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You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2008 / The Best For Last

The Best For Last

by John Cole|  October 14, 20088:04 am| 73 Comments

This post is in: Election 2008

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Via Sullivan, this preview of what is to come:

McCain advisers say they’re saving their best material for the last ten days of the race, when, the campaign hopes, three quarters of the remaining undecided voters will make up their minds, and their minds will be concentrating on Barack Obama. When the urgency of the presidential election impresses itself, the hope is that these voters will swing back to the familiar, rather than the unknown. The last ten days, according to a McCain aide, are when the “imponderables” come into play.

Here is a wild guess of what the best material is:

Here is Tucker Carlson pining for more Rev. Wright in the Daily Beast (which is turning out to be worth reading):

The McCain campaign’s attempt to tie Barack Obama to terrorist-turned-professor Bill Ayers appears to have failed. Most people still don’t seem to know who Ayers is. And there still isn’t evidence that the two were more than acquaintances. By the end of the week, McCain will likely have moved on to another line of attack. The obvious question is: Why not Jeremiah Wright?

Timing, Tucker, timing, although I honestly think it will fail. At this point, Obama has already weathered the Reverend Wright stuff, and any return to it will be seen as a sign of desperation. I forget which talking head said it the other day on AC360, but at this point, everything the McCain campaign does is viewed by the public through the perception that McCain is behind. Even things that may be legitimate will be viewed as acts of desperation at this point.

Anything can happen, and I think the triumphalism in some quarters among Democrats (myself included at times, when I am not swinging wildly towards unwarranted pessimism- we all know how carried away I can get) is cause for concern, but we really are starting to head into “live boy dead girl” territory.

*** Update ***

Also, via Ta-Nehisi, this:

*** Update #2 ***

And, right on time, Stanley Kurtz:

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

Panic.

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Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    dr. bloor

    October 14, 2008 at 8:09 am

    I’d like to share your optimism, but I’ll believe it’s President-Elect Obama after the last vote is counted, and not before. The threshold for voting against an African American in America is considerably lower than the live boy/dead girl standard.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    October 14, 2008 at 8:14 am

    The stupid, it burns:

    McCain advisers say they’re saving their best material for the last ten days of the race, when, the campaign hopes, three quarters of the remaining undecided voters will make up their minds,

    And the remaining quarter of undecided voters will what, throw a dart at their ballot? (hopefully, none of them will try that with a touchscreen machine; gets expensive). *All* of the "remaining undecided voters" will either make up their minds or simply not vote.

    -dms

  3. 3.

    chopper

    October 14, 2008 at 8:15 am

    yeah, but they’ll only start throwing wright at us if they think the damage it’ll do is bigger than the damage the ‘he’s a muslim’ shit is already doing. they can’t have both so you know they’re crunching the numbers on that madly right now.

  4. 4.

    TheFountainHead

    October 14, 2008 at 8:15 am

    Agree completely that any attempt to knock down Obama’s numbers with Rev. Wright is going to to be ineffective at best, and possibly backfire at worst. That said, I’m not going to start any of my planned celebratory rituals (and there are many) until I hear Tweety, KO, or Brian Williams sing.

  5. 5.

    SGEW

    October 14, 2008 at 8:21 am

    Well, besides Wright, there’s also the National Enquirer "scoop":

    Obama Perv Scandal
    (warning: link leads directly to the Enquirer)

    It’s burning up th’ wing-nut blogosphere.

  6. 6.

    Doug H. (Comrade Fausto no more)

    October 14, 2008 at 8:24 am

    538 has McCain’s chances at 5%. He’s still way down in state and national polls with three weeks left on the shot clock. Not to be too triumphalist, but we’ve been at ‘live boy / dead girl’ for a while now.

  7. 7.

    thereisnorule6

    October 14, 2008 at 8:25 am

    All these gyrations just to avoid what they really want to say — the n word.

  8. 8.

    Walker

    October 14, 2008 at 8:26 am

    Don’t forget the Obama Christmas Special (Obama’s half-hour TV buy a week before elections). No one is going to care about McCain at all.

