After the fact fictitious conjectures still fly like pesky gnats
So much energy is wasted on the negativity that hasn't happened, on what ifs and false prophecies. If those bloviating such hypothetics and conjecture would turn their efforts in the direction of positive action, of making this country better for themselves and their fellow men, we would have never been thrown under the bus by the Bush Administration over the past eight years. Where was your outrage then? Where was your righteous indignation? Now you question us all for our choice in a leader, those who voted and those who've rallied behind President-elect Obama for the sake of the country, and persist with innuendo and propaganda smears. You seath in a hatred that is consuming your every waking moment. You memorialize your rancor in commentaries that spread at light speed over cyberspace. Such actions will bring nothing good to you or those close by you. Rather than hope for the best you've surrendered to a fatalism that brings no benefit, no reward, no satisfaction, no productivity. It is an exercise in futility.
This is a new era. One to celebrated and appreciated with fervor
Otherwise how will one be able to look back on it with a clear conscience? To speak of it proudly before everyone? How can a bigot, or a racist of any strain or ilk look at themselves in the light of this karmic justice? Those who cannot celebrate represent the past. They honor the old ways of fear mongering, separatism and xenophobic tendancies this new Era will seek to dispel.
The civil rights movement and the hearts of true Americans willing to take action to change inequity is realized in it's fulness concerning America's black race. But there is work to do. Can we have an Asian president, a Mexican president, both men and women? This the American experience. If it isn't among the possibilities one thinks of when they see Lady Liberty they may be in the wrong country. Within these shores lies the promise of equal opportunity for ALL people.
Time has with the passing arighted in a single day decades of wrongs of a nation most elegantly and thoroughly to which we've all been given the priviledge of witnessing first hand if not aid in it's execution.
It is most wonderful to be, black in America today. It is wonderful to be white in America. It is wonderful to be Northern, Western or Eastern European, Asian-East, West or South Seas in America. It is wonderful to be African, hispanic, latino or of the native tribes in America. It is wonderful to be in The United States of America. To be truly American.
One Nation, one people
Anti-American is to continue to fault us for our decision
Anyone who continues to doggedly hold disparaging comments concerning this groundbreaking moment, this historical landmark moment - the present president-elect, voted in by majority rule, is missing out on experiencing the better qualities of mankind, the communion with the better angels of our nature, and is forever casting their lot with the negative, unproductive aspects of this passing era.
Now they turn on us their fellow Americans, castigating us as unlearned, as unintelligent in our decision making processes. Anything rather than conceding that they perhaps may be wrong about our choice, about our love of country in picking the one who we have deemed the most capable to lead us into a brighter future for ourselves and our families.
This actually hints of treason and is essentially unpatriotic. It is the wrong side of history and not in the least in the best interest America .
Now they turn on us their fellow Americans, castigating us as unlearned, as unintelligent in our decision making processes. Anything rather than conceding that they perhaps may be wrong about our choice, about our love of country in picking the one who we have deemed the most capable to lead us into a brighter future for ourselves and our families.
This actually hints of treason and is essentially unpatriotic. It is the wrong side of history and not in the least in the best interest America .
Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe speaks today on CBS
><a href='http:/www.cbs.com'>Watch CBS Videos Online
Poll Recordbreaking turnouts/Problems in the Battleground States
><a href='http:/www.cbs.com'>Watch CBS Videos Online
><a href='http:/www.cbs.com'>Watch CBS Videos Online
Blame it on the lady of the western frontier
I found this article to be quite enlightening as a mere example of the lengths the McCain Campaign has gone, the knee jerk decisions they've made over the last few months in securing the oval office. The judgment and temperament are certainly more apparent now then they were when in July McCain shocked the political world and the media by taking the risk that just may turn out to be the failed political hail Mary pass of recent memory - the selection of Sarah Palin to the Republican presidential ticket. Such a hasty choice was she that before then he had only met her once. Now she, and not his choice of her, will be blamed on his prospective loss in the race to the White House. Read on...
John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.
And it has decided on Sarah Palin.
In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”
Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?
Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”
Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t it his first presidential-level decision?
And if you are a 72-year-old presidential candidate, wouldn’t you expect that your running mate’s fitness for high office would come under a little extra scrutiny? And, therefore, wouldn’t you make your selection with care? (To say nothing about caring about the future of the nation?)
McCain didn’t seem to care that much. McCain admitted recently on national TV that he “didn’t know her well at all” before he chose Palin.
But why not? Why didn’t he get to know her better before he made his choice?
It’s not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn’t announce his choice for a running mate until late August.
Wasn’t that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn’t that enough time for his crackerjack “vetters” to investigate Palin’s strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva?
But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the “enthusiasm gap” between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base.
And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called “columnists.”)
As proof that she is, McCain aides now say Palin is “going rogue” and straying from their script. Wow. What a condemnation. McCain sticks to the script. How well is he doing?
In truth, Palin’s real problem is not her personality or whether she takes orders well. Her real problem is that neither she nor McCain can make a credible case that Palin is ready to assume the presidency should she need to.
And that undercuts McCain’s entire campaign.
This was the deal McCain made with the devil. In exchange for energizing his base by picking Palin, he surrendered his chief selling point: that he was better prepared to run the nation in time of crisis, whether it be economic, an attack by terrorists or, as he has been talking about in recent days, fending off a nuclear war.
“The next president won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain told a crowd in Miami on Wednesday. “I’ve been tested, my friends, I’ve been tested.”
But has Sarah Palin?
I don’t believe running mates win or lose elections, though some believe they can be a drag on the ticket. Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, told me that Dan Quayle cost the ticket 2 to 3 percentage points. But Bush won the election by 7.8 percentage points.
So, in Atwater’s opinion, Bush survived his bad choice by winning the election on his own.
McCain could do the same thing. But his campaign’s bad decisions have not stopped with Sarah Palin. It has made a series of questionable calls, including making Joe the Plumber the embodiment of the campaign.
Are voters really expected to warmly embrace an (unlicensed) plumber who owes back taxes and complains about the possibility of making a quarter million dollars a year?
And did McCain’s aides really believe so little in John McCain’s own likability that they thought Joe the Plumber would be more likable?
Apparently so. Which is sad.
We in the press make too much of running mates and staff and talking points and all the rest of the hubbub that accompanies a campaign.
In the end, it comes down to two candidates slugging it out.
Either McCain pulls off a victory in the last round or he doesn’t.
