Sarah Palin went on the offensive this weekend, accusing Barack Obama of “paling around with terrorists.” (LAT, Oct. 5) When Obama’s tenuous ties to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers were brought up a few months back, we pointed out that some of those making hay out of it were themselves far cozier with “terrorists”—such as Pat Buchanan, whose 1996 presidential campaign advisor Larry Pratt “pals around” with Klan and Aryan Nations types. Buchanan now enthuses that “of the four debaters we’ve seen, she [Palin] was the most interesting, attractive of them all.” (NYT, Oct. 3) Indeed, there’s much evidence that Palin and Buchanan—and his vile sidekick Pratt—are the proverbial birds of a feather…
David Neiwert wrote on the Firedoglake blog Sept. 22:
This morning I interviewed John Stein, the former Wasilla mayor who was defeated by Palin in 1996 by using “a quiet campaign by some Palin supporters raising emotional issues like abortion and gun control, which had no apparent tie to municipal politics”—and…a whisper campaign that Stein was secretly Jewish (Stein is a Lutheran).
According to Stein, Palin’s main base of support in that election (and subsequent Wasilla campaigns) was derived from her fellow congregants at Wasilla Bible Church and the larger evangelical Christian community. But it also included some of the Mat-Su [Matanuska-Susitna] Valley’s biggest far-right nutcases—to the extent that she even attempted to reciprocate by appointing one of them to the city’s planning commission.
The connection revolves mostly around three men known to have far-right leanings in the community: a builder named Steven Stoll [later Palin’s abortive appointee to the planning commission], a computer repairman named Mark Chryson [chairman, Alaskan Independence Party, 1997-2003], and a third man named Mike Christ. All three subscribed to a bellicose, “Patriot” movement brand of politics—far-right libertarianism with a John Birch streak.
According to Stein, Steven Stoll—whose local nickname, according to [Progressive Alaska blogger] Phil Munger, is “Black Helicopter Steve”—was involved in militia organizing in Wasilla the 1990s, and subscribed to most of the movement’s paranoid conspiracy theories: “The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over.”
This wasn’t particularly unusual in the valley at the time. Like much of the rural Northwest, survivalist worldviews often led to Patriot organizing activity and its attendant paranoia: “There were other folks who also got all worked up about the supposed Y2K thing,” Stein said, recalling a home he’d looked at with a full array of bunkers and stored food supplies.
But Stoll, Mike Christ, and Mark Chryson were a special case: “They would demonstrate in front of the Wasilla Council,” recalled Stein, saying that the causes varied but invariably involved an animus to “socialist” government, such as planning and public education. “This same group [Stoll, Christ, and Chryson] also challenged me on whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name. So we literally had to produce a marriage certificate. And as I recall, they said, ‘Well, you could have forged that.'”
The double standard about terrorism is pretty deeply ingrained in this country, even after Oklahoma City. Islamist or left-wing armed militancy is seen as an existential threat and ultra-toxic contagion (and is always labeled with the T-word)—while that of the radical right is seen as just good ol’ boys having fun (or even as a defense of freedom against Big Government). Blogger Jed Lewison noted on his Jed Report April 27 that John McCain has his own “domestic terrorism problem”—his votes against the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which sought to secure abortion clinics against armed attack:
In both 1993 and 1994, McCain voted against the anti-terrorism measure. On each occasion, McCain was one of thirty radical anti-choice Senators to oppose the bill Fortunately, despite McCain’s opposition, it passed the Senate by a 69-30 margin.
At the time, right-wing anti-choice extremists were terrorizing women, doctors, and clinic staff across the United States with thousands of acts of physical violence and threats of violence each year. The new legislation was necessary because in early 1993, the Supreme Court had ruled that even though the terrorism crossed state lines, the federal government could not protect clinics without a specific grant of statutory authority.
After Dr. David Gunn was murdered by an anti-choice terrorist outside the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic, Congress finally passed the much-needed legislation giving authorities the tool they needed to protect women, doctors, and clinic staff from the ongoing threat of terrorism.
