Using Republican logic, I prove McCain is a terrorist

Campbell Brown over at CNN made an excellent point recently about the perception among a vast swath of ignorant Americans that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and the fact that such a staggering number of people view this as the primary reason to vote against him. Brown asks a simple question: Even though he's clearly not a Muslim, should it really matter if he were?

The answer, obviously, is no it shouldn't, but the reality: Yes it will. And that really says something about our country. Even though a majority of voters appear prepared to release their prejudices long enough to elect a black man as president, this nation still has a long way to go. A long, long way.

This election has been infected with blatant overtones of racism from the beginning, and it hasn't always been about black-and-white politics. Consider some recent comments from John McCain at a campaign rally, when he responded to a voter who declared she wouldn't vote for Obama because he's an Arab (never mind the fact that if he were an Arab, as opposed to an American, the Constitution would bar him from running for president in the first place):

No ma'am, no ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign is all about. He's not, thank you.

Think about what McCain is saying here: No, is Obama not an Arab, he's a decent family man. Maybe it was subconscious, maybe it was unintentional, or maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but it sure seems like he's making a sharp distinction between Arabs and decent family men. Sure, you can say he's just practicing good politics, and that's exactly the type of distinction the people who attend his rallies would expect him to make. Fine. But then what does that say about the Republicans who attend his rallies?

As Campbell noted in her essay, it shouldn't matter which religion you practice, just as it shouldn't matter if you're black, white, Asian or an alien from Planet Gargamel (as long as you were born in America!) And although Americans might soon pass a milestone in seeing beyond Obama's skin color, clearly many are still hung up on the fact that he could be a Muslim.

The elephant in the room in this case is Sept. 11, and the Americans who were killed by Arab terrorists. The argument goes, I guess, that those hijackers were a representation of all Arab culture, and therefore all Arabs are not to be trusted. But using that logic, I could say that Timothy McVeigh -- a white, American domestic terrorist who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing -- is a representation of all white Americans. Does that mean I should vote against John McCain?

Maybe I'll do just that.

It's come to this

The desperation and deception of McCain's new campaign strategy -- unleash Sarah Palin to lie shamelessly in front of adoring, racist crowds -- wrapped up nicely by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank:

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- John McCain is collapsing in the polls in Florida and other swing states, but Sarah Palin, God bless her, has a solution.

"For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off," she announced at high noon Monday to a group of Republican donors at the Naples Beach Club.

You betcha.

As the donors sipped their bloody marys and mimosas, she added, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, "I'm sending the message back to John McCain also: Tomorrow night in his debate, might as well take the gloves off."

Darn right.

Of course, it's not only gloves and heels; headgear has a role, too. "Okay, so, Florida, you know that you're going to have to hang on to your hats," she said at a morning rally in Clearwater, "because from now until Election Day, it may get kind of rough."

Say it ain't so, Sarah!

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain confidant, told The Post's David Broder that the campaign would "go down in history as stupid if they don't unleash" Palin. Well, the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed -- if not unhinged.

Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!" This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she told the Clearwater crowd. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

McCain's swoon is largely out of his control, the result of an economic collapse that ignited new fears Monday when the Dow Jones industrial average closed below 10,000 for the first time in four years. That's why his lead in Florida polls, which once reached as high as 15 points, has turned into a three-point deficit.

But the campaign has reacted with recriminations (the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Florida Republican Party chairman, after questioning Palin's aptitude, was told that he couldn't fly on her plane) and now Palin's rage.

The angry GOP vice presidential nominee even found a way to blame the market decline on the yet-to-be-enacted tax policies of the yet-to-be-elected Obama.

"If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you're gonna see that, yah, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn't understand -- no!" she said at an afternoon fundraiser at the home of mutual fund giant Jack Donahue. "Especially in a time like this, you don't propose to increase taxes. The phoniest claim in a campaign that's full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes."

Of course, Obama never promised to cut taxes for people at $10,000-a-plate lunches in air-conditioned tents on waterfront compounds. And the crowd -- among them New York Jets owner Woody Johnson -- reacted without applause to Palin's Joe Six-Pack lines. After they didn't strike up the usual "Drill, baby, drill" or "USA" chants, Palin, rattled, read hurriedly through the rest of her speech.

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

"See, John McCain is a different kind of man: He believes in our troops," she said.

At times, Palin hinted at the GOP campaign's troubles. "It's going to be a hard-fought contest, especially in these swing states, some maybe we would not have expected," she admitted to donors. She allowed that "John McCain and I need to do a better job" of talking about the economy.

