Right-Wing Media

FOX Declares McCain the Loser

Bob Fertik — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:55:48 -0400

Notice something strange next to "McCain" in the text ("chyron") below? Yes, that's a D for Democrat. All FOX-ologists know that chyron "errors" are never accidental. Instead, they are meant to send a message from Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.

Their messages have two intended audiences: the viewers who see the chyrons, and the politicians who are in them.

By putting a (D) next to McCain, the message for viewers is: this guy you see who's done something bad is a Democrat. Don't argue with us: only Democrats do bad things, so whenever you see someone doing something bad, it's a Democrat.

And the message for the politician is: you're a loser! They mean it both in the narrower sense (you're going to lose the election) and in the broader sense (you suck). They also mean it in the "actionable" sense - we hate your guts and we're running you out of our party.

Here's a previous example of when a Republican did something really bad.

To add insult to injury, McCain's own party has "disappeared" him from their homepage, while Obama is the star of his party's website.

REWARD: $100 For Mickey Mouse Votes

Bob Fertik — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:40:08 -0400

As every FOX viewer knows, FOX News has spent weeks smearing ACORN for registering 1.3 million low- and moderate-income voters.

FOX insists ACORN is deliberately filing bogus voter registrations to allow ineligible voters to vote. ACORN admits a small number of employees have filed bogus registrations to keep their jobs, but ACORN also insists it reviews every registration and flags bogus ones for election officials so they don't get added to the voter rolls. ACORN also encourages law enforcement to prosecute employees who commit such fraud. (Watch Bertha Lewis respond.)

Republicans have attacked ACORN for non-existent voter fraud since 2004. This charge was investigated by Tova Wang of the Brennan Center at the request of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and found baseless; the Republican-controlled EAC suppressed the report for two years.

As Josh Marshall reminds us, this scam was at the heart of the U.S. attorney scandal:

The firings were one thing. But the story behind the firings, what led to them, is key to understanding the current 'vote fraud' scam being played by the Republicans and the media outlets that are going along with the scam.

Remember, the US Attorneys in question were all either Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. In every case, they were appointed by George W. Bush. In most of the cases their firing was tied to 'vote fraud' claims stemming from the 2004 election.

The pattern was very consistent. During the final weeks of the 2004 campaign Republican partisans started pressing claims of widespread voter fraud. In many, though not all cases, the examples they pointed to were not even allegations of voter fraud, but allegations of voter registration fraud: examples of people being registered more than once, non-existent people being registered, etc.

The Republicans making these claims argued that these problems with registration cards were opening the coming election up to widespread vote fraud. Logically, this makes no sense. And, more importantly, all evidence shows this has never happened, certainly not in any widespread sense. Every person who claims otherwise is either ignorant or speaking in bad faith.

Democrats.com wants to stop all election fraud. So here's our challenge: if you (a) find "Mickey Mouse" or other fictional characters who get past the screeners and end up on voter rolls, and (b) prove that they were able to cast a vote, we will pay you $100 - and forward your evidence of voter fraud to local authorities for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

Post your findings below and we will investigate them. If you find a rat (or a mouse), you'll get some cheese!

Update 1: Investigative reporter Greg Palast has researched election fraud more thoroughly than anyone in the Corporate Media, and here's what he told Buzzflash about massive voter disenfranchisement by corrupt election officials:

- In the swing state of Colorado, we found that the Republican Secretary of State wiped out 19.4% - one in five - voter names in an unnoticed mass purge.

- In swing-state New Mexico, in the February caucus, one in nine Democrats found their names missing from the voter rolls supplied by the State. The elections supervisor of San Miguel County - whose own name was missing from the rolls - has no confidence the state contractors will fix it. Our statistical analysis showed there was a direct relationship between your name and your race and income. The poor and the dark were disappeared.

- In Indiana, you heard about 10 nuns who lost their vote because their ID - drivers' licenses - had expired (they were all over eighty). But what about the others? We've calculated that 143,000 others were turned away - disproportionately Blacks and new voters.

And what about voting fraud by corrupt voters, which is the centerpiece of the ACORN smear campaign?

there are only about SIX voters found guilty of federal voting fraud in a year. SiX! Out of 178 million registered voters.

So the GOP (and Fox and CNN) are running stories about ACORN signing up zillions of illegal voters. Yep, there are a handful of phony names - but 'Mary Poppins' has never shown up to vote.