  9. 9.

    Josh Huaco

    October 14, 2008 at 8:31 am

    @thereisnorule6:

    All these gyrations just to avoid what they really want to say—the n word.

    Which is why the base became as openly rabid as it did once McPalin started pushing the Ayers BS. While McPalin were saying, "Obama is friends with a terrorist," the gomers just heard "Obama is…a terrorist." It validated what they always thought and gave them permission to let the hate fly.

  10. 10.

    Rick Taylor

    October 14, 2008 at 8:34 am

    I’m getting more optimistic despite myself. The thing is, if the Republicans win this time, it’s going to be even more crushing than when Bush beat Kerry. The attacks on Obama this time around aren’t any more outlandish than floating claims that Kerry faked his war wounds. This is how Republicans win elections, and it is vile.

    The problem with the 50+1 strategy, is you get a segment of the 49 that will never ever vote for a Republican during their life time. I can’t imagine every pulling the lever one after the last eight years. I have so much anger built up.

  11. 11.

    Josh Huaco

    October 14, 2008 at 8:41 am

    @Walker:

    Don’t forget the Obama Christmas Special (Obama’s half-hour TV buy a week before elections). No one is going to care about McCain at all.

    I don’t know if y’all have Dish Network, but Obama has a 24-hr infochannel airing on it right now (I think it’s #73). Are any DirectTV people out there seeing the same thing?

  12. 12.

    Dennis - SGMM

    October 14, 2008 at 8:43 am

    Lie, baby, lie! Especially when it’s too late to refute the lies with facts.
    The only lesson that John McCain seems to have taken away from his years as a POW is that you do whatever you have to to stay alive.

  13. 13.

    El Cid

    October 14, 2008 at 8:50 am

    Well, as long as they throw every last slimeball they got out from each and every rock and from each and every cellar.

    When McCain and the GOP get beaten this year, beaten badly, I don’t want ANY of them to be able to claim that they wuz havin’ ta’ fight wif’ one arm tied a’hind their backs.

    I want the full shock of their loss to hit them as a complete and utter defeat of everything they knew to do.

  14. 14.

    Montysano

    October 14, 2008 at 8:59 am

    OK, let’s talk Rev. Wright, but move beyond the 30 sec. "God damn America" clip and get to the heart of his message in that sermon:

    – God blesses some actions;

    – God condemns (i.e. "damns") some actions;

    _ Invading and ravaging a sovereign nation, who had not attacked or threatened us, killing probably hundreds of thousands of their citizens in the process……. this is not a blessed action. It’s the other one.

    Fuck em’. Bury ’em for a long, long time, hopefully forever.

    The first few seconds of this speech? Kind of says it all, eh?

  15. 15.

    Cassidy

    October 14, 2008 at 9:01 am

    And while they show the Wright clip, we can show the witch doctor clip side by side and see who comes out looking like a nutter first.

  16. 16.

    LA Confidential Pantload

    October 14, 2008 at 9:06 am

    OMG! It’s….The Whitey Tape!!!!

  17. 17.

    jnfr

    October 14, 2008 at 9:10 am

    @Josh Huaco:

    I’ve been looking for the Obama channel on our DirectTV, but haven’t seen any yet.

  18. 18.

    SamFromUtah

    October 14, 2008 at 9:12 am

    everything the McCain campaign does is viewed by the public through the perception that McCain is behind.

    That, and the nagging feeling of deja vu from when Clinton did it in the primaries.

  19. 19.

    Ella in NM

    October 14, 2008 at 9:17 am

    This week’s "Final Grand Master Plan"probably won’t be a repeat of last weeks bull-shit.

    My money goes on McFool’s campaign recruiting the entire Republican Party and lazy-ass media in an intensive effort to disenfranchise as many Democratic-leaning voters as possible–with their biggest noise made by pretending that ACORN is the new version of the Weather Underground, with Barack Obama at it’s helm.

