Obama Campaign Takes Legal Action Against Voter Suppression Tactics in Michigan
I heard about this through a mailing list I’m on, and I’m glad to see that team Obama is fighting it. Basically, what’s happening is that Republican officials are using lists of foreclosed homes to challenge voters at the polls. The technique is called “caging,” and Republicans have been doing it for years.
Racism Is a Value, Too
This needs no comment from me:
At the Values Voter Summit this weekend, vendors sold an item called “Obama Waffles” featuring a racist cartoon of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) on the box front — with “popping eyes and big, thick lips” — and another image of him wearing an Arab-like headdress on its top flap. Its creators, Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, said it was meant as “political satire,” and sold the box for $10 from a booth at the Family Research Council event. CNN’s Lou Dobbs stopped by the booth and exclaimed, “My wife will love this!” A photo shows Dobbs with a box of the mix in his hand. UPDATE: American News Project interviewed the creators, who said they were just “having a little fun during the election season,” and denied that the box was racist or offensive.
The creators of this product were interviewed; Think Progress has the video.
John Cole has several other examples of Republican values.
Palin Fights to Divide America
It’s late and I finally saw Palin’s speech via TIVO. It was the most mean-spirited, hateful and divisive speech I have ever witnessed in American politics. It was packed throughout with lies and deceptive omissions.
It was clear that she feels she has the right to define America and that her definition includes no place for progressives like myself. Sure, she coded her smears as against “community activists” and “San Francisco,” but we all knew she was smearing all progressives, liberals, Democrats, etc. I truly believe she hates people like me and does not consider us American.
The speech was George Bush on steroids. It was in the long tradition of Atwater and Rove. It had the Rove acolytes fingerprints all over it. It was pure wedge politics with the hope that in dividing America she tore off just a big enough chunk to narrowly win this election. It’s desperation. It’s their only shot.
Overall, it was simply shameful.
UPDATE: As to the lies, Hilzoy has an early breakdown. I would add to his list Palin’s deceptive omission in failing to include that she used a windfall profits tax on oil companies (something Obama supports and McCain opposes) to give back money to Alaskans during the recent rising gas prices.
Max Blumenthal: Council for National Policy “Hidden Hand Behind McCain’s Palin Pick”
For those who claim that the McCain campaign didn’t thoroughly vet their VP nominee before offering her a slot on the ticket, Max Blumenthal puts all concerns to rest:
Bristol Palin, 17, Is Pregnant
The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.
Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
First point: The rumors that Trig Palin is Bristol’s baby, not her mother’s, got started to begin with because (1) the former was visibly pregnant in several publicly released photographs; and (2) Bristol’s mother, whose own pregnancy overlapped with her daughter’s, did not tell anyone, not even her closest staff, that she was pregnant until her seventh month. In most instances, this would not cause such confusion, but Sarah Palin for whatever reason, did not look pregnant at all. Unsurprisingly, when Sarah Palin gave birth in April to a child most people did not even know she was pregnant with, and during the same period of time, published family photos showed a visibly pregnant Bristol Palin (albeit early pregnancy), people started asking questions.
All this is not even to mention Sarah Palin’s dishonesty and lack of good judgment in (apparently) not telling the man who had asked her to be his vice-president that her daughter was pregnant.
Does it even need to be said that the usual suspects on the right not only are not acknowledging the above, but are treating Sarah Palin’s announcement of her daughter’s pregnancy as some sort of triumph for their side and a takedown for ours?
Right now I’m all but shaking with anger at the brazen, blatant, shameless hypocrisy. Although why I am, I don’t know. I surely should be used to it by now.
I will have much more to say about this when I process all the implications a bit more.
Hindrocket Wins the Spin Award
This is the best I’ve ever seen. On the charge that McCain is out of touch with ordinary Americans because he has so many homes he isn’t able to remember how many, John Hinderaker writes:
The truth is that McCain isn’t out of touch with “ordinary people” because he’s rich, he’s out of touch with his own domestic arrangements because he cares little about material things, and for many years has devoted his extraordinary energies not to enjoying his wife’s money, but to serving the American people. Given the number of nights he’s spent in hotels or on military bases over the last few years, it’s no wonder he hasn’t seen much of his wife’s condos.
U.S. Army Disavows E-mail That Claimed Obama Snubbed Troops in Afghanistan
We already know how easy it is to start a smear campaign via e-mail. Here is another illustration of that fact, but beyond that, this account of an “Obama-snubbed-the-troops” narrative that was untrue from start to finish demonstrates that visual evidence like the much-reviled “campaign op” videos and photographs can actually help to expose a vicious lie. See the last paragraph of this quoted article from Military Times for what I’m talking about.
Wingnuts Want Addington in the Witness Protection Program After Delahunt Joke
The right’s hypocrisy is on display again in its unhinged reaction to Rep. Delahunt’s attempt at humor on the House floor today:
If Karl Rove said something in the woods, would it make headlines?
Seriously. I understand his comments are ridiculous, but who gives a crap what Rove thinks about Obama? Or anything? He’s out of the White House, he’s not running the country anymore.
This, though, is my favorite part of the short article:
Piling On
As John and Jed pointed out earlier, John McCain’s “official campaign website” is apparently home to all sorts of hate filled vitriol the likes of which we have not seen since, well, yesterday.
More proof that monkeys can indeed type below the fold…
Shameless Liar
Dick Cheney is a cold-hearted, weasel-mouthed, sociopathic liar:
McCain Adviser Says Hillary Clinton Is a Bitch
Alex Castellanos is a Republican consultant. And yesterday he said on CNN that Hillary Clinton is mistaken when she says that there has been a lot of sexism directed against her in this campaign. Why? Because, Castellanos said, sometimes women really are bitches.
Please, Mr. President, Keep Talking
While it may be overstating things a bit to say that the Democratic party has a serious unity problem right now, it is not an overstatement to recognize that, temporary or permanent, fractures have been formed.
There are plenty of reasons for this, two great candidates, both of whom having done a fabulous job of forming emotional bonds with their supporters, not the least of which. But another, perhaps lesser, contributing factor has definitely played a part.
Michael Goldfarb’s* Very Revealing American Idol Analysis
*Note from Kathy: My apologies for dissing Michael Goldfarb about a piece that was actually written by Dean Barnett. And thank you to Martin in Comments for calling my attention to this.
Okay, look — I know this is not exactly a life or death issue, but sometimes a person’s character is revealed more starkly by the seemingly little things. Here is what Michael Goldfarb Dean Barnett had to say about the results of this week’s elimination process on American Idol:
How Republican Ideology is Killing America: Example 1 Heparin
Nearly three years ago my grandfather, a veteran of World War II, a man in his early 80’s, and a man whom at the time was apparently as healthy as an ox, suddenly found himself in suburban Detroit’s Beaumont hospital on the verge of death. What happened to him is not unlike what happens to many American’s of his age. One day he found out that he was not nearly as healthy as he and his doctors thought he was. An emergency quadruple bi-pass later and he has never quite recovered and now looks and acts as old his 86 years would seem.
Paging Jonah! “Liberal Fascism” Strikes in Indiana!
A candidate for Congress in Indiana’s 2nd District “stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background” and delivered a speech to a group of neoNazis.