But we're not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.From : Frank Rich New York Times
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."
Rev. John Lewis From: Congressman Says McCain 'Sowing Seeds of Hatred' Saturday 11 October 2008 by: The Associated Press
Anyway , as for the election in the United States over the last week it has degenerated as the Palin/McCain campaign has decided to take the low road calling Barack Obama Unpatriotic, UnAmerican with a hidden agenda who is not just a risk but may in fact be working for unknown or unnamed terrorists. The Republicans have adopted the attitudes and Hate Speech of the Shock Jocks of Hate Radio tossing out accusations making unsupportable arguments to rile up the Mob - pitchforks & torches to bring down Obama who is depicted as America's worst enemy. In other words the Republicans have lost - gone a little nuts proving that they have been taken over by the wingnuts , the racists and religious fanatics who seem to hate just about everybody Palin/McCain on the Darkside/ Hate Speech Has Consequences
For instance look at this Hate Mongering ad attacking Barack Obama.
The ad Accuses Obama of being not who he says he is and that rather than wanting to unite Americans the ad suggests as Palin & McCain have that Obama wants to destroy America. Obama Is depicted as being Evil : "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing". The refence is from Matthew in which Jesus warns his apostles about those who would deceive them. The use of this phrase would suggest to their Evangelical supporters that Obama is the Anti-Christ or the one who prepares the way for the Anti-Christ of the Book of Revelation of Jesus Christ to St.John which they believes details the End-Times. These End-Time will be coming soo according to many Evangelicals and Pentecostals.
The ad ends with the slogan " WAKE UP America " which is often used by White Supremacist in America and in European White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi videos. Such videos can even be found on YouTube.Saying Wake Up implies the people or the nation have been asleep while evil anti-Christian , or anti-Anglo Saxon forces have been at work and have taken over or are about to take over the nation.
Beware of Wolves in Sheep's Clothing Mike Gendron
The Lord Jesus Christ warned His followers, "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheeps clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves (Matt. 7:15). The warning was important because Jesus later said to them: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore be shrewd as serpents, and innocent as doves" (Matt. 10:16). The apostle Paul, with a deeply troubled spirit and in tears, penned a similar warning: "I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock" (Acts 20:29). Throughout church history these warnings concerning professing Christians who deceive even the elect have seldom been taken seriously. How can the church be so easily deceived? According to Websters Dictionary "deceive" means "to lead astray or to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid." Could it be the church has not only lost its ability to discern truth from error but also to discern wolves from sheep?
and from: The Phrase Finder.org.uk
The King James Version of the Bible, 1611 gives this warning, in Matthew 7:15:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
The earliest English version of that biblical text is in John Wyclif's translation in 1382:
Be ye war of fals prophetis, that comen to you in clothing is of scheep, but withynneforth thei ben as wolues of raueyn.
America's Biggest Deception
thepoliticalmind
Added: October 05, 2008
So much for civilized Discource as McCain/ Palin Whipup Hate Mongering
Outspoken unabashed Hatred of Barack Obama has become the norm At McCain-Palin Rallies: Supporters yell "Terrorist! Kill Him!" etc.
Yep...you read the title correctly. McCain and Palin are whipping the mindless republican crowds into a frenzy. The crowds calling Obama a terrorist and screaming kill him! This is so far past the line that it is becoming criminal and dangerous! Especially after all the threats and attempts at Obama's life.
Rachel Maddow: Venomous Hate at McCain-Palin Rallies is Frightening
MSNBC 10/10/08
Rachel Maddow reports on the "venomous hate" being incited at McCain-Palin rallies.
Keith Olbermann:
McCain And Palin Incite Mob Mentality 10-7-08
McCain and Palin have been Inciting people in their rally's to go Far Beyond politics and have become Criminal. Now The Secret Service is investigating.
Media Right-wing Shock-Jocks' Hateful & Angry Speech Darkens Palin/McCain Campaign.