Now maybe there were legitimate civil-liberties arguments against the FACE Act. But why is it necessary for Obama (like Kerry before him) to make all the requisite noises about “killing” Osama bin Laden (who has never been tried in a court of law), yet even this will not immunize him against terrorist-baiting—while nobody (apart from a few marginal left-wing bloggers) calls out McCain as “soft on terrorism”?
Next, let’s put the violence of the Weather Underground in a little context. In a front-page story in the New York Times on the Obama-Ayers controversy Oct. 4 the paper recalls:
In an article that by chance was published on Sept. 11, 2001, The New York Times wrote about Mr. Ayers and his just-published memoir, Fugitive Days, opening with a quotation from the author: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”
Three days after the Qaeda attacks, Mr. Ayers wrote a reply posted on his Web site to clarify his quoted remarks, saying the meaning had been distorted.
“My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy,” he wrote. But he added that the Weathermen had “showed remarkable restraint” given the nature of the American bombing campaign in Vietnam that they were trying to stop.
The Times delineates the casualties the Weather Underground were responsible for:
Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another. An accidental 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house basement killed three radicals; survivors later said they had been making nail bombs to detonate at a military dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And in 1981, in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in Nanuet, N.Y., that involved Weather Underground members including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.
The Weathermen undertook their campaign of bombings in response to the US saturation bombardment of Vietnam—which claimed probably hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, wreaked untold ecological damage, and so shocked the world that the Geneva Conventions were amended in its aftermath to outlaw the practice. However adventurist and counter-productive the Weather bombings were (and they pale in comparison to the deadly violence of the radical-right armed underground of the ’80s and ’90s), they were an effort to resist US government actions which are today legally recognized as criminal.
But while Obama is tarred as a terrorist-lover for his acquaintance with Bill Ayers, McCain is unapologetic for the 23 bombing missions he flew in Vietnam. (Newsweek, July 21) On the contrary, this experience is portrayed as a patriotic duty and touted as qualifying him for the Oval Office.
The racism behind the genocidal US campaign in Southeast Asia is alive and well in John McCain—as his own words reveal. According to press portrayals, such as the above Newsweek story, many in Vietnam are actually rooting for McCain—including Tran Trong Duyet, head of the guard unit at Hoa Lo prison where McCain was held as a POW (the “Hanoi Hilton”), who denies the senator’s claims that he was tortured there. McCain isn’t so forgiving. “I’ll call right now my interrogator that tortured me and my friends a gook,” he said in 2000. “You can quote me.” (NYT, Sept. 20)
Katie Hong wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 2, 2000:
…Sen. John McCain told reporters, “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” Although McCain said he was referring only to his prison guards, there are many reasons why his use of the word “gook” is offensive and alarming.
It is offensive because by using a racial epithet that has historically been used to demean all Asians to describe his captors, McCain failed to make a distinction between his torturers and an entire racial group.
It is alarming because a major candidate for president publicly used a racial epithet, refused to apologize for doing so and remains a legitimate contender.
Contrary to McCain’s attempt to narrowly define “gook” to mean only his “sadistic” captors, this term has historically been used to describe all Asians. McCain said that “gook” was the most “polite” term he could find to describe his captors, but because it is simply a pejorative term for Asians, he insulted his captors simply by calling them “Asians”—a clearly disturbing message. To the Asian American community, the term is akin to the racist word “nigger.”
Yet even the Obama campaign is too intimidated to make an issue of this.
Meanwhile, a Support Bill Ayers website has accrued over 500 signatures in protest of the campaign of vilification:
We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack. Ayers is a nationally known scholar, member of the Faculty Senate at UIC, Vice President-elect of the American Educational Research Association, and sought after as a speaker and visiting scholar by other universities because of his exemplary scholarship, teaching, and service.
Whose activities in the 1960s were worse—Bill Ayers’ or John McCain’s? And why is nobody asking this?