And if he doesn’t, he has nobody to blame but himself.
John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.
And it has decided on Sarah Palin.
In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”
Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?
Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”
Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t it his first presidential-level decision?
And if you are a 72-year-old presidential candidate, wouldn’t you expect that your running mate’s fitness for high office would come under a little extra scrutiny? And, therefore, wouldn’t you make your selection with care? (To say nothing about caring about the future of the nation?)
McCain didn’t seem to care that much. McCain admitted recently on national TV that he “didn’t know her well at all” before he chose Palin.
But why not? Why didn’t he get to know her better before he made his choice?
It’s not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn’t announce his choice for a running mate until late August.
Wasn’t that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn’t that enough time for his crackerjack “vetters” to investigate Palin’s strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva?
But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the “enthusiasm gap” between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base.
And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called “columnists.”)
As proof that she is, McCain aides now say Palin is “going rogue” and straying from their script. Wow. What a condemnation. McCain sticks to the script. How well is he doing?
In truth, Palin’s real problem is not her personality or whether she takes orders well. Her real problem is that neither she nor McCain can make a credible case that Palin is ready to assume the presidency should she need to.
And that undercuts McCain’s entire campaign.
This was the deal McCain made with the devil. In exchange for energizing his base by picking Palin, he surrendered his chief selling point: that he was better prepared to run the nation in time of crisis, whether it be economic, an attack by terrorists or, as he has been talking about in recent days, fending off a nuclear war.
“The next president won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain told a crowd in Miami on Wednesday. “I’ve been tested, my friends, I’ve been tested.”
But has Sarah Palin?
I don’t believe running mates win or lose elections, though some believe they can be a drag on the ticket. Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, told me that Dan Quayle cost the ticket 2 to 3 percentage points. But Bush won the election by 7.8 percentage points.
So, in Atwater’s opinion, Bush survived his bad choice by winning the election on his own.
McCain could do the same thing. But his campaign’s bad decisions have not stopped with Sarah Palin. It has made a series of questionable calls, including making Joe the Plumber the embodiment of the campaign.
Are voters really expected to warmly embrace an (unlicensed) plumber who owes back taxes and complains about the possibility of making a quarter million dollars a year?
And did McCain’s aides really believe so little in John McCain’s own likability that they thought Joe the Plumber would be more likable?
Apparently so. Which is sad.
We in the press make too much of running mates and staff and talking points and all the rest of the hubbub that accompanies a campaign.
In the end, it comes down to two candidates slugging it out.
Either McCain pulls off a victory in the last round or he doesn’t.
And if he doesn’t, he has nobody to blame but himself.
Meet the smearcasters: The Dirty Dozen that nobamas adore
"The Smear Casters": Promoting hate, spreading fear and Islamophobia
Here's some of the more obnoxious pushers of hate and bigotry. Just like the rabid Zionists who poisoned wells in Palestine when they invaded that state, these modern thugs poison the wells of people's minds.
The Dirty Dozen: Who's who among America's leading Islamophobes
Bigots aren't born, and hate doesn't spring up on its own; as the song says, "You've got to be carefully taught." The following list includes some of the media's leading teachers of anti-Muslim bigotry, serving various roles in the Islamophobic movement. Some write the books that serve as intellectual fodder, others serve as promoters, others play the roles of provocateurs and rabble-rousers. Some ply their bigotry in the media's mainstream, others in the Internet's tributaries, while still others work talk radio's backwaters. Together with uncounted smaller players, they form a network that teaches Americans to see Islam in fearful terms and their Muslim neighbors as suspects.
Michelle Malkin calls Islam "the religion of perpetual outrage" on her two blogs, MichelleMalkin.com (8/1/06, 2/11/08) and Hot Air (2/9/08), though Malkin herself seems remarkably easy to outrage. When celebrity chef Rachael Ray was featured in a 2008 Dunkin' Donuts ad wearing a black-and-white paisley scarf that vaguely resembled an Arab keffiyeh, Malkin created such an uproar over what she imagined to be a "hate couture" symbol of "murderous Palestinian jihad" (MichelleMalkin.com, 5/28/08) that Dunkin' Donuts pulled the ad and issued an apology (Huffington Post, 5/28/08).
In her book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in WWII and the War on Terror, Malkin argued that the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans was explained and justified by what she presented as evidence of subversion; she drew a present-day parallel to alleged subversion amongst Muslim and Arab populations in the U.S. today.The main thesis of the book was condemned as historically incorrect by the Historians' Committee for Fairness (8/31/04), which stated that Malkin's book was "contradicted by several decades of scholarly research, including works by the official historian of the United States Army and an official U.S. government commission."
On her website (8/10/06) Malkin explained why by she no longer uses the term "Islamofascism":
I stopped using the terms "Islamic fascist" and "Islamofascism" a while ago...because they obscure rather than clarify. The views held by the Muslim jihadis who want to destroy us are not marginal views held only by a minority of "Islamic fascists."
If Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer serve the movement by providing intellectual arguments for its rank and file, Michael Savage serves as its angry rabble-rouser. And Savage's reach is remarkable: His radio show Savage Nation reaches a reported 8.25 million listeners per week (Talkers Magazine, Spring/08), the third most popular political talk radio show in the country (trailing only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity).
Savage is notorious for his relentlessly hateful language--he was fired from his MSNBC gig when he labeled a caller a "sodomite" and told him to "get AIDS and die" (FAIR Action Alert, 7/7/03)--and Muslims are often his target. "When I see a woman walking around with a burqa," Savage told his listeners on July 2, 2007, "I see a Nazi…a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children."
Savage sees a monolithic Islamic scheme to take over the U.S.--"We know you want to take over America. We know you wanna push your religion down everyone's throat," (Savage Nation, 7/2/07)--and imagines himself one of the few brave souls standing up against the onslaught (10/29/07): "I'm not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I'm not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm not getting on my all-fours and braying to Mecca.... I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind."
Savage has even called (4/17/06) for killing a hundred million Muslims, saying that people are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, "Oh, there's a billion of them." I said, "So, kill 100 million of them, then there'll be 900 million of them." I mean, would you rather die--would you rather us die than them? I mean, what is it going to take for you people to wake up? Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die? Because you're going to have to make that choice sooner rather than later.
