Sigh. I have to share with my Alabama-born wife this dreadfully wingnut news about a debate that was held for candidates in the 5th Congressional District race there.
Steve Johnson of CBS affiliate WHNT.com was the moderator of the debate and this is the first question he tosses out to Republican Wayne Parker and Dem State Senator Parker Griffith:
And purported journalist Johnson elaborates with this additional mind-blower—“Is this how Jesus wants to see you campaign? And maybe the best way to ask this is with a popular question—‘What Would Jesus Do?’”
I sh*t you not. Watch it—Parker gets the first crack at an answer. It’s below the fold (with transcript).
This week, Barack Obama ran a half hour ad right before Game 5, Part II of the World Series of American Heterosexual Baseball. The going whisper campaign was that Obama pushed back the start of the third of a game to air his presumptuous ad, and that Real Americans would be bitterly, clingily angry at his great affront to a playoff series none of them were watching.
In 2000 and 2004, this would have been the defining narrative of the last two weeks, not McCain’s William the Hung or a tape concerning an obscure Columbia professor’s 2003 dinner. Obama not understanding the real priorities of American, of having the utter audacity and presumptuousness to think that a glorified infomercial was enough to push the American pastime out of the way.
Yet, somehow, it wasn’t. It bubbled up once or twice, and went nowhere. Part of this was probably public disinterest in the game, part of this was probably the fact that the McCain campaign could run against a child molester and make their campaign message about whether or not the guy actually bought the weed he smoked in eleventh grade.
But another part of this is the fact that Obama is simply that good of a campaigner. He nullified the “regular guy” meme months ago, shook up the same frame that’s worked since Nixon was running, and did it while running as a black guy with a funny name. It’s why I don’t worry about the race closing, or even about close-race shenaningans on Tuesday. I just feel like he’s got this covered…and it’s why I’m more confident than ever that he’ll be a good, possibly great president.
It also helps that John McCain is wandering around making jokes about 1930s Russia and bear DNA, the crushing issues of the day. Never let that man’s incomptence be understated.
There’s a wonderful blog, KansasPrairie.net, where Peg Britton blogs about many topics, but I was drawn to her blogging about Barack Obama’s maternal family (the white relatives). There is a great post that features a photo of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham and her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. Some background in the post.
“They secretly married on the spring weekend of the annual junior-senior banquet in 1940, Madelyn’s senior year, several weeks before graduation, according to friends. Continuing to live with her parents, Madelyn didn’t tell them about her marriage until she got her diploma in June. The news was not a big hit at the Payne family home, but parental objections didn’t matter.”
“When World War II came, Stanley enlisted in the Army. Madelyn became a Rosie-the-Riveter at Boeing Co.’s B-29 production plant in Wichita. And Stanley Ann Dunham arrived in late November 1942.”
“The Dunhams were full-time working parents, renters and strugglers in pursuit of the next opportunity. After the war, Madelyn worked in restaurants while Stanley managed a furniture store on Main Street in El Dorado.”
“Mack Gilkeson, a retired engineering professor who grew up in El Dorado and knew both Madelyn and Stanley, has watched their now-famous grandson too. “If I were to squint my eyes and look at Barack,” he said, “I’d almost see his grandparents.”
Barack Obama favors his grandfather to a great degree. I wonder what the race-obsessed people who are scared of electing a black president think about this photo (or this one), his family, who loved and cared for him. It chips away the ridiculous one-drop rule of assigning a person to a racial category based on appearance. It makes people discuss the complexity of culture, race and heritage.
For all of the desperate, color-aroused people denigrating Obama with ridiculous charges - fearing that he will enslave white people, or use the power of the presidency to “redistribute wealth” (read: take from the wealthy and give to those poor, lazy black people)—it’s easier to only see his blackness (or, rather, what they imagine it to represent), choosing to ignore that his bloodline and upbringing is no less American than Joe the Plumber’s. They don’t want to face that. It makes some people still queasy about miscegenation squirm. They don’t want to see themselves in Barack Obama; it’s easier to dismiss the Other as alien or suspect.
Quite frankly, there’s nothing we can do about attitudes that are irrational, even unhinged because of internalized racism and the desire to feel superior to groups historically targeted for discrimination.
Other Barack Obama posts at KansasPrairie.net are here.
I’m never again going to doubt the wisdom of this campaign. At every step, when I feared that they were going off the rails, doing something that would imperil their chances at winning, it always turns out to be right. From the primaries to the general, when they make a move, they make it worse.
