I was at an Obama rally today and whenver the beat ended with 'McCain' or his policy, the audience jumped in with a big ol' "Boooo."And, I assume, a few shouts of "Kill him" and "Off with his head", right?
Here's what I want: someone (whether it is Barack or anyone that: kicks off a rally or mid-speech) to say we need to get past this one-side-or-the-other-ness, and cut out the contempt altogether.Yeah, um, that's a nice vision. And sure, you're right, decency should be requested way before "terrorist". But that fact does not make "Booooo" even remotely similar to "Kill him" in any but the most transparently sophistic sense.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, decency should be requested way before someone yells "terrorist!"
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - On the eve of a report on a legislative panel's abuse-of-power investigation into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report clearing her of any wrongdoing.Uh.
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."[14]
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".[4]
Assuming the Muslim terrorist beliefs are truly held, I frankly fail to understand how people so entangled in this sort of thing manage to continue it. If Obama gets elected, I am rather sure he will commit no acts of terrorism against America. I am also sure will not institute a Muslim theocracy. The complete failure of these feedback loops and "knowing" should lead to their questioning - but would it? Presumably the "conventional wisdom" of these circles has been just as wrong before and yet is still not questioned.Are you sure you're familiar with hardcore conservatives?
...nobody died as a result of bombings in which Ayers said he participated as part of the Weather Underground, at the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, in a men's lavatory in the Capitol building in 1971 and in a women's restroom in the Pentagon in 1972. The deaths to which Clinton referred were of three Weather Underground members who died when their own "bomb factory" exploded in a Greenwich Village townhouse on March 6, 1970. Ayers was not present. Also, two police officers were murdered in connection with the robbery of a Brinks armored car by Weather Underground members in 1981. That was about a year after Ayers had turned himself in and after all charges against him had been dropped.From the Times interview now haunting Obama:
Ayers did say ''I don't regret setting bombs'' and "I feel we didn't do enough'' regarding the group's violent protests against the Vietnam War. That was in a New York Times interview that was published the morning of September 11, 2001. The interview had been conducted earlier, in connection with the publication of a memoir of the year Ayers spent as a fugitive with his wife and fellow Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Obama and Ayers served together for a time on the board of an antipoverty charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, from 1999 to 2002. Ayers also contributed $200 to Obama's campaign for the Illinois state Senate on March 2, 2001.
''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.''Don't get me wrong - I'm not putting Ayres forth as an object of admiration. Personally, I think Ayres is a rather typically self-centered and somewhat spoiled product of the baby boom who did some criminal things. But have some historical perspective. It was not a time like today. There are people in my family who lost their lives during that time, too, and people who did things they deeply regret. I can't get any more or less outraged about the actions of radicals trying violently to end the war than I can about the actions of cowards trying desperately to escape the war than I can about the shortsighted, insular generals and strategists who dug us deeper into a covert and unwinnable civilian-destroying war than I can about the actions of confused, duped, and misled soldiers trying in whatever way they could to survive the war. Today's character metrics just don't map very well onto the late 60s.
...As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr. Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.
And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in the Weathermen bombings?
By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from ''The Cure at Troy,'' Seamus Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes:'' '' 'Human beings suffer,/ They torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' ''
He continued to recite:
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, ''I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed.''
He began his career in primary education while an undergraduate, teaching at the Children’s Community School (CCS), a project founded by a group of students and based on the Summerhill method of education. After leaving the underground, he earned an M.Ed from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1984), an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed.D from Teachers College, Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction (1987).He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and has appeared on many panels and symposia.As a nonprofit staffer and board member, I can tell you that if I met someone aged about 60 who was presented to me with that resume, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself to be "palling around with terrorists." Even were his radical activities spelled out, I'd have to consider him in toto, and in context, weighing his involvements in the 1960s war protest movement against two or three decades of accountability, public life, and public service. And I think it's absolutely ridiculous to try to make hay of this against Obama. When you live a life of public service, you serve with, and rub up against, people of all stripes and backgrounds. I'm not here to defend Ayres' actions; just to get them back into perspective, and to say that it's not legitimate to suggest that the fact that Obama knew and worked with this guy in aboveboard, formal, recognized 21st-century organizations run by major charitable groups implies any endorsement whatever of his positions and actions during the bloodbath that was the 1960s.
"The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"... they're ready to blame their problems on a minority race or religion, or both. Combine this with a shaky economy ready to topple, a government deep in debt and rife with corporate cronyism and corruption, and a sentiment to fundamentalist religion, along with a strong anti-immigrant movement, and you have a recipe for bad juju
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?Imagine Clinton in the White House. That's changing the culture. People would gripe. Some would be angry. But would it attract the same amount of violent hate? Not even close.Someone doesn't remember the 90s, and how incredibly and inexplicably virulent the ring-wing talk-radio hatred for Hilary Clinton was. I was in elementary school in Idaho in that time, and, while I have sort of have a shitty memory, I'm still amazed by how much just amazing hatred was directed at her, by both children and adults around me and by much of what I heard in the media.