However, the Republican cry of 'Vote Fraud!' has become the cover for purges and challenges to legal voters by the millions.

I even tracked down and filmed some of these so-called fraudulent voters handed me from a GOP list. Every one was a legal voter.

Update 2: Brad Friedman explains how ACORN itself is exposing all of its "crimes":

Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

Update 3: Jane Hamsher is utterly (and rightly) baffled by ACORN's Mickey Mouse Plan for World Domination:

The St. Petersberg Times today says that "Mickey Mouse tried to register to vote in Florida this summer. Orange County elections officials rejected his application, which was stamped with the logo of the nonprofit group ACORN."

If that was the plan, don't you think they'd pick a name that was, oh I don't know, a bit less likely to raise red flags than "Mickey Mouse?" Many of the registration forms flagged by ACORN were incomplete. If their intention was to stuff the ballot box on election day, don't you think they'd do a better job of dummying them up?...

conservatives rarely understand how things work. They don't take the time and don't have the minds. We're thus treated to a lot of smoldering innuendo, a bunch of supposedly damning facts, but what they think the ultimate Acorn conspiracy is never really comes together into a concrete plan. We're all just supposed to nod knowingly, assume that "where there's smoke there's fire," and repeat John McCain's talking points until told to do otherwise.

Update 4: dday explains what actual election fraud looks like:

In 2002, Republican operatives in New Hampshire jammed the phone lines of the state Democratic Party on Election Day while they were attempting to organize get-out-the-vote efforts. This impacted thousands of volunteers and party operatives who were trying to ensure their voters turned out to elect Jeanne Shaheen over Sen. John Sununu. Sununu ended up winning by a few percentage points*, close to the margin expected from a successful ground game. Allen Raymond, one of the architects of the scheme, went to jail for it and wrote a tell-all book called How To Rig An Election. Raymond acknowledged that there were dozens of phone calls between his team and Ken Mehlman in the White House leading up to Election Day. And today, James Tobin, another operative, was indicted for lying to the FBI about the operation.

That would fall under the category of ACTUAL election fraud. It was targeted at a specific race, and it sought to impact thousands of potential voters at once by disabling Democratic GOTV efforts in a form of voter suppression. Contrast this with registering one voter named "Mickey Mouse" at a time, telling election officials about it, and then hoping it slips past them and that someone in a mouse suit shows up to the ballot box on Election Day.

But when looking at the reporting about these kinds of incidents, the very real election fraud isn't mentioned, and examples of the system working, where election monitors catch bad registrations ahead of time and nobody fraudulent actually votes, becomes the scandal of the century. It's enough to make you wonder if some outside force is driving the discussion other than the very independent media.

I eagerly anticipate the first mention of Tobin's indictment on cable news.

Update 5: PFAW president Kathryn Kolbert reports on today's GOP press conference with former Senators John Danforth (who proudly gave us Clarence Thomas) and Warren Rudman (who famously opposed budget deficits until fellow Republican Ronald Reagan moved into the White House):

today’s press conference was just the latest effort by the GOP to justify voter suppression under the guise of so-called election integrity. As in the past, Republicans have latched onto a few colorful but insignificant examples – e.g. a man who was registered to vote 73 times and a 7-year-old child who was registered – to advocate for draconian enforcement measures that disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, typically minority and low-income voters.

But there are already safeguards in place that prevent people who submit fraudulent voter registrations from actually voting. In fact, there is no evidence of significant voter fraud of any variety anywhere in the nation. At the urging of the GOP, the Justice Department sought evidence of fraud but came up empty-handed.

However, there is evidence for significant vote suppression and disenfranchisement. As the New York Times reported last week: “Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law.” This is what Danforth and Rudman would have talked about today if they really cared about election integrity.

They also would have talked about the various barriers to voting that members of their party have erected, like rejecting voter registration forms not printed on 80-pound bond paper or requiring names on voter registration forms to exactly match records in existing databases (e.g. Mike R. Neuman would be rejected if listed elsewhere as Michael R. Neuman). Or how about the strict voter ID laws put in place by Republicans? They seem reasonable enough, until you consider that millions of voting-age Americans (perhaps as high as 10%) do not have driver’s licenses.

The logic behind the GOP’s efforts is as simple as it is undemocratic: the fewer people who vote, the better off Republicans candidates will be.