    They already tested it–remember the crowd videos with the really Dumb Blonde declaring that Barack Obama was the CEO of ACORN, and was responsible for the Freddie/Fannie mortgage crisis? They already are pressuring AG’s in a variety of state’s to investigate ACORN based on rumours and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud. That’s all it will take for some folks to stay the course, instead of staying home.

    Mark my words. This is what the story of next week will be, and it’ll work as much as it could, given the circumstances. These McCain-Palin-ites are dumb, ready and willing to be completely played. And the Republicans just don’t care anymore.

  20. 20.

    Xanthippas

    October 14, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Can someone explain to me why Tucker Carlson thinks all of America has not already heard everything there is to hear about Wright? You would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to have somehow missed the Wright story earlier this year. What was Obama’s response? The best speech (still) that he’s ever given. And this is the McCain secret weapon? Sorry Carlson, but you clowns shot that wad already.

  21. 21.

    Punchy

    October 14, 2008 at 9:45 am

    I’ve been looking for the Obama channel on our DirectTV, but haven’t seen any yet.

    I have it. It’s called BET.

  22. 22.

    Capri

    October 14, 2008 at 9:55 am

    According to Chuck Todd, where the race is by Oct 16 is pretty much how it’s going to go because of the huge number of states that now have early voting.

    So it’s already too late for any game changer.

  23. 23.

    Darkness

    October 14, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Given we are staring down Great Depression II Keating trumps Wright by a 10 to 1 margin. It’s not just the McPain campaign that is holding back for the last ten days.

  24. 24.

    dmsilev

    October 14, 2008 at 10:01 am

    It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

    Wow, that’s almost but not quite the Grand Unified Theory of Barack Obama Conspiracies. We just need to note that Tony Rezko, at the urging of Bill Ayers, was responsible for forging Obama’s birth certificate in order to distract people from the "whitey" tape. Voila, Total Wingnut Convergence.

    I haven’t quite figured out how Vince Foster’s murder or the destruction of the Hindenburg fit in, but I know that they’re related.

    -dms

  25. 25.

    emme

    October 14, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Wow can you say fear of a black president?

    Why don’t they just start jumping up and down screaming "nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger!!!!" and get it over with?

  26. 26.

    jcricket

    October 14, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Let’s start getting some great quotes ready from Liddy, Keating, etc. (although I’m sure Obama already had a nice video produced). Plus you have the crazy pastor in Wasilla and his comment about the "Israelites", "witchcraft", etc.

    This will succeed in getting some disenchanted Republicans to vote (improving turnout on their side), but it’s turning off actually undecided voters off faster than it’s energizing wingnuts.

    The problem is that reality demands government intervention right now, and as we know, it’s just not in Republicans wheelhouse to propose government programs that work. It’s impossible for them to do anything but either get reluctantly on-board something like nationalization, or to propose more ridiculous corporate/rich people tax cuts.

    If Democrats are smart (which we only barely are), we will make it clear to everyone the Republican stimulus plan is a giveaway to the fat cats, and the Democratic one puts money in your hands.

  27. 27.

    charlotte

    October 14, 2008 at 10:10 am

    The goons running the McCain death march fail to understand one thing: Many of us understand what Rev. Wright was actually saying and many of us agree with him. Simple as that. That being said, the Rovians will continue to pretend that they didn’t and still don’t get it. Good luck with that. Best to be temperate, for sure–just look at Obama. I’ve thought for awhile now that his refusal to become visibly angry in face of all the BS thrown at him just makes his supporters work harder. He’s not channeling our outrage at that level so all the pent-up steam has to be released elsewhere: into donations and volunteer work. And then there’s the Palin factor. I’m dying to know what the latest fundraising numbers are on Barack’s side. Must be off the charts. She rears her head over American airspace and whammo out with the old debit card. Seriously, my friends, how dumb is John McCain?

  28. 28.

    B-Money

    October 14, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Maybe they can find someone who played D & D with him in the early 80s to support an accusation of sorcery and velveteen 12-sided dice pouch-fetishism.

  29. 29.