Obama keeps reaching back to Chicago political past
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Nigerian Stock Exchange Chief Executive Officer Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke is being investigated after holding a fund-raising event linked to U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, Agence France-Presse reported.
U.S. electoral laws forbid donations from foreigners to electoral campaigns.
Obama keeps reaching back to Chicago political past for policy advisers, and pulling one despicable, vile, and even evil “rabbit” after another out of his hat.
The list of Barack Obama’s radical associations is long and it keeps getting longer. Some are now well-known, but many are not. They need to be.
23 years at TUCC with Jeremiah Wright and James Meeks. racist sermons on Youtube.
He chose the most radical church in the country; chose to immerse himself in hard-core ideological radicalism. Never before has this country considered such a radical leftist for its chief executive.
Michael Pfleger and his hateful and race-hating ramblings, Obama met while carrying out his own radical social activism as community organizer at ACORN, (radical organization)
Penny Pritzker, heads Obama camp National Finance Committee was president of Superior Bank – massively failed and she literally bought her way out of jail paying $460 MILLION fine; was the very epicenter of subprime loan scandal” that would come to eat this nation’s financial system alive.
Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, former head of Obama’s vice presidential selection committee, discovered he benefited from sweetheart loans from subprime king Countrywide.
Tony Rezko certainly and his federal indictments and financial dealing with Obamas of course and William Ayers, US terrorist bomber, Obama-co-lecturer, fellow board member, neighbor, and friend.
Communist Frank Marshall Davis, obama mentor; Saul Alinsky and Gerald Kellman (Kellman’s Woods Fund is how Obama hooked up with terrorist William Ayers)
Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, appointed as Obama camp national coord for Muslim n affairs also stepped down after news about his stint on the fund’s board – which includes fundamentalist imam – prompting The Wall Street Journal inquiries about relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and his long personal relationship with Hamas Jamal Said.
Obama desperately needs voters to forget hes the son of a Muslim father who served an incredibly brutal and corrupt Kenyan government; to forget he attended a madrassa in Indonesia and practiced Islam; forget that he campaigned in Kenya on behalf of Raila Odinga, who relied upon chaos, corruption, and violence in his campaign; numerous associations with radical Muslims; forget the photographs of Obama in traditional Muslim clothes, hanging with Muslim radicals such as Mazen Asbahi and anti-Semite Rashid Khalidi.
The mainstream media has frankly put the security of our great country at risk with an Obama coronation media like CNN & MSNBC is the only way Obama managed to steal the Dem nom. It’s extremely concerning that so many Americans could care less about who their candidate really is?? simply amazing and frankly scarey.
PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE WITH EVERYONE ASAP
“The Last 100 Days”
Hon. James David Manning, PhD.
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr07-28-08.html
Did anyone ever tell you that you’re illiterate?
If the rest of McCain’s army of smear artists are similarly incapable of completing a full sentence, Obama should do just fine.
You should really lay off the Obama-went-to-a-madrassa line. CNN already thoroughly debunked it. Maybe that’s why the “Hon.” Manning is telling his flock to “boycott” CNN. When it comes to keeping irrational dogmas intact, there’s no substitute for good old fashioned ignorance! (We’d sure like to know where he got his “PhD,” by the way.)
Gotham Gazette informs us that ACORN is so “radical” that they support the Atlantic Yards mega-development project in Brooklyn. Gee, sounds really dangerous.
Much of the rest of your slanders are debunked on Snopes.com. But once again, we’d like to know—why is it verboten for Obama to have had a communist friend or two, while it’s OK for Palin to have built her political career by appealing to the militia right?
Just asking.
Terrorist-tainted McCain campaign terror-baits Obama
Yes indeed, Bill why aren’t the Democrats seriously taking on the right’s slanders? There is a pathological fear by liberals in general, and Democrats in particular, to challenge the toxic theocratic nonsense of the McCain/Palin/Rove axis in the campaign. The same goes with their refusal to take on the blatant racism and fringe far-right sentiments of the Governor.
