’08/12 Election

John McCain’s Scarlet Letter

'08/12 Election, Culture, Election Skullduggery, Race, US politics
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John McCain thinks ‘Arab’ is an insult…

I really do fail to see how McCain can still insist he’s not a racist demagogue when he keeps doing and saying racist demagoguey things. From Politico:

Crowd boos after McCain says Obama not ‘an Arab’By JONATHAN MARTIN & AMIE PARNES | 10/10/08 9:19 PM EDT

Fearing the raw and at times angry emotions of his supporters may damage his campaign, John McCain on Friday urged them to tone down their increasingly personal denunciations of Barack Obama, including one woman who said she had heard that the Democrat was “an Arab.”

Each time he tried to cool the crowd, he was rewarded with a round of boos.

“I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States,” McCain told a supporter at a town hall meeting in Minnesota who said he was “scared” of the prospect of an Obama presidency and of who the Democrat would appoint to the Supreme Court.

“Come on, John!” one audience member yelled out as the Republicans crowd expressed their dismay at their nominee. Others yelled “liar,” and “terrorist,” referring to Barack Obama.

McCain passed his wireless microphone to one woman who said, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not he’s not uh—he’s an Arab. He’s not—” before McCain retook the microphone and replied:

“No, ma’am,” the Arizona senator assured. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”

More…

What he should have added was “…not that there’s anything wrong with that”. But he didn’t.

And since when has the the description ‘Arab’ been an accusation? Surely McCain must think there’s something wrong with being an Arab in the first place if he thinks it’s a deadly insult.

That won’t go down well with a number of his own party – or the Saudis… or the Iraqis or the Palestinians or the Kuwaitis, or anyone else for that matter. This isn’t just McCain demonstrating his own nasty brand of petty racism against Obama; this kind of ingrained bigotry has international, strategic implications.

Not only has this presidential candidate insulted a whole 1.2 million-strong ethnic group at home and untold millions abroad, by showing that he sees the mere description ‘Arab’ as a deadly insult – but by also clearly implying that Arabs are not decent family men and citizens, he’s just killed any possibility of a future McCain presidential middle-east peace deal. People tend not to want to negotiate with someone who demonstrates such open contempt for them.

But then again, did McCain ever want a middle-east peace deal in the first place? His selection of the dominionist and end-times believer and rabble rouser Sarah Palin as running mate emphatically says not (and also raises the spectre of a future religiously-motivated nuclear war).

So there’s a lot more to McCain’s public acts of petty racism and intolerance than is initially apparent. If he’s elected and his administration’s acts are motivated by that same ingrained bigotry, then McCain’s scarlet ‘a’ could stand for ‘apocalypse’.

The Last Vicious Gasp Of A Failed Political Generation

'08/12 Election, US politics
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The moment McCain lost the election for sure:

>

Not ‘him’, or ‘my colleague’ or ‘my opponent’ or ‘Senator Obama’ – no he says ‘that one’, as though Obama were a wardrobe or a chair.

Urgh. Look at that disgusting, vicious old revenant blinking madly and doddering all over the stage, the last discredited remnant of a failed political generation still fighting the racially motivated conflicts of the ‘fifties and ‘sixties. He can’t even recognise a non-white person as a human being or look him in the eye as an equal, let alone look up to him as a superior.

Does anyone still believe that McCain, with his arrogance and obvious contempt for humanity, would hesitate to press the big red button and incinerate us all, if only out of bigoted pique and offended vanity?

UPDATE:

In case you thought the above was an isolated incident.

[Clip via .au expat blog G’day, G’day]

The Election Is Well And Truly Godwinated

'08/12 Election, Election Skullduggery, Race, US politics, Wingnuts
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Why are Palin and McCain attempting to exclude independent reporters from their rallies? You’d think they’d want attention, but no:

Press kept under a watchful eye

CLEARWATER — Constantly under the watchful eyes of security, the media wasn’t permitted to wander around inside Coachman Park to talk to Sarah Palin supporters. When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?” and turn the person around.

When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past, negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility Monday.
— Times staff writer Eileen Schulte

Why don’t they want attention at the rallies (other than to hide the pisspoor attendance at Palin’s)? Could they be keeping reporters away to hide the fact that they are rousing their supporters to violence?

“Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin said.

“Boooo!” said the crowd.

“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'” she continued.

“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

To which it’s been reported Palin’s response was a faint smile; not even a murmur of protest. McCain did likewise when one of his audience screamed ‘terrorist’ in response to McCain’s rhetorical question. “Who is the real Barack Obama?”

It’s clear both are singing from the same extreme-right hymn sheet.

This gloves off, Klan regalia on strategy is the biggest McCain campaign gamble of all. They’re betting that one of the less inhibited flying buttmonkeys of wingnuttia might hear the message – outsider, dangerous, not one of us – and take a fatal shot at Obama. Should that happen, McCain himself would have clean hands.

He must know by now he can’t beat Obama any other way; it’s either eliminate the opponent, or a massive interference with the ballot.

So is he resorting to inciting assassination by silent acquiescence? McCain has a sociopathic desire to win at all costs and doesn’t care how he does it. He’ll do whatever it takes, it’s said. Does that include colluding in the removal of his opponent from the race ?