    Zifnab

    October 14, 2008 at 10:12 am

    @El Cid:

    Are you kidding. I hope and pray feverishly that the wingnut response to the landslide of ’08 is to get even more fringe and more crazy. I want them so far off in right field that the only thing left for true moderate conservatives to do is start their own party from scratch.

  30. 30.

    jcricket

    October 14, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Why don’t they just start jumping up and down screaming "nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger!" and get it over with?

    What’s that Wallace quote again? Oh yeah…

    "I was out-niggered, and I will never be out-niggered again."

    Speaking of Wallace… Here’s an example of him channeling Palin (well, vice versa, really) quote on his deathbed:

    "I would like to be remembered as one who opened up equal opportunity for all people…"

  31. 31.

    jcricket

    October 14, 2008 at 10:21 am

    I had forgotten this great gem, although we seem to be going backwards:

    You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
    And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

    (This is Lee Atwater).

  32. 32.

    jake 4 that 1

    October 14, 2008 at 10:21 am

    @Cassidy: Yep, although he’s technically an anti-witch doctor. They should also run the clip of the pastor who opened a McPOW rally by warning God He’d better deliver a win to the GOP or people would point and laugh at Him.

    I have little time for organized religion and I don’t believe God has time to smite people or groups of people who act up. But wagging one’s finger at God and telling Him to shape up or ship out is just plain c-raaaazee. And arrogant.

  33. 33.

    ksmiami

    October 14, 2008 at 10:23 am

    The thing is Palin whipping up the dogs of hate does more to scare off moderates and rational people more than just playing Reverend Wright ad nauseum. I mean he is some preacher, not a part of Obama’s cabinet and the shrilla from wasilla has the potential to be one cancer episode from the presidency. I can honestly say that Palin has done more to bring in the Jewish vote for Obama in Florida than any other event.

  34. 34.

    Yucca plant

    October 14, 2008 at 10:29 am

    I’ve been looking for the Obama channel on our DirectTV, but haven’t seen any yet.

    I have it. It’s called BET Al-Jezeera

    Accurified.

  35. 35.

    Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill

    October 14, 2008 at 10:35 am

    I’ve been looking for the Obama channel on our DirectTV, but haven’t seen any yet.

    I have it. It’s called BET.

    Considering that the founder of BET pretty much called Obama a drug dealer during the primaries, I’m thinking not so much.

  36. 36.

    gwangung

    October 14, 2008 at 10:36 am

    The goons running the McCain death march fail to understand one thing: Many of us understand what Rev. Wright was actually saying and many of us agree with him.

    QFT.

    Basically, he’s only been saying what Gil Scott Heron’s been singing about for thirty years. Ain’t nuthin’ new to what he’s been saying. "Could stuff all his black friends in the trunk of a Pinto and still have room for the Republican elephant"…

  37. 37.

    Shalimar

    October 14, 2008 at 10:39 am

    I think you’re wrong. Wright isn’t their trump card, Rezko is. Read between the lines on the story from a few days ago: The Bush Justice Departmentt has clearly been trying hard to turn Rezko, the only question is whether they get him to say something damaging about Obama before the election.

  38. 38.

    smiley

    October 14, 2008 at 10:40 am

    @dmsilev:

    …combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

    Apparently he didn’t carefully study all of the documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I don’t remember where I read it but the Annenberg Challenge responded to the allegations that they are some sort of left-wing radical organization by publishing the names of others who served on the same board at the same time. All very main stream community leaders and academics.

  39. 39.

    Sir Alan Greenspend

    October 14, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Look who else was on the board of the foundation with Bill Ayers:

    Let’s look at a few, starting with the funder. Annenberg was a lifelong Republican and former ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Richard Nixon. His widow, Leonore, has endorsed McCain. Kurtz might just as plausibly have accused Obama and the foundation of “translating Annenberg’s conservatism into practice.”

    Among the other board members who served with Obama were: Stanley Ikenberry, former president of the University of Illinois; Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University and assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration; Scott Smith, then publisher of the Chicago Tribune; venture capitalist Edward Bottum; John McCarter, president of the Field Museum; Patricia Albjerg Graham, former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Journalism, and a host of other mainstream folks.

