by the right. The message to decent people everywhere must be "America is better than that. You are better than that."

Who is this idiot?

This story would be hilarious if not for the fact that it ties up emergency lines that should be used only for... well, emergencies. A motorist calls 911 to complain about a traffic tie-up on the Wilson Bridge... hey, doesn't that voice sound eerily familiar?

[Update: the original post had an edited-for-TV condensation of the 911 calls involved. I have replaced it with a more complete version. Wouldn't want to quote the man out of context, after all...]

Quote of the week: McCain on negative ads

"Sooner or later, people are going to figure out that if all you run is negative attack ads, you don't have much of a vision for the future, or you're not ready to articulate [it]."

John McCain

February, 2000

Fear and Loathing in the Right Wing

Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes a good point in his Oct. 18 blog entry: the GOP is indeed terrified of American voters.

The Republican Party thrives on fear. They want you afraid of Muslims and afraid of Arabs, afraid of immigrants and even Spanish-speaking Americans. They want you afraid of gays, afraid of the homeless, afraid of taxes, afraid of liberals, afraid of voter fraud. and afraid of Democrats. They especially want you afraid of Barack Obama.

But if there's one thing they're afraid of, it's American voters. Why else have they disenfranchised millions of legitimate voters? They know that if the people's will is expressed in 16 days, their reign of terror is over. Our national nightmare is, after all, their most cherished dream: permanent one-party rule.

So... what can I say? Piss off a Republican - vote!

A ridiculous man

This sums things up rather well:

I sincerely believe that the biggest difference between Bush and McCain is that Bush has sociopathic tendencies. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about what cost his actions may bring to others. In the middle of the current financial crisis, he claimed that he was glad he was at the helm when it occurred; never once considering the fact that he and his minions were largely responsible for it. If Alfred E. Neuman found Jesus, he’d be re-christened “Bush.”

I believe McCain knows what he’s doing. Maybe, he even regrets it. That makes him the sadder of the two and, also, the more dangerous. He has built a career on lies and exaggerations and, now, he somewhat believes them. Like most spoiled kids, he has lived in a bubble. Today, he’s not only battling his own demons but the new and ugly presence of reality.

With his Cryptkeeper’s grin and his total lack of empathy for the “regular folks” he champions, McCain has resorted to the kind of campaign ethics Karl Rove made famous – only he’s screwed it up.

- Ed Naha

The GOP plan to "Block the Vote"

If this effort succeeds in stealing the White House again, by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters, there will be rioting in the streets.

In this light, you can see the ACORN flap for what it is: just one piece of a scheme to do anything and everything - ethics and constitutionality be damned - to keep Democrats from voting. Pathetic? Pathological.

McCain campaign incites terrorism

The DoD defines terrorism as:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

The US code reads: 

the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

Either definition easily applies to what is going on right now, provoked at least in part by the scurrilous lies being bandied about by the right concerning ACORN:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they've provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents.

Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended."

A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said.

When is the McCain campaign going to realize that the sick, irresponsible attacks they are making on Obama, ACORN, and their political opponents in general, are fomenting hatred and violence? There is a breakdown in the moral fiber of our country underway, and McCain and Palin have become the leading cheerleaders for it. It's time for Americans to say "enough is enough."

Quote of the week

"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president."
- Sen. John McCain

Two Minutes Hate

Was George Orwell a prophet, or is this really footage from a McCain-Palin rally?