Of course, I’m talking about the McCain/Palin campaign and their propensity for throwing people out of their rallies for no particular reason.
Perhaps most prominent was their refusal to let the president of Penn State University into an on-campus rally, although to be fair, the 7,000-person rally was also fully screened so that only die-hard supporters would be allowed in. This makes perfect sense, as the surest way to swing the undecided and slightly Obama-leaning supporters that you need to your side is to make sure that they’re refused access to you.
A McCain-Palin campaign official snubbed the president of Penn State University who inquired about attending a campus speech Tuesday by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, university officials told ABCNews.com.
“He’s a big Democrat. Why would he want to meet Palin?” campaign aide Russ Bermel allegedly asked a school employee who was hoping to make arrangements for president Graham B. Spanier to meet Palin, according to Spanier’s office.
Wasn’t part of the rationale of adding Palin to the ticket to attract die-hard Democrats who were former Clinton supporters, particularly in states like Pennsylvania? Oh, I forgot, no rationale in their campaign can last longer than three days, because then it starts to get old and stupid.
This is small potatoes compared to the real genius exhibited at their rallies - throwing out any and all young people because they look shady. This includes their own supporters, because…why wouldn’t it?
Lara Elborno, a student at the University of Iowa, said she was approached by a police officer and a McCain staffer and was told she had to leave or she would be arrested for trespassing.
“It was a very confusing, very frustrating situation,” Elborno said. “I said that I had a right to be there, I wasn’t doing anything disruptive — I was sitting, waiting for the rally to start.”
[...]
Elborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave.
“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”
I really can’t see any problem whatsoever with threatening the arrest of people at your events because they don’t fit the correct profile of your supporters. People love that shit.
There has been a large dustup in the blogosphere and in the media over Elizabeth Dole’s fraudulent ‘Godless’ ad portraying her as cozying up to atheists, so much so that Dem challenger Kay Hagan has a new commercial out addressing the matter:
I’m Kay Hagan and Elizabeth Dole’s attacks on my Christian faith are offensive. She even faked my voice in her TV ad to make you think that I don’t believe in God. Well, I believe in God. I taught Sunday school; my faith guides my life. And Senator Dole knows it. Sure, politics is a tough business, but I approved this message because my campaign is about creating jobs and fixing our economy, not bearing false witness against fellow Christians.
It’s a strong response, placing the tactics directly on the MIA senator (note there’s no mention about the MIA senator’s anti-gay mailer that bashes Hagan as a liberal and in favor of marriage equality (she’s not).
UPDATE #2: The person standing next to Hagan in the ad, one of the alleged Godless Atheists, isn’t one (The Independent Weekly):
Both ads feature shadowy photographs of Hagan standing next to a nameless gray-haired man—presumably one of those atheists to whom the Democrat is allegedly indebted. He is in fact, Charles Frederick (Rick) Stone III, who currently studies theology at the Harvard Divinity School. Until his 2007 move to Boston, Stone lived in Greensboro and taught Biblical studies at Greensboro College, which is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, and Guilford College, which draws on Quaker tradition.
His courses have included Old and New Testament, religious law, and the teachings of Jesus. Stone himself is Episcopalian and a believer in God.
That’s rich. I hope Hagan bankrupts Dole.
A couple of things about the “Godless” debacle trouble me, aside from the base mudslinging of Liddy in her last gasps of desperation. 1) Dole is saying there’s a religious test to serve in public office; 2) Hagan has to respond in a way that affirms this, though she attempts to redirect by saying she plans to focus on the secular. It’s troublesome all around that candidates have to drag personal faith into a discussion about fitness to serve office. For goodness sake, what if an atheist wants to give to her campaign? I’m sure Dole has some atheists on her mailing list of donors. Does it not occur to the surgically preserved senator that non-believers simply want to select a candidate that will address the economy or the host of other issues, given the state the U.S. is in? It’s all ridiculous.
***
But back to Dole on another matter that has received scant attention in this state—immigration. The ads have been inflammatory, full of fear-baiting. More below the fold.
Actually it’s a clown bus, not a clown car. The remaining staunch support of John McCain lies in the Base—the hard case bible beaters, the Freeper set, the low, low, low info voter, and those simply scared of change. Jonathan Stein over at Mother Jones attended a stop on the Our Country Deserves Better PAC’s “Stop Obama” tour.
You know all those ridiculous wingnut screams of “socialist,” “Muslim,” etc.? Well this event at the National Press Club was a cornucopia of batsh*ttery. They have strong Kool-Aid on the tour bus. Look at some of the current conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. They are below the fold.