David Horowitz is the Islamophobia movement's premier promoter. Through his "Islamofascism Awareness Week" (see Islamofascism Case Study), which brought leading Muslim-bashers to more than a hundred college campuses in October 2007, and via his website, FrontPage Magazine, which features the movement's leading writers and links to other anti-Muslim sites, Horowitz has made himself the chief publicist of the Islamophobic movement. (Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab writings at Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine have been exposed for inaccuracy by, among other outlets, the New Yorker magazine--4/14/08.)
But more than a promoter, Horowitz is also a key participant. He appears in his own venues as well as in other right-wing arenas, such as the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel.
In one Fox appearance (5/9/08), he linked Muslim student associations on college campuses across the U.S. to the "terrorist Jihad against the West":
The point here is that there are 150 Muslim students' associations, which are coddled by university administrations and treated as though they were ethnic or religious groups, when they are political groups that are arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the fountainhead of the terrorist jihad against the West.
No doubt the students are part of the "between 150 million and 750 million Muslims" Horowitz claims "support a holy war against Christians, Jews and other Muslims" (Columbia Spectator, 10/15/07).
During a speech at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Horowitz accused students wearing green in support of the schools' Muslim Student Association of supporting Hamas, and students wearing Arab Keffiyehs of honoring Yassir Arafat and terrorism (Santa Barbara Independent, 5/15/08).
Glenn Beck claims he doesn't hate Islam, just its "evil" extremists, but during his eponymous CNN Headline News show and the Glenn Beck Program--the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54 (CNN.com)--he has repeatedly associated Islam with Nazism. He drew a parallel between Mein Kampf and "jihad" because, he said, both mean "my struggle" (Glenn Beck, 11/17/06), and he has warned (Glenn Beck, 7/12/06) of "World War III and the impending apocalypse," declaring that "whether you like it or not, this is a religious war. Radical Muslims want to wipe everybody else off the face of the earth."
Beck had made earlier allusions to putting Muslims in concentration camps, predicting in 2006 (Glenn Beck, 9/5/06): "In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West."
Beck has asked Muslim guests to distinguish themselves from Islamic terrorists. "I mean, you're reasonable," he said to Sharida McKenzie, organizer of a Muslim Peace March (Glenn Beck, 10/4/07). "How do we know the difference between you and those that are trying to kill us?"
According to the American Muslim and former Nixon advisor Robert Crane (TheAmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07), Robert Spencer is "the principal leader…in the new academic field of Islam-bashing."
Spencer is the author of several books attacking Islam, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad, Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery, 2006) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery, 2005). He is the publisher of the "notoriously Islamophobic website" Jihad Watch (Guardian, 2/7/06), a subsidiary of the David Horowitz Freedom Center; a columnist for right-wing outlets like Human Events and WorldNetDaily; and a recurring guest on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News show, as well as several Fox News shows.
Though his scholarship has been questioned by Islamic scholars (e.g. Crane, TheAmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07; Louay M. Safi, Media Monitors Network, 12/29/05; Khaleel Mohammed, FrontPage Magazine, 4/18/05), Spencer serves as an intellectual force in the movement, specializing in one-sided interpretations of the Quran. He has written (cited in Crane, TheAmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07) of Osama bin Laden's use of quotes from the Quran:
Of course, the devil can quote scripture for his own purpose, but Osama's use of these and other passages in his messages is consistent (as we shall see) with traditional understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don't interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved them away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition.
Yet Islam does in fact have an interpretive tradition, which Spencer seems bent on ignoring. His New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam has been faulted (Crane, AmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07) for promoting a Puffin English-language version of the Quran that contains no explanatory commentary as superior to versions which include "many thousands of footnotes evaluating 14 centuries of interpretative tradition" and "the wealth of classical Islamic scholarship on both the inner and outer meaning of the Quran and on the hadith that reflect this wisdom."
According to Crane, "Spencer's readers are carefully steered away from all contact with the Islamic interpretative tradition, which equals or exceeds that of any other religion, because any scholarly knowledge about Islam would expose all his extremist interpretations to ridicule."
By selectively ignoring inconvenient Islamic texts and commentaries, Spencer concludes that Islam is innately extremist and violent, and
Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute "Sharia" worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. (Jihad Watch, 3/3/07).
The founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, Pipes has been introduced by the national media as a "scholar" of Islam (e.g., CBS Sunday Morning, 9/10/06; Fox News Special Report, 11/26/02) and a "noted Middle East expert" (CNN Moneyline, 5/8/03) who was "years ahead of the curve in identifying the threat of radical Islam" (CBS Sunday Morning, 9/10/06).
However, Pipes' "expertise" has included erroneously linking the Oklahoma City bombing to Islamic groups (USA Today, 4/20/95), as well as warning (National Review, 11/19/90): "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene.... All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."
A defender of racial profiling of Arab-Americans (CNN American Morning, 11/18/02), Pipes has also warned (American Jewish Congress, 10/21/01) that "the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims" entail "true dangers" for American Jews. As one of the leaders of the "Stop the Madrassa" campaign against a secular Brooklyn-based Arabic language school (see Case Study), he himself has admitted (New York Times.com, 4/28/2008) to misleading the public by using the word "madrassa" to get attention.
His columns are featured in the New York Sun, New York Post and National Review, and have also been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Time. Pipes has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC and PBS, as well as on NPR. Appointed by Bush (2003) as the director of the U.S. Institute of Peace, he has a growing reach on college campuses through his Campus Watch initiative, which encourages students in McCarthyite fashion to monitor their professors' political views and report deviations from the conservative ideology Pipes espouses.
Debbie Schlussel may tout herself to her fan club as the "greatest sexy, blonde and beautiful commentator," but her Islamophobic rhetoric is as ugly as the rest.
Schlussel jumped to the erroneous conclusion (Debbie Does Politics, 4/16/07) that a "Paki" was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting. (She remarked that "even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.") When Sen. Barack Obama's campaign team prevented two Muslim women from sitting behind him during a speech (see Islamophobia Election piece, p. n), Schlussel asserted (Debbie Does Politics, 6/19/08) that they were "Muslim Terror Front-Group Activists" (One of them faced this accusation because she held a position at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Muslim Students Association.)
Claiming a "unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism" (DebbieSchlussel), Schlussel presents America as being in "the war of our lives with Islam," and depicts the American Muslim community as a dangerous fifth column. She has asserted (FrontPage Magazine, 2/10/05) that "Fox's 24...actually tells the truth about Islamic terrorists":
They are here on our shores, pretending to be loyal Americans, and they are plotting to take over our country. With the help of plenty of complicit Muslim-Americans, working for the government and government contractors.
