Gagging a Fox

A friend at the Field Museum in Chicago once attributed the phrase "rotten enough to gag a maggot" to a staff taxidermist presented with a reeking and putrefying elephant hide. I can't confirm or deny it, but it's a useful concept and it came to mind when Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade dared this morning to say that Sarah Palin had gone beyond the snark limit in dismissing President Obama as a "charismatic guy with a teleprompter." Of course saying that while reading from notes written on her palm and bellowing to a snarling crowd seemingly taken right out of some medieval painting of Jesus in torment might just be expected to make even a Foxman gag at her unrestrained roguery. Was his stomach already upset at her dishonest hypocrisy evident in damning Rahm Emanuel and Excusing Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard" as a noun?

Kilmeade evoked the Fox of the previous administration in saying

"The only thing I was uncomfortable with [was] when she said it is bigger than any guy with charisma and a teleprompter. That guy is still president. I think you got to -- you got to -- you're no longer the candidate. He's not the guy you're running against. I think you got to give that title its due even if you don't respect the policies."

Indeed, although the Fox of today isn't noted for recognizing the similarity or often the identity of Bush Vs. Obama policies, the Fox of the previous administration was fond of criticizing Bush's critics for questioning his wars, questioning his unconstitutional acts and policies, or the state of the economy or anything else for that matter. Remember when the FOX theme of the day was that the economy was robust and "Liberals" were only pretending otherwise? Well we won't get an apology for that one, but it seems at least one Foxer remembers the idea of respecting the President at some basic level, remembers their taunts that disrespecting the president was "hating America."

Can it be that Palin has become an embarrassment to Fox as well as to the human race or is this just the view of one talking head whose gag reflex has been triggered? It will be interesting to watch this develop.

Unholy and Anti-American Trifecta

The latest proof that "Obama is tearing apart the fabric of America" as Sean "Insanity" Hannity recently observed, hit my in-box with a time stamp only minutes ahead of Urban Legends refutation of the e-mail claiming that our president was the first to hit the "unholy and Anti-American Trifecta" by failing to show up at the Army Navy game, not attend any Christmas religious observance, and stay on vacation following a terrorist attack.

He must be doing rather well if this is the smelliest crock they can come up with -- and of course and as usual, it is indeed a crock. George W. Bush, the president most often described during his term as the right hand of Jesus missed 5 out of 8 of them. Woodrow Wilson didn't attend a Christmas church service in 1914, nor did Herbert Hoover in 1929, nor Lyndon Johnson in 1968. It would take some research, but I'm willing to bet this isn't unique or uncommon. Presidents haven't always been expected to be examples of public religiosity after all and Christmas was opulently celebrated at the White House this year, even if Fox took pains not to notice.

As to staying on vacation after a failed terrorist attack in which nobody but the attacker was hurt, the claim would require that he had ignored it and had spent the day on the beach, which of course isn't true. The President travels with his flying White House and a large staff, briefings were held, he ordered beefed up security and passenger screenings and ordered a review of the terrorist watch list and made statements to the public.

This being the 21st century, being in Honolulu or being in Washington DC has little bearing on the effectiveness of the president. Certainly jumping on AF 1 and heading as fast and far away from DC, as the previous president did after an actual and successful attack doesn't make the current President look all that bad, nor does the fact that the Republican broke all records for vacation time.

Please do remember, far milder criticism of Bush resulted in cries of treason from the same people who insist that the country is being destroyed and make up lies to prove it. He's here, he's President, he's black. Get the hell over it and stop trying to sabotage my country.

The perpetual foreigner

It's funny how the people who spend their lives trying to destroy democracy in America insist that everyone who stands in their way hates democracy in America. Barak Obama, regardless of what kind of a president he will turn out to be in the long run, certainly is an obstacle to the far right and their dubious objectives and of course, to the racists. Someone who doesn't give a damn about the country might find some humor in the myth making and the rebarbate logical fugues that characterize the believers and the creators and the marketers of Obamahate, but I'm not one of them. Unfortunately however, I seem to be on their mailing lists.