Students of assassination in the US have generally seen assassins and attackers of political leaders as either possessing "political" motives or as being "deranged." This is a narrow and inaccurate view of assassination. Attackers and near-lethal approachers of public figures rarely had "political" motives. Only one subject who acted alone, Sirhan Sirhan, might be seen to have a primary political motive or a primary interest in changing government policies. (And even in Sirhan's case, there is considerable evidence to suggest that his primary interest in assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy was to gain notoriety.)I'm not saying it's out of the question that someone might take it into their head to assassinate Obama. I'm saying instead that assassination is a lot odder and more random in nature than what we might think or fear. It's not possible to draw a straight line from the existence of racist fear to an increased likelihood of a black leader being assassinated. The case studies in this article give some good food for thought about who assassinates and why; it just doesn't proceed according to the same kind of logical path we might imagine based on our own more rational observations and concerns.
...Assassins, attackers, and near-lethal approachers had a range of reasons for action, with a subject often having more than one motive. Motives for attacks and near-lethal approaches included:
to achieve notoriety/fame
to avenge a percieved wrong
to end personal pain; to be killed by law enforcement
to bring national attention to a perceived problem
to save the country or the world
to achieve a special relationship with the target
to make money
to bring about political change
...What does seem clear for almost all subjects was that their attack or near-lethal approach occurred after a period of downward spiral in their lives...almost half of attackers or near-lethal approachers were known to have experienced accident/illness, loss of relationship, or failure/loss of status that influenced their behavior in the 12 months before their violent or potentially violent actions. For many subjects, one or several situational stresses appeared to trigger the process of thinking and action that led to assassination behavior.
...At some point - often after a life crisis - attackers and near-lethal approachers begin to see the idea of assassination as acceptable and desirable....Attackers and near-lethal approachers often consider more than one target, ultimately choosing a target for their attack after concluding that an opportunity for attack exists and that an attack on the chosen target is likely to fulfill their goals.
Recently, Chicago attorney Mazen Asbahi was forced to retire as Barack Obama's Muslim outreach advisor, after it was learned that in 2000 he briefly served on the board of an Islamic investment fund with an allegedly "fundamentalist" Imam who was recently named an un-indicted co-conspirator in a case against alleged Hamas fund-raisers. Of course, everyone understood the game that was being played here: Obama's outreach to Muslim-Americans was about to be contorted into an exercise of aiding and abetting Muslim terrorists! In order to preempt this unfounded insinuation, Mr. Asbahi felt obliged to resign, in order, in his words, "to avoid distracting from Barack Obama's message of change."posted by BinGregory at 10:47 PM on October 9, 2008 [2 favorites]
- from "Between American society and the American story", by Sherman Jackson
I grok that vsync, but telling Bubba that a black man is his boss will give him a stroke, even if it isn't true. And then I'm gonna tell Bubba about how "one of them Negroes is now putting his feet up on the desk in Oval Office..."I can appreciate a good troll as well as the next guy.
Lordy, I am so full of petty.
THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, awhooping and raging like Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach. Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death.It was a bully circus, indeed.
They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. It was a little twenty-foot yard. Some sung out "Tear down the fence! tear down the fence!" Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave.
Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.
Sherburn never said a word — just stood there, looking down. The stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it.
Then he says, slow and scornful:
"The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN! Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a MAN? Why, a MAN'S safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind — as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him.
"Do I know you? I know you clear through was born and raised in the South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people — whereas you're just AS brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark — and it's just what they WOULD do.
"So they always acquit; and then a MAN goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought PART of a man — Buck Harkness, there — and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing.
"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. YOU don't like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a man — like Buck Harkness, there — shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back down — afraid you'll be found out to be what you are — COWARDS — and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is — a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN along. Now LEAVE — and take your half-a-man with you" — tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this.
The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap. I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.
Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.posted by rtha at 9:12 AM on October 10, 2008 [10 favorites]
John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.
John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.
My job, with your help, is to start today, or recommit today, with 29 days left in this campaign, to politically destroy Barack Obama. Our job is to undermine him in every possible legal way, to undermine his upcoming administration in advance, to destroy his ability to reach any governing majority, undermine and destroy his political ability to govern or to have any hope of a successful administration.This is not going to be a pretty four years no matter who ends up in the White House.
"Barack Obama's attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn't understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo," reads a statement from spokesman Brian Rogers.Obama is unpatriotic because McCain's supporters are making accusations of terrorism and calling for assassination. Why does Obama hate America?
