Palin: Obama associates with terrorists.

[RedImperator]

Apparently, the Obama campaign is preparing to retaliate with Charles Keating:

Democrats To Raise McCain Associations To Keating, Others

05 Oct 2008 06:40 pm
Democratic surrogates say they've been given the go-ahead from the Obama campaign to mention John McCain's associations with S&L kingpin Charles Keating and other historically tarnished creatures when asked about Obama's connection to ex-Weatherman William Ayers.

A senior Democrat who has had contact with Obama's high command points to Democratic strategist Paul Begala's comments on this morning's Meet the Press.

Begala noted that McCain once "sat on the board of a very right wing organization," the U.S. Council for World Freedom, led by a retired Army Maj. General named John Singlaub. The Anti-Defamation League allegedly called the CWF's parent organization a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites.

Said Begala: "Now, that's not John McCain. I don't think he is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain's record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face."

Other potential negative associations for McCain are his long-time South Carolina consultant, Richard Quinn, a publisher of a Southern heritagte magazine, and John Hagee, a pastor whose endorsement McCain solicited and later rejected.

Presently, Marc Ambrinder at the Atlantic is the only reporter who seems to have this, but it makes sense to me. Unlike Ayers, Rezko, and Wright, Charles Keating's name hasn't been heard much in this election. Given current events--crooked bankers have wrecked the economy, and the taxpayers are on the hook for a twelve-digit bailout--the Keating Five scandal could once again seriously damage John McCain.

[Durandal]

As I said before, the best part is that it's not a personal attack. It can be directly tied to McCain's claims about "always" supporting government regulation and that he has the judgment to be president. (The Senate Ethics Committee explicitly rebuked him for exhibiting "poor judgment" in that scandal.) Obama doesn't have to say that McCain is crooked to bring it up -- even though he almost certainly was.

[Saxtonite]

Technically, was Bill Ayers even a "terrorist"? He didn't target civilians AFAIK. The Weatherman didn't target civilians or anything, the only person killed was one of their members who accidentally set off a bomb. I wounder how the mainstream America would react if you point out that the "terrorists" were far from terrorizing given the targets they chose (they destroyed a statue dedicated to the POLICE victims of Haymarket, for example). Especially given some of them idealize the 'left' IIRC. Correct me on that if I am wrong please.

[Guardsman Bass]

As for the Zion Curtain, well - I'm afraid we're stuck, Knife (especially since you live down near Provo, right?).

Davis county actually, however it makes little difference in politics though, since the people around here are every bit as red as those down in god's country south of Salt Lake.

Really? For some reason, I thought you lived in Orem.

One thing about Keating - how effectively will it stick? McCain apologized pretty profusely back then, and he can always try to tie it into a narrative about how he became a fighter against corruption. It does kind of dampen the impact of his POW experience, since he was into this for years before the Savings and Loans Scandal burst.

[Patrick Degan]

Technically, was Bill Ayers even a "terrorist"? He didn't target civilians AFAIK. The Weatherman didn't target civilians or anything, the only person killed was one of their members who accidentally set off a bomb. I wounder how the mainstream America would react if you point out that the "terrorists" were far from terrorizing given the targets they chose (they destroyed a statue dedicated to the POLICE victims of Haymarket, for example). Especially given some of them idealize the 'left' IIRC. Correct me on that if I am wrong please.

Yes, technically, the Weather Underground was a terrorist organisation, though they did not target people. They bombed banks at night, well after closing hours. More vandalism than terrorism but still within the legal definition of the term. The problem is that Bill Ayers and the Weathermen are ancient history and everybody now associates terrorism with Muslims. If they really try to push this and start screaming Bill Ayers, the likely response from most Americans would be "who?"

One thing about Keating - how effectively will it stick? McCain apologized pretty profusely back then, and he can always try to tie it into a narrative about how he became a fighter against corruption. It does kind of dampen the impact of his POW experience, since he was into this for years before the Savings and Loans Scandal burst.