A resident of the Detroit area, which has large Muslim and Arab populations, she wrote immediately after the September 11 attacks (9/17/01): "Don't blame federal agents for Tuesday's lapse in national security. Blame my neighbors--the Arab-American and Muslim leaders who've actively blocked the fight against terrorism for years."
Schlussel (DebbieSchlussel, 11/13/07) has raised national security concerns about Muslims being employed in certain fields, and having access to public resources that would allow them to teach their own children Arabic:
As long as we continue to hire Muslims to be translators and analysts, as long as we continue to give money to Arabic and Muslim schools to teach their kids Arabic instead of non-Muslim, non-Arab Americans, as long as the FBI (and ICE) continues to turn down Sephardic Jews and Maronite Lebanese Christians who speak Arabic and who've applied for jobs in favor of extremist Muslims...the result we will get is...spies, spies and more spies.
http://www.smearcasting.com/index.html
Here's some of the more obnoxious pushers of hate and bigotry. Just like the rabid Zionists who poisoned wells in Palestine when they invaded that state, these modern thugs poison the wells of people's minds.
The Dirty Dozen: Who's who among America's leading Islamophobes
Bigots aren't born, and hate doesn't spring up on its own; as the song says, "You've got to be carefully taught." The following list includes some of the media's leading teachers of anti-Muslim bigotry, serving various roles in the Islamophobic movement. Some write the books that serve as intellectual fodder, others serve as promoters, others play the roles of provocateurs and rabble-rousers. Some ply their bigotry in the media's mainstream, others in the Internet's tributaries, while still others work talk radio's backwaters. Together with uncounted smaller players, they form a network that teaches Americans to see Islam in fearful terms and their Muslim neighbors as suspects.
Michelle Malkin calls Islam "the religion of perpetual outrage" on her two blogs, MichelleMalkin.com (8/1/06, 2/11/08) and Hot Air (2/9/08), though Malkin herself seems remarkably easy to outrage. When celebrity chef Rachael Ray was featured in a 2008 Dunkin' Donuts ad wearing a black-and-white paisley scarf that vaguely resembled an Arab keffiyeh, Malkin created such an uproar over what she imagined to be a "hate couture" symbol of "murderous Palestinian jihad" (MichelleMalkin.com, 5/28/08) that Dunkin' Donuts pulled the ad and issued an apology (Huffington Post, 5/28/08).
In her book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in WWII and the War on Terror, Malkin argued that the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans was explained and justified by what she presented as evidence of subversion; she drew a present-day parallel to alleged subversion amongst Muslim and Arab populations in the U.S. today.The main thesis of the book was condemned as historically incorrect by the Historians' Committee for Fairness (8/31/04), which stated that Malkin's book was "contradicted by several decades of scholarly research, including works by the official historian of the United States Army and an official U.S. government commission."
On her website (8/10/06) Malkin explained why by she no longer uses the term "Islamofascism":
I stopped using the terms "Islamic fascist" and "Islamofascism" a while ago...because they obscure rather than clarify. The views held by the Muslim jihadis who want to destroy us are not marginal views held only by a minority of "Islamic fascists."
If Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer serve the movement by providing intellectual arguments for its rank and file, Michael Savage serves as its angry rabble-rouser. And Savage's reach is remarkable: His radio show Savage Nation reaches a reported 8.25 million listeners per week (Talkers Magazine, Spring/08), the third most popular political talk radio show in the country (trailing only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity).
Savage is notorious for his relentlessly hateful language--he was fired from his MSNBC gig when he labeled a caller a "sodomite" and told him to "get AIDS and die" (FAIR Action Alert, 7/7/03)--and Muslims are often his target. "When I see a woman walking around with a burqa," Savage told his listeners on July 2, 2007, "I see a Nazi…a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children."
Savage sees a monolithic Islamic scheme to take over the U.S.--"We know you want to take over America. We know you wanna push your religion down everyone's throat," (Savage Nation, 7/2/07)--and imagines himself one of the few brave souls standing up against the onslaught (10/29/07): "I'm not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I'm not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm not getting on my all-fours and braying to Mecca.... I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind."
Savage has even called (4/17/06) for killing a hundred million Muslims, saying that people are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, "Oh, there's a billion of them." I said, "So, kill 100 million of them, then there'll be 900 million of them." I mean, would you rather die--would you rather us die than them? I mean, what is it going to take for you people to wake up? Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die? Because you're going to have to make that choice sooner rather than later.
David Horowitz is the Islamophobia movement's premier promoter. Through his "Islamofascism Awareness Week" (see Islamofascism Case Study), which brought leading Muslim-bashers to more than a hundred college campuses in October 2007, and via his website, FrontPage Magazine, which features the movement's leading writers and links to other anti-Muslim sites, Horowitz has made himself the chief publicist of the Islamophobic movement. (Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab writings at Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine have been exposed for inaccuracy by, among other outlets, the New Yorker magazine--4/14/08.)
But more than a promoter, Horowitz is also a key participant. He appears in his own venues as well as in other right-wing arenas, such as the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel.
In one Fox appearance (5/9/08), he linked Muslim student associations on college campuses across the U.S. to the "terrorist Jihad against the West":
The point here is that there are 150 Muslim students' associations, which are coddled by university administrations and treated as though they were ethnic or religious groups, when they are political groups that are arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the fountainhead of the terrorist jihad against the West.
No doubt the students are part of the "between 150 million and 750 million Muslims" Horowitz claims "support a holy war against Christians, Jews and other Muslims" (Columbia Spectator, 10/15/07).
During a speech at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Horowitz accused students wearing green in support of the schools' Muslim Student Association of supporting Hamas, and students wearing Arab Keffiyehs of honoring Yassir Arafat and terrorism (Santa Barbara Independent, 5/15/08).
Glenn Beck claims he doesn't hate Islam, just its "evil" extremists, but during his eponymous CNN Headline News show and the Glenn Beck Program--the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54 (CNN.com)--he has repeatedly associated Islam with Nazism. He drew a parallel between Mein Kampf and "jihad" because, he said, both mean "my struggle" (Glenn Beck, 11/17/06), and he has warned (Glenn Beck, 7/12/06) of "World War III and the impending apocalypse," declaring that "whether you like it or not, this is a religious war. Radical Muslims want to wipe everybody else off the face of the earth."