As Frank Rich writing for the New York Times notes the accusations made by The Palin/McCain campaign are erroneous and are also rather hateful and may endanger the life of Barack Obama or his supporters since he is being accused of being a terrorist who is out to destroy America according to the Palin/McCain campaign. This is at the least libel and at worst an example of incendiary Hate Speech. It is unfortunate that the United States is one of the few Western Nations that does not have stricter rules or regulations or statutes concerning Hate Speech. It appears that even calling for the death of one's political rival is seen as fair game. Has the McCain /Palin campaign crossed a line which should never be crossed. Should there be a criminal investigation into the Palin/McCain campaign. If justice were to prevail these two would be warned to cease and desist or face jail time. But no this is what Americans mistakenly refer to as Free-Speech. The radio shock-jocks gutter speech has now entered a major federal campaign.
The Terrorist Hussein Barack ObamaSunday 12 October 2008/by: Frank Rich, The New York Times
Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of ‛Treason!' and ‛Terrorist!' and ‛Kill him!' and ‛Off with his head!' as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.
All's fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers's Weather Underground history dates back to Obama's childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it's not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that's going on here. Don't for an instant believe the many mindlessly ‛even-handed' journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign's use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign's hammering on Charles Keating.
What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama ‛launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.' He is ‛palling around with terrorists' (note the plural noun). Obama is ‛not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.' Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.
By the time McCain asks the crowd ‛Who is the real Barack Obama?' it's no surprise that someone cries out ‛Terrorist!' The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama's middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers's Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.
That's a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. ‛Barack Obama's friend tried to kill my family' was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 - when Obama was 8.
...From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.
McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani's mocking dismissal of Obama as an ‛only in America' affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.
No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin's convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago's mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was ‛regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.' In the ‛60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: ‛Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.'
This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It's astonishing there's been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan - or William Ayers - in Denver.
Frank Rich concludes his article with a warning :
But we're not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.
As Rachel Maddow and others have pointed out a lot of this hatefilled talk reminds one of the angry vitriolic spewed out in the 1960s by Republicans which was really appealing to some Americans' greatest fears appeling to the worst in Americans their fear of the unknown and of deep seated racism - tolerance, compassion & differences & understanding & openness are depicted as weaknesses rather than good qualities. A leader who is not willing ,in their view, to shout down or to imprison or even to shoot those who have been called disloyal and unpatriotic is a weak leader. They see Palin & McCain as the solution to all that ails America. Next stop Martial Law. Well it appears all this ugly rhetoric is not helping the Republicans according to the polls.
Congressman Says McCain 'Sowing Seeds of Hatred' Saturday 11 October 2008 by: The Associated Press
Washington - Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.
Republican candidate John McCain on Saturday called Lewis' remarks "shocking and beyond the pale."
The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator doesn't believe McCain or his policy criticism is at all comparable to Wallace and his segregationist policies.
In a statement issued Saturday, Lewis said McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." He noted that Wallace also ran for president.
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."
One of the seminal events of the civil rights movement was the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963. Four black girls died in the blast, which was linked to a Ku Klux Klan group.
But in desperation and self-righteousness & denial of what hatred McCain & Palin have stirred up
McCain rejected any comparison to Wallace.
"I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track," McCain said.
Republican Leaders Break Ranks With McCain /Monday 13 October 2008
by: Stephen Foley, The Independent UK
Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which has seen Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.
And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats took another symbolic step towards healing the party after their bitter primary battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first joint appearance in support of Mr Obama.
From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican rallies.
Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in the Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said Mr McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy losses not just in the presidential race but also in contests for Congressional seats. Mr Thompson, a former governor of the swing state of Wisconsin, said he thought Mr McCain, on his present trajectory, would lose the state, and he told a New York Times reporter he was not happy with the campaign. "I don't know who is," he added.
Some Republicans seeking election to Congress have begun distancing themselves from Mr McCain. In Nebraska, a Republican representative, Lee Terry, ran a newspaper ad featuring support from a woman who called herself an "Obama-Terry voter".
...Reining in the party's supporters may be harder. A minister delivering the invocation at a rally on Saturday asked Christians to pray for a McCain win. "There are millions of people around this world praying to their god ñ whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah ñ that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons," said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport. Those comments earned a rebuke from a McCain spokesman, and both sides this weekend had to slap down supporters for stirring issues of religion and race.
