LoyaltyisaCurse

Really? a Riot? wow AZ...

We can have a decent conversation if we talk about the Cardinals...

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Goin' "Double Maverick!"

AzCards21

I am corrected, let's stick to the Cards. Otherwise I am just some racist asshole with an unfounded opinion on what could happen.


Cards 24
pukes 17

LoyaltyisaCurse

I didnt call you a racist, I just pointed out what your post seems to assert...

I would love for Cards to win, but the avg. score between the Boys and the Cards is Pukes: 26 Cards: 9.

That said, this sunday:

Cards 34
Jerks: 35

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Goin' "Double Maverick!"

ajcardfan

This country is slowly going insane.

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We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.

T.H. Huxley

DWKB

Well here is a column from The Atlantic that brings up an interesting point. I wasn't alive during the civil rights movement and have to take Coates word on the usage of Communism to mask the racial undertones. If true, it does show great parallelisms with today's Muslim terrorists.

LoyaltyisaCurse

McCain, Media & Meltdown: A Witches' Brew for Election Violence

As previously described, John McCain's body language shows he is a hater. ("McCain's Body Language: He is a Hater", October 8, 2008). Now, his rhetoric has caught up to his body language. He has been baiting his audiences to view Barack Obama as dangerous, and representative of a "foreign" (read: sinister) element.

The spontaneous reactions of his audience--from "kill him", "off with his head", to "he's a terrorist"--show that the effect of such language is to remove the veneer of civility that keeps our country together and enables us to settle our differences through the rule of law and electoral processes. When people leave a McCain rally telling reporters that Obama is a terrorist because "it's in his blood", the potential for violence is real.

Sure, McCain has every right to question Obama's policies, his past statements and past votes, and even his past associations to the extent they are truly relevant and not a manufactroversy (i.e., a manufactured controversy).

How those questions are put determines whether they are inflammatory, whether they are the equivalent of "yelling fire in a crowded theatre".

When McCain says, "who is Barack Obama?", it is clear that he is not just questioning his policies, he is not too subtly suggesting that Obama is "not one of us".

Evolution has hardwired our brains to make instant judgments about whether a situation is safe or dangerous, part of me or "other". With the exceptions of food and sex, the default mode is defensive, and then the brain rationalizes that emotional choice. The more the McCain campaign feeds the emotional triggers, the more people will default to the defensive perspective that Obama is "other".

We are also primarily a visual species (more than auditory, touch or smell) Hence, to convey the John Kerry was really "French" (which he is not), they focused on his hair, and windsurfing (French is elite, just think of wines). For Barack, his race and his origin, as reflected in his middle name, is even more effective. For Obama to be perceived as "one of us", he had first to overcome the initial "us"/"other" response based upon his skin color.

As indicated in "Obama's Millennials--83 Million Strong," (June 30,2008), for voters born after 1980, who grew up in an integrated society, differences in skin color do not register as "other". By contrast, even the most progressive boomers, who may have grown up in integrated schools, but who were in the frying pan of the controversy, do not have the same easy "us" response to differences in race. Thus, McCain's attempts to trigger emotional responses to the default position of defense against Obama as other, will only work with people born prior to 1980, i.e., the boomers and the elderly.

The McCain campaign's strategy is deliberate, scientific, vicious, disgraceful and, most worryingly, dangerous.

This would be bad, and inflammatory enough on it own, but when engrafted upon a very angry electorate, people whose good works have been lost in a flash of greed and mismanagement, and who feel powerless, it is like shouting fire in a crowded theatre. A person who truly "puts country first", as McCain claims to be, would err on the side of caution. Indeed, he ought affirmatively to condemn any implication that Barack Obama is strange or has any hidden agenda. That does not stop McCain from strongly disagreeing with Obama.

In neurological terms, an honorable McCain, who puts country first, would specifically seek to "avoid the amygdala", dampening down the reptilian responses, and appeal to peoples' logic. He would do so even if there were not this underlying fuse just awaiting a signal to be lit, but especially since there clearly is a growing incendiary feeling among the electorate.
Here is what McCain said about Obama just 10 weeks ago:

"Let me begin with a few words about my opponent. Don't tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways. He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. His success should make Americans, all Americans, proud. Of course, I would prefer his success not continue quite as long as he hopes. But it makes me proud to know the country I've loved and served all my life is still a work in progress, and always improving. Senator Obama talks about making history, and he's made quite a bit of it already. And the way was prepared by this venerable organization and others like it. A few years before the NAACP was founded, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party. Whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing -- for himself and for his country -- and I thank him for it." (McCain speech to NAACP, July 10, 2008).

As if McCain's campaign itself were not bad enough, the mainstream media is egging him on. I have yet to hear anyone say, "whoa!", "yes, McCain may be behind, but his only chance is to convince people of some major policy superiority, or even that he himself (McCain) is more trustworthy than Obama on matters that count for the electorate". Nor have any of the networks just refused to cover allegations no matter how bogus, and no matter how bogus they know them to be.

It seems to go without question to them that, if McCain is behind, then of course he should be manufacturing controversies, and doing everything he can to make people fear Obama at a gut level, i.e., that it is perfectly acceptable for him to engage in all-out, untruthful, character assassination, sowing fear and doubt.

There is one bright light--Campbell Brown. She has realized that parity does not mean equal time when one side is speaking the truth and the other is lying, or when one side is appealing to their views of the issues and the other is engaging in false character assassination. Chris Matthews notes the problem, but gives "equal time" to people like Pat Buchanan, who claim it is "payback time" for the Goldwater campaign (!)--were people suggesting Goldwater's Jewish background made him weird or unreliable, or just that he himself promoted dangerous views?--and then laughs, as if incitement to violence is a big joke. I do not think John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luthur King, Jr., would get Pat's punchline.