I noted in comments that you wouldn’t see the last of my Sarah Palin costume. Marc and I hit the studio and made a short, but I hope moving, story about the inner turmoil Sarah Palin goes through after lambasting Obama for knowing Bill Ayers, when she herself has her own dark terrorist palling around secrets.
I’m enjoying dressing up as Sarah Palin a bit too much, and for this video I got my hairdresser to put my hair in a bouffant. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to being a drag queen. In fact, I considered performing under the drag name Sasha Fierce, and then I was informed that it was already taken, so I went with my own name.
John McCain isn’t really closing in this race. Over the past three weeks, Obama’s lead has oscillated wildly (massively!) between between 5.5 and 8 points. His current average RCP lead is 6.2%, which is right in the middle of that range and about as high as he ever was at any point before our entire financial system crashed.
But McCain has done one thing more successfully than anything else since he announced Sarah Palin as his running mate - sold the narrative that the race will inevitably tighten for him, and that any result which shows a closer race is evidence of a trend, no matter how fleeting or random the result is. The worst example (of the morning) is this article from Florida Today, entitled “Poll gives McCain lead in Fla. early voting”. It would be fine, except that there’s another poll, referenced in the same piece, which shows Barack Obama destroying the holy hell out of McCain in early voting.
A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll gave McCain a 49-45 lead over Democrat Barack Obama among Floridians who have already voted.
[...]
Only a tiny fraction of the Florida respondents reported voting early, leaving McCain’s lead subject to a wide margin of error. A Quinnipiac University poll, released Wednesday, showed early voters favoring Obama 58-34, another small sample with a potentially wide margin of error.
Why would you favor one poll showing a statistical tie as showing a lead when another poll shows a massive blowout in the other direction? Because that’s the narrative!
Howard Fineman wonders why this race is still so close, and why McCain hasn’t been “put away” yet, which would be a great story if McCain had a single real poll from this month ever showing him ahead, or if Obama hadn’t had a winning margin in the Electoral College for, you know, weeks. The issue isn’t Obama not putting McCain away - the issue is that nobody will write that story for fear of being “unfair” and ending the race, meaning the only story left is how Obama may fail.
The other strange part of this narrative is that this Dick Morris article is an article of faith among those covering this campaign. If undecideds were going to break for Obama, they would have (which, of course, makes no sense, because you could make the exact same argument in McCain’s direction). It all goes to the same story, though - Obama, whether or not he’s actually closed this race out, will never be said to have done so, because it renders McCain’s campaign (and therefore the entirety of election coverage) as dead as a doorknob.
Obama’s being faulted for a structural deficiency in media coverage of the presidential campaign, and McCain hailed because there has to be some reason that a race Obama’s had won for weeks isn’t yet a “victory”. Just wait until Zogby produces that Monday poll showing an exact tie…my friends.
You might recall the last time the network made this “mistake,” it was when they labeled GOPerv Mark Foley “(D)”. I guess this is Fox’s way of tossing McCain under the bus.
Other signs of the feeble, weakening McCain campaign are below the fold.
Let me relish this moment and this video. I’m white. And I’m straight. And I live in one of the states where people are apparently “real” Americans. Getting booted from the “real America” club is actually not as simple as voting straight Democratic, but this is my ticket to Othersville: the dreaded atheism.
What’s awesome about atheists is we really are fucking scary, and just for the reasons I outlined above. Many of us look exactly like “real Americans”, as defined by McCain/Palin. We’re all scary and mysterious like that. You could be sitting next to a white lady with a Texas accent holding a boy’s hand on the bus and feel secure that she’s not a scary Other that is rotting this country at its core, but you’d be wrong, because that lady is me and I’m a Godless American. We’re everywhere, like Amway, except we have morals but no god, so sort of the opposite of Amway. We might just turn to you, and in a voice that sounds just like a “real” American voice, destroy your fragile faith by saying, “Have you ever considered that if god is all powerful and all good, then there shouldn’t be evil in the world? So either god is evil, not all powerful, or doesn’t exist. Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” That’s why we’re the scariest non-real Americans in America.
Then again, maybe it is. I can’t believe that they dug up these grade Z celebs:
As Ben notes, one of the celebs is washed up SNL vet Victoria Jackson, who has this ace wingnuttia about Obama up on her personal web site. Again, this is so ridiculous that it looks like satire. Alas, no.
I don’t want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I’m scared to death that un-educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.