    “The whole idea of it being radical when it was this tie of blue-chip, white-collar, CEOs and civic leaders is just ridiculous,” said the foundation’s former development director, Marianne Philbin.

    The vast majority of the foundation’s external partners were not remotely controversial. Here are a few examples: the Chicago Symphony, the University of Chicago, Loyola University, Northwestern University, the Chicago Children’s Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association.

    We could go on and on with evidence that the Chicago Annenberg Challenger was a rather vanilla charitable group. For example, under the deal with Annenberg every dollar from him had to be matched by two from elsewhere. The co-funders were a host of respected, mainstream institutions, such as the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Chicago Public Schools.

    In short, this was a mainstream foundation funded by a mainstream, Republican business leader and led by an overwhelmingly mainstream, civic-minded group of individuals.

    Read the full article at http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002974214&cpage=3

  40. 40.

    SLKRR

    October 14, 2008 at 10:48 am

    So, where’d you get that cool picture of Obama with Bob Barr?

  41. 41.

    limbaugh's pilonidal cyst

    October 14, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Okay, they could catch Obama in a motel room with a live boy, a dead hooker, and a flock of sheep, plus, just the night before he was the keynote speaker at the annual NAMBLA conference, plus, he was revealed to be a co-investor with Phil Gramm in a titty film back in the ’80s, plus, plus, plus….

    And on inaugeration day the word "President" will still be followed by "Obama".

  42. 42.

    Martin

    October 14, 2008 at 10:57 am

    Don’t forget the Obama Christmas Special

    Are we celebrating Life Day with the Wookies? Will Princess Leia sing for us?

  43. 43.

    dmsilev

    October 14, 2008 at 11:01 am

    @smiley:

    Apparently he didn’t carefully study all of the documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I don’t remember where I read it but the Annenberg Challenge responded to the allegations that they are some sort of left-wing radical organization by publishing the names of others who served on the same board at the same time. All very main stream community leaders and academics.

    Oh, I know. I’m in Chicago and have followed local politics reasonably closely. At this point, Ayers is very much Establishment, at least as far as educational policy goes. Unless, that is, you think that Mayor Richard II of the House of Daley is a bomb-throwing radical.

    The Ayers thing isn’t going to go anywhere. He did some deplorable things forty years ago, but has long since paid his debt to society, and by the time Barack Obama knew him was thoroughly mundane. Or don’t these right-wing ostensible Christians believe in absolution and redemption?

  44. 44.

    GSD

    October 14, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Can someone explain to me why anything Tucker Carlson says really matters?

    I mean he’s a grown man who made a public display of the trivial fact that he was no longer going to wear a necktie.

    The man is childish. As a matter of fact he represents the stereotype of the 80’s conservative hacks who pushed the whole "he who dies with the most toys wins" maxim.

    We have the new bogeyman to replace the old 60’s dirty fucking hippy caricature.

    The bow tie wearing conservative punk.

    -GSD

  45. 45.

    Comrade Darkness

    October 14, 2008 at 11:11 am

    shrilla from wasilla

    You know what I really dislike about Palin? She’s giving snark a bad name.

  46. 46.

    jenniebee

    October 14, 2008 at 11:12 am

    zomg, Obama has a record of… EDUCATION! and not just education, he has a record of edumacatin teh knee-grows. And you know what that leads to, don’t you? Uppitiness.

    Jeehosephat, I am really looking forward to the day when American politics moves past the 60’s. And by that, I mean the 1860’s

  47. 47.

    CMcC

    October 14, 2008 at 11:20 am

    I fear that the Rethuglicans are going to end up with a multi-pronged effort to unite white folks against the dark menace. There will be:

    1.) The effort to blame minority borrowers (under law blamed on Carter/Clinton/Democrats) for financial crisis, on the grounds that wise and prudent white bankers were forced to lend to shiftless, dead-beat minorities.

