Sliming and the Press

Just a short report from the McCain/Palin rally yesterday in Clearwater, FL

"Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun
to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted
with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on
to blame Katie Couric's questions for her 'less-than-successful
interview with kinda mainstream media.' At that, Palin supporters
turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and
shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin
supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man
for a network and told him, 'Sit down, boy.' ")

(Another crowd member, upon mention of Obama's ties to Bill Ayers:
"Kill him!")

Ira

Responding to Palin's Attack

I have been touched by the writing bug this morning. Thank, God!! So the reading of the links will wait until later. But I wanted to say thanks to you and your family for keeping some things in perspective. As a child of the 60's and Vietnam, all of us in that era could be called upon to point out our wicked ways by daring to speak against the government. Most of us are now solid citizens and members of the over 30 crowd we criticized.

However, some things never really change so I am glad you keep reminding us to be diligent in seeking out the truth.

Sandra

Palin's Slimy Campaign

I am unhappy about the latest slurs being cast about Obama's association with Bill Ayers. Since Dad served on the Parker School Board with him, and I hung out with a group of teens who called him a friend when I was in high school, does this make us suspect as well? Neither I nor Dad hatched any nefarious plots with Ayers, and as far as I can tell, most of his activities didn't involve 8 year old kids (as Obama was only 8 at the time) when he was in his "glory days" of plotting the bombing of ROTC buildings, and egging young adults on to disrupt the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Where I find fault, if any is to be assigned is that Ayers remains unapologetic for his role as a gadfly, instigating havoc, and disappearing when the cops showed up. He, as far as I know, has never served a day in prison, and many of his "friends" have. In fact, as I recall, he and his wife took in the children of one of his compadres when she went to prison. While I do not believe in eternal punishment, and I believe that Ayers does much good in his community work, I still hold him culpable for the imprisonment or deportation of a number of people who got caught up in the movement. That he is unable to own his responsibility suggests that his ego still is a problem, a dangerous thing for Obama. One must hope that Ayers will redeem himself.

What other (fake) dirt is going to be slung in Obama's direction?

See, the Keating connection strikes me as much more apropos, since McCain was an adult, and a politician at the time, and the Keating contributions to his campaign are a direct reflection on McCain's lack of "due diligence".

That's what makes the difference.

Kathy

McCain and Palin

I kept trying to decide if McCain's selection of Palin was a simple-minded attempt to lure Hilary's dejected constituents away or what... After much consideration, I decided (in my usual paranoid way of thinking) that, in fact, this was the Republican "good ol' boy" (GOBs), "business as usual" way of handling things. I considered the evidence carefully: what women (and minorities) have been put forth as W's choices for various choice positions? Well, there's Condi Rice, and there's Margaret Spellings, and there was that brief moment where W selected "that woman" as his candidate for Attorney General, but she withdrew so he got Gonzalez to be AG instead. And, of course, there's Laura Bush... Not a one of them has had the spine to disagree with the GOBs, going along with anything they're told to do, obediently as any second class citizen from two centuries ago...

Now, at first blush I thought Palin might actually serve as competition to Hillary's smarts, and her gumption to stick up for causes that no one cared to take on (after all they were all about human rights of those self-same second class citizen groups--which as far as I can tell, are still second class citizens even though we've had a few constitutional amendments, because the GW Supreme Court has been dispatching anything resembling human rights with all due vigor...), but that's all a red herring--to fool the three women who would have voted for Hillary because she wasn't black. The truth is, she's such a little fish, in an infinitesimal pond, that any of her teensy acts of rebellion are pretty much "stage dressing". I don't doubt that she'll be so busy being a "hockey mom" and so on that she will pretty much knuckle under to anything she's told to do. Oooooh, and I hear that she also has this little problem with her daughter (aged 17) being 5 months pregnant. I guess she'll be plenty busy minding the home front...

So, don't any of us think that she's an outsider, poised to effect change--she's NOBODY!! She's INVISIBLE!! She's a stand-in whose voice will be silenced, except when it is expedient to set her up with shamelessly bigoted and inhumane remarks aimed at trashing the opposition, leaving that "wise-cracking" GOB McCain to stay clean, lily-white, and as out of touch with the people as he wishes. Meanwhile, the GOBs will continue to manufacture more of that slime that they "doo-doo" so well.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr!!