At other times, she had troubles of her own, as when she spoke over the weekend of "our neighboring country of Afghanistan" or when she got choked up at the Clearwater rally, saying, "Some of your signs just make me wanna cry," without explaining which ones or why.

But then the gloves came off, the heels came out, and Palin was once again talking about her opponent hanging out in a terrorist's living room.

The facts, finally

Click here for the most incredible investigation of John McCain's career of deception and dishonor that you'll ever read. You'll never look at him the same way again.

Also, note to the McCain campaign: Nobody gives a shit that Obama was on the same charity board as a guy who was a radical 30 years ago. People want to know why billionaire CEOs are walking away rich while Wall Street crumbles, and why we're still sending billions to Iraq when we can't even run our own economy. Your entire campaign is a now a national parody. You're gonna lose, bitches!

Counting down to November

The sudden reversal of the McCain campaign's treatment of its beloved Sarah Palin is not surprising given that a week spent on the interview circuit has lowered expectations of her experience and competence to such a historically low level that a change in strategy was imperative. McCain will still lose, of course, but at least he'll go out fighting -- or whining, as Palin is apt to do so exquisitely.

Interestingly, the campaign decided to take off the leash and send Palin on the offensive. Instead of stumping the policies of a McCain administration, she's leveling personal attacks on Obama's character and leadership. In the past two days, Palin has more or less labeled Obama a terrorist sympathizer and called him unqualified to lead an army (in her universe, Obama is somehow unpatriotic for pointing out that we should avoid carpet-bombing Afghan villages and slaughtering innocent civilians by the truck load).

All this is hilarious considering Palin was so clearly recruited not for her character or leadership, but for her uncanny ability to court social conservatives with folksy platitudes and meaningless emotional drivel. Palin is a self-parody, and sometimes I wonder if she's even smart enough to realize her role in the campaign is purely superficial.

The big question this week: Will American voters be able to see the irony in everything Palin says and does? Will they be turned off by her hysterical rhetoric? Have we finally moved past terrorism politics? And, most important, will Obama respond in a way that is effective and powerful? For the sake of America, I sure hope so.

Republican fear machine back in action

As I've pointed out, the Republicans can't win without fear-mongering about terrorism. If people aren't terrified of their imminent deaths, the GOP has no legs to stand on. This is only the beginning:

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of his association with a former 1960s radical, stepping up the campaign's effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.

Palin's reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, during the tumultuous Vietnam War era four decades ago. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, served on a charity board with Ayers several years ago and has denounced his radical views and activities.

The Republican campaign, falling behind Obama in polls, plans to make attacks on Obama's character a centerpiece of presidential candidate John McCain's message with a month remaining before Election Day.

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Palin, Alaska's governor, said that donors on a greeting line had encouraged her and McCain to get tougher on Obama. She said an aide then advised her, "Sarah, the gloves are off, the heels are on, go get to them."

Barracuda? Sounds about right

An observation: The McCain campaign continues to label Sarah "You Betcha" Palin as a political barracuda. Sen. McCain repeated the metaphor in a speech today when he declared, in reference to Palin's debate performance: "Viva la barracuda!"

Yet, I wonder whether the campaign has bothered to look up "barracuda" in the dictionary? It yields interesting results (from merriam-webster.com):

1: any of a genus (Sphyraena of the family Sphyraenidae) of elongate predaceous often large bony fishes of warm seas that includes food and sport fishes as well as some forms frequently causing ciguatera poisoning

2: one that uses aggressive, selfish, and sometimes unethical methods to obtain a goal especially in business

I don't get it. Are they saying she's a fucking fish, or are they saying she's aggressive, selfish and unethical?

I'd tell you what I think about Palin, but I've chewed off my tongue

Sarah Palin's down-home, aw-shucks personality makes me want to tear my eyelids off and set my eyeballs on fire. I want to ram a red-hot poker into my ear, sever my brain stem and drown myself in boiling water. All these things I would rather do than listen to her bumble for one more second like she's running for spot on the Wasilla PTA. If she wants to make the claim that she's part of the "middle class," as she did so many times during Thursday's debate, then she might want to burn down her mansion in the pristine Alaskan wilderness and give away that $1,000,000 she has in the bank. Middle class? Please. She wouldn't know middle class if she shot and skinned it during a raving moose hunt. She can drag as many pregnant teen daughters and Down syndrome babies onto the stage as she wants.

Sen. Biden skewered her like a clueless schoolgirl on foreign policy and domestic issues. Unfortunately, Americans inexplicably insist on electing idiots, so it's all meaningless. That said, any self-respecting independent and undecided voter couldn't possibly watch that spectacle and come out with the conclusion that this astoundingly inexperienced Republican madwoman is fit to sit in the White House.