If Obama is going to raise taxes on the top bracket, and McCain says that will reduce jobs, that's a great discussion to have on the basis of "equal time". [Obama can ask McCain to explain the 23M jobs created after raising taxes on the top bracket during the recession in 1993]. But, if Obama says he is going to raise taxes on the top bracket, and McCain says that Obama had a coffee at the home of a college professor who 40 years ago was a radical, then that's not a discussion that deserves any time just because that is what the McCain campaign has decided to make its message of the day.

During the Watergate hearings, the not-yet jailed Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell excused the crimes he and others committed against the political process and against the Constitution in the 1972 election with these words: "All we were trying to do is re-elect the President". Earlier he had explained: "In my mind, the reelection of Richard Nixon, compared to what was on the other side, was so important that I put it in exactly that context."

Although Mitchell became the nation's first Attorney General to go to jail, it appears as if the anything-goes to win psychology that has permeated Wall Street has also captured the media. There are no more standards, except the Wall Street standards of what will attract the most viewers, and thus the greatest profits. Whatever the campaigns, or the Drudge Report, serves up, they buy. It is "news" just because a campaign said it. One party can arrogate to itself the judgment that the other side is so unacceptable that law-breaking, or inciting-to-violence is justified to defeat them.

As this is being written, I am told that McCain has dialed it back, stating that Obama is not someone to be afraid of if he is elected President.

Whether that is a poll-driven message or a pang of conscience, it may help..a bit. Let us now see if he takes down his inflammatory ads, publicly talks down those at his rallies who incite to violence, says "no" when he is being egged on by an enthusiastic supporter, and begins, finally, to run the respectful campaign he claimed he wanted.

John McCain had to choose between losing this election or dishonor.

He chose dishonor.

He shall lose.

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Goin' "Double Maverick!"

LoyaltyisaCurse

Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama



By FRANK RICH
Published: October 11, 2008
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.


Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.

Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.

It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.

From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second:

Yes.

McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.

There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.

Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.

To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.

But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.

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Goin' "Double Maverick!"

Jughead

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nidan

You will yes but what about the hate filled mob McCain and Palin are stirring up ?

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DogTv

clif

I look at this as what I perceive is a different standpoint. I see the point being made by LIAC and a few others, but I choose not to accept it. I personally want to give people more credit than that. I don't want to pigeon hole people's thoughts. I don't like to deal in fear. (see commentary below on fear) Everything thing being said and not said in this campaign is being magnified, right or wrong, because race is 1 factor in this election. Some might say it is THE factor. I doubt that it is for most Americans I think most people want to accept candidates on their words and actions rather than rhetoric or prejudices.

I would strongly suggest that had Obama been white the use of the word "terrorist" or others would not have been given as much play as it has.

The old saying of "If you point your finger at someone, there will be three more pointing back at you" rings true here for me. Don't be so quick to judge how someone else will react, but think about how you will react should they react in a certain manner. For example, I'm not going to get bent out of shape if some ignorant racist feels Obama should be killed. I am not going to let that cloud my judgment and riot. That is the very thing that said racist would expect me to do.

I personally want to give myself more credit than that.

The one thing I have come to notice is that this world and in particular this country thrives on fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of not knowing the truth. I see it on both sides. Fear that McCain and Palin are not rejecting hateful rhetoric, fear that Obama is a terrorist, fear that a riot will occurr if Obama is elected, fear that a riot will occur if Obama is NOT elected.

I for one choose to reject fear from all directions. If people want to believe that Obama is a terrorist... God bless 'em. I personally believe the vast majority of people who have any intelligence and self discipline will not let the actions of others sway them to retaliate. Therefore I couldn't care less what McCain or Palin say or don't say at this point since I evaluate the truth and compare it to my own beliefs.

UncleChris

I would suggest that if Obama's name were Jones and he had two Caucasian, Christian parents, he wouldn't be called a terrorist.

And although I enjoyed your post and agree with much of it philosophically, the reality of it is that if you shout "FIRE" in a crowded theater when, in fact, there is no fire, you have moral, ethical and legal culpability in doing so. That's a direct parallel to what McCain/Palin are doing; firing up whackos in the crowd with innuendo and in some cases directly. If one of these gelatinous chunks of doody with legs were to take a shot at Obama due to being fired up by McPalin, I hold them at least partially responsible.

What is happening is unconscionable and way beyond "politics as usual."

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Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather. ....

clif

I agree that in my own mind I would at least hold McCain and Palin accountable for not rejecting the innuendo, but I think where you and I disagree is as to what level or percentage of accountability I would hold them responsible. In my mind I think it would be a very small percentage. I more on the level of personal responsibility, or holding myself for what I think rather than worrying what others will think of what McCain is doing.

UncleChris

Understood, sir!

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Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather. ....

Louis

LIAC I posted a similar worry in another thread I started about McCain's ad attempting t link Obama to terrorism.

A new ad actuall says "Obama worked with a domestic terrorist". That's the line before it moves on. Worked how? Helped with the bombings? Helped the terrorist terrorize?

McCain and Co have incited and invited hatred into their rallies.

It doesn't matter that we knew ahead of time what their move was going to be or that in years past others were painted negatively as well.

The point is people are now yelling to kill Obama, cut his head off, accusing him of treason, saying in one of the townhalls that they are afraid of him as President (not because of policy), you have old women saying he's an Arab, and more importanly it's now going beyond McCain rallies. In the South a debate between the republican congressman and the democrat trying to take his seat had a woman yelling to bomb Obama.

It's reached a point so wrong that McCain is forced to speak up on behalf of Obama at McCain's own rallies. McCain gets booed by his own "supporters".

wallyburger