I wrote the other day about one US Army Major Stefan Cook who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan in order to generate enough publicity so that his claim that Barak Obama was foreign born would make the papers and boost publicity for the fabricated myth. His case was thrown out of court as expected, but the crusade wears on and it may soon be that you will receive another e-mail diatribe attempting to prove with every fallacy in the book that Obama's three week trip to visit a college friend in Pakistan proves he was travelling under a foreign passport, never had or had renounced his US citizenship, was born in Africa and must have received foreign funding of his education and travels -- which in turn proves a conspiracy to make him president a quarter century later: the same conspiracy begun 50 years ago with the intent of taking an African, Muslim baby and making him the president of the US sometime in the next millennium. It's the same conspiracy that involves the Honolulu newspapers and the Hawaii bureau of vital records.

The serial fallacy proceeds from a false premise: that it was illegal for a US citizen to travel to Pakistan in 1981. It wasn't. Supporting false premises are that it was part of a round the world cruise, which it wasn't and that it would cost a fortune to crash with a college buddy for three weeks, which it doesn't. It's worth reading the screed at Snopes.com simply as an example of poorly crafted, disjointed and clumsy fallacy and a lesson in the power of bigotry to overcome one's ability to spot it.

I should point out that Snopes has debunked so many of the products of the hateful underground that it itself was recently the subject of an e-mail and blog assault attempting to "prove" that it's owned by Liberals and so it's facts weren't facts even if independently verifiable.

I've made it my practice to denounce these never-ending viral e-mails and to hit reply all when doing it. I've irritated people, I've infuriated people, I've lost friends, I've made enemies -- but I've kept some sense of self-respect because I've not let lies and slander and subversive plots pass me by unhindered. Whoever it really was who told us that all evil needs to prosper is that good people look the other way was absolutely right. I hope you'll throw these things back at the perpetrators and the traitors as well.

October surprise

The ATF has announced that they have broken up a white supremacist plot to kill Senator Obama along with over a hundred black people in a Tennessee murder spree.

Who knows how far they would have got, but who knows what other evil lurks in the hearts of such people, stoked up on campaign libel and "Joe sixpack bigotry."

No comment has been obtained from Palin headquarters yet, as to whether these are some of the "real Americans she's been talking about.

Cutting through the Bull

CNN's Campbell Brown says the presidential campaign has been getting ugly. Last night on Cutting Through the Bull she told us:

"To say, as Gov. Sarah Palin is now doing, that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists is just outrageous"

and indeed it is, but the fair and balanced charade that's been going on since Fox trotted out that trope, requires a counterpoise to any direct statement even if it's a poor one.

The poor one here is that she equates the Democrat's recalling the Keating 5 scandal in a newly released video with a scurrilous accusation of treason against Barak Obama. It's poor in my opinion because that scandal really occurred, really cost us all over three billion dollars and John McCain, although he wasn't punished, really was reprimanded for his bad judgment. Barak Obama, on the other hand, is not plotting to blow up buildings with Bill Ayers.

Reality, even if not quite damning, is more damning than fiction; malicious fiction. The truth is not a matter of balance. It isn't arrived at by finding a midpoint between fact and fiction and no matter how many sides there are to a story, they are not all equally true.

Let's cut through the bull.

The one

One of the things that used to make me wake up in a cold sweat was the Nixon campaign jingle: Nixon's the one, Nixon's the one. Nixon's the one for me. Turns out he was the one to be elected and some of his supporters, like right wing radio crackpot and self confessed criminal G. Gordon Liddy were willing to break any law that got in the way of the process including laws against murdering people who get in your way.

It seems a bit ironic for the McCain campaign to be mocking Obama's charismatic personality by running a sleazevideo called "The One" and accusing the man of arrogance. Of course no one ever accused old John of being a charismatic anything and many is the time that his splenetic and explosive personality has got him into trouble. It's ironic when you remember the religious Ecstasy that helped lift W into the throne. People claimed it felt like voting for George was like voting for Jesus.

Of course accusations of elitism and arrogance can be interpreted to be a manifestation of inferiority -- in deed it's often the mating call of the loser. It's far too soon to be predicting a loss for McCain, particularly with the party of Liddy and Rove and the Swift Boat Veterans running amok, goading their demented minions into a frenzy of irrational hatred. Anything can happen. This is the country that elected Nixon twice and I hate to say it, but I think we're even dumber and more irrational today.

But there's an irony in comparing Obama to Jesus as the advertisement does is sarcastic tones. Indeed that sort of mockery of a popular figure as a false messiah is so integral to the Passion of Jesus that only a Republican can ignore the fact that they are painting themselves into the picture of Jesus in the Via Dolorosa, Jesus on the cross with the mocking I.N.R.I and the onlookers marvelling at the arrogance of claiming to be King of the Jews.