So it's time for McCain and Palin and Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to pull their collective heads out of their asses, stop pretending that they don't hear what people are shouting and find a way to lose with some fucking grace. Because their supporters that do this will go exactly as far as they think their idols will approve of them going and, if this week is any indication, for some people that is further back than anyone in this country should want them to go.posted by jokeefe at 3:17 PM on October 10, 2008
"If Obama gets elected ... which I seriously doubt. but if he did it would be interesting to see how long it take for someone to take a shot at him."Craigslist ad:
"vote obama (grassy knoll): we are about due for another assassination!" *posted by ericb at 3:18 PM on October 10, 2008
It's interesting when you put it together: Acorn. Subprime Meltdown. Bogus loans given to people who could never pay it back. Banks teetering on the edge with unstable loan portfolios. Hedge funds using short selling to challenge the valuation.It's all here, folks. The Marxist conspiracy of the Far Left, with its roots in the Anti-Vietnam 60s, to bring down the entire capitalist structure, and Obama is their guy. This whole thing was hatched in Timothy Leary's Greenwich Village apartment. I think that Alger Hiss was there at the time.
And George Soros behind it all, from the funding of Acorn, the promotion of Obama and the run on the banks. Read George's book "The Alchemy of Finance" where he explains his method of not waiting for, but engineering disequilibrium in markets. George used Obama to sue Bank of America to force them to issue these loans. Each loan was a promise that Soros knew couldn't be kept - just like the Bank of England's unsustainable currency position. Given sufficient leverage, Soros could kick the leg out and give the U.S. a reason to vote for a Marxist candidate he had made.
Look at the leverage used to set the market on fire. Why now? Why the sudden short selling? Why the rumors spread in the market by others controlled by Soros to cause bank runs? And how convenient that a candidate emerges with more than a decade "disappeared" from his life, other than phantom traces to socialist parties which also have their ties to Soros.
If you're looking for the man pulling puppet Obama's strings, look no further.
And then later, again, someone dangled a great big piece of low-hanging fruit in front of McCain: "I'm scared to bring up my child in a world where Barack Obama is president."This is hilarious. The one solid base he has left actually boos him when McCain tries to appeal to reason and rationality. They're demanding he be crazy. McCain is screwed - alienate his new-found friends from the Waco compound, or alienate America. What to do?
McCain replies, "Well, I don't want him to be president, either. I wouldn't be running if I did. But," and he pauses for emphasis, "you don't have to be scared to have him be President of the United States." A round of boos.
And he snaps back: "Well, obviously I think I'd be better. "
But, as the polls show, and election day will prove, about half of people will support McCain.
George Bush has probably had the hardest administration since Lincoln
You start to see that Florida and Ohio are, once again, the keys to the kingdom.
Finding 2: I find that… Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.posted by scody at 5:42 PM on October 10, 2008
Poor McCain.Fuck that. He chose to piss in his own bed when he chose to piss in that of the American people.
do you really think Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia will all go to Obama because they're leaning?
With 25 days to go until the election, Barack Obama is presently at his all-time highs in four of the six national tracking polls (Research 2000, Battleground, Hotline and Zogby) and is just one point off his high in Gallup.posted by kirkaracha at 6:38 PM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite]
...
There's just nothing in there for McCain to hang his hat on.
...
McCain is getting some criticism for campaigning in Iowa, and for sending Sarah Palin out to West Virginia, but the truth is that their electoral hand is so poor right now that it doesn't much matter in which states they're deciding to bide their time.
McCain has earned back a bit of my respect for trying to turn back the tide of hate.It's a nice start if it's earnest, but frankly, he's still putting out ads that are pushing the meme, and his campaign flacks are still doing it too. Plus, Palin has been pushing it hard.
“Defending the aggressive campaign rhetoric at recent McCain-Palin events against criticisms made by Rep. John Lewis, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis raised John McCain's history as a POW on Sunday.posted by ericb at 9:41 AM on October 12, 2008
‘Look, Chris, I think we have to take this very seriously,’ Davis told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. ‘And the kind of comments made by Congressman Lewis, a big Obama supporter, are reprehensible. The idea that you're going to compare John McCain to the kinds of hate spread in the '60s by somebody like George Wallace is outrageous. Where was John McCain when George Wallace was spreading his hate and segregationist policies at that time? He was in a Vietnam prison camp serving his country with his civil rights also denied.’”
Martin's sleazy background has gained renewed attention in light of his appearance this month in a Sean Hannity-hosted Fox News documentary about Obama. During that October 5 program, Martin claimed that the Democratic presidential candidate was once "in training for radical overthrow of the government." Martin offered no proof for this claim, nor was any sought by Hannity, who identified Martin as an "Internet journalist." Nor did Fox mention the kooky Martin's history of anti-Semitic statements or his arrest record (click here to view five of his mug shots).posted by Sys Rq at 9:34 AM on October 14, 2008 [1 favorite]
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