Race

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 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 ?

Comment of The Weekend

'08/12 Election, Age, bigotry, Comment of the Day, Race, US politics, Wingnuts, Women
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Has to be the story about the assholery of John McCain by Mary-Kay Gamel that’s doing the internet rounds. [Though I don’t have to remind regular blog readers this, because it is doing the rounds, take it with a big pinch of salt.]:

On the question of McCain’s often abusive personality and inability to control either his sense of entitlement or his temper, a friend sent me the below-cited e-mail text from a professor in California. Unlike the anonymously sourced rubbish circulated by the Republicans to attack Obama, this eyewitness account of a vacation from hell with John McCain has the ring of credibility to it. Here it is.

MY HOLIDAY WITH JOHN McCAIN

It was just before John McCain’s last run at the presidential nomination in 2000 that my husband and I vacationed in Turtle Island in Fiji with John McCain, Cindy, and their children, including Bridget (their adopted Bangladeshi child).

It was not our intention, but it was our misfortune to be in close quarters with John McCain for almost a week, since Turtle Island has a small number of bungalows and their focus on communal meals force all vacationers who are there at the same time to get to know each other intimately.

McCain arrived at our first group meal and started reading quotes from a pile of William Faulkner boo ks with a forest of Post-Its sticking out of them. As an English Literature major myself, my first thought was “if he likes this so much, why hasn’t he memorized any of this yet?” I soon realized that McCain actually thought we had come on vacation to be a volunteer audience for his “readings” which then became a regular part of each meal. Out of politeness, none of the vacationers initially protested at this intrusion into their blissful holiday, but people’s buttons definitely got pushed as the readings continued day after day.

Unfortunately this was not his only contribution to our mealtime entertainment. He waxed on during one meal about how Indo-Chine women had the best figures and that our American corn-fed women just couldn’t meet up to this standard. He also made it a point that all of us should stop Cindy from having dessert as her weight was too high and made a few comments to Amy, the 25 year old wife of the honeymooning couple from Nebraska that she should eat less as she needed to lose weight.

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This Is How They Do It

'08/12 Election, Bloody Lawyers, Democratic (in)action, Economy, Election Skullduggery, Poverty, Race, Sensible Liberals, US politics
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Lost everything in the recession? Foreclosed? Homeless? Well, now you’ve lost your vote too – Republican ratfuckery in Michigan, from the Michigan Messenger via the estimable Attaturk:

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Mich., a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the coming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed…

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told the Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

Now, why ever might they want to do that?

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.

There you go.

But of course being Republicans there’s always a particularly vicious and venal little twist:

…the McCain campaign’s Michigan headquarters is located in the office buildiing of Trott & Trott, a law firm that specialized in foreclosures, whose founder is a major Republican fund-raiser.

The dirty tricks have barely begun.

Colour Me Shocked – Yet Hardly Surprised

'08/12 Election, bigotry, Election Skullduggery, Merkins..., Race, Wingnuts, Women
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If what’s being reported is true, Sarah Palin is apparently a vicious racist as well as the class cow. But then, did I really ever think she’d be anything else?

From the LA Progressive [Via The Poor Man] comes this heartwarming story of everyday gubernatorial bigotry:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Read whole thing

Well, there it is, racism in the raw out and on the table. Wherever do the campaigns go from here?

UPDATE:

An Alaskan anti-Palinist casts doubt on the allegations.

Read both and make your own mind up.