The Obama campaign disassociated itself from comments by Democratic congressman John Lewis who compared Mr McCain to the late Alabama segregationist George Wallace. "Senator McCain and Governor Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division," he said. "George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights."
--------------
And in an article from the Huffington Post it appears the angry nasty mudslinging isn't merely a reflection of some over-zealous supporters but is part of the Palin/McCain campaign strategy :
Jeffrey Feldman: McCain Volunteers Taught to Accuse Obama of Terrorism
By teaching his volunteers to see Barack Obama as similar to bin Laden, McCain is using his campaign to tie Obama to the mass murders of September 11, 2001.
According to Time, McCain campaign staffers in Virginia are teaching volunteers to see Barack Obama as having terrorist 'friends,' and then providing these volunteers with arguments for persuading voters that Sen. Obama, like Osama Bin Laden, shares responsibility for bombings of the Pentagon.
The report from inside the McCain campaign brings to light an alarming fact: while McCain tells his supporters publicly to refrain from violent rhetoric, he continues to teach his volunteers rhetoric designed to elicit violent responses.
In the article, Time's Karen Tumulty recounts her visit to a campaign training session in Gainesville, VA, a strategic center for the McCain ground game in Prince William County. What Tumulty describes is a training session hosted by by Virginia's state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick in which volunteers were being trained to see Barack Obama as a terrorist.
Tumulty writes:
"The McCain campaign invited me to visit Frederick and the Gainesville operation on Saturday morning, to get a first-hand glimpse of its ground game in Prince William County, Virginia, a fast-growing area about 30 miles from Washington, D.C.
With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points -- for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true -- though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born."
and : What I Learned at the Sarah Palin Rally Before They Threw Me out/By Linda Milazzo, AlterNet. Oct. 7, 2008.
20,000 Christian zealots, anti-abortion fanatics, and mostly white suburbanites reconnected with their high school past at the Palin rally.
What I witnessed was thoroughly alarming!!
Among this raptured crowd of 20,000 was a frightening mix of Christian zealots, anti-abortion fanatics, and mostly white suburban women and men reconnecting with their high school mentality. Bright colored pom-poms were everywhere -- as if Sarah Palin were head cheerleader, the women were on her squad, and the men were the football heroes. Sarah Palin, the quintessential 4ever-school-girl had revitalized their youth and saved them from adulthood. Check out the red pom-pom "hair" on the man behind Palin. If that isn't high school, what is??
(and as for Domestic Trrorists she writes:)
...While Palin's peevishness is appalling, it pales in comparison to the dangerous ideology that she and her followers share. By unleashing Sarah Palin, John McCain has reinvigorated the anti-choice/anti-woman/anti-reproductive rights fanatics, who not long ago were at the forefront of domestic terror. Interesting that Palin insinuates Obama when referring to:
"terrorists who would target their own country"
when it's those who share herideology who have committed heinous domestic crimes. Let us not forget the health-care workers who were murdered by anti-choice radicals who share Palin's no exceptions for abortion beliefs. Let us not forget the women and family clinics that were bombed. Let us not forget Eric Rudolph - the anti-abortion terrorist who killed two people and injured 100 others during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. The same Eric Rudolph who bombed abortion clinics that killed even more people. The same Eric Rudolph who sadistically attacked a gay bar. Let us not forget that the Sarah Palin wing of anti-choice fanaticism victimized America for years, committing crime after heinous crime. What John McCain has unleashed on America with his choice of Sarah Palin is an outright invitation to these cults to wreak havoc all over again.
and how far do Palin and her followers go in accusing Obama as being a secret agent of the Terrorists :
Yes, the silly Palin chatter of"she's one of us 'cause she talks like us and is a regular person"was also spun at Saturday's event. As was propaganda about Obama"getting paid undercover by some other country"and "doubt that Obama was really born in Hawaii because his birth certificate can't be found". Sadly this level of ignorance exists -- even in Southern California. In fact, it was so illogically mind-boggling that I audio-taped it as proof.
and so it goes ,
GORD.
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