Beck had made earlier allusions to putting Muslims in concentration camps, predicting in 2006 (Glenn Beck, 9/5/06): "In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West."
Beck has asked Muslim guests to distinguish themselves from Islamic terrorists. "I mean, you're reasonable," he said to Sharida McKenzie, organizer of a Muslim Peace March (Glenn Beck, 10/4/07). "How do we know the difference between you and those that are trying to kill us?"
According to the American Muslim and former Nixon advisor Robert Crane (TheAmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07), Robert Spencer is "the principal leader…in the new academic field of Islam-bashing."
Spencer is the author of several books attacking Islam, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad, Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery, 2006) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery, 2005). He is the publisher of the "notoriously Islamophobic website" Jihad Watch (Guardian, 2/7/06), a subsidiary of the David Horowitz Freedom Center; a columnist for right-wing outlets like Human Events and WorldNetDaily; and a recurring guest on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News show, as well as several Fox News shows.
Though his scholarship has been questioned by Islamic scholars (e.g. Crane, TheAmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07; Louay M. Safi, Media Monitors Network, 12/29/05; Khaleel Mohammed, FrontPage Magazine, 4/18/05), Spencer serves as an intellectual force in the movement, specializing in one-sided interpretations of the Quran. He has written (cited in Crane, TheAmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07) of Osama bin Laden's use of quotes from the Quran:
Of course, the devil can quote scripture for his own purpose, but Osama's use of these and other passages in his messages is consistent (as we shall see) with traditional understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don't interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved them away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition.
Yet Islam does in fact have an interpretive tradition, which Spencer seems bent on ignoring. His New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam has been faulted (Crane, AmericanMuslim.org, 10/20/07) for promoting a Puffin English-language version of the Quran that contains no explanatory commentary as superior to versions which include "many thousands of footnotes evaluating 14 centuries of interpretative tradition" and "the wealth of classical Islamic scholarship on both the inner and outer meaning of the Quran and on the hadith that reflect this wisdom."
According to Crane, "Spencer's readers are carefully steered away from all contact with the Islamic interpretative tradition, which equals or exceeds that of any other religion, because any scholarly knowledge about Islam would expose all his extremist interpretations to ridicule."
By selectively ignoring inconvenient Islamic texts and commentaries, Spencer concludes that Islam is innately extremist and violent, and
Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute "Sharia" worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. (Jihad Watch, 3/3/07).
The founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, Pipes has been introduced by the national media as a "scholar" of Islam (e.g., CBS Sunday Morning, 9/10/06; Fox News Special Report, 11/26/02) and a "noted Middle East expert" (CNN Moneyline, 5/8/03) who was "years ahead of the curve in identifying the threat of radical Islam" (CBS Sunday Morning, 9/10/06).
However, Pipes' "expertise" has included erroneously linking the Oklahoma City bombing to Islamic groups (USA Today, 4/20/95), as well as warning (National Review, 11/19/90): "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene.... All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."
A defender of racial profiling of Arab-Americans (CNN American Morning, 11/18/02), Pipes has also warned (American Jewish Congress, 10/21/01) that "the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims" entail "true dangers" for American Jews. As one of the leaders of the "Stop the Madrassa" campaign against a secular Brooklyn-based Arabic language school (see Case Study), he himself has admitted (New York Times.com, 4/28/2008) to misleading the public by using the word "madrassa" to get attention.
His columns are featured in the New York Sun, New York Post and National Review, and have also been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Time. Pipes has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC and PBS, as well as on NPR. Appointed by Bush (2003) as the director of the U.S. Institute of Peace, he has a growing reach on college campuses through his Campus Watch initiative, which encourages students in McCarthyite fashion to monitor their professors' political views and report deviations from the conservative ideology Pipes espouses.
Debbie Schlussel may tout herself to her fan club as the "greatest sexy, blonde and beautiful commentator," but her Islamophobic rhetoric is as ugly as the rest.
Schlussel jumped to the erroneous conclusion (Debbie Does Politics, 4/16/07) that a "Paki" was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting. (She remarked that "even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.") When Sen. Barack Obama's campaign team prevented two Muslim women from sitting behind him during a speech (see Islamophobia Election piece, p. n), Schlussel asserted (Debbie Does Politics, 6/19/08) that they were "Muslim Terror Front-Group Activists" (One of them faced this accusation because she held a position at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Muslim Students Association.)
Claiming a "unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism" (DebbieSchlussel), Schlussel presents America as being in "the war of our lives with Islam," and depicts the American Muslim community as a dangerous fifth column. She has asserted (FrontPage Magazine, 2/10/05) that "Fox's 24...actually tells the truth about Islamic terrorists":
They are here on our shores, pretending to be loyal Americans, and they are plotting to take over our country. With the help of plenty of complicit Muslim-Americans, working for the government and government contractors.
A resident of the Detroit area, which has large Muslim and Arab populations, she wrote immediately after the September 11 attacks (9/17/01): "Don't blame federal agents for Tuesday's lapse in national security. Blame my neighbors--the Arab-American and Muslim leaders who've actively blocked the fight against terrorism for years."
Schlussel (DebbieSchlussel, 11/13/07) has raised national security concerns about Muslims being employed in certain fields, and having access to public resources that would allow them to teach their own children Arabic:
As long as we continue to hire Muslims to be translators and analysts, as long as we continue to give money to Arabic and Muslim schools to teach their kids Arabic instead of non-Muslim, non-Arab Americans, as long as the FBI (and ICE) continues to turn down Sephardic Jews and Maronite Lebanese Christians who speak Arabic and who've applied for jobs in favor of extremist Muslims...the result we will get is...spies, spies and more spies.
http://www.smearcasting.com/index.html
The train left the station - destination1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Obama Swinging For The Fences
By every metric, the Democrat's presidential campaign looks as if it is headed for the upper deck.
by Charlie Cook
Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008
Election 2008 10/25/08
RCP National Average
Obama 50.4 / McCain 42.5
Obama Spread of +7.9
Favorable Ratings
Obama +22.6 / McCain +9.1
Obama Spread of +13.5
For a political analyst, the normal posture this time of year is much like a baseball umpire's: hunched over, peering carefully as the ball approaches the plate, watching for whether it breaks left or right, whether it's coming in high or low. But, these days, we analysts are more like outfielders, watching in awe as a ball seems on a trajectory to not only clear the fence but very likely land in the upper deck.
