Tag: Barack Obama

Swift Boat Alumni Readies Ads Attacking Obama

Seth Anderson0 comment

Oh yayy, more raacist liars to pollute the airwaves with their filth.

A new group financed by a Texas billionaire and organized by some of the same political operatives and donors behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004 plans to begin running television ads attacking Barack Obama, a signal that outside groups may play a larger role than anticipated in the closing days of the presidential race.

The American Issues Project has amassed a multimillion-dollar fund, and the group is putting the final touches on an eleventh-hour campaign targeting the Democratic presidential nominee, sources said.

[From Group With Swift Boat Alumni Readies Ads Attacking Obama – washingtonpost.com]

I trust the Obama campaign won’t be quite as slow to react as the 2004 John Kerry campaign, for all of our sakes.

McCain is computer illiterate

Seth Anderson0 comment

The ad is actually pretty funny, and McCain did admit he is a relic from a prior age.

“Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in a campaign strategy memo. “We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people.”

The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early ’80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik’s Cube.

“1982, John McCain goes to Washington,” an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t.

“He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,” it says. It shows video of McCain getting out of a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush and closes with a photo of him standing with the current President Bush at the White House. “After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

[From The Associated Press: Obama mocks McCain as computer illiterate]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ2I0t_Twk0

Poverty Pimp

Seth Anderson0 comment

The Wednesday night gang of thugs at the RNC kept sarcastically referring to Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer12. I puzzled over what was the implied meaning of the phrase in twitter discussions3, but I think billmon has teased out what the Rethuglicans meant:

It kept popping up in all the speeches tonight — Romney’s, Guiliani’s and of course Alaska Barbie’s:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.

On the face of it, it’s a pretty weird repetitive theme. Obama’s done lots of stuff — teaching, state legislature, writing books, etc. — but “community organizer” seems like an odd one to fixate on. The words themselves have generally positive connotations, particularly that first one: everybody is in favor of “community” (as long as its their community).

Which is exactly the point, I think. Used the way the GOP speakers used the words tonight (i.e. with a sneer), community = ghetto and organizer = activist.

It essentially was a coded way of pointing out Obama’s work in, with and for the black community (see? even I’m doing it) on the South Side of Chicago. Also the fact that his work involved helping low-income people stand up for their legal rights, as opposed to a GOP-sanctioned “real” job like business owner or career military officer (or moose hunter.) They were trying to put Obama back on the same level as Jesse Jackson — i.e., the black protest candidate — and mocking him for it.

To cut right to the nasty, they were using “community organizer” as a euphemism for “poverty pimp.”

And, as a special bonus, to a GOP audience (country club division, at least) organizer = union. What could be worse than a black, radical activist union organizer from the South Side of the Chicago?

[Click to read more Daily Kos: billmon – Why the repeated attacks on “community organizers”?]

re-defeat bush
[re-defeat bush]

No word spoken at the RNC wasn’t approved by John McCain, don’t forget.

Footnotes:
  1. as Atrios points out, a key component to George Herbert Walker Bush’s Thousand Points of Life Inaugural Address speech in 1989 [↩]
  2. Said 41: I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in. [↩]
  3. join in, its fun! [↩]

Historic Event for the Democratic Party

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I too was moved despite myself. I realize the whole Democratic convention1 is scripted within inches of its life, but witnessing the Democratic Party actually nominate a black man for President was something I never would have expected happen, at least in my life time.

This evening, though, I watched something happen that I was solid sure would never happen in my lifetime, or probably my children’s lifetimes: A major American political party just nominated an African American as its candidate for the presidency of the United States — the big job, the Leader of the Free World, the whole enchilada.

Watching it on C-SPAN, I saw a closeup shot of an African American delegate after Nancy Pelosi banged the gavel down. She was hugging the delegate next to her (a white woman) And the tears were pouring down her cheeks.

I dunno, I guess that’s when it hit me — the enormity of what I’d just seen. It may not mean as much to you youngsters (get off my lawn!) but for someone of my age, who grew up in the dying days of segregation, who still remembers the colored and white drinking fountains and the monochrome lunch counters, who saw Washington DC burn the night Martin Luther King was killed — who, in some sense, has essentially spent his whole life living in the shadow of American racism, it was completely mindblowing. The party of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace (but also of FDR and Bobby Kennedy) had just chosen a black man as its standard bearer — and the Gods willing, as the country’s next leader.