Barak Obama is hardly that; the video actually shows him telling us we need to be our own saviors, but by claiming that he claims it, by asking if the man they are mocking for his obvious leadership abilities is ready to lead, they do invite comparison to McCain's slithering and dithering and sucking up to the same old nefarious nabobs. Is there any evidence anywhere that John is ready or qualified to do anything more than continue the disastrous disunity that has us fighting with ourselves as never before while our wealth and prestige and indeed our prospects for the future leak away? What has John said that suggests he'll undo anything of what George has wrought?

Snark is cheap, but I'm hoping that for McCain, the price of this embarrassing insolence will be more than he can afford.

The last refuge

My inbox is like a lobster trap. At night while I sleep, it's out there collecting crawly ugly things from the creepy critters that live under rocks, eat nasty stuff, pretend to be outraged at Barak Obama's obvious lack of patriotism and insist that we immediately send some infected bit of racist outrage to "everyone you know."

Today's prize winner is titled:

Obama The Patriot -
Removes American Flag From His Plane

Of course that's not quite the truth.The truth is that the airline he was using featured a flag on the tail and when his campaign leased the plane and painted his name and slogan on it, the flag was moved to the fuselage, as you can see. According to the author, this indicates gross lack of patriotism and disrespect to the flag. While it would be easy to eviscerate such an idiotic argument, perhaps I can save a thousand words with a few pictures. Look at McCain's plane. Not only no flag, it's a French airplane. That's right French! OhmyGod - ohmyGod tell everyone you know!


But wait, there's more! look at McStraightalk's tour bus. NO FLAG! Is he ashamed? Is he not a patriot? Is he a:




Commieliberaltreehuggingelitistamericahating
democratsurrendermonkeyfrancophileterroristappeaser?



Send this to everyone you know before it's too late!

In a way, I should be gratified that racist right wing America can't come up with anything but this shell game, but I doubt it will backfire on them and if Obama is elected, I'm positive that his administration will face more vicious opposition from enemies domestic than any president in our history and the better he does, the worse it will get.

Bang the drum slowly

Barak Obama, we're told, rejects General Wesley Clark's opinion that John McCain's service in Viet Nam, an important qualification for people who think dropping bombs is good presidential training, doesn't necessarily make for a good Commander in Chief. I agree.

Obama, of course can't say what he means, lest every word be twisted and used against him in the court of sleazy hyperbolic rhetoric and patriotism, but why would McCain's particular military experience teach him any of the many, many things a President should be expert in? Yes, it's a real military experience, unlike Bush's, but it didn't teach him all about the military industrial complex, the inner workings of the Pentagon and the other entities a president has to be able to work with and control. He is no expert on strategy, or policy or logistics or anything in fact other than the piloting of now obsolete aircraft to drop bombs on civilians.

Even if we insist that military command experience is a great teacher, John McCain is no Eisenhower and John McCain doesn't seem to have gained any real understanding of the problems of military personnel or veterans, at least far enough to have firm, clear and expressed opinions about things like the Geneva Conventions and the treatment of prisoners. He has little enough to impress us with and so we will hear more about the background he has and not about the background he should have had.

We were told years ago, when the simple mindedness of George W. Bush became apparent, that he would pick good advisers and so it didn't matter that he had no knowledge of world affairs, economics, history and trivia such as Constitutional law. He would pick good advisers. It's redundant in the extreme to repeat the results of his advisers' bad advice. Are we poised to repeat the same mistake by electing McCain? Who would his advisers be, TV evangelists? Defense contractor lobbyists?

I confess that my bias is toward intellect; toward people who ideas are relatively straightforward, but not simplistic and emotionally based. I prefer people who are actively learning rather than "taking a stand." I far prefer someone who speaks as the intellectual equal to the best of us and not just like the boys at VFW hall. If any presidency has demonstrated that "regular guyness" is not only insufficient but dangerous, it's our current one. Let's not do it again.

An old saw has it that to a carpenter, every problem is fixed with a hammer. Can our problems best be solved with bombs according to McCain's military training? Will our problems be solved by using powerful family connections, abandoning past commitments and getting into bed with someone wealthy the Way John solved his? Perhaps so. George Bush also tried to solve our problems, and the problems he created, according to his military background: that is to say, with lies, cover-ups, shredded records, invented stories and massive secrecy using the aid of powerful and wealthy allies. That's pretty much what he did during his brief and disastrous business adventure as well. Let's not do it again.