By every metric, Barack Obama's presidential campaign appears headed for the upper deck. Polls (both national and state-by-state), organization, money, and momentum are all running strongly in Obama's favor. At this point, one wonders whether Obama's winning margin could be greater than Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's 5.6-point win over President George H.W. Bush in 1992, more than Bush's 7.7-point win over Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, or more than Clinton's 8.5-point win over Sen. Bob Dole in 1996. Even higher on the landslide roster is California Gov. Ronald Reagan's 9.7-point victory over President Carter in 1980 and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's 10.9-point win over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
Certainly, the 2008 presidential contest could reverse direction and result in victory for John McCain. But at this point, he would have to be the beneficiary of something quite dramatic for that to happen.
As this campaign has shifted from a surprise-around-every-corner situation to one more akin to watching concrete set, many observers have begun playing "What if?" If McCain had picked someone other than Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, would he now be higher in the polls? If the senator from Arizona had waged this battle more as John McCain 1.0, the 2000-vintage candidate who was more of a maverick and less of a partisan than the 2008 version, could he have succeeded because he was less tied to his Republican Party and less joined at the hip with President Bush?
These are interesting questions, but they avoid one unmistakable fact: This is a toxic political environment for Republicans. That's why they will probably lose at least seven seats in the Senate and at least 20 in the House. Having former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or former eBay CEO Meg Whitman or even Mother Teresa as McCain's running mate would not have changed that. And, with Bush's job-approval rating in a recent Gallup Poll at 25 percent, my National Journal colleague Ronald Brownstein has noted that McCain would need the support of one-third of all voters who disapprove of Bush's performance in order to reach 50 percent in a general election. With Republican Party identification down from parity four years ago to a 10-point deficit, this race would have been incredibly hard for the Republican nominee no matter what.
Although this contest was very competitive over the summer and could have gone either way before the stock market crashed and the credit markets seized up, arguably it has become virtually unwinnable for McCain. The nation's economic problems feel very personal and very painful for nearly everybody who has looked at their 401(k) or other retirement account statements and seen that a quarter or more of their retirement savings have evaporated. Many voters even held stock in venerable companies, including some of those long considered among the safest around, and have watched in horror as those investments turned almost worthless.
For voters who may end up working many more years than they had planned, or who have lost money set aside to send their children or grandchildren to college or to start or expand a business, it is far easier to blame anyone wearing a red Republican jersey than to dwell on thoughts about which presidential nominee has had more experience on national security issues or has spent more time contemplating the situation in the Middle East.
Of course, this election isn't over. Something could transform it from one focused on an economic recession to one obsessed with national security or some other topic that would give McCain a fighting chance. But with the growing popularity of early voting, that "something" would have to be very big and happen very soon to have the power to change the trajectory of Obama's campaign.
For now, what is so jarring about the tempo of this election is its shift from turbulent to placid, from shocking to inevitable. Perhaps that is a fitting end to this weird campaign year.
By every metric, the Democrat's presidential campaign looks as if it is headed for the upper deck.
by Charlie Cook
Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008
Election 2008 10/25/08
RCP National Average
Obama 50.4 / McCain 42.5
Obama Spread of +7.9
Favorable Ratings
Obama +22.6 / McCain +9.1
Obama Spread of +13.5
For a political analyst, the normal posture this time of year is much like a baseball umpire's: hunched over, peering carefully as the ball approaches the plate, watching for whether it breaks left or right, whether it's coming in high or low. But, these days, we analysts are more like outfielders, watching in awe as a ball seems on a trajectory to not only clear the fence but very likely land in the upper deck.
By every metric, Barack Obama's presidential campaign appears headed for the upper deck. Polls (both national and state-by-state), organization, money, and momentum are all running strongly in Obama's favor. At this point, one wonders whether Obama's winning margin could be greater than Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's 5.6-point win over President George H.W. Bush in 1992, more than Bush's 7.7-point win over Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, or more than Clinton's 8.5-point win over Sen. Bob Dole in 1996. Even higher on the landslide roster is California Gov. Ronald Reagan's 9.7-point victory over President Carter in 1980 and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's 10.9-point win over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
Certainly, the 2008 presidential contest could reverse direction and result in victory for John McCain. But at this point, he would have to be the beneficiary of something quite dramatic for that to happen.
As this campaign has shifted from a surprise-around-every-corner situation to one more akin to watching concrete set, many observers have begun playing "What if?" If McCain had picked someone other than Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, would he now be higher in the polls? If the senator from Arizona had waged this battle more as John McCain 1.0, the 2000-vintage candidate who was more of a maverick and less of a partisan than the 2008 version, could he have succeeded because he was less tied to his Republican Party and less joined at the hip with President Bush?
These are interesting questions, but they avoid one unmistakable fact: This is a toxic political environment for Republicans. That's why they will probably lose at least seven seats in the Senate and at least 20 in the House. Having former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or former eBay CEO Meg Whitman or even Mother Teresa as McCain's running mate would not have changed that. And, with Bush's job-approval rating in a recent Gallup Poll at 25 percent, my National Journal colleague Ronald Brownstein has noted that McCain would need the support of one-third of all voters who disapprove of Bush's performance in order to reach 50 percent in a general election. With Republican Party identification down from parity four years ago to a 10-point deficit, this race would have been incredibly hard for the Republican nominee no matter what.
Although this contest was very competitive over the summer and could have gone either way before the stock market crashed and the credit markets seized up, arguably it has become virtually unwinnable for McCain. The nation's economic problems feel very personal and very painful for nearly everybody who has looked at their 401(k) or other retirement account statements and seen that a quarter or more of their retirement savings have evaporated. Many voters even held stock in venerable companies, including some of those long considered among the safest around, and have watched in horror as those investments turned almost worthless.
For voters who may end up working many more years than they had planned, or who have lost money set aside to send their children or grandchildren to college or to start or expand a business, it is far easier to blame anyone wearing a red Republican jersey than to dwell on thoughts about which presidential nominee has had more experience on national security issues or has spent more time contemplating the situation in the Middle East.
Of course, this election isn't over. Something could transform it from one focused on an economic recession to one obsessed with national security or some other topic that would give McCain a fighting chance. But with the growing popularity of early voting, that "something" would have to be very big and happen very soon to have the power to change the trajectory of Obama's campaign.