    2.) The effort to blame ACORN for trying to steal the election by registering Mickey Mouse and other mostly dark-skinned characters.

    3.) The effort to associate Barack Obama with Jeremiah Wright, plus white (anti-American and bomb-throwing, not to mention beard-growing and sandal-wearing) radicals who lend support.

    Prepare for an ugly, racist three weeks.

    By the way, did you know that John McCain was a POW and that Sarah Palin is married to Joe Sixpack?

  48. 48.

    Zifnab

    October 14, 2008 at 11:21 am

    @Martin:

    Sorry, I read "Obama Christmas Special" and thought "Star Wars Christmas Special". And all I could think was "yeah, that would be something bad enough to bring down the Obama campaign."

    People need to keep George Lucas and Steven Spielburg the fuck away from the Obama campaign.

  49. 49.

    Zifnab

    October 14, 2008 at 11:24 am

    I fear that the Rethuglicans are going to end up with a multi-pronged effort to unite white folks against the dark menace.

    It won’t work. At least not in the mainstream. People are more educated today than they were 80 years ago. Even the lackluster reporting of the mainstream media is nothing if it is not constantly yammering. Between TV, radio, and the internet, its too hard for a meme to get spread that won’t eventually get debunked by someone in the next month or so. The bigger the lie gets, the more aggressive and louder the pushback, until – if nothing else – the majority of Americans have heard both sides of the issue. Then it just comes down to who is most trustworthy. And the Republicans just don’t have trustworthiness on their side.

  50. 50.

    bootlegger

    October 14, 2008 at 11:30 am

    That Kurtz piece reeks of desperation. Now its not just guilt by association, but guilty by association with an associate who might have believed X. Now that, my friends, is reaching.

    I’ll bet if we went two degrees of separation from Honest John we’d find a whole host of Wingnutistan radicals.

  51. 51.

    jake 4 that 1

    October 14, 2008 at 11:33 am

    @CMcC: Great. When the dust settles they’ll still be in Enemy Territory, only they’ll be exposed.

    I want everyone who is supporting McPalin to be faced with the clear choice of siding with screeching bigots or siding with reasonable people. I want any Congress Critter who still supports him to be so toxic that even if he has no trouble getting re-elected, no one will work with him because the stink is too bad. I want the GOP to shake out the bigots or to die completely and with a little help from McPalin, that’s exactly what I’ll get.

  52. 52.

    bootlegger

    October 14, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Or don’t these right-wing ostensible Christians believe in absolution and redemption?

    A person must first be repentant to be forgiven and absolved. That’s why they keep saying "the unrepentant terrorist Ayers". Of course this unrepentantness is based on a quote from Ayers that "we could have done more." Only problem is that this quote was referring to the entire anti-war movement and not the violent activities of the Weather Underground.

  53. 53.

    dms

    October 14, 2008 at 11:38 am

    Afro-centric ideologues? And this never occurs among "Caucasians"?

  54. 54.

    Robyn

    October 14, 2008 at 11:42 am

    McCain advisers say they’re saving their best material for the last ten days of the race, when, the campaign hopes, three quarters of the remaining undecided voters will make up their minds, and their minds will be concentrating on Barack Obama.

    The stupidity of the 10 days out plan is this thing called Early Voting! Obama has a GOTV organization that is targeting Early Voting. So if Obama gets a sizable number of votes done before McCain’s genius 10-day plan, does it matter?! He’s going to concede Obama’s Early Voters. I just saw on MSNBC (as I’m writing this) that Obama is advertising Early Voting in EA VIDEO GAMES for God’s sake!

    I know this is an understatement, but it must be said: McCain is a DUMBASS!!! If this is the foresight with which he’d govern the country, we need to defeat him HANDILY!!!

  55. 55.

    NonyNony

    October 14, 2008 at 11:43 am

    @jcricket:

    I was actually thinking about that quote from Atwater the other day. The problem the McCain camp has is that they seem to have skipped over some pieces of the quote:

    You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires.

