Barack Obama claimed the state of North Carolina today, which hasn’t gone to a Democrat since Jimmy Carter. But before we could reflect on this historic triumph, we were reminded of something we read last week, which made us think of this:
Don’t worry. We can explain.
Senator Lindsey Graham, warming up a North Carolina audience for McCain, assured them that McCain would win: "He fits North Carolina like a glove…I’ll beat Michael Phelps in swimming before Barack Obama wins North Carolina." Whoops! Graham continued, "Don't let me down, because I can’t swim."
But rather than eating his words, we hope Graham will take the opportunity to learn to swim. Swimming is an important skill, especially for a man who could himself get washed away by a blue wave.
We’ve done him the favor of inquiring about beginner lessons in South Carolina. The Columbia YMCA has two very promising offerings:
Graham was right about one thing: McCain does fit North Carolina like a glove. We tried it ourselves, and the glove kept getting hung up on Asheville:
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s historic election, the McCain campaign and RNC led a coordinated campaign to cast the integrity of the vote into doubt. They claimed ACORN was engaging in massive voter fraud. They claimed that Obama was receiving illegal foreign contributions. They claimed that the “liberal media” was skewing the polls in favor of Democrats.
In other words, they were writing themselves an insurance policy in the event of a contested election or narrow loss. But it wasn’t even close.
As a result, the anticipated barrage of conspiracy theories and false charges never materialized. Yet not everyone could just let it go.
By now, you’ve probably heard about this segment on Thursday’s NBC Evening News:
Brian Williams asked Sarah Palin if “an abortion clinic bomber [is] a terrorist under this definition” and she answered, “Now others who would to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities, I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word ‘terrorist’ there, but it’s unacceptable, and it would not be condoned of course on our watch.”
As others have noted, it’s disturbing that after 7 murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 175 acts of arson and hundreds of cases of death threats, stalking, assault, and break-ins, Palin doesn’t think it’s appropriate to use the T-word.
But what has been mostly overlooked is the fact that the comments by Palin, a self-described “hardcore pro-lifer,” run contrary to the longstanding position of American law enforcement.
For instance, the FBI has long considered acts of violence by radical anti-abortion activists to be domestic terrorism. In its 2002-2005 Terrorism in the United States report, Eric Rudolph – the man responsible for two abortion clinic bombings, the Olympic Park bombing, multiple deaths and serious injuries to many more – is described as falling into the “FBI’s 'lone offender' category of terrorist for those who engage in terrorist activities free from organizational guidance.”
The FBI defines domestic terrorism, logically enough, as “the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or its territories without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” In other words, Palin is out of step with the FBI.
But don’t expect John McCain to set his running mate straight on the issue. He opposed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act – a crucial anti-domestic terrorism bill which led to a considerable reduction in violence – when it came before him in the Senate, so he too is willing to pander to the far right on this issue.
There's a long history in American politics of exploiting divisions and fanning bigotry to win elections. In recent decades those strategies were honed by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. Now the torch has passed to Steve Schmidt, and he’s done just about everything possible to fan the flames.
Schmidt’s tactics and the right-wing echo chamber have convinced millions of Americans that the nation is about to elect someone who hates America and “pals around with terrorists.” Just take a look at this video of supporters outside a Palin rally:
In recent weeks, the right wing has grown even more frenzied as McCain and his allies pushed the ACORN voter fraud hoax. Not only is Obama a Manchurian candidate, the thinking goes, but his evildoer comrades at ACORN are trying to steal the election. It’s little wonder that some people are going berserk.
McCain, Palin, Schmidt, Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of them have created something very powerful, but very ugly, and it’s grown too big for them to control. Here is just some of what happens when you train your pit bulls to fear and hate and attack, and then they get loose:
People For the American Way is tracking such incidents around the nation. If something happens in your community that people should know about, please get in touch.
It’s bad enough that the employees of ACORN have had to endure days of baseless and outlandish attacks by John McCain and the RNC. But after McCain outrageously claimed before a national audience on Wednesday night that ACORN was “maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy,” the group came under attack, literally. In the following days, ACORN’s Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized and at least one employee received a death threat.