Depends upon the timing and vector of the attack. Hitting the Gimp with Keating closer to election day narrows his window of response, and if his Keating Five shennanigans, which led to a financial meltdown in the 80s, are likened to his support for the deregulation which led to this current financial meltdown, he gets painted as the man who twice helped drive the country into a ditch.

[Durandal]

One thing about Keating - how effectively will it stick? McCain apologized pretty profusely back then, and he can always try to tie it into a narrative about how he became a fighter against corruption. It does kind of dampen the impact of his POW experience, since he was into this for years before the Savings and Loans Scandal burst.

Doesn't matter. As they say, "Forgive, but don't forget." The story exposes McCain's claims that he's always been for regulation as the blatant lies they are.

[Durandal]

http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

Obama's campaign never ceases to amaze me. This is the perfect way to handle this attack: by making a web site with full details and a mini-documentary. They're making sure that everyone knows this isn't some one-liner smear or a vague connection, which is all John McCain's guilt-by-association attacks are. They're good enough for sound bytes, but they don't hold up to scrutiny.

Not to toot my own horn, but this is exactly how I said McCain's involvement in the Keating Five should be handled. Tie it back to the message that McCain is out of touch, doesn't get it and is a deregulation fanatic.

[The Big I]

Look's like we have the democratic response:

John McCain prone to crash planes - report
October 06, 2008 04:56pm
Article from: Agence France-PresseFont size: + -
Send this article: Print Email
US presidential hopeful John McCain was prone to mistakes during his time as a Navy pilot, and if today's standards were applied, his career may have ended in a hard landing, according to a report today by The Los Angeles Times.

The newspaper said that when Senator McCain was training in his AD-6 Skyraider in Texas in 1960, he slammed into Corpus Christi Bay and sheared the skin off his plane's wings.

In his autobiography, Senator McCain said the crash had occurred because "the engine quit'', but an investigation board at the Naval Aviation Safety Centre found no evidence of engine failure, the report said.


Here is the rest of the article.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24 ... 09,00.html

Can't wait for McCains response to the charges of recklessness.

[Count Chocula]

Ahh, who cares. Obama and McCain are just lobbing balls at each other in the 2008 US Political Open. This is clearly a red herring meant to provoke a reaction from the Obama campaign. The fact that the Dem presidential candidate felt the need to respond to a Repub vice-presidential candidate will probably be seen as a Republican point by their strategists.

As far as this quote from Tribun goes:

I also think they call him a "semi-terrorist", because they can't openly call him a "nigger".

Get a fucking life. Or, hey, listen to Reverend Wright or Michelle Obama talk. The racism goes both ways, if you truly think that's a significant issue to most American voters.

[Surlethe]

Get a fucking life. Or, hey, listen to Reverend Wright or Michelle Obama talk. The racism goes both ways, if you truly think that's a significant issue to most American voters.

Michelle Obama and Rev. Wright are racist? Care to point me toward some evidence?

[Count Chocula]

Michelle Obama's racist quotes are, at this time, rumors. Nothing concrete, my bad. Link to Fox News video at about 4:26.
There's some evidence from her thesis that infers she's a 'black separatist.' Remember Randy Weaver, the "white separatist?" Didn't work out too well for him.

Barack, of course, called his grandmother a "typical white person" and "racist" - link. Again, nothing explicit, but a clue to his thinking.

As for Reverend Wright, I'll let him say it, courtesy again of YouTube: Rev. Wright

Of course, racism on either side is far less important than what possible good either candidate can actually do as President.

[Julhelm]

Barack, of course, called his grandmother a "typical white person" and "racist" - link. Again, nothing explicit, but a clue to his thinking.

So you can't call racists out on their bullshit now without being a racist yourself? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.

[Zac Naloen]

One thing you also have to take into account, she was a typical white person of her time.

Back then pretty much everyone was racist to some degree.

[Darth Wong]

If I only had a dime for every time I've heard somebody try to make himself feel like he's smart by taking a problem and pronouncing that it "cuts both ways", with no regard for the concept of magnitude.

[Count Chocula]

If I only had a dime for every time I've heard somebody try to make himself feel like he's smart by taking a problem and pronouncing that it "cuts both ways".