    They’re currently running around stopping just short of screaming ‘nigger’. They don’t throw the word out there, but it’s plain to anyone watching the clips of the rallies that showed up on YouTube last week what was going on with his "palling around with terrorists" barbs. That line from Kurtz that John quotes above is more of the same ‘palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues’. They’re calling him a ‘terrorist’ but they’re trying to link him to Black radicals.

    But Atwater’s quote specifically says this type of shit stopped working in ’68. You have to be more subtle than that. And since Atwater made that quote in the 80s, I think it’s gotten even harder to do it without turning off the middle of the road folks – most folks under a certain age are very uncomfortable with overt racism nowadays (thankfully). It’s backfiring and they’re flailing.

    And the Wright stuff isn’t going to help them much. It was a misfire for Hillary’s campaign because there are plenty of folks out here in the midwest who have sat at a sermon in front of a pastor that made us squirm politically and didn’t denounce him, or leave the church, or anything like that (ask any pro-choice Catholic – they’ve had to do it). And hell, I heard worse from white preachers like Falwell and Robertson in the post-9/11 and post-Katrina aftermath about "God damning America" than what Wright said. I guess it was okay because Robertson was blaming "teh gayz" and not our actual interventionist global policies that treat other countries like shit. But people who aren’t already voting Republican know that you don’t have to agree with your pastor on EVERYTHING – if you did, most of the churches would be empty.

  56. 56.

    Товарищ НеинтереснаяСобака

    October 14, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    I just saw on MSNBC (as I’m writing this) that Obama is advertising Early Voting in EA VIDEO GAMES for God’s sake!

    I’m pretty sure that those ads are not built into the games but housed on an external server and piped in at load time–so it’s not as crazy as it sounds. These aren’t very expensive ads, and it’s not at all surprising that some kid on the Obama campaign thought of buying a couple.

  57. 57.

    jake 4 that 1

    October 14, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    But Atwater’s quote specifically says this type of shit stopped working in ‘68. You have to be more subtle than that. And since Atwater made that quote in the 80s, I think it’s gotten even harder to do it without turning off the middle of the road folks – most folks under a certain age are very uncomfortable with overt racism nowadays (thankfully). It’s backfiring and they’re flailing.

    True, and they’re also flailing because those who are still very comfortable with it don’t want subtle. McPOW attempted to back down (and win back the mods) and got booed by his on side. Das Base is cutting up the Big Tent for Klan robes and there’s nothing he can do.

    The man has made his own party into a cleft stick and rammed his ass in the crack. We could solve the energy crisis if there were a way to harness The Fail boiling off the GOP.

  58. 58.

    Zifnab

    October 14, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    @NonyNony:

    But people who aren’t already voting Republican know that you don’t have to agree with your pastor on EVERYTHING – if you did, most of the churches would be empty.

    It’s funny, because back in the 70s and 80s the Catholic Church realized that it was hemorrhaging membership in the States and Europe precisely because it was trying to be too reactionary and conservative. So the church turned over a new leaf and became significantly more liberal.

    Churches do empty out when their pastors embrace attitudes that rub their constituencies the wrong way. What the GOoPers don’t want to admit is that Wright built a large congregation rubbing his constituencies the right way. There has been a massive backlash building against a racist, corporatist, elitist Washington Insiders for some time. What they really don’t want to admit is that this isn’t a "black" phenomenon. It’s been building across the board.

  59. 59.

    Robyn

    October 14, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    @Товарищ НеинтереснаяСобака:

    The Obama campaign has confirmed buying these ads.

    The point isn’t where the ad comes from; the point is that Obama is focused on Early Voting & Nov 4th, while the McCain campiagn is focused on Nov 4th.

  60. 60.

    debra

    October 14, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    I could not even follow the 10 degrees of crazy in the Kurtz rant. It read like some massive conspiracy theory. Assertions without evidence. Conclusions made bringing two things together without specifying how they are related. It reminds me of the ravings of an anti-globalization protester. He may as well be shaking his fist at "The Man". Talk about bizarre and convoluted.

    Let me see if I can walk through the logic.