The walls still have ears

“It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people” said Barak Obama yesterday.

Obviously he is less of a polemicist than I am. I would have hoped for his utter objection and opposition to the FISA bill that passed the House of Representatives yesterday, but in his calm fashion, he seems to be far less dogmatic and more practical and dare I say more conservative than I am by saying in essence that this is an improvement because it restores oversight and so he will support it with the pledge that further improvements are to be expected.

A good compromise fully satisfies no one and perhaps, although I loathe the actions of the Bush administration and it's swashbuckling lawlessness, it may be necessary to allow domestic surveillance but subject to legal guidelines: perhaps it may be a good compromise.

Perhaps what Obama shows here is leadership. It takes a stronger man to recognize the objections of people he does not agree with and to accept what practically can be acieived at any given moment rather than to play up to hard core supporters by chest pounding and foot stomping obstinacy that divides and does not achieve much. Sometimes a grudging admiration leads to more respect than unrestrained approbation.

Childe Barak

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

-- Robert Browning

**********

When does enough become too damned much? Immediately, when we're talking about any US election and this one is exceptional only in that it went over the top before it even started. The latest bit of fake outrage at the Republican "he said, she said" buffet is that Barack Obama told a whopper when he said an uncle of his helped liberate Auschwitz. The man actually participated in the liberation of Buchenwald.

No straw lacks enough buoyancy to be grasped at by the party drowning in its own deceit.

"Obama's frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief,"

said RNC spokesman and ethical cripple Alex Conant. No, they don't, but he wishes they did. He wishes they would raise the kind of doubts that should have prevented the coke and booze-addled serial failure, cynical liar and duty shirker George Walker Bush from being elected to public office. George, the guy who promised to keep us out of foreign conflicts and nation building and to restore honor and dignity to the Presidency.

Obama's grandmother's brother, was a member of the US 89th infantry division that went into Buchenwald and that's a fact. It has no more or less significance than if it had been another camp, although of course Auschwitz is in Poland and was liberated by the Russians. No honest man could identify this as a lie, but then we're talking about Republicans.

No candidate's programs, promises, plans or platforms ever survive first contact with reality anyway, It's all for show, but if Obama is being dishonest by naming the wrong concentration camp and George Bush was honest by claiming he had never been arrested for drunk driving, then it's time to stop talking about honesty and begin talking about gross, offensive hyperbole and ruthless hypocrisy. It's time to get real about who's exaggerating and how it reflects on the GOP and its candidates.

Cross posted from The Reaction

Patriotism

no federal agency has the authority to issue 'official' rulings legally binding on civilians or civilian groups. Consequently, different interpretations of various provisions of the Code may continue to be made.

UNITED STATES CODE TITLE 36 CHAPTER 10


Barak Obama must be seen as the man to beat these days, or at least the man to slime. I've been getting an increasing number of e-mail screeds excoriating him for singing the National Anthem without his hand on his heart. Sometimes the story has him pledging allegiance. Often it includes his appearing without the plastic patriotism pin or pledging to give the country away to "the ragheads."

The latest issue includes references to the flag Code which show Obama to be in violation for not making the required salute, although of course that code clearly states that these rules do not apply to and cannot be made to apply to civilians and any behavior is acceptible as long as respect is shown. Just a little bit of information makes the lie go down, to paraphrase the song.

Much is being made of Michelle Obama's “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” It's really impressive to watch the faux outrage build up to an hysterical psychodrama. I'm having trouble remembering the last time I was really proud of this country and of course her adult lifetime rivals the age of my favorite shoes. Sure, I'm proud of the part we played in the two World Wars, I'm proud that we landed on the moon, but I'm not proud of Slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, the Trail of Tears, Wounded knee, the battle of Little Big Horn, Joe McCarthy, the internment of Japanese American citizens, the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, the training of the Central American death squads to rape nuns and murder peasants, the sale of weapons to Iran while they were holding US prisoners, and yes, the invasion of Iraq and its attendant hoaxes. Being unable to feel shame is the mark of the sociopath, not the patriot.