I don’t want to be “inclusive;” I want to win, and that means smashing your opponents. This was the experience of the anti-Operation Rescue clinic defense movement in the Bay Area during the 1990s. We didn’t organize a “focus group” or “town hall meeting” against the Randall Terry and clinic bomber-types. But determined and militant actions that kept the clinics open and sent the theocrats and their militia-loving freaks packing.
Who was the “we”? Communists, anarchists, Trotskyists, radical feminists, queers and just plain, everyday folks. “Whatever it takes” was our motto, and guess what, we won!
But that’s then and this is now; besides, I’m voting for Cynthia McKinney!
“Whatever it takes”?
“Whatever it takes”? Even blowing people up? That’s the definition of extremism, if the word has any meaning at all. You might want to reconsider your motto.
what about Liddy…?
Ayers was involved with terrorism when Obama was 8 years old. McCain was involved with Gordon Liddy when he (McCain) was in his 40s and 50s.
And Liddy said on one of his radio shows, that listeners should be prepared to kill BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) agents, and then he described the most effective way to shoot them.
So Liddy himself was actively supporting the murder of law enforcement officers, and McCain continued to hang out with him.
Someone needs to get an audio recording of that Liddy quote, and make an ad based on it. That’ll put the Ayers thing in perspective.
McCain’s G. Gordon Liddy problem
Good catch. This should be forwarded everywhere. Why isn’t this on the front page of the NY Times? Columnist Steve Chapman wrote for the Chicago Tribune May 4 (emphasis added):
rogues gallery
Lots of shady characters around McCain. But as the “liberal media” probably won’t get on this let’s hope Axelrod spends those advertising dollars wisely.
As for Ayers, IMHO the fact
As for Ayers, IMHO the fact that the US was bombing Vietnam was not sufficient justification for what he & his did. They were no better than the KKK: domestic terrorists all of ’em. And after all, the anti-abortion terrorists claim to be “protecting innocent life from murder,” when they blow up clinics and so on.
The same principle has to hold all across the spectrum. If Ayers was justified, then the clinic bombers are also justified. Both are, or neither are.
Ayers seems to have reformed himself. Good for him. If the anti-abortion terrorists reform themselves, good for them. They can all do things like working for campaigns and circulating petitions, and we can live with that. And ultimately the story about them shouldn’t be that their very presence is bad mojo for a politician or campaign or cause, but that they decided to reform their ways, give up on violence, and get with legitimate politics. That will also discourage others from going down the road to doing violence.
Down with false equivalence
I can’t go along with equating the Weathermen and the Klan or the anti-abortion underground. For starters, the anti-aboriton extremists kill—as in the case of doctors Gunn and Barnett Slepian. So did the Klan/Nazi underground—as in the case of Alan Berg, and Mulugeta Seraw. And remember Oklahoma City? The Weathermen never carried out assassinations or intentionally killed. They were going in that direction with the planned Ft. Dix attack, but rethought and abandoned such tactics after the 11th St. disaster. The Weathermen were misguided and adventurist, but not evil. At least, they turned back from the threshold before crossing into the realm of the truly monstrous.
And while (as stated above) I reject the doctrine that the ends justify the means, I also don’t think the question of ends can be dismissed in judging means. A woman has a right to control her reproductive destiny. The Pentagon doesn’t have a right to commit mass murder in Southeast Asia.
So while I don’t think either the Weathermen or clinic-bombers were “justified,” neither do I think they should be measured by the same stick. What do you do when your government is committing mass murder? It’s not an easy question to answer. (Yes, the anti-abortion extremists also think they are resisting mass murder, but it’s extremely dangerous to concede that point to them.)
Weatherman Group Bombed Capitol, Pentagon, etc.
If you want to do that type of association, then you should associate Barack Obama with the Hamas terrorist group, since his church promoted Hamas literature, and not a long time ago EITHER.
Bill Ayers’ involvement with the Weathermen Terror Group is not trivial, nor was that terrorist group trivial. This is a group that bombed the Capitol, that bombed the Pentagon, etc.
