For weeks the McCain/Palin team has whipped up extreme amounts of hatred among their base, where at rallies so-called regular people would call Obama a terrorist or traitor, continue the false meme that he is Muslim, or an Arab. One man, earlier this week, was so riled up, he threatened to shoot election officials if he didn’t get his voter registration card to “vote the n*gger out.” Not much hatred there [/sarcasm]
Not once, during all this whipping did McCain or Palin correct or admonish their supporters, in fact, just the opposite, this whipping-up was encouraged, particularly by Palin, to the point of supporters hurling racial epitaphs to an African American sound-man, in a number of rallies.
So, when McCain tried to correct his supporters yesterday, it backfired.
Indeed, he just snatched the microphone out the hands of a woman who began her question with, “I’m scared of Barack Obama… he’s an Arab terrorist…”
“No, no ma’am,” he interrupted. “He’s a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.”
More than a day late and a dollar short.
That doesn’t even begin to address the advertisements put out by the McCain/Palin campaign that are not only negative, they give false information, and yet, McCain was supposedly opposed to negative ads.
It’s not just the hatred by McCain/Palin supporters that I find truly scary, it’s the abject ignorance of these people.
What should we expect when one of the candidates would rather act ignorant and steep herself in hatred?
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Friday said Sen. Barack Obama put “ambition above country” after a newspaper reported that Obama may have tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States.
Interesting choice of words, now that the Republican dominated bipartisan legislative investigation into Troopergate, showed that Palin abused her power as governor, and violated ethics laws. Now, that sure sounds to me like she was putting ambition over her state and country.
Yet, for weeks, the media has allowed the McCain/Palin campaign hijack actual reportage and fact-checking, continuing to repeat the Obama/Ayers non-connection, while completely omitting the McCain/Liddy connection, among other points.
Let’s start with Bill Ayers, since the news media have spent much of the week obliging McCain’s efforts to make him the focus of the campaign. As an activist in the 1960s — when Barack Obama was a young child — Bill Ayers was a member of the Weathermen, a group of radical activists who launched a series of violent demonstrations and bombings in protest of the Vietnam War. Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and a school reform advocate. During Obama’s first campaign, Ayers hosted a coffee for him, and the two men have served together on the board of a school reform effort funded by a foundation chaired by Leonore Annenberg, who has endorsed John McCain. The New York Times concluded that Obama and Ayers “do not appear to have been close,” and Obama has denounced Ayers’ actions as a member of the Weathermen.
A search* of the Nexis database found that more than 4,500 news reports so far this year have mentioned Obama and Ayers — more than 1,800 this week alone.
Now: G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy served four and a half years in prison for his role in the break-ins at the Watergate and at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychologist’s office. He has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in “if necessary.” He plotted to kill journalist Jack Anderson. He plotted with a “gangland figure” to murder Howard Hunt in order to thwart an investigation. He plotted to firebomb the Brookings Institution. He used Nazi terminology to outline a plan to kidnap “leftist guerillas” at the 1972 GOP convention. And Liddy’s bad acts were not confined to the early 1970s. In the 1990s, he instructed his radio audience on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents (”Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.” In case anyone missed the subtlety of his point, Liddy also insisted: “Kill the sons of bitches.”) During Bill Clinton’s presidency, Liddy boasted that he named his shooting targets after the Clintons.
Seriously now, one has to wonder why the media is carrying water for McCain/Palin, all while some of the most extreme wingnuts are still crying that the media has a liberal bias? They have got to be kidding me! And, still Fox News is one of the most virulent outlets of hatred and misinformation.
And it hasn’t stopped! In fact tying Obama to Ayers has expanded to tying Michelle Obama to Ayers. We can only guess at this expansion of lies is a poor attempt to try to make the “terrorist” lable stick.
But, what of the issues? Just in the past couple of days we find:
that Gen. Petraeus backs Obama on talks with one’s enemies;
that economists that support(ed?) McCain are trashing his mortgage plan.
You know, it is truly sad that I have spent so much time typing about the hatred coming from the McCain/Palin campaign, which, for me is a conclusion of their ineptitude, rather than the issues. Issues has, for a long time, driven my decisions, as it should everyone’s. I can’t help wondering why so many people in this country continue to fall for the bs-politics of fear and loathing on race, on the economy, on war, etc.
And when McCain tried (weakly, I might add) to tell his supporters to be respectful, they booed him.
When you try to address this issue with the wingnuts, they counter with more character assassinations. But then, that’s the McCain camp’s excuse for this crap. Here’s McCain mouthpiece Brian Rogers:
And here’s mouthpiece Tucker Bounds:
In other words, to hell with the issues this country is facing. Let’s pile on Barack Obama.
This is just more of the same, when McCain has been saying Change this just proves to any one with a brain that he is on the same path as Bush.
The sad part is that you can see there is a large group of people that want this country to be run by this type of person.
You would think that after this country has been in wars with people that never did anything to us and we are Bankrupt, we would want change.
I have always been proud of our past and right now I am upset with the greed that has driven us into war and debt.
This is a mess that is not going away soon.
[...] Now, please, how can righties claim bias from the big, bad, liberal media when McCain is constantly given a pass? Here’s just one example. Another example is McCain’s strong ties to G. Gordon Liddy. [...]