And for nearly two weeks, ACORN offices across the nation have been subjected to an onslaught of racist and threatening voicemails and emails. We have secured copies of some of the most disturbing and offensive messages and have reproduced them below in order to show the very real consequences of the Right Wing’s overheated and misplaced “voter fraud” rhetoric.
Warning: the emails and voicemails below are highly explicit and have only been edited to remove personally identifying information. Please also note that, where relevant, the proper authorities have been notified.
Voicemail #1:
“Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He's a fucking nigger, and he's a piece of shit. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They're gonna get all hung honeys, they're gonna get assassinated, they're gonna get killed.”
Email #1: This email was received by the Cleveland office. The subject line was the name of a senior staffer who had recently appeared on TV to defend the group.
According to McClatchy, the email was traced back to a Facebook account featuring a McCain-Palin sign.
Email #2:
Voicemail #2:
"You liberal idiots. Dumb shits. Welfare bums. You guys just fucking come to our country, consume every natural resource there is, and make a lot of babies. That's all you guys do. And then suck up the welfare and expect everyone else to pay for your hospital bills for your kids. I just say let your kids die. That's the best move. Just let your children die. Forget about paying for hospital bills for them. I'm not gonna do it. You guys are lowlifes. And I hope you all die."
At press conference earlier today in Washington, two of the GOP’s elder statesmen – former senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman – tried to convince reporters that vote fraud is a serious problem and could call the election into question. What they failed to say is that there is no evidence of widespread vote fraud.
On the other hand, there is undeniable proof of countless acts of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. All you have to do is open a newspaper to know that.
Today in New Hampshire, the former head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for New England was indicted for lying to investigators about his role in a successful effort to jam the phones of the New Hampshire Democratic Party and its allies on election day in 2002.
And today in California, a former Republican congressional candidate pleaded not guilty after being indicted for obstructing an investigation into a letter sent by his campaign to 14,000 legally registered voters with Hispanic surnames informing them that “they could be deported for voting if they were in the country illegally or were an immigrant.”
We trust that Danforth and Rudman will hold another press conference tomorrow, this time to talk about the proven threat of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. But we’re not holding our breath.
The Religious Right conservatives and the Big Money conservatives usually stick closely to their own turf. Even within the right wing fraternity, good fences make good neighbors. But lately in Alabama, all bets are off (so to speak).
The state chapter of the Christian Coalition, which has split from the national group and calls itself Christian Action Alabama, has been sparring with Freedom’s Watch, a right-wing group funded by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson which has been spending big in the state. The reason is simple: gambling.
Political observers wondered how long the dispute could simmer before bursting into plain view of voters. The DCCC just answered that question with its new ad in the race for Alabama’s 2nd congressional district:
Michelle Goldberg has an excellent article in The Nation that traces the rise of Sarah Palin back to Pat Robertson’s failed 1988 presidential bid. The campaign’s grassroots machinery was reorganized as the Christian Coalition and began “building power from the ground up, turning conservative churches into little political machines.” Palin owes her entire career to that effort, which continues to this day.
Palin, “who got her start in a local church-backed political struggle,” followed the Religious Right playbook in her run for mayor by politicizing religion and focusing on social issues that were far removed from the duties of a small town mayor. She also received crucial support from culture warriors near and far:
When Palin ran for mayor in 1996, she leveraged the support of the religious conservatives. Wasilla mayoral races are nonpartisan and in the past had been focused on local issues like taxes and policing. In her challenge to Republican mayor John Stein, Palin changed that, touting her opposition to abortion, her religion and her support for gun rights. "She got a lot of help from the Christian groups," said Curt Menard, mayor of Mat-Su Borough (which includes Wasilla). […]
According to Stein, a national antiabortion organization sent out postcards to Wasilla voters on Palin's behalf. There was a whisper campaign that Stein, a Lutheran, was actually Jewish. Some Palin supporters suggested that Stein and his wife, Karen Marie, weren't really married because they didn't have the same last name.
Palin likewise depended on the Religious Right in her run for governor: the “Alaska Family Council, a group that formed that year and is loosely affiliated with Focus on the Family, distributed a voter guide showing Palin's alignment with its ideology.” And when a GOP state representative prematurely left office last year, Palin used the opportunity to shore up her base:
Sarah Palin appointed Wes Keller, an elder in her church, to replace him. He introduced a bill to make the performance of intact dilation and extraction abortions – so-called “partial-birth abortions” – a felony, and…plans to introduce legislation mandating the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.