If John McCain was associated with someone who was in a terrorist group that bombed the Capitol, bombed the Pentagon, etc. – he would not only be run out of the presidential race, he would have never been elected to the Senate. NBC/ABC/CBS/CNN would be running such a story on 24×7 basis, and you know it.
Per Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)
“For the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, they issued a statement saying it was “in protest of the US invasion of Laos.” For the bombing of The Pentagon on May 19, 1972, they stated it was “in retaliation for the US bombing raid in Hanoi.” For the January 29, 1975 bombing of the Harry S Truman Building housing the United States Department of State, they stated it was “in response to escalation in Vietnam.”
I think we heard that
What “type of association”? Seems to us it is Palin who started the association game. Turnabout is fair play.
“Weathermen Terror Group” is not the proper name, so why do you capitalize it? The proper name was the Weather Underground. And you don’t have to quote Wikipedia. We all know what they did.
McCain is associated with someone who illegally subverted the democratic process in Watergate and then advocated killing federal agents. And the media are giving him a near-total pass on it. The double standard seems to work the other way.
You are using quotation marks incorrectly.
McCain served on board of terrorist-linked organization
Sam Stein writes for Huffington Post, Oct. 6 (emphasis added):
World Court: contras were terrorists
Lest we forget… The International Court of Justice ruled in June 1986 that the US was guilty of “illegal use of force” in backing the Nicaraguan contras. “Illegal use of force” is, in this context, essentially UN-speak for terrorism. Read the summary of the ruling in Nicaragua vs. United States of America.
Palin pals with America-haters
David Talbot writes for Salon, Oct. 7:
Norman Markowitz writes for Political Affairs, Oct. 6:
We’ve already noted Vogler’s extremoid rhetoric.
The saddest thing…
…is that Obama will be too intimidated to use any of the ammo we have assembled here when he is Weather-baited by McCain tonight (as he almost certainly will be) because of the way the Reaganites have succeeded in redefining the debate over the past generation. In a matter of minutes we shall see…
McCain refrained…
…from Weather-baiting, probably because he didn’t want to be Keating-baited. I guess he’s gonna let Palin play Bad Cop on this one. On to round three…
Republican dirty tricks
From ABC News, Oct. 6:
Terry Gross reported on NPR tonight that the same flyer has been distributed in African American neighborhoods in Philly. She also said Republicans are accusing Democrats of actually distributing the flyer themselves in black-op to discredit the GOP! This strikes us as unlikely in the extreme, as it would probably cost the Dems far more votes than it would win them…
McCain supporter on Obama: “Kill him!”
From CanWest News Service, Oct. 8, emphasis added:
Well, we’d like to know more of this Murtagh incident, which we have not heard of before. But much more to the point—it happened 38 years ago, while someone called for Barack Obama’s assassination at a GOP campaign rally on Monday. We are told that Biden is protesting it. Did Palin? Did she halt the proceedings at the rally and say something like “That isn’t appropriate, we reject terrorism”? Have either Palin or McCain publicly repudiated the death threat invoked at their rally?
We want to know.
Will Palin disavow Obama assassination call?
The original source seems to be a story by Dana Milbank on the Washington Post’s The Trail campaign blog of Oct. 6 (emphasis added):
As one reader commented:
Did Palin not hear the “Kill him” comment? She must know about it by now. She owes us an explanation.
“treason”…”socialist take-over”
We’re still waiting, Sarah. Meanwhile, from TPM Election Central, Oct. 9:
From GPolitics, Oct. 9:
The UK Guardian Oct. 9 offers the complete text of the McCain campiagn response to the “kill him” comment:
Nothing directly from Palin or McCain themselves—just a statement from an underling, so perfunctory and lukewarm that it barely counts as a repudiation. And these people want us to think they are really concerned about “terrorism”?