Lipstickgate: Anatomy of a Rightwing Sh*tstorm

Bob Fertik — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:56:16 -0400

Update 1: ROTFL! A female McCain advisor used the joke as the title of her book!

Yesterday Barack Obama mocked John McCain's message of change:

"You know, you can put lipstick on a pig," Obama said, "but it's still a pig."

The McCain campaign pounced on that old joke to create a rightwing sh*tstorm, accusing Obama of a sexist attack on Sarah Palin. Huh???

How the hell did that non-sequitur get turned into a sh*tstorm? Glenn Greenwald maps it out.

1. Jake Tapper of ABC News pulls sh*t out of his ass (how the hell does he know what any one person is thinking, let alone any group of people???)

The crowd rose and applauded, some of them no doubt thinking he may have been alluding to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's ad lib during her vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last week, "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

2. Matt Drudge hypes the imagined insult:

3. Rightwing hosts (Sean Hannity) and bloggers foam at the mouth.

4. Rightwing bloggers make it the "most discussed story on the internet"

5. MSNBC puts it on its front page and Morning Joe spews his coffee over it:

Joe Scarborough helpfully explains to Chris Matthews why he repeats every Republican lie:

MATTHEWS: I want to ask you, what will we talk about two days from now?

SCARBOROUGH: Whatever the McCain campaign wants us to talk about, because the McCain campaign is assertive.

Which means you are passive and eat whatever sh*t Republicans feed you.

McCain/Palin Campaign Relies on Lazy Thinking and Prejudice to Win

dlindorff — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:17:45 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I got an urgent email from an uncle of mine yesterday evening. A
sweet man, retired career military and very religious, he was genuinely
worried about an email he had received purporting to convey an article
said to have been written by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and
published on June 29, 2008 alleging that much of the Obama campaign's
"small donations" over the Internet had actually come from several Arab
sources overseas.

Now I could see before reading two paragraphs of the alleged column
he forwarded to me that it was not Dowd's acerbic and witty writing
style, but I cannot expect most people who don't even read Dowd to know
that. Two minutes at the computer, however, and I was easily able to
confirm, as anyone could do, that Dowd had never written the article. A
search of the New York Times archive showed she had written on a wholly
different topic--Hillary Clinton--on that day, and moreover, the
non-partisan truth-checking website Snopes.com had a full documented debunking of the scam.

Why this particular campaign dirty trick--and with Karl Rove in the
back seat of the McCain campaign bus I have no doubt that it originated
in the bowels of that campaign, which has not disavowed it--works, and
why the many other vile efforts, like the latest shameful official
McCain TV ad claiming that Obama backs "sex education for
kindergartners," work is that many otherwise decent Americans like my
uncle first of all are primed to believe such crap by a deep-seated
prejudice against people of color, and secondly that the corporate
media which are supposed to be informing us are afraid to call out a
mainstream political candidate for lying and deceiving the public.
Some, like Fox, actually promote these falsehoods.

Look at the news today. Instead of exposing the blatant campaign of
character assassination by the McCain/Palin campaign, it is focused on
the bogus (and frivolous) claim by the McCain campaign that Obama has
called Palin a "pig with lipstick"! (What did Obama really do? He said
that the McCain/Palin ticket's attempt to portray itself as an
anti-pork, anti-Washington, reform campaign is like putting lipstick on
a pig--a common expression used by McCain himself.) The issue becomes
not "Is the McCain campaign charge true?" but rather "Should Obama have
to apologize to Palin?"

What's depressing about this is how well the McCain campaign's swim
in the sewer is working. A nice kid I know who works at our local
garage told me that he couldn't vote for Obama, despite liking his
policies, "because he'll take his oath of office on the Koran." Aside
from the anti-Muslim bias inherent in this statement, it is based upon
false information being spread virally through the internet falsely
claiming, on the basis of no evidence, that Obama is a secret Muslim
and that he took his Senate oath of office on a Koran.

People on the left may wish that Obama were a more overtly
progressive and more expressly anti-war candidate. I certainly do. But
let's get real here for a minute. With the black-baiting that is going
on by the other side, and the gullible and terribly uninformed or even
misinformed electorate out there, and with a national media that will
simply repeat and spread whatever bilious and false charges are made by
the McCain campaign, what chance on earth would a candidate like Obama
have if he were to call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, or for a
government-run medical insurance program? Those who call angrily for
such unambiguous positions by Obama are deluding themselves.