So I guess Michelle and I along with her husband aren't Patriotic; at least as long as patriotic is defined by being overwhelmingly proud and elated at every foul, stupid and misguided thing our government has done.

I've yet to receive any of these sneering, cynical and indignant assaults on John McCain, not that there aren't any outraged opponents of the man who waffled about torture and has steadfastly promoted a war while steadfastly opposing anything designed to improve health care benefits for those returning from it. John McCain voted against veteran's benefits in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 and continues to vote against anything designed to benefit the VA hospitals even when (and perhaps because) the bill would be payed by closing tax loopholes.

But John McCain is a patriot - he wears a pin to prove it. He supports the troops as long as it doesn't require putting Halliburton's money where his mouth is.

The VA hospital system is said to be the best health care system, public or private, in the country but the privatization pirates, wearing their patriot pins and waving flags, have been trying to board it and sink it for years. John would rather have veterans go to private health care providers, the same ones who regularly bilk Medicare and deny claims that eat into profits. Why? Ask the lobbyists for the health care industry, the lobbyists for the Cerner Corporation, for instance, who have replaced a high functioning, open source electronic information system with a private, closed source package at the expense of veterans. Why? Could it be because the VA is admired world wide for efficiency and thus contradicts the Great Buffoonicator's proclamation that Government can't do anything?

Who cares? The web of Republican reasoning isn't worth unraveling and there's only a spider at the middle of it anyway. Needless to say, those who scream about flags and pins and national pride the most have their agendas, and one man's patriotism is another man's treason. Oh, and yes, While McCain sold out the vets again, Obama voted for improved benefits. Tell me again about how patriotism is about pins and flags.

Our newest ambassador

One of the weaknesses of our normally peaceful presidential change of watch is that someone like Bush, leaving office peacefully, with ceremony and not in handcuffs, isn't an event that shows the world we have attempted to cleanse ourselves of his administration and its arrogance. Regardless of who his replacement will be, it will be hard to convince the world that our government has any respect for basic human rights, justice or the rule of law.

Newly released Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al Hajj returned to his native Sudan Monday to begin his new mission of United States bad will ambassador to the world. He was held in our Guantanamo prison camp without charge for seven years, apparently because he contributed money to a charity suspected of supporting terrorists, once interviewed Osama bin Laden and worked for a beverage company whose director supported Muslim forces in Bosnia and Chechnya. After seven years, or as he put it in a televised speech, "After 2,340 days spent in the most heinous prison mankind has ever known" he was released. Was this vengeance for his having reported human rights violations in Afghanistan? Maybe, but if this kind of evidence can justify seven years of enhanced interrogation, nobody the US targets for reprisals is safe and of course the world knows it, hates us for it and hates us the more for our not caring, for nattering endlessly about flag pins, what brand of whiskey is preferred and other insanely meaningless crap.

It will take a long time for the image of the US as a dangerous country run by paranoid megalomaniacs and peopled by cowardly, greedy entertainment junkies who have no clue or care, to fade. Who knows if it ever will? Who knows if we ever will be able to get clean of the addiction to diseased patriotism, ignorance and delusions of grandeur, but if we won't Punish, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the entire cabal, perhaps the election of Barak Obama will to some degree signal that a change has occurred in America. Without that perception, ambassadors like Sami al Hajj will unite the world against us and ignite the passions of ten thousand terrorists. We can chose to become an isolated nation dependent upon the fear of our nuclear weapons for protection, or we can begin to reverse course, to live again as free and courageous people who deal with the world honestly.

Our choices are very limited and there is no perfect candidate, but for my part, I think Barak Obama, whatever his faults and weaknesses may be, is the best choice we have.

Name game

Face it, being factually or logically true isn't what makes facts factual. As long as enough people want Barak Obama to be an America hating radical Muslim, he is. As long as there are enough people who want him not to be willing to pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth, or insist that he took his oath of office on the Koran, it doesn't matter that it is a lie. The only thing left of Democracy in the United States is the democracy of slander. Belief is what counts and in a nation desperately addicted to belief and to anger, there's always a ready market for both.

That the infamous Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Awja contains the same Hussein, means that SenatorObama is Muslim as certainly as Abraham Lincoln was a Jew and General Omar Bradley was a Persian poet. There's nothing in a name. The name Barak, as Intellectual Insurgent once pointed out to me means "blessed" in many Semitic languages. Baruch is the Hebrew form and a thousand Hebrew prayers begin with the word that must have been on Jesus' lips from his childhood.