[From billmon at Daily Kos: Really Proud]

I’m not quite old enough to remember colored and white drinking fountains, but I did live in Burkeville, Texas2 so witnessed first-hand plenty of vestiges of the Old South (the bone-crushingly racist South, if you don’t know)). I’m similar to billmon also in that I have conflicted feelings towards the Democratic Party: I am much more left than most party leaders, and yet I was proud of the Democrats last night.

Footnotes:
  1. like all conventions, just wait till the Republican show starts! [↩]
  2. Jasper, Texas was the nearest town, yes, that Jasper, Texas [↩]

Will Congress Extend Wind, Solar Tax Breaks

Seth Anderson0 comment

Would seem as if this should be bigger news: McCain would rather devote alternative energy tax credits to the poor, poor oil corporations who are underwriting his campaign instead of renewing or expanding tax credits to new green-collar industries.

Windy Day Just Like Any Other Day
[Windy Day Just Like Any Other Day]

The whole clean-energy ecosystem, from investors to manufacturers to developers, is on tenterhooks to see what will happen with the credits.

Of course, that’s not necessarily the fault of the Democrats who control Congress. Sen. John McCain famously missed the decisive vote on renewing the tax credits earlier this year, and missed another vote after that.

But it does explain why, as California senator Barbara Boxer said last night in Denver, “In the Senate, 60 is the new 50!”. Sixty Demcratic senators is a filibuster-proof majority. That means policy ideas turn into policies. Which is why some observers, like the WSJ edit page, figure the most important votes this election season won’t necessarily come at the top of the ticket—Obama versus McCain—but at the Congressional level.

With 60 Democratic senators, clean-energy advocates like Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell may just get their wish: permanent tax credits for renewable energy.

[From Environmental Capital – WSJ.com : Pay Me: Will Congress Extend Wind, Solar Tax Breaks?]

1. Renewable resources like wind and solar, or 2. petro-dollar dictators like the Saudi princes. Hmmmm, let us collectively noodle on that choice for a second. Gee, let’s choose door number 1, Alex!

Ayers and Obama

Seth Anderson0 comment

Are the Republicans so bereft of ideas that this is the best they can come up with? Linking Obama to someone who did some crazy stuff when the country was in upheaval in the late 1960s, and Obama was eight? Wait, don’t answer that. Apparently, if you are considering running for office, you need to vet every person you ever meet or work with before you talk to them.

The University of Illinois at Chicago on Tuesday released more than 1,000 files detailing the activities of an education reform group in which both Barack Obama and former 1960s radical William Ayers played key roles.

The release of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents turned the sterile special collections room at the university’s Daley library into a media frenzy. Television crews hovered at the room’s entrance. Librarians scurried to copying machines to fulfill the requests of a roomful of reporters. Two security officers stood guard.

On a typical day, one or two scholars may conduct research there. The library director laughed when asked whether it has had security before.

A partial examination of the documents did not reveal anything startling about the link between Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, a Vietnam-era anti-war group that claimed responsibility for several bombings. Ayers, who spent years in hiding, is now a UIC education professor

[From Files linking Obama to ’60s radical a hot commodity — chicagotribune.com]

Haymarket Riot memorial, old version.

The Republicans whined that Obama responding to the false smears is harassment. They would much rather Obama just ignored the mindless allegations, and let them be repeated on endless loop.

With threats of legal action, boycotts and a response ad launched quietly to avoid publicity, the Obama campaign has put conservative donors and television stations on notice that 2008 will not be 2004, when Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, waited weeks to respond to attacks on his Vietnam War record and ultimately did so ineffectively. Christian Pinkston, a spokesman for the American Issues Project, which is airing the anti-Obama ad, called the response intimidation and harassment.

Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer replied: “If someone rides up to a convenience store with a sawed-off shotgun and a prior record, I’m not intimidating anybody by calling the cops. . . . If this [Republican] campaign is going to be run in McCarthyite fashion by lawbreakers in an illegal way, they are going to pay a price.”

and the Republican operatives again have a problem with using copyrighted material:

Efforts to stop the Ayers ad have not come only from the Obama campaign. A film company in Berkeley, Calif., that made an Oscar-nominated documentary in 2004 [sic, 2002, per IMDb] on the Weather Underground group has issued a cease-and-desist letter to the American Issues Project, saying that it illegally appropriated copyright images from the film for the ad. Brook Dooley, an attorney for the Free History Project, said shots of Ayers speaking into a camera in an interview and the aftermath of a Weather Underground bombing were copyrighted. The group has informed about 150 stations in Ohio and Michigan of its objection, but Dooley said no decisions have been made about legal action.