Palin’s rise from a small right-wing church in Alaska to a slot on a major party ticket gives lie to the notion that the Religious Right is fading away. Or as Goldberg puts it, “the Christian right often has its greatest triumphs just after it's been pronounced moribund.”
As we've written about before, the Alliance Defense Fund is organizing a face-off between right-wing churches and the IRS over limits on politicking by churches:
"Christian ministers from California and 21 other states will use their pulpits Sunday to deliver political sermons or endorse presidential candidates – defying a federal ban on campaigning by nonprofit groups."
The ADF and its partners want to turn right-wing churches into one giant GOTV operation for anti-gay, anti-abortion Republicans – all the while remaining 100% tax-exempt. Here's a taste of what a partisan church would be like, courtesy an ADF ally:
"I'm going to talk about the un-biblical stands that Barack Obama takes. Nobody who follows the Bible can vote for him," said the Rev. Wiley S. Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. "We may not be politically correct, but we are going to be biblically correct. We are going to vote for those who follow the Bible.”
That’s the sort of ugly partisanship that Congress sought to avoid when in 1954 it restricted all tax-exempt groups from directly supporting or opposing candidates for public office. Tax-exempt status was created to support charitable, religious, and educational undertakings – not partisan warfare.
Churches and their leaders are of course free to address public policy and mobilize around the issues of the day, including directly supporting legislation. The ADF’s claim that churches are being muzzled is patently false.
This weekend’s publicity stunt by the ADF’s partisan pastors may just result in some of the churches losing their tax-exempt status. Perhaps they could save themselves the effort and be honest with the public by simply reincorporating as political action committees.
In the moments after John McCain revealed his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, a group of right-wing luminaries held a conference call to publicly swoon over her selection. “She could not be a better Vice Presidential pick,” gushed Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. Ken Blackwell, the controversial former Ohio Secretary of State and vice chairman of the GOP platform committee, concurred: “I just think that John McCain couldn’t have made a better choice.”
The reason for their enthusiasm was clear – abortion. Or rather, Palin’s opposition to it, even in cases of rape or incest. Blackwell called the McCain-Palin ticket the “strongest pro-life team with a pro-life platform in the history of the Republican party.” Coming from an anti-abortion zealot like Blackwell, that’s not faint praise.
Not surprisingly, the speakers thought Palin stacked up favorably against Joe Biden. In response to a question posed by Sarah Posner, Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life said that Palin is a good Catholic and Biden is no Catholic at all: “He's a Catholic who's contradicting one of the key tenants of Catholicism. And claiming that he's practicing is simply not true. You can't practice the faith when you deny it.” (Pavone failed to note that Palin was rebaptized into the Assemblies of God as a girl.)
McCain has worked for years to cultivate his maverick image, including deliberate efforts to obscure his strong anti-choice record and sentiments. But no such ambiguity is possible with Palin on the ticket. “For those who have had ambivalence or who have simply been unsure of how pro-life Senator McCain is – and of course his voting record is very strong on pro-life – now that ambivalence will certainly be counteracted by this VP selection,” said Pavone.
McCain shouldn’t take too much comfort in the heaps of praise from the far right because it cuts both ways. As he removes lingering doubts among Religious Right voters, he is creating new doubts among moderate voters who are increasingly seeing the holes in his maverick schtick. He’s riding a public opinion seesaw, and not even real straight talk will get him off it.
The creative geniuses at the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow still haven't learned their lesson. The right-wing site was roundly ridiculed last month after we reported that the site was automatically replacing every instance of the word "gay" with "homosexual" in the Associated Press stories that it syndicates. As a result, they ran numerous stories like this one about track star Tyson Gay: "Homosexual breaks Greene's US record in 100 at trials."
And they're still at it. The folks at Queerty noticed some less-than-subtle edits in today's AP story on Hallmark's decision to carry same-sex wedding cards.
The headline – Now on Hallmark Aisle: Gay Marriage Cards – was changed to this: Hallmark embraces homosexual ‘marriage.’
And the lede went from “Most states don't recognize gay marriage” to “Most states don't recognize same-sex ‘marriage.’”