“racial epithets”
From CNN, Oct. 10:
Now let’s see, that would be the same “mainstream media” that is hyping the Weather-baiting 24/7 and, with rare exception, completely ignoring Palin/McCain’s own far more substantial links to “terrorism” (delineated above)?
McCain shared stage with terrorist-symp
From People for the American Way (undated), emphasis added:
Wikipedia provides the following background on the OCA:
McCain issues (backhanded) semi-denunciation of racist attacks
Finally, McCain says something to distance himself from the blatant racism of his supporters—but dig the subtly sinister subtext! An Oct. 10 CNN, story, “Rage rising on the McCain campaign trail,” delineates a bunch of ignorant extremism issued from supporters on campaign stops about “the socialists taking over the country,” etc. It includes the following:
Is this a glimmer of hope? McCain’s response of “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man” to the comment “He’s an Arab” seems to imply that being an Arab and being a decent family man are mutually exclusive… Was this a Freudian slip—or a cynically calculated one?
To give credit where it’s due, AP reports Oct. 10 that at that same Minnesota campaign stop, McCain said—despite boos—that Obama is a “decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.” (He then followed up that he didn’t mean supporters should reduce their “ferocity.”)
Perhaps he figures the fear-mongering has served its purpose, and now it is time to appease to GOP “moderates” (patricians who find the Beerhall Putsch element of the Palin/McCain show unseemly), lest he fuel yet further neo-Mugwumpery.
More McCain distortions on Ayers
The New York Times Oct. 10 reports from a McCain campaign stop in Wisconsin:
The liberal watchdogs at Media Matters for America point out that Obama never actually said Ayers was “just” a guy in the neighborhood. But there is a far more insidious distortion here. The Ayers quote that he “wanted to bomb more” is from the New York Times of (entirely coincidentally) Sept. 11, 2001—noted again in the Times’ Ayers profile of Oct. 4:
So—contrary to McCain’s implication—Ayers spoke these words before the 9-11 attacks, and was explicitly referring to the situation 30 years earlier when the US was bombing Vietnam. To be accurate, McCain should have said that Ayers “said before Sept. 11, 2001 that he had still wanted to bomb more.” This is a pretty critical distinction. McCain made it sound like Ayers was encouraging Osama bin Laden and hoping for further al-Qaeda attacks. Why doesn’t Ayers speak up about this?
Media double standard on McCain and Ayers
An unpublished letter to the New York Times:
Steve also points us to the following cartoon.
Pro-Palin bloggers try to pull a fast one
The Scranton Times-Tribune reported Oct. 14 that an audience member yet again shouted “Kill him!” in response to a reference to Barack Obama at a Sarah Palin rally in that city on that day:
The paper says Palin ignored the outburst, but went on to lead the crowd in ritualistic chants of “Drill, baby, drill!” The incident was later noted in several national media outlets. The following day, Northeast Pennsylvania’s Times Leader ran claims from a Secret Service agent on the scene that he heard nobody shout “Kill him!” in Scranton. Now the right-wing blogosphere (e.g. RightPundits.com) is touting stories with headlines like “Obama Lies about ‘Kill Him’ Allegation”—using the disputed incident in Scranton to accuse Obama of invoking a fabrication at last night’s presidential debate. Yet, as we noted above, the original “Kill him!” interjection (the first in a string of threatening and racist ugliness on the Palin/McCain trail) was made Oct. 6 in Clearwater, Fla.
Trying to pull a fast one, are we RightPundits?
Palin sat silently through anti-Semitic tirade
From Politico.com, Sept. 2, emphasis added:
huh
> “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”
Is it just me or is this pretty innocuous. If subterfuge and deception are what you’re bringing and superstition (I mean, relgious conversion) is what you’re after …
I personally have been targeting Jewish girls with subterfuge and deception for years.
The egregious point…
…is the terrorist-attacks-as-God’s-judgment jive.
Targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception is also pretty ugly, tho.
tricked into converting?
> …is the terrorist-attacks-as-God’s-judgment jive.