Haymarket Memorial in snow

Just such a stupid line of attack: it wouldn’t be difficult to find somebody who McCain met with who was somehow linked to some nasty act. Not difficult at all, but would it be relevant? No, of course not. And yet, there was a media frenzy at the UIC anyway. Can’t they look into the Keating Five documents? Those are more recent, and more relevant to the person John McCain is than any tenuous Ayers-Obama connection. Or how about having a media frenzy about McCain’s mobbed-up father-in-law?

Austin Anyone?

Seth Anderson0 comment

Everyone loves Austin, sometimes. For your fluff news of the day…

Senator Barack Obama marveled at the view here in Big Sky Country. He discovered that the gumbo in New Orleans was far tastier than in Chicago. And he was pleasantly surprised that he loved Austin, Tex., and its music — but who doesn’t?

…

“A place that I’ve come to love, which I did not expect until this campaign, is Texas,” he said in an interview the other day aboard his campaign plane, a patchwork of the countryside passing below him. “I ended up loving Texas! I’ve been struck by how many beautiful places there are in the country that you don’t necessarily think of as beautiful. Pittsburgh, for example, is a really handsome town with the rivers and the hills.”

[From Obama Is Going Places He Has Never Seen Before – NYTimes.com]

Flavin Disciple
[neon sign at Curra’s, Austin]


“U.F. Orb (Deluxe Remastered Reissue w/Previously Unreleased Tracks) – 2 discs” (Orb)

“U.F. Orb (Deluxe Remastered Reissue w/Previously Unreleased Tracks) – 2 discs” (Orb)

Corporate Media Feeding Frenzy

swanksalot0 comment

Corporate Media, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

The television talking heads should be permanently muted, what is the point of breathless and endless speculation about the damn Vice Presidential candidate? We as voters don’t even have a say…

Who *is* going to be the Vice President?

Bill Casey and Abortion

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I didn’t realize this myself. I had read so many times that Bill Casey was refused a speaking platform at the 1992 Democratic Convention for his anti-abortion views that I assumed this was not in dispute. I was wrong.

For the past 16 years, news organizations have been repeating an obvious falsehood about the 1992 Democratic convention. According to countless news reports — in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, ABC, NPR, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and on and on and on — then-Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey was denied a speaking role at the convention because he opposed abortion rights.

That’s false. And it’s obviously false.

Here’s all you need to know in order to know with absolute certainty that Casey’s views on abortion were not the reason he was not given a speaking role: that very same Democratic convention featured speeches by at least eight people who shared Casey’s anti-choice position, including Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley Jr., Sens. John Breaux and Howell Heflin, and five governors.

[From Media Matters – “Media Matters”; by Jamison Foser]

The reason Casey was not afforded a prime time speaking position was that he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, and wanted to do a Zell Miller spew-fest, trashing the Democratic Party for various reasons, mostly having to do with abortion. Strange how that got twisted.

People involved in planning the 1992 Democratic convention have long maintained that Casey was not given an opportunity to speak because he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, who was to be nominated at the convention. That’s what they said at the time, too. The Washington Post’s first report on Casey’s request for speaking time included a quote from the Democratic National Committee’s press secretary: “anyone who is speaking at the convention will have endorsed Governor Clinton by the time of the convention and Governor Casey has not.”

It should be noted that it wasn’t merely that Casey hadn’t gotten around to endorsing Clinton. He was arguing that Clinton had only a “flyspeck” of support and that the party should consider nominating someone else at the convention.

Of course, only those involved in the decisions about who would speak at the convention know for certain if Casey’s refusal to endorse Clinton was the reason he wasn’t given a speaking role. But we do know that as soon as Casey asked for one, the Democratic Party publicly indicated that his failure to endorse Clinton would prevent him from speaking. If the convention organizers were making a bluff, Casey could have called it by simply endorsing Clinton. He chose not to. Instead, he began denouncing the party for having a “radical, extreme position” in favor of abortion rights and claiming it was bowing to “the radical far left.” Members of his own delegation were quoted saying he was “being a jerk” and said they were considering removing him as head of the delegation.