I really have to laugh. He'd be labeled a traitor and a communist,
and you know what? Absent a real analysis and absent critical reporting
by the mainstream media, 90 percent of the American public would
unthinkingly buy that false and ludicrous characterization.

I used to have a higher opinion of my fellow Americans, who had a
reputation for common sense. I used to believe that if a candidate told
them that it made no sense to put insurance companies in charge of
their health care and that people were much healthier and less anxious
about their health and their lives, and spent less on health care in
countries like Canada or Sweden or Germany or France where their health
care was guaranteed by the state, if a candidate told them that half
the money being spent on the US military was a waste and did nothing to
make the nation safer, if a candidate told them that human life on this
planet was in grave danger if nothing was done to seriously reduce
carbon emissions by half or even more, that they would listen and vote
accordingly. I used to think that if only Ralph Nader could shoehorn
his way into the national debates, a wave of popular support would
sweep him into the White House. (And let's be honest here. We on the
left are not immune from this poison of ignorance. I cannot tell you
how many otherwise intelligent people on the left keep writing me to
say that the entire foreign policy of the United States is being
secretly run by "Israel and the Zionists.")

I no longer hold that high opinion. Sure, if this nation were
educating people to think critically--which is not being done--if we
had a media that had a core ethos of getting at the truth and making it
known--which we don't--I would have that confidence. But I think it is
clear that we have traveled so far down the road of creating an
ignorant and fearful electorate that any candidate making such bold
claims would be doomed to either a devastating loss, or to minor party
status. Nader, for example, whose ancestry is Lebanese Christian, were
he to begin to rise in the polls to become a serious candidate, would
certainly be portrayed as a Muslim Manchurian candidate, and it
wouldn't matter what he said or stood for after that.

I don't know what this dismal state of affairs means in terms of
the future direction of American politics, but it doesn't bode well for
the future of third parties, or for the Democratic Party, or for the
country, or for the fate of the world.

And that is the truth.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

How to Get a Job By Shooting Up a Church

davidswanson — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:00:27 -0400

By David Swanson

Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.

And imagine deciding that the way to attack the people who stand for everything that might help you is to go shoot up a bunch of men, women, and children. And then imagine telling those damn liberals: "You see, you were wrong at least about gun policies, because if angry desperate people who believe everything they hear on the radio weren't allowed to get mad and go buy guns I never could have shot up your children's play! And why are you showing a dumb play about poor kids, anyway? You never put on plays about people like me, potential billionaires down on their luck who've been threatened by Muslim terorists and mistreated by blacks and gays and women and liberals!"

And imagine the Associated Press report completely playing along with your delusion, and writing:

"Although individual Unitarian churches can vary dramatically in outlooks, most congregations retain a deep commitment to social justice, which has led many to embrace liberal stances on the ordination of women, civil rights and gay rights."

What if labor rights had been mentioned?

And then imagine that the Knoxville News Sentinel gives your heros credit for deranging your mind and filling you up with bizarrely misdirected rage:

"Inside the house, officers found 'Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder' by radio talk show host Michael Savage, 'Let Freedom Ring' by talk show host Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly."

And what if you were then given decades behind bars, without ever a word of thanks from your heros, to think about what in the world you might have been thinking? What would your advice end up being for others in the same sort of trouble you were in?

I like to think you'd eventually recommend selling your radio and television and spending some time talking to real people.

Speaking as a liberal who supports a sustainable full-employment economy with guaranteed education, income, and health care, I'm sorry that we have failed you and so many others so drastically, in fact failed so badly that you don't even have the slightest idea who we are. I suspect that if you knew us you would find us to have goals you approve of but to be grotesquely and despicably timid, hesitant, and easily compromised in how we go about trying to accomplish anything. And you'd be right.

We'll tell your story, for a week or so, both as an example of the effect of hatemongering propaganda and as an example of desperate economic stress and lack of community. But will we DO anything to improve those situations? I seriously doubt it. This is an election year, after all.

What About Sean Hannity's Terrorist Friend Hal Turner?

Bob Fertik — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:02:14 -0400

Sean Hannity is the last person who should be asking questions about terrorists, as David Neiwert reports:

Bad enough that the questions were trivial -- even more notable was that it seemed as though they had been concocted by right-wing talk-show hosts, since they all were built out of right-wing talking points. And well, whaddya know?