Yeah that’s beyond the pale (must … resist… pun …)
>Targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception is also pretty ugly, tho.
I still don’t understand. A working definition of organized religion could be ‘subterfuge and deception’. How do you target someone for conversion with subterfuge. “Ha! You thought you were just going swimming but you’re really Baptised!” Or “Here have some crackers. Gotcha! You’ve just taken communion!” (though these psycho’s probably think mainstream Catholics are too far left)
Dishonest methods
JG, you can click on the link for the ADL report, but as a New Yorker you should be well aware of J4J’s odious MO. (They are pretty ubiquitous in this town, alas.) They come on to their targets as if they are fellow Jews—meaning religious Jews, not just ethnic ones. Their whole (public) line is Jesus was Jewish and you can accept him as your savior and remain a good Jew. But as the Wasilla affair reveals, they are actually fundamentalist Christians and they despise Jews, and think they are fit fodder for divine retribution in the form of suicide bombers. (BTW, ain’t it just grand that the Xian fundis manage to hate Muslims as the antichrist and simultaneously view Muslim terrorists as instruments of the divine?)
You’re probably right, I don’t pay attention
Isn’t there some Protestant sect that thinks that the Jews going back to the Holy Land means the 2nd coming is coming?
I still don’t understand but I don’t get the whole thing, obviously. I was asked on a job what my religion is and I said ‘I like jazz’.
If it wasn’t obnoxious blog practice I’d paste the whole John Lennon God lyric.
> (BTW, ain’t it just grand that the Xian fundis manage to hate Muslims as the antichrist and simultaneously view Muslim terrorists as instruments of the divine?
The whole Christian extremest world view is a little apocalyptic for my tastes.
“a little apocalyptic”?
An intentionally ironic understatement, I hope.
It is standard Xian fundi eschatology that the in-gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for Armageddon and the Second Coming. They can’t wait for the nukes to fly. As we have pointed out.
More bogus equivalism
The right-wing blog PajamasMedia reports with glee that in contrast to “nonexistent” (!!!) hate speech at Palin rallies, a McCain supporter was physically attacked at a (very small, natch) Palin-McCain rally on Manhattan’s Lexington Ave. last month. The blog runs lugubrious close-up pictures of the small bruise on the victim’s temple. Other blogs, such as the idiotically named NYC conservative SilentMajority (you wish!) have also jumped on the incident. Ben Smith’s Politico blog confirmed with the Manhattan DA’s office that the attack took place. The assailant allegedly grabbed the woman’s McCain sign, threw it in her face, and said upon his arrest, “I don’t know why I did this. It’s just those signs, and this election, it has me so upset.”
Predictably, this one incident by a lone deranged wingnut is being cynically equated with the routine outbursts of racism and death threats that have followed the Palin/McCain show around the country. (Check out this AlJazeera clip from a Palin rally in Ohio on YouTube if you have a strong stomach.)
In fact, it is worse than equivalism, because PajamasMedia actually has the absurd chutzpah to deny that the Palin/McCain hatefest even exists. Rather than stand up and take some responsibility for the death threats and actual violence that has now been committed by their side—the ransacking of ACORN’s offices in Boston and Seattle—the Palinista pundits wave the bloody shirt of one isolated incident on the Upper East Side.
As Frank Zappa sang, “Pajama people… They sure do make you sleepy with the things they might say.”
GOP propaganda goes subliminal
From Political Punch, Oct. 18:
What do we think? That this election is a test of just how stupid America really is, that’s what. In two weeks and change, we’ll know…
Colin Powell: King of the Mugwumps!
Amazingly, it is the neo-Mugwump Colin Powell, rather than any liberal Democrat, who says what needs to be said about the incessant Muslim-baiting of Obama! From AP, Oct. 20:
Right on, Colin! (Wait a minute, did I just say that…?)
Greensboro “pro-America”: coded message?
Here’s the offending quote, from CNN, Oct. 17:
Of course, called out by a reporter, she quickly pretended that she had said something other than what she said:
Interesting that she chose to say this in Greensboro. Is this what she meant by “pro-America”?