The scare quotes around marriage are a great touch, but we’re surprised that OneNewsNow passed up the opportunity to replace “same-sex” with “homosexual,” as they did later in the story. This can only mean one thing – the OneNewsNow summer interns have headed back to Virginia Beach to resume their formal education at Pat Robertson University.
Current New York Times best-selling author and proven liar Jerome Corsi has been lavished with attention by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for his slanderous new book about Barack Obama.
But before Corsi put Obama in his crosshairs, he plied his wares in the GOP presidential primary. Fox and Limbaugh treat Corsi like he’s a legitimate political commentator, so we’ll trust they’ll have Corsi back on to discuss his groundbreaking work on McCain:
The AP's Nedra Pickler caught the right-wing website WorldNetDaily in particularly fine form yesterday while researching a story about Jerome Corsi, a serial liar and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who writes for the site:
"Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was "Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice."
[Right Wing Watch was first to report the Corsi/Bigfoot nexus yesterday]
Pickler also quoted an Obama spokesman, whose review of Corsi’s new book – if it even counts as a book – was less than positive:
"Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."
If WorldNetDaily is any indication, there is apparently money to be made in running a debunked Internet source, especially when you run fabulous ads like these:
We reported earlier that the FBI believes that suspected Anthrax sender Bruce Ivins was motivated partly by his “right-to-life fervor.” Regardless of whether anti-abortion sentiment played a role in those attacks, there was never any doubt about the motivation behind the now forgotten anthrax scare that swept women’s health clinics the following month.
Here’s an excerpt from an 11/29/01 FBI press release announcing new information about the then-fugitive suspect Clayton Lee Waagner:
During Labor Day weekend, 2001, Waagner abandoned a vehicle in Memphis, Tennessee, following a hit and run accident. Authorities recovered various items from the vehicle including a rifle, a shotgun, a pipe bomb, and anti-abortion literature. That same weekend, Waagner fled the area after committing a carjacking in nearby Tunica, Mississippi. Waagner had previously testified that he is an "anti-abortion warrior" and admitted to stalking abortion clinics around the country.
During the second week of October 2001, more than 280 letters that threatened to contain anthrax were mailed to women's reproductive health clinics on the east coast. The envelopes were marked "Time Sensitive" and "Urgent Security Notice Enclosed." The envelopes also bore return addresses of the U.S. Marshals Service or the U.S. Secret Service. During the first week of November 2001 a second series of more than 270 anthrax threat letters were sent to women's reproductive health clinics via Federal Express.
It now appears quite possible that one deranged “pro-life” terrorist was inspired to action by another deranged “pro-life” terrorist. How tragic, and telling, that would be.
The FBI believes that Bruce Ivins – the FBI’s sole suspect in the 2001 anthrax terror attacks – was motivated in part by his fervent “pro-life” views to send anthrax-laden letters to two Democratic Senators and multiple media outlets, which killed five people and severely sickened others.
We reported last week that Ivins, whose wife was the president of an anti-abortion group, was himself a longtime supporter of an anti-gay group that bashes Democratic senators and mainstream media outlets. But an affidavit released by the FBI and recent comments by investigators provide far more information about Ivins’ potential motivation.
In a section of the affidavit titled “Frustrations with Members of the United States Senate,” investigators recount email messages written by Ivins concerning his “pro-life” views and frustration with civil libertarians in Congress over their opposition to Bush administration policies. They also describe an article found in his house from an anti-abortion newsletter which argued that Catholic senators like Leahy and Daschle “should be excommunicated for aiding and abetting abortion.”
Additionally, NPR has reported that Ivins was connected to numerous anti-abortion groups and “did a great deal of mailing under pseudonyms and from various cities,” much of which “involved anti-abortion or Right to Life activities.” All of this has led officials to conclude that “Ivins’ right-to-life fervor was at least part of the reason he would target Daschle and Leahy.”
If Ivins was in fact the anthrax sender, he would be far from the first “pro-life” advocate to resort to murder and terrorism. A perusal of the list of items confiscated by the FBI from Ivins’ home reveals these noteworthy items:
* Five (5) cards from Respect Life Committee * Black briefcase containing Glock 34 S/N KKP854; Beretta pistol s/n DAA274445; Glock 27 s/n ERP247 * Beige lockbox containing stunmaster 300s, airtaser, Stunmaster 100s, 2 peppersprays, batteries