Hannity asked George what kinds of questions they'll be asking at the debate tomorrow and they discussed a few things. When Hannity asked about the first question below about Ayers and whether George had plans to ask such a question, George replied, "Well, I'm taking notes now Sean." It did actually sound like he was pausing to take notes.

There's no small irony in Sean Hannity demanding to know about Obama's supposed unsavory connections to people who once were radical terrorists. Sean Hannity, the onetime friend of Hal Turner.

Turner, you'll recall, has made something of an ugly name for himself in recent years with his frequent calls for the assassination of various figures, including judges overseeing the cases of white supremacists and various members of Congress. Max Blumenthal has all the details. And of course, it's always fun to watch Hannity lie and scramble for cover whenever Turner's name gets brought up on his show.

One more reason to Kill The Media.

Censorship and the Anemic State of Political Discourse in America

dlindorff — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:56:43 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

When I lived in China in the early 1990s, there were things that you could not discuss. One was Tibet. Another was Taiwan, "referred to in my daughter's public elementary school in Shanghai as "China's largest island." Another was the 1989 massacre of students and workers in Beijing. I used to be grateful at the time that I was an American and that back home, we could talk about anything.

Except that in a way we can't. Not in public discourse, anyhow.

Take the silly broughhaha on the Right, in the media, and in the Democratic primary campaign, over the statements of Obama's "spiritual mentor" the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Everyone is all worked up--and Obama has sacked Wright from his campaign's religious advisory committee--because of some statements Wright has made that crossed an invisible line of permissible discourse.

Wright's "crime"? He dared to point out that the US is a racist nation. He dared to suggest that the US is a terror state.

In fact, what Wright said is absolutely correct. If you look at the incarceration rate for African Americans, at the fact that half of the astonishing two million Americans who are in prison at this moment (one-percent of the adult population!) are black, at the fact that half the approximately 4000 people on death row are black, at the appalling education that is offered to most of the nation's black children (my daughter teaches math at a "magnet" high school in Brooklyn, NY that is billed as a college preparatory institution, where there are 35 kids per classroom and where there's no teacher offering calculus or even pre-calc even though some students are ready for it), if you look at who the main victims are of the sub-prime loan scandal, if you look at how the Republican Party has deliberately worked in state after state to keep blacks from voting, it's clear that this is a racist nation.

But you're not allowed to say that and be a candidate, or work for a candidate, for public office, much less for the office of president.

Rev. Wright said that 9-11 was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost." He cited America's use of nuclear bombs on civilian targets--the non-military cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He might as well have mentioned the equally catastrophic US bombing of the cultural city of Dresden. These were terror bombings pure and simple, on a scale never seen before in the history of war.

He might also have mentioned the sacking and leveling of Fallujah in 2004--an act of "collective punishment" by the US for the killing and subsequent mutilation of four mercenaries captured by militants in that city.

But in America you're not allowed to say that the US is a terrorist nation, even though objectively, it is at the top of the list. (Look what happened to tenured professor Ward Churchill for saying the same thing at Colorado State University: He was fired.) Nor are you allowed to suggest that 9-11 was in any way a predictable result of US behavior towards third world nations or towards the people of the Islamic world, although it is patently obvious that it was US behavior in the Middle East--propping up dictatorial regimes (including Saddam Hussein's), backing Israeli policies towards Palestinians, etc.) that made us a target of Al Qaeda.

Wright said that the response of the US to the 9-11 attacks was to "pay back and kill," and if you think back, he is totally correct. All the expressions like " it's payback time" and "let's roll!", the American flags everywhere, the lust for getting Osama "dead or alive", and finally, the cheerleading for an attack on Iraq (which had nothing to do with (9-11), were based upon a blind and ill-thought-out lust for revenge, encouraged by a president and vice president who had been angling to attack Iraq at least nine months before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But you're not supposed to say that American wars are based on blood lust.

Wright crossed another line when he said that the US had "supported state terrorism" against Palestinians and the African population of South Africa. And yet he is absolutely correct on both counts. The US has unquestioningly and aggressively supported 60 years of Israeli attacks on and abuse of Palestinians, and continues to do so, with money, arms and votes in the United Nations. It also overtly and covertly backed the white Apartheid government of South Africa in its policy of apartheit and suppression of the legitimate rights of the majority black population of that nation.

But you are not allowed to criticize Israel in American politics, or to suggest that the US backed apartheid in South Africa.