Looks like I need to hit that PayPal link! Seriously, how important is the race issue to this election? My guess is the smarter and dirtier fighter will win the election - not the darker or lighter one.

[General Zod]

Looks like I need to hit that PayPal link! Seriously, how important is the race issue to this election? My guess is the smarter and dirtier fighter will win the election - not the darker or lighter one.

If you think that's the case, then you must be completely ignoring the sheer amount of dogwhistle and flat out blatant racism coming out of the McSame camp. There was at least one instance of southern senators calling Obama uppity and just stopping short of using the n-word.

[Ohma]

Looks like I need to hit that PayPal link!

Okay, I have nothing useful to ad to the on-topic discussion that other people haven't. But what is that supposed to mean there?

The only thing I can come up with is that it's supposed to be implying that Mike is somehow bought off by "reverse racists".

[Simplicius]

It's from Darth Wong's "If I had a dime..." comment.

[Darth Wong]

If I only had a dime for every time I've heard somebody try to make himself feel like he's smart by taking a problem and pronouncing that it "cuts both ways".

Looks like I need to hit that PayPal link! Seriously, how important is the race issue to this election? My guess is the smarter and dirtier fighter will win the election - not the darker or lighter one.

How can you blithely ignore the fact that a third of the US population is overtly racist? There are plenty of people out there who would flatly refuse to vote for Obama no matter what he says or does; how on Earth can you deny that this would have a significant impact on the election?

The fact is that the Republican party is the white racist party of America, and everyone knows it. Just check out the results of the final poll on this Gallup article:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/109258/Major ... pread.aspx

Just to summarize:

Code: Select all

Percentage who believe racism against blacks is widespread

   Democrats: 67%
Independents: 55%
 Republicans: 39%


Percentage who believe racism against whites is widespread

   Democrats: 38%
Independents: 43%
 Republicans: 46%

Yes, that's right: Republicans think that whites suffer more from racism than blacks do. It's no myth or unfair stereotype: the Republican party is the party of the white racists. And don't give me that bullshit about how anti-white racism really is just as bad as anti-black racism; there's a reason that only white people ever say that bullshit.

[Count Chocula]

I guess I'm lucky - I really don't see any racism in my daily life. Since I'm not politically active these days, I don't really travel in circles where race is an issue. I don't see it at the airport, or at the range, or in the stores I frequent. Neither my (Cuban) wife nor I are registered as Democrats or Republicans, either.

I look at the mud slinging and take it for what it is - a way to get elected. If either candidate comes out and says something blatantly racist, then I'll give them mental demerits for irrelevance. I expect, however, that the economy, foreign policy, and skeletons in the candidates' closets will be greater issues.

[General Zod]

I guess I'm lucky - I really don't see any racism in my daily life. Since I'm not politically active these days, I don't really travel in circles where race is an issue. I don't see it at the airport, or at the range, or in the stores I frequent. Neither my (Cuban) wife nor I are registered as Democrats or Republicans, either.

Just paying attention to the news alone makes it rather painfully obvious that racism is still prevalent and a rather big factor as long as you're not willfully ignoring the instances where it happens.

[Covenant]

Looks like I need to hit that PayPal link! Seriously, how important is the race issue to this election? My guess is the smarter and dirtier fighter will win the election - not the darker or lighter one.

Blah blah racism blah. C'mon Count. Your really stupid statement is that Wright and Michelle are racist because they point out the marked inequality, which doesn't make you a racist, it makes you awake. Besides, Barack disowned the man by now anyway, so it's hardly the right cross to nail him to. He started going to that Church because it was heavily involved in the community, and he was a community organizer, and as an atheist was having a lot of trouble getting anything done. So he found Jesus, signed up, and got people organized. United Church of Christ is as liberal as it can get, so I can hardly blame him for picking that one, but racist? Seriously? When you have people openly admitting that they still feel negatively about black people and are afraid of what they'd do in charge? One of the big problems is that racism is underreported by pollers, and this is just a simple fact. People will give you any excuse for why they're voting against him, but will rarely dig a layer deeper and say "Well, I don't trust him on foreign things since he's so new, but he's also a muslim and I don't know if that's safe."