For now, what is so jarring about the tempo of this election is its shift from turbulent to placid, from shocking to inevitable. Perhaps that is a fitting end to this weird campaign year.
Obama Hammers McCain - Florida slips away from GOP
Campaign roundup: Obama hammers McCain's 'outdated ideology' on economy
US News & World Report
Wednesday, October 22nd 2008, 11:49 AM
The AP reports Sen. Barack Obama, in Florida yesterday, said Sen. John McCain "is offering only 'wishful thinking, outdated ideology' to an economy in crisis, seeking to capitalize on the main issue that is propelling him forward in the race for the White House." The Politico adds Obama said McCain "'has failed to fully acknowledge' the extent of the economic crisis." The New York Times reports Obama invited "Democratic governors and supportive business leaders to amplify his plan to pass an economic stimulus package to help create jobs across America." The CBS Evening News said the panelists, "all supporters of Obama's, underline his call for temporary tax credits to companies that hire American workers and his commitment to renewable energy because of the potential they hold to create what he says will be five million new jobs."
The Miami Herald, looking more broadly at Obama's swing through the key battleground state, reports that Obama's "two-day sweep across Florida showed he can whip up overflow crowds, orchestrate a massive early-voting blitz and rattle off the state's grim economic statistics to drive home his indictment of the" GOP. The Obama camp's "reach into nearly every corner of Florida also forced" McCain "to hightail it back to a state that once leaned heavily in his favor, with plans to campaign Thursday in Central Florida."
McCain Tries To Capitalize On Biden "Test" Remark
USA Today reports Sen. John McCain yesterday "told a Pennsylvania crowd that he has already been 'personally tested' in the kind of international crisis that Democratic running mate Joe Biden warned Obama would face if Obama is elected." ABC World News adds the McCain camp "believes Joe Biden handed them a real opening this past weekend with comments he made at a fundraiser, Sunday, in Seattle." McCain was shown saying, "We don't want a president who invites testing from the world, at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars." The Los Angeles Times adds that the "charge that Obama lacks experience is one that McCain and the Republicans had used early on in the campaign until the economic meltdown forced a change in priorities."
RELATED: RNC SPENDS THOUSANDS ON DRESSES, MAKUP FOR PALIN FAMILY
McCain Still Fighting For Pennsylvania
The New York Times reports in a front page story that Sen. Barack Obama "has a double-digit lead in recent Pennsylvania polls," but in "these frantic last weeks of the 2008 campaign," Sen. John McCain "has lavished time and money on this now deep-blue state - he made three stops here on Tuesday - as if his political life depended on it." The CBS Evening News says the task "won't be easy" for McCain, as "after a surge in registration Democrats now outnumber Republicans by more than a million." The Wall Street Journal notes, though, that Obama "lost big in the April primary here to Sen. Hillary Clinton, with large numbers of white working-class voters harboring doubts about the Illinois senator." The McCain campaign "has a massive operation enlisting Democrats supporting the GOP ticket to recruit other Democrats in Pennsylvania, targeting voters right down to the precinct level, according to Mike DuHaime, the campaign's political director." ABC World News showed noted analyst Stuart Rothenberg saying, "If you're the McCain campaign, and you think you may lose Colorado, and you're pretty sure you're going to lose Virginia, you're going to need to win a state that went Democratic both in 2000 and 2004. There isn't much to choose from, and so you're left with Pennsylvania."
US News & World Report
Wednesday, October 22nd 2008, 11:49 AM
The AP reports Sen. Barack Obama, in Florida yesterday, said Sen. John McCain "is offering only 'wishful thinking, outdated ideology' to an economy in crisis, seeking to capitalize on the main issue that is propelling him forward in the race for the White House." The Politico adds Obama said McCain "'has failed to fully acknowledge' the extent of the economic crisis." The New York Times reports Obama invited "Democratic governors and supportive business leaders to amplify his plan to pass an economic stimulus package to help create jobs across America." The CBS Evening News said the panelists, "all supporters of Obama's, underline his call for temporary tax credits to companies that hire American workers and his commitment to renewable energy because of the potential they hold to create what he says will be five million new jobs."
The Miami Herald, looking more broadly at Obama's swing through the key battleground state, reports that Obama's "two-day sweep across Florida showed he can whip up overflow crowds, orchestrate a massive early-voting blitz and rattle off the state's grim economic statistics to drive home his indictment of the" GOP. The Obama camp's "reach into nearly every corner of Florida also forced" McCain "to hightail it back to a state that once leaned heavily in his favor, with plans to campaign Thursday in Central Florida."
McCain Tries To Capitalize On Biden "Test" Remark
USA Today reports Sen. John McCain yesterday "told a Pennsylvania crowd that he has already been 'personally tested' in the kind of international crisis that Democratic running mate Joe Biden warned Obama would face if Obama is elected." ABC World News adds the McCain camp "believes Joe Biden handed them a real opening this past weekend with comments he made at a fundraiser, Sunday, in Seattle." McCain was shown saying, "We don't want a president who invites testing from the world, at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars." The Los Angeles Times adds that the "charge that Obama lacks experience is one that McCain and the Republicans had used early on in the campaign until the economic meltdown forced a change in priorities."
RELATED: RNC SPENDS THOUSANDS ON DRESSES, MAKUP FOR PALIN FAMILY
McCain Still Fighting For Pennsylvania
The New York Times reports in a front page story that Sen. Barack Obama "has a double-digit lead in recent Pennsylvania polls," but in "these frantic last weeks of the 2008 campaign," Sen. John McCain "has lavished time and money on this now deep-blue state - he made three stops here on Tuesday - as if his political life depended on it." The CBS Evening News says the task "won't be easy" for McCain, as "after a surge in registration Democrats now outnumber Republicans by more than a million." The Wall Street Journal notes, though, that Obama "lost big in the April primary here to Sen. Hillary Clinton, with large numbers of white working-class voters harboring doubts about the Illinois senator." The McCain campaign "has a massive operation enlisting Democrats supporting the GOP ticket to recruit other Democrats in Pennsylvania, targeting voters right down to the precinct level, according to Mike DuHaime, the campaign's political director." ABC World News showed noted analyst Stuart Rothenberg saying, "If you're the McCain campaign, and you think you may lose Colorado, and you're pretty sure you're going to lose Virginia, you're going to need to win a state that went Democratic both in 2000 and 2004. There isn't much to choose from, and so you're left with Pennsylvania."