Wright also said that the US had contributed to the drug crisis among blacks in America's cities by smuggling cocaine into the US in return for money to back anti-government rebels in Nicaragua (the Contras). There is solid evidence that this was in fact the case, including a crashed CIA plane in Central America loaded with guns that was tied to drug flights in the other direction. Several well-documented investigative books have been written on this topic. (There is evidence that the US backed the production and sale of opium and heroin by its anti-communist allies in Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s, too.)

But you're not allowed to say that the US government is a long-time drug runner and a promoter of drug use inside its own borders.

Even Wright's claim that the US encouraged the spread of AIDS in black commuities has some truth to it. By opposing needle exchanges despite the documented benefits of free clean needle availability in reducing the incidence and spread of AIDS among drug users, the federal government has worsened the AIDS problem in America.

Unfortunately, none of these topics can be openly and intelligently discussed and debated. Once Wright mentioned them, Barack Obama had two choices: rationally explain why the pastor was right, and become instantly a has-been candidate for president, or denounce the pastor and his statements, and sever all connections with him.

Obama chose the latter tactic, and America is the poorer for it.

Like China, there are some things you can't say or discuss in public in America.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Obama Should Convert to Judaism

Bob Fertik — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:04:02 -0400

Faux News is manufacturing a rightwing shitstorm (TM) over Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and Democratic "surrender monkeys" are running in terror. Here's TPM reader JB:

The Wright time bomb appears to be detonating, now that the horse race narrative has stalled and the media needs new material. The inadequacy of Obama's response is deeply discouraging. I was very excited about Obama, but I suddenly think Wright is going to deal a death blow to him on the "electibility" front. Michelle Obama's comments and now the man who lead him to Jesus is saying "God Damn America", and all BO can say is "I disagree"? He has to thow him under the bus and then back up over him again, but it does not appear that he will. Not clear it would even help that much, given the depth and length of their relationship. Sad to say, but it's best this happen now rather than in October. As distasteful as her tactics have been, I suddenly think we may be better off in November with Hillary. Wright is cancer.

Gimme a break - in that case McCain's friend John Hagee is a Humvee-penetrating EFP.

But here's a suggestion that would solve both Obama's "pastor" problem and his "Muslim" problem with one stone: he should convert to Judaism!

I know most of us would accept Obama into "the tribe" in a heartbeat.

Update 1: Here's Obama's statement on HuffPo:

I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

I think that says everything that needs to be said.

"Muslim in His Blood"

Bob Fertik — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 11:45:40 -0500

It's hard to imagine, but Bay Buchanan is way to the right of her brother Pat. Unfortunately no one ever calls her out because she mostly operates behind the scenes and because her brother is so powerful.

Last year she was the campaign manager for the most rightwing Republican in the race, immigrant-basher Tom Tancredo - just one indication of how rightwing she is.

On Friday she crossed a line that no one in American politics should be permitted to cross - making an issue of a candidate's blood. As Logan Murphy writes,

Buchanan adamantly states that Obama’s middle name should be fair game because it’s a real concern for a lot of Americans and that they have the right to know if he has Muslim in his blood. WTF? This is pure xenophobic baiting at its finest (or worst) and both Meyers and Blitzer call her out on it.

Dee Dee Meyers was terrific in challenging Buchanan right away and not allowing Buchanan's aggressive armwaving to intimidate her. Buchanan adamantly refused to answer Meyers as to why Obama's middle name was relevant, and pretended it wasn't an issue for her but might be for "others."

Attacks on unpopular ethnic "blood" have a long and ugly history and contributed to anti-Jewish pogroms and the Nazi Holocaust. Anyone who tries to bring "Muslim blood" into this campaign should be held fully accountable by the media.

Scarborough Says Iraq War Critics are Not Americans

Bob Fertik — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:26:19 -0500

Tell MSNBC to fire Joe Scarborough for declaring that the 60% of Americans who believe the invasion of Iraq was a disaster are not Americans.

OBAMA: I do know Al Qaeda's in Iraq, and that's why we should continue to strike Al Qaeda targets, but I have some news for John McCain. And that is that there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq before George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 -- that would Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which is stronger now than at anytime since 2001. I've been paying attention, John McCain.

GEIST: So are you ready for eight months of that argument?

SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, it is an argument -- Mika's gonna disagree with me on this one -- but I would guarantee you, guarantee you, that while a lot of people in Manhattan and Georgetown and on college campuses are worried about what happened in 2002 and the lead up to the war, Americans are concerned about what's happening now.