It’s also important to keep in mind that Casey didn’t merely want to speak at the convention. He wanted to devote his entire speech to opposing the Democratic Party on a single issue. After the convention ended, Casey released the text of the speech he would have delivered had he been given the chance. The speech ran more than 1,000 words — and not one of those words was “Clinton.” Nor was the word “Gore” mentioned. Casey’s speech did not include a single word of praise or support for the ticket being nominated at the convention he wanted to address. Instead, it accused the party of being “far out of the mainstream and on the extreme fringe” on abortion. That’s what the entire speech was about: disagreeing with, and insulting, the Democratic Party on abortion.

Barack Obama had better vet Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton’s speeches pretty carefully. Pretty damn carefully.
Jamison Foser continues

FTC Rule Barring Oil Manipulation

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I’m sure the final rule will have a lot less oomph, and plenty of loopholes.

Under pressure from federal lawmakers concerned about high energy prices, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule prohibiting petroleum-market manipulation, giving the agency authority to levy fines of up to $1 million per violation a day.

The proposed rule — which would cover both spot and futures markets — is designed to increase oversight of the crude-oil, natural-gas, gasoline and other product markets as directed by Congress late last year.

As oil prices surged to nearly $150 a barrel in July, many lawmakers increased pressure on the FTC to promulgate the antimanipulation rule, feeling existing oversight was too weak and laxly regulated. Lawmakers are concerned that excessive speculation — and possible manipulation — in the oil markets helped drive prices to record levels, and are seeking ways to enforce tougher market oversight. Congress is considering legislation designed to rein in speculative trading deemed to be distorting the market.

[From FTC Proposes Rule Barring Oil Manipulation – WSJ.com]

Brass Rust

Potential fines are discussed:

If the agency enacts the rule as it is currently written, it could subject violators with penalties of up to $1 million per violation per day. The FTC said it aimed to conclude the rule-making process by the end of the year. It drew immediate praise from some lawmakers who have been pushing for more stringent oversight of the markets.

This is some serious cheese for violators. As an example, Exxon Mobil’s profit in 20071 was in the vicinity of $4,633,200 per hour, or $111,196,800 per day. A million dollar fine would reduce Exxon Mobil’s daily profit to a paltry $110,196,800 a day! Won’t somebody think of the children! Of course, I’m not sure Exxon Mobil would be covered by these rules anyway, I’m sure nobody at Exxon Mobil is involved in speculation of oil futures, right? but sounds like there will be a lot more discussion before anything gets enacted in any case.

Given that the proposed rule covers the futures market — also the domain of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — it is likely to upgrade a regulatory turf battle between agencies and spur activity by the CFTC.

Lots of discussion and posturing, and lots of profits to be snatched in the meantime. By the end of the year, Obama will be elected, and the glory years of oil companies might start to sputter.2

Footnotes:
  1. so far 2008 is much higher, so adjust all these numbers by numbers that your calculator can’t even handle [↩]
  2. let us fervently pray so, anyway, though there is no guarantee that Obama will have the intestinal fortitude to tell the oil industry and Wall Street to reign their greed in [↩]

Insomniac Voters Unite!

Seth Anderson0 comment

When I’m up in the wee hours1, I tend not to watch television, but that’s just me.

Lonely Zenith

The Obama campaign is the first to use a long-form infomercial during the 2008 presidential campaign. If you hadn’t noticed, that may have been because the nearly 30-minute program aired at 1:30 a.m. Sunday on ION Television.

“This was one more effective way for us to communicate with folks who may not normally see other communications we have with voters who are paying closer attention to the race.,” the campaign said in a statement.

The mostly biographical 28-minute, 30-second program included scenes of the Illinois senator’s keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention as well as scenes from other campaign appearances along with background about Mr. Obama and frequent call-in numbers.

…

“It is a first. I guess they are going after the insomniac vote,” said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNS Media Intelligence’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. He said the unusual airing time in fact appears to allow the campaign to test the effectiveness of the infomercial format without spending much.

[From Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | Obama courts insomniac vote | Crain’s ]

Political advertising seeks viewership, and especially viewership that isn’t competed over by political rivals.

Footnotes:
  1. which unfortunately happens more than it should [↩]

Obama sets out his Israel vision

Seth Anderson0 comment

David Horovitz of the Jerusalem Post has met three major American politicians in the last two months: President Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama. Horovitz was much more impressed with Obama than the other two dim bulbs.

Two months ago in the Oval Office, President George W. Bush, coming to the end of a two-term presidency and presumably as expert on Israeli-Palestinian policy as he is ever going to be, was accompanied by a team of no fewer than five advisers and spokespeople during a 40-minute interview with this writer and three other Israeli journalists.