That John McCain's daughter Bridget was born in Pakistan is no more evidence of his or her secret Jihadi affiliation than that Obama's grandfather lived in Nairobi, and like the strange genetic discovery that Thomas Jefferson had a male ancestor from the middle east, it means nothing. Nobody seems to be concerned that General John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander is a secret agent from Hamas or Gen. George Joulwan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe might be a "terrorist." They have Arabic names.

So what about Regular names like John, which is from the Hebrew Yohannon; is McCain a Zionist?

So just what the hell was "conservative" radio host Bill Cunningham thinking when he described Barak Hussein Obama at a McCain rally in Cincinnati Tuesday saying

"All's going to be right with the world when the great prophet from Chicago takes the stand, and the world leaders who want to kill us will simply be singing [Kumbaya] together around the table with Barack Obama."

He was thinking that anything he can do to elect John McCain is justifiable; any lie, any slander, any old bucket of slime. He was thinking that Americans are so in love with hate and have such a need to believe things that justify it, that he would be greeted with cheers. What were those in the audience who actually cheered thinking? Probably the same sort of thing a chimpanzee thinks before attacking a neighboring band of apes.

Republicans, who seem to loathe Semitic names, have called Obama anti-Semitic. "Anti-Semites for Obama" is the title of a press release a few days ago, according to Wonkette. The same stupid game again. Absurdity, Irony: these are things these fake conservatives can't even perceive. It's a kind of blindness that allows a No matter that he speaks out against the bigotry he has some first hand knowledge of. Republicans like Congressman Jack Kingston who wasn't wearing a lapel pin to sneer that Obama doesn't wear a lapel pin simply can't bridge the gap between their fantasy world and the real one. He's a Muslim and a traitor and that's the same thing and they'll be damned if they're going to let reality get in the way. Perhaps they will be.

It was the Republican party of course who selected Cunningham as a speaker, not McCain; the same Republican party of George Walker Bush that attacked him for having a "black" daughter in the 2000 race; a daughter with Muslim ancestors and relatives with names like Hussein or perhaps Mohammad Ali or Karim Abdul Jabbar - names nobody should have reason to be ashamed of.

Perhaps there's a lot more shame to be felt for supporting such a party; for being loyal to that party more than to the nation that persists, much to my disgust, in allowing them to exist.

My country, 'tis of thee. . .

It's starting. Barak Obama is now the Democratic candidate apparent and the Swift Boats are weighing anchor, the slime breweries are bubbling and the Republican Values Vermin are sitting around the cauldron and giggling.

Barak, you see, is a homosexual junkie and even though he never went to a radical Islamic school, he did anyway. He's a known follower of Soviet leaders, planns to send our wealth to foreign countries because he is a Communist and his wife is anti-American. My in-box is crawling with racist "jokes" from people I formerly respected.

"Barack’s first presidential photo will show Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton on his right side and Teddie Kennedy and Oprah standing on his left side." says one.

"the head of the National Black Caucus said on NPR, National Public Radio, that if his boy got in he would make sure that Jessie was made Secretary of something. " says another. The viral video: Barak the Magic Negro has crawled out of its coffin again.

It's not as though I didn't expect it and it's not as though every country doesn't have it's unworthies. It's that we don't drag them out into the public square and pillory them any more that makes me so ashamed.

Smells like smoke

I used to read The Gun Toting Liberal although other than for the title that describes me fairly well, it's slant is hardly liberal or even "slightly left of center" lately, and I haven't read much 2nd amendment debate there. I used to read them, but it's all over now and I'm through wishing I could quit them; I'm finished.

I'm aware that the title of "liberal" has become meaningless through decades of tendentious definition, but what kind of Liberal claims that Barak Obama is a Muslim, Caroline Kennedy is his daughter and the New York Times commits treason? Actually, the antic internet smear campaign against Obama is more comical than the usual swashbuckling swift boat stuff I've seen used against John Kerry, his wife, Max Cleland and even against John McCain in previous elections. It ranks with the little remembered and less effective campaign to insinuate that Dwight Eisenhower was Jewish.