John McCain's economic fairy tale
John McCain's economic fairy tale
By David Sirota
Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That's the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to "redistribute the wealth" with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich.
Of course, the Democrat's proposal would merely slow down (not fully halt) the less-talked-about redistribution whereby Washington sends middle-class money up the income ladder. Either McCain doesn't know about this kleptocracy and is the dumbest presidential candidate in history, or he thinks America is too ignorant to recognize theft.
Which is it? I'm guessing the latter, since the evidence is so overwhelming.
In the last eight years, we the little people have been forced to provide more and more of the taxes fueling America's redistribution machine. As the Congressional Budget Office reports, the $715 billion in tax breaks that President Bush gave to those making more than $342,000 a year began dramatically shifting the overall tax burden from the rich onto the rest of us. Meanwhile, because of lobbyist-crafted loopholes, most corporations pay zero federal income taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. The result is what Warren Buffett admits: When counting all taxes (income, payroll, property, etc.), billionaires and Big Business often pay lower effective tax rates than their employees.
The output of the redistribution machine is becoming just as regressive. In the age of Halliburton fraud and ExxonMobil subsidies, our government spends $93 billion a year on corporate welfare. (For comparison, that's roughly three times what it spends on a traditional welfare program like food stamps.) That doesn't include the recent bailout giving $700 billion to the same banks currently doling out $70 billion in executive pay and bonuses — a scheme the Financial Times says "amounts to a large transfer of resources from lower to higher income earners." Thanks to these redistributive policies, the richest 1 percent today owns a larger share of America's wealth than at any time since before the Great Depression.
The Republican standard-bearer likely knows all this, but his fetish is fact-free fairy tales — the kind presenting seven houses, a beer-industry fortune and lockstep conservatism as mavericky Joe-the-Plumber populism. When it comes to economics, McCain is banking on Americans believing similarly inane myths — specifically, those portraying obscene affluence as the commonplace achievement under royalist rule.
During the indigence and socioeconomic immobility of the 19th century's Gilded Age, this meme flourished through Horatio Alger stories. Today, one in five American children live in poverty, and authorities from The Economist magazine to The Wall Street Journal note our country exhibits the least amount of upward economic mobility in the industrialized world — less than even Europe's supposedly sclerotic socialisms. In light of that, sustaining the "American Dream" narrative requires updated rags-to-riches fantasies like "MTV Cribs," HBO's "Entourage" — and now McCain '08.
The Arizona senator's pulp fiction packs an extra-nationalistic punch, however. We are not only expected to support regressive redistribution, but also to believe that stopping such robbery is subversive. McCain implies Obama is backing Soviet conquest by proposing to finance tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers with tax increases on the richest 5 percent. When Joe Biden said it is "patriotic" for millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, Republicans waved the bloody shirt of Reaganism and attacked him — as if Al Capone-style tax evasion is how aristocrats display their true love of country.
The GOP campaign, in short, is a brew of redbaiting and free-market zealotry, a concoction with a poisonous purpose: resurrecting the everyone-for-themselves pathologies that perpetuate the status quo.
And if we revert to selfish form during this economic crisis, then McCain's cynical calculation is correct: America is a confederacy of dunces.
By David Sirota
Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That's the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to "redistribute the wealth" with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich.
Of course, the Democrat's proposal would merely slow down (not fully halt) the less-talked-about redistribution whereby Washington sends middle-class money up the income ladder. Either McCain doesn't know about this kleptocracy and is the dumbest presidential candidate in history, or he thinks America is too ignorant to recognize theft.
Which is it? I'm guessing the latter, since the evidence is so overwhelming.
In the last eight years, we the little people have been forced to provide more and more of the taxes fueling America's redistribution machine. As the Congressional Budget Office reports, the $715 billion in tax breaks that President Bush gave to those making more than $342,000 a year began dramatically shifting the overall tax burden from the rich onto the rest of us. Meanwhile, because of lobbyist-crafted loopholes, most corporations pay zero federal income taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. The result is what Warren Buffett admits: When counting all taxes (income, payroll, property, etc.), billionaires and Big Business often pay lower effective tax rates than their employees.
The output of the redistribution machine is becoming just as regressive. In the age of Halliburton fraud and ExxonMobil subsidies, our government spends $93 billion a year on corporate welfare. (For comparison, that's roughly three times what it spends on a traditional welfare program like food stamps.) That doesn't include the recent bailout giving $700 billion to the same banks currently doling out $70 billion in executive pay and bonuses — a scheme the Financial Times says "amounts to a large transfer of resources from lower to higher income earners." Thanks to these redistributive policies, the richest 1 percent today owns a larger share of America's wealth than at any time since before the Great Depression.
The Republican standard-bearer likely knows all this, but his fetish is fact-free fairy tales — the kind presenting seven houses, a beer-industry fortune and lockstep conservatism as mavericky Joe-the-Plumber populism. When it comes to economics, McCain is banking on Americans believing similarly inane myths — specifically, those portraying obscene affluence as the commonplace achievement under royalist rule.
During the indigence and socioeconomic immobility of the 19th century's Gilded Age, this meme flourished through Horatio Alger stories. Today, one in five American children live in poverty, and authorities from The Economist magazine to The Wall Street Journal note our country exhibits the least amount of upward economic mobility in the industrialized world — less than even Europe's supposedly sclerotic socialisms. In light of that, sustaining the "American Dream" narrative requires updated rags-to-riches fantasies like "MTV Cribs," HBO's "Entourage" — and now McCain '08.
The Arizona senator's pulp fiction packs an extra-nationalistic punch, however. We are not only expected to support regressive redistribution, but also to believe that stopping such robbery is subversive. McCain implies Obama is backing Soviet conquest by proposing to finance tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers with tax increases on the richest 5 percent. When Joe Biden said it is "patriotic" for millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, Republicans waved the bloody shirt of Reaganism and attacked him — as if Al Capone-style tax evasion is how aristocrats display their true love of country.
The GOP campaign, in short, is a brew of redbaiting and free-market zealotry, a concoction with a poisonous purpose: resurrecting the everyone-for-themselves pathologies that perpetuate the status quo.
And if we revert to selfish form during this economic crisis, then McCain's cynical calculation is correct: America is a confederacy of dunces.