In March, on his whirlwind visit to Israel, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, one of whose primary strengths is said to be his intimate grasp of foreign affairs, chose to bring along Sen. Joe Lieberman to the interview our diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon and I conducted with him, looked to Lieberman several times for reassurance on his answers and seemed a little flummoxed by a question relating to the nuances of settlement construction.

On Wednesday evening, toward the end of his packed one-day visit here, Barack Obama, the Democratic senator who is leading the race for the White House and who lacks long years of foreign policy involvement, spoke to The Jerusalem Post with only a single aide in his King David Hotel room, and that aide’s sole contribution to the conversation was to suggest that the candidate and I switch seats so that our photographer would get better lighting for his pictures.

Several of Obama’s Middle East advisers – including former Clinton special envoy Dennis Ross and ex-ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer – were hovering in the vicinity. But Obama, who was making only his second visit to Israel, knew precisely what he wanted to say about the most intricate issues confronting and concerning Israel, and expressed himself clearly, even stridently on key subjects.

There is a limit to what can be gauged of a politician’s views as expressed in a relatively short interview at the height of an election campaign. But Obama, who chose to give the Post one of the only two formal sit-down interviews he conducted during his visit, was clearly conveying a carefully formulated message – and it was striking in several areas.

[Click to read more David Horovitz Exclusive: Obama sets out his Israel vision | Jerusalem Post ]

Experience is a false metric for political success, in my estimation. More important is cleverness, and a willingness to be educated on issues. Our current half-assed President has never been interested in learning anything new, nor in parsing the complicated nuances of international diplomacy, and based on all evidence I’ve seen, neither is John McCain. Barack Obama, for all his other faults, is the sort of intelligent human who should be running the Executive Branch of the US.

Palast on McCain and Nukes

Seth Anderson0 comment

Greg Palast discusses John McCain’s love for all things nuclear, a part of McCain’s goofy energy plan.

I’m guessing it was excessive exposure to either radiation or George Bush, but Senator John McCain’s comments from inside a nuclear power plant in Michigan are so cracked-brained that I fear some loose gamma rays are doing to McCain’s gray matter what they did to Homer Simpson’s.

On Tuesday, the presumptive Republican candidate descended into the colon of a nuke to declare we need to build 45 new nuclear plants – that this is the way out of our energy crisis. Nuclear power, declared the senator, is a “safe, efficient [and] inexpensive” alternative to oil.

Really? We can argue all day about whether nuclear plants are safe (they aren’t –period). But there can be no argument whatsoever that these giant radioactive tea-kettles are breathtakingly expensive.

Nuclear plants are cheap until you actually try to build one. Not one of the last 49 nuclear plants cost less than $2 billion apiece. I’m looking down the road at the remainders of the Shoreham nuclear plant which took nearly 20 years to build at a cost of $8 billion – or close to $7,000 per customer it was supposed to supply. When I say “supposed to,” it was closed for safety reasons after operating just one single day.

We’re told that the new generation of plants will be different. Just like an alcoholic child-beater, the nuclear plant builders promise us that, “This time it will be different.” Sure. And McCain believes them.

[From Greg Palast » The McCain Plan: Homer Simpson without the Donut ]

and the nuclear plant waste issue is still unresolved, as we’ve mentioned previously

While The New York Times reporters following McCain repeated his line about “inexpensive” nuclear power without question, a buried wire story on the same day noted that the Energy Department is putting the unfunded bill for disposing nuclear plant waste at $96.2 billion – nearly a billion dollars per plant operating today. And no one even knows exactly how to do it, or where. Obama has the audacity to ask about the nuclear waste’s cost. “Can we deal with the expense?” he said on Meet the Press.

McCain’s plan to spend endless billions on nuclear plants without a waste disposal system in place is like building a massive hotel without toilets. D’oh! I suppose you can always tell the guests to poop in buckets until someone comes up with a plan for plumbing. But the stuff piles up. And unlike the fecal droppings of tourists, nuclear waste will stay hot and dangerous for a thousand generations.

Read the whole article here

Obama The Antichrist

swanksalot2 Comments

Way to stay classy, John McCain. Get out the evangelicals’ vote any way possible, even by duplicitous means.

An Internet ad launched last week by the McCain presidential campaign has attracted more than one million hits by appearing to mock Barack Obama for presenting himself as a kind of prophetic figure.

