CallingAllWignuts

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

This Country is Nuts!

dlindorff — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:45:20 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I have to vent here. We all get a little crazy sitting alone
at our keyboards in this business, and it's finally gotten to me.

I know there are serious signs of a complete mental breakdown in the
US, with polls reporting that millions of people are actually excited
at having a low-rent religious fanatic who consistently mispronounces
pundit as "pundint" (shades of Dubya!), pilfers state funds for her
family's personal use, lies about her alleged opposition to Washington
pork, claims the bloody war in Iraq is "God's will," forces her
17-year-old daughter to make a momentary mistake into a lifetime one by
marrying the kid who got her pregnant, and refers to blacks as "sambo"
and to Alaska's indigenous people as "arctic arabs," running for vice
president on the ticket with a man who is a walking medical disaster
waiting to happen.

These are probably the same people who still give the worst
president in the history of the Union a 30 percent approval rating, who
keep watching reality TV shows (perhaps thinking they're real), and who
still think having 180,000 US troops indiscriminately slaughtering
Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis is making the US "safe."

But right now I want to talk about Homeland Security and the US Postal Service, two small examples of domestic insanity.

I tried to mail a book to my father last Saturday for his 86th
birthday. In order to make sure it would get there by Tuesday, I sent
it in one of those flat-rate Priority Mail envelopes--the ones that
promise two-day delivery. It cost me $4.80 (five 90-cent stamps, one
24-cent stamp and two 3-cent stamps). I drop the little package off
after hours into the mail slot in the lobby of my local post office.

Yesterday, my envelope was in my mailbox, though, with a blue
sticker attached headed: "Important Customer Information: We regret
that your mail was not collected or is being returned to you due to
heightened security requirements. All mail that bears postage stamps
and weighs more than 13 ounces MUST be taken by the customer to a
retail service associate at a Post Office."

Okay, so dad won't get his present on his birthday.

I called the local PO to ask what was going on, and was told that
any package over 13 ounces with stamps has to be handed in person to a
counter employee.

"With stamps?" I asked. "What if I had worked at a company and had a
metered stamp put on it and then dropped it in a mailbox or mail slot?"

"Then it would go," I was told. "Because we'd have a meter number to trace who mailed it."

Let's see. The meter would trace the package to whatever big company
I might have worked at, but I don't see how that would help them trace
it to the actual mailer.

Now, what about if I brought my package to the counter? Would it be
opened and checked? No, I was told. I would simply be asked by the
counter clerk whether the package contained any banned substances, like
bodily fluids, liquids or bombs. If I said no, it would be accepted for
mailing. ("I know this sounds silly," the postal worker on the phone
told me, "but I don't make the rules. It's Homeland Security.")

Wow. The Post Office and the Department of Homeland Security are
sure keeping our mail trucks and our airlines safe with this clever
policy.

I mean, we can be sure that those stoopid Ayrabs wouldn't think to
put a metered stamp on the bomb they send through the mails. And that
asking at the counter thing, that would sure catch anyone trying to
slip some deadly substance into the mail stream. The clerks are
probably trained to look for certain kinds of markers of suspicious
behavior--a tic, a shifty look, or some reticence in the answer given.

Right.

So this is what it has come to in America. We're ready to put an
refugee from the "Jerry Springer" show a missed heartbeat away from the
White House, and we keep our mail and our aircraft industry safe from
terrorists by returning (through the mail, mind you!!) packages that
are left in a mailbox if they have postage stamps on them.

Dad, if you're reading this, I'm sorry your present is going to
arrive late. Take it up with Mike Chertoff, the guy who made sure
everyone got out of New Orleans alive when that city was hit by
Hurricane Katrina.

Is this a great country or what?
_____________________

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