You see, what bothers me most, besides being a Communist, and a racist (Obama writes in his book, From Dreams of My Father, “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and and animosity against my (white) mother’s race.”) (Obama’s “religion” of the last 20 years is Black Liberation Theology. What is that? “It is simply Marxism dressed up in Christian rhetoric. But unlike traditional Marxism, Black Liberation Theology emphasizes race rather than class. It’s leading theorist is James Cone who says Jesus was black, African-Americans are the chosen people, and whites are the devil. Cone says, “What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.” The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor), is that he is a LIAR. He pretends to be a Christian and he incriminates himself everytime he speaks about Christianity. To lie about being a believer in Christ is very dangerous. Lightning could strike him at any minute! But seriously, he doesn’t have a clue what the Bible says and yet he pretends to be a church- going Christian to win votes. That is sooooo evil.
It took me far too long to work up the enthusiasm to watch this video I just posted about Joe Biden’s and the VAWA. It was 6 minutes, and I thought I knew all I needed to know, and so I didn’t watch it until today. That was a mistake. I did learn some things from it (mostly how Biden had worked much harder on this legislation than even I realized), but mostly I was impressed at how much they managed to accomplish in 6 minutes—-the video humanizes the issues, addresses the common objection to law enforcement interfering with domestic abuse (which is that the responsibility belongs to victims to leave), promotes the Obama/Biden ticket, and more interestingly, makes an argument for the good that government can do when politicians take their job to work for the people seriously. In the face of the power-mad blitzkrieg of bullshit coming from McCain/Palin, I can honestly say this video felt refreshing.
It was also a stern reminder, which I hoped I didn’t need, of what should be feminist priorities when it comes to engaging in electoral politics. Luckily, McCain’s gamble with Sarah Palin—-that she would be a shiny distraction from his viciously anti-woman policies for Clinton supporters with hurt feelings—-mostly failed. (Luckily, Palin was also picked apparently to pander to right wing illusions, and especially right wing men’s fantasies, and she’s succeeded amply at that.) Still, a few women have been lured by the “Ooooh, shiny” effect. Unfortunately, one of them is Elaine Lafferty, who wrote an article she apparently thinks is feminist, but is actually stunningly condescending.
In the NYT, the Beltway Dominionists are soiling their diapers at the prospect of the defeat of Prop 8. This is their last stand, and are declaring that religious persecution is around the corner unless it passes. In fact, owner of the KKK’s mailing list, and Family Research Council honcho Tony Perkins declares that this battle over marriage equality is more meaningful than the presidential election.
Conservative religious leaders from across the country are pouring time, talent and millions of dollars into the state in support of Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage. They are hoping to reverse a California Supreme Court ruling in May that gave same-sex couples permission to marry, resulting in thousands of exultant same-sex weddings.
Similar marriage amendments are on the ballot next month in Arizona and Florida. But religious conservatives have cast the campaign in California as the decisive last stand, warning in stunningly apocalyptic terms of dire consequences to the entire nation if Proposition 8 does not pass.
California, they say, sets cultural trends for the rest of the country and even the world. If same-sex marriage is allowed to become entrenched there, they warn, there will be no going back.
OMG - does it mean the end of the world is around the corner? If so, why hasn’t Massachusetts caused the End Times? Oh silly, why should facts get in the way of The Rapture. Hyperbole alert…
“This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” said Charles W. Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and an eminent evangelical voice, speaking to pastors in a video promoting Proposition 8. “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.”
“We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation,” said Mr. Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. “But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.”
Doesn’t it leave you breathless?! Tony also takes the opportunity to knife John McCain in the back for not stepping up to the plate enough to help the fundies—even though he selected Sarah Palin to carry the torch of intolerance for them.
“He’s not helping, and he’s not being helped by the support for the marriage amendment,” Mr. Perkins said, in contrast to the campaigns of President Bush.
Fellow fundie Janet Porter takes an even more dire view of your soul. See below the fold.
There’s a wonderful blog, 
Barack Obama favors his grandfather to a great degree. I wonder what the race-obsessed people who are scared of electing a black president think about this photo (
I’m never again going to doubt the wisdom of this campaign. At every step, when I feared that they were going off the rails, doing something that would imperil their chances at winning, it always turns out to be right. From the primaries to the general, when they make a move, they make it worse.
I don’t want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I’m scared to death that un-educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.
Conservative religious leaders from across the country are pouring time, talent and millions of dollars into the state in support of Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage. They are hoping to reverse a California Supreme Court ruling in May that gave same-sex couples permission to marry, resulting in thousands of exultant same-sex weddings.