The ad has also generated criticism from Democrats and religious scholars who see a hidden message linking Sen. Obama to the apocalyptic Biblical figure of the antichrist.

[From McCain Web Ad Is Accused Of Linking Obama to Antichrist – WSJ.com]

Snake

The End Times, a New Testament reference to the period surrounding the return of Christ, were popularized in recent years by the “Left Behind” series of books that sold more than 63 million copies. The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the series, said in an interview that he recognized allusions to his work in the ad but comparisons between Sen. Obama and the antichrist are incorrect.

“The antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania,” the 82-year-old author said.

or like the Panama Canal…

The ad has provoked a growing debate on the Internet over whether it is playing with apocalyptic themes. Those ideas are chiefly shared by fundamentalist Protestants and some other evangelical Christians. Among their expectations: the ascension of a false prophet, a one-world government and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Critiques of the ad started surfacing earlier this week when Eric Sapp, a Democratic operative, circulated the first of two memos pointing out images that he believed linked Sen. Obama to the antichrist.

“Short of 666, they used every single symbol of the antichrist in this ad,” said Mr. Sapp, who advises Democrats on reaching out to faith communities. “There are way too many things to just be coincidence.”

Dog whistle politics, in other words. Though, I doubt very much if conservative evangelicals were ever going to vote for Obama, no matter what.

In some swing states with concentrated pockets of fundamentalists and evangelical Christians, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia, the ads could have particular impact. Suggestions that Sen. Obama is the antichrist have been circulating for months in Bible-study meetings in towns like Chillicothe, Ohio, where congregants compare his remarks and his biography with verses from the Bible.

Stewart Hoover, director of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the references to the antichrist in the McCain ad were “not all that subtle” for anyone familiar with “apocalyptic popular culture.” Some images in the ad very closely resemble the cover art and type font used in the latest “Left Behind” novel. The title of the ad, “The One,” also echoes the series; the antichrist figure in the books, Nicolae Carpathia, sets up “the One World Religion.”

Fake memes and Obama

Seth Anderson0 comment

Jamison Foser dissects some recent anti-Obama press, including a reporter named Amy Chozick’s ridiculous Wall Street Journal article about Obama being too skinny for anyone to vote for.

Chozick apparently had some trouble finding people to support the crackpot premise that Obama’s physical fitness might cause voters to question his fitness for office, so she turned to trolling Internet message boards in desperate search of someone — anyone — she could quote. As the blog Sadly, No! revealed, Chozick posted a Yahoo! Message Board thread on July 15, asking, “Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his ‘no excess body fat’? Please let me know. Thanks!”

About three-and-a-half hours later, Chozick got her first response — a post ridiculing her for her focus on “totally meaningless drivel.” Nearly an hour after that, Chozick finally got the response she was looking for. A user posting under the name “onlinebeerbellygirl” wrote, “Yes I think He [sic] is to [sic] skinny to be President. … I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.” Chozick quoted the post in her article — one of only two quotes agreeing with the premise of the article. She did not, however, disclose that the quote had come only after she started a thread encouraging people to make such comments. After she got caught, the Journal acknowledged: “The article should have disclosed that the reporter used the bulletin board to elicit the comment.”

There may be more to it than that. A post in a subsequent Yahoo! Message Board discussion thread devoted to Chozick’s article noted that “[n]either Chozick nor ‘onlinebeerbellygirl’ has made any other posts on Yahoo before or since, and both profiles appear to have been created on 7/15, the day Chozick started the topics. It certainly looks like Amy Chozick constructed the whole thing.”

Another post wondered: “Do WSJ reporters make up fake IDs and make up fake quotes?”

Chozick’s original thread has been deleted (a cached copy is available here). Even more curiously, a search of the Yahoo! message boards for “onlinebeerbellygirl” comes up empty. Whether “onlinebeerbellygirl” ever really existed at all or was a Chozick invention, running a 1,300-word article suggesting Obama is too skinny to be president, based upon a random Internet message board post, is insane. As Slate.com’s Tim Noah noted, “In the vastness of cyberspace, you can always find somebody who will say whatever you want.”

[From Media Matters – “Obama coverage finds dark lining around silver clouds”; by Jamison Foser]

Obama is Plugged In to the Nation

No wonder newspaper circulation keeps dropping. Mr. Foser continues on to more serious, but equally insane fake memes, like that Obama is “too Presidential” to be President, or too well-educated. Ummm, yeah.