“Death to Obama supporters”
From The Register, Oct. 22, emphasis added:
McCain-Palin hypocrisy watch
From Huffington Post, Oct. 24:
Meanwhile, Palin denies that clinic-bombers are terrorists. From MSNBC, Oct. 23:
Death threats, intimidation, propaganda
We’ve all heard about the 30 tires of Obama supporters slashed at a rally in Fayetteville, NC, Oct. 20. The AFL-CIO’s Now News blog notes Oct. 22 that it got worse:
And worse…
Well, hurrah for that McCain supporter for putting truth and decency before politics! But he or she is a rare exception. When are the Palin-McCain camp going to start expressing some contrition over this stuff?
Then there’s the grisly affair in Pittsburgh, PA, where 20-year-old Ashley Todd apparently gave herself a black eye and carved a (backwards) B in her face and went to the police saying she was attacked by a 6’4″ Black Obama supporter—before the lie fell apart and she recanted everything. Joe Garofoli‘s Politics blog in the San Francisco Chronicle calls out the “media perps” in the attempted deception:
But, after all this, is there the slightest hint of contrition or even repudiation from the right? No, all they keep doing is whining about how the media are stacking the deck against them. (You mean by reporting facts?) Mary Katharine Ham on The Weekly Standard griped Oct. 14 (in a piece still making the rounds in the right-wing blogosphere) “No One Ever Said ‘Kill Him’ About Obama”—asserting that the “Kill him!” warcry at the Florida rally came in response to a Palin reference to Ayers. This is true, but the Ayers reference came up in reference to Obama, obviously. Contrary to Ham’s presentation, many media accounts (e.g. CNN, Oct. 10) have acknowledged it is “unclear if it was targeted at Obama or Ayers.” Actually, it is Ham who is being disingenuous here by not conceding any ambiguity! (As if calling for the extrajudicial execution of Ayers were OK!) She goes on to whine:
As if an upside down flag were the equivalent of a death threat. As if an obnoxious t-shirt were the equivalent of slashing tires and ransacking offices. As if there weren’t plenty of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism on the Republican side. And as if we should accept her claims of “rampant violence” and “black supremacy messages” without documentation. We’re waiting, Mary…
Ayers speaks —but not about Obama
Colin Moynihan writes for the New York Times, Oct. 27 (we’ve highlighted the one indirect Ayers reference to Obama):
The Rashid Khalidi (non-)connection rears its ugly head
From CNN, Oct. 29, emphasis added:
Excuse us? The United Nations, international law and US policy “accuse” Israel of “occupying” Palestinian territories! It is only isolated annexationsts on the Israeli far right who deny that Israel is “occupying” Palestinian territories. Is CNN mainstreaming this radical view as legitimate? So much for the media’s supposed liberal, anti-Israel bias…
CNN’s Political Ticker blog pulls the same trick (while fleshing out the extent of Rashidi’s fairly ephemeral ties to Obama):
Obama’s Khalidi (non-)connection has been raised before.
Bill Ayers speaks —at last
Bill Ayers himself writes an op-ed in the Dec. 6 New York Times:
Ayers is being a lot more honest here than his detractors were—but he is still not being fastidiously honest. So Katha Pollitt wastes no time in calling him out in The Nation:
She’s got a point, even if she fails to note that part of the reason for the name-change from Weatherman to Weather Underground was a repudiation of the direction they had been going, of intentionally targeting human beings (the aborted Fort Dix attack). Subsequent Weather Underground attacks only targeted property, which is how Ayers today can call them “extreme vandalism” rather than “terrorism.” Sympathists of the current radical environmentalist underground are splitting the same hair today. Both those who terrorist-bait the eco-militants and those who “whitewash” by adhering to the narrowest possible definition of “terrorism” are twisting the language for propaganda purposes. As we said in this context before: while fire-bombing an empty building may not exactly be terrorism, it isn’t exactly not terrorism either…