Jack Cafferty: “Over the past 18 months, Obama has been attacked as a naive novice, an empty suit, a tax-and-spend liberal, an arugula-grazing élitist and a corrupt ward heeler, but the only attacks that clearly stung him involved the Rev. Jeremiah Wright - attacks that portrayed him as an angry black man under the influence of an even angrier black man.”

I would also add that the other attack that stuck was the Muslim one, since both the "Muslim" and "Scary Pastor" things are mutually exclusive but play up religion and race, so it's a bit of Pick Your Bigotry. Here's only the most recent article about how Obama could be getting as many as 6 more percentage points if race were not an issue. Of all the issues, this is the most popular and prominent.

Unrelated CNN politics stuff.

Racism still exists in no small amount in everyday life, and blacks face racism not just from some idiot whites but also a great amount of idiot minorities of many other stripes. It's deep set and it's infectious, and it colors people's opinions. One of the random voters interviewed for some unrelated bit of polling said quite openly, "The blacks have an axe to grind, and if Obama wins, they're going to grind it. The country would be in for some hard times." What these whites and others are afraid of is their own goddamn racist bastardry biting them in the ass, essentially, so you're getting what is widely understood as a reluctance to openly admit your own racist views and downplaying the significance. People generally feel reticent to admit their prejudices openly, but go back ten or twenty or fourty years and look at some of the values on parade in every big city and you'll see that even these modern democratic strongholds have an aging base that admitted to racism in their 30's and probably still feel it now.

It doesn't need to be "Daggum blacks need to be picking my cotton, you betcha" style racism, it can just be white fright about blacks 'rising up' to get revenge on all the nasty cracka's who oppressed them for so long. Even that little bit of "I don't know... he is Black afterall..." is racism, and it is impossible for you to assert that his race hasn't given a good lot of people a moment's pause. Sure, sometimes the angels of their better nature will prevail, but sometimes they won't, and it makes odd attacks like the muslim one feasible. That's something McCain certainly doesn't have to deal with.

[Elfdart]

John "I hate the gooks" McCain's campaign must really be in deep shit at this point. The way he and Palin keep trying to paint Obama as a "terrorist" is sounding more and more like Likkud's campaign of calling Yitzhak Rabin a traitor, a terrorist and a Nazi. They lost the election, but Rabin was murdered by one of the inbred little fucktards who takes right-wing bullshit seriously.

Washington Post

By Dana Milbank
CLEARWATER, Fla. -- "Okay, so Florida, you know that you're going to have to hang onto your hats," Sarah Palin told a rally of a few thousand here this morning, "because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough."

You betcha. And the person dishing out the roughest stuff at the moment is Sarah Palin.

"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day," she said.

"Booooo!" replied the crowd.

"I knew you guys would react that way, okay," she continued. "So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago."

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin's allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin 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 went on to say that "Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers's living room, and they've worked together on various projects in Chicago." Here, Palin began to connect the dots. "These are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes -- remember that's what Joe Biden had said. "And" -- she paused and sighed -- "I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. 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."

"Boooo!" said the audience.

<boldface mine>

Boo indeed. Remember, this is the same hag who quoted Westbrook Pegler (who called for the assassinations of Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy) in her convention speech.

Rachel Maddow showed the video from this scene and Palin just grins and keeps on talking, the same reaction McCain had (also shown on TV) when he asked "Who is Barack Obama?" and one of the humanoids in his audience shouted "A TERRORIST!".

I wonder if the Republitards aren't holding out for a Lone Crazed Gunman to deal with Obama.

[AdmiralKanos]

This fucking low-life trailer trash bitch has a lot of gall to screech that Obama is too critical of America, when her own fucking party has spent the the last 30 years demonizing huge swathes of the American landscape, from everyone living in metropolitan cities to sexually active people, visible minorities, homosexuals, and increasingly, everyone who does not fellate the military and drape himself in the flag.

[Elfdart]

Not only that, her own husband wants to remove Alaska from the Union. Keith Olbermann has more:

Crooks And Liars