Leonard Pitts comments in today's Miami Herald about the strangeness of a country that accepts Shaquille O'Neal and Mohammed Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who are Muslims and worries about whether Obama, who is not a follower of the Prophet, is secretly the Baghdad Candidate. I would actually dismiss the effort as being so puerile as to be ineffective but for the e-mails that pour into my mailbox with indignant comments about Barak Osama refusing to salute the flag or say the pledge of allegiance and taking his oath of office on the Koran. Apparently there are people looking for some reason to tear him down that distract from their real reason and then there are always those who will fall for the "where there's smoke, there's fire" fallacy. Of course, where there's smoke there's often a smokescreen and what smells like smoke to some, smells like bullshit to others.

Say it ain't so, Jesse

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse - you know I've always tried to like you and sometimes I've succeeded in admiring you and I've forgiven your "Hymie Town" slurs and the way your accent changes when you talk to different people, but you really haven't learned, have you?

So Obama is "acting like he's white" for not being "all over Jena." Are you accusing me of being a bigot like your friend Louis Farrakhan who threatens the Jews with destruction and thinks white people are devils? because that's what "Acting White" means in that context. I didn't accuse you of "acting black" when you accused the Jews of trying to defeat you while ignoring the large amount of support you've had from them. That's not fair and I know you're a man who has always tried to tell other people to be fair, unless of course you're referring to Jews or Hymies as you call them. That's not fair to Senator Obama either because if a man is going to be president of the United States and all its people, including Hymies and white people and others and commander of 30 thousand nuclear warheads and all, he's going to have to indulge in a bit of arrangement of things according to priority.

A good president simply isn't going to have time for and shouldn't have time for making the sad story of racial hysteria in a tiny town the center of his attention. That wouldn't mean he was "white" unless you consider responsibility to be an exclusively white trait and you don't, since you're not a racist of a kind who would talk down black people. I know that.

I'm quite sure you aren't promoting the idea that a president should intervene personally in judicial matters like the current administration and I'm sure you've heard Mr. Obama express his regrets at this unhappy situation that seems somehow headed for resolution without the Senator "being all over" it. So what is it really all about? do you really want to tell black people what they should or shouldn't; can or can't be because of their skin color?

I'm confused, I really am and although it could just be because I'm white, or worse yet - a hymie from hymietown, but maybe you could explain to me why Senator Obama isn't enough like you to be president.

Can we talk?

Obama blew it. That headline and other rather overblown readings of Senator Obama's response that he would be ready to hold talks with the bad guys are everywhere today and sadly Senator Clinton's website seems to be one of those places.

"irresponsible and frankly naive" said Mrs. Clinton to an Iowa Newspaper today, adding that such a meeting should only be attempted after lower level diplomatic exchanges had been exhausted. Obama's response was to raise the question of her responsibility and naivete in voting for Bush's war along with pointing our her self serving interpretation of his answer.

"What she's somehow maintaining is my statement could be construed as not having asked what the meeting was about. I didn't say these guys were going to come over for a cup of coffee some afternoon,"

Sometimes I wonder if we're listening to adults here, but Obama was, in my opinion, right in calling this a manufactured controversy. There was nothing in his response that indicated he would try some reckless act nor am I sure the kind of diplomatic dance that she advocates would really be a reflection of her greater foreign policy know-how rather than just an opportunity to pose as a wise statesman. Obama never said he'd ignore diplomatic channels.

Is this attempt at differentiation another example of Freud's narcissism of small differences, or is it just childish political ritual of the type that has given us so much formally stupid discourse over the years?

Katrina Vanden Heuvel in her blog at The Nation, writes that

"In signaling that he was willing to meet with the leaders of these countries, Obama was signaling that the United States has the confidence in its values to meet with anyone. But he also signaled a certain humility that reflects the understanding that the next president must reach out to the rest of the world and not merely issue conditions from the White House and threaten military force if it does not get its way."

I agree and perhaps it would also be a signal that the traditional formality of ignoring everyone who disagrees with us, that has brought us this traditional hostility, can be set aside. The Viet Nam era policy of negotiating only from "strength" and never having a discussion without a predetermined outcome has proved to be a great system for eliminating constructive conversation as well as for losing conflicts.

I don't know if Hillary Clinton really represents the same old, same old, or whether she's doing what her same old strategists tell her, but if the country ever wanted a change in the way it's affairs are conducted more than it does now, I'm not aware of it. The idea of cutting through the BS, bluster and bravado and sitting down to talk may just be the kind of refreshment this weary electorate wants.