    1. Obama and Ayers were on the same board.

    2. The board funded a program to target inner city Blacks through some form of cultural heritage educational program.

    3. The grant application for the cultural heritage education program had words that were similar to words used by Black radicals. Words for instance like "Black".

    4. These words that are similar to words used by Black radicals are related to an obscure movement that no one has ever heard of (the wheelchair assassins?).

    5. There is someone who wrote a book about this obscure topic. That someone knows someone who died.

    6. Rev. Wright gave the eulogy for that person who died completing the circle of Obama-Ayers-Wright.

    NRO may as well hire the underpants gnomes to write their articles.

  61. 61.

    Delia

    October 14, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    Or don’t these right-wing ostensible Christians believe in absolution and redemption?

    Only if it involves their own people getting caught with their pants down.

    You did know that, didn’t you?

  62. 62.

    Brett

    October 14, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

    Unless you’re trying to spin a yarn, I’m not sure why you’d need a "careful study" of the relevant documents, when the official reports tell you a lot about what the program actually funded. The entities included the nefarious "Hug-a-Book" program and as well as other literacy, curriculum development, and school-to-work transition programs. See for yourself, here:

    http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php?pub_id=108

    Table 5 (p. 14) lists the entities actually funded.

    Maybe "Hug-a-Book" was a stalking horse.

    I love Kurtz’s rhetorical strategy. There is a wealth of information available about the program, and none of it points to anything nefarious. Kurtz’s theses are only plausible to those who will not bother to look up the publicly available stuff.

  63. 63.

    Cassidy

    October 14, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    But wagging one’s finger at God and telling Him to shape up or ship out is just plain c-raaaazee. And arrogant.

    Not that I’m a bible scholar, but last I recall this happening, he turned a couple of cities into salt. personally I’d hedge my bets and err on the side of caution.

  64. 64.

    dadanarchist

    October 14, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    Can we pass a law banning men named "Tucker" from our politics?

    Between Tuckers Carlson, Bounds and Eskew, they all turn out to be either evil, dumb, assholes, or some combination of all three.

  65. 65.

    Ella in NM

    October 14, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Well, if nothing else works, they’ve always got this crap floating around the email universe:

    October 11, 2008
    FEMA Official States Bush Is Planning To Implement Martial Law
    By William Cormier
    http://www.opednews.com/articles/FEMA-Official-States-Bush-by-William-Cormier-081009-14.html

    Or even better:

    Bailout push included threat of martial law
    Congressman says several colleagues got message before vote
    http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=77860

    Like someone said the other day, short of an asteroid hitting a Obama-Biden Rally, what else do they have left?

    Martial Law!

  66. 66.

    Nylund

    October 14, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    Haven’t you been reading your confederate yankee and national enquirer? Its now all about the child rapist Obama new as a kid and mentions in "Dreams…"

  67. 67.

    John PM

    October 14, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    @Shalimar:

    I think you’re wrong. Wright isn’t their trump card, Rezko is. Read between the lines on the story from a few days ago: The Bush Justice Departmentt has clearly been trying hard to turn Rezko, the only question is whether they get him to say something damaging about Obama before the election.

    Several problems with your theory:

    1) Patrick Fitzgerald is the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, where the Rezko case is pending. He is no friend of the Bush Administration.

    2) Obama’s name did not come up at all during Rezko’s trial. Most likely, the feds are trying to get Rezko to flip on Illinois’ governor Rod Blagojevich, who has had many shady dealings with Rezko over the years, especially during Rod’s first run for the governor’s office.

    3) The judge postponed the sentencing date from October 28 to a date to be determined in the future. If the feds were looking to dirty up Obama before the election, they would have left that date.

  68. 68.

    PaulB

    October 14, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Many of us understand what Rev. Wright was actually saying and many of us agree with him

    And most of the rest understand that Obama is not Wright and is not personally responsible for anything that Wright says or does. Repeat as needed for Ayers, Rezko, and anyone else the wingnuts can dredge up. Unless they find something where Obama is personally involved, I just don’t see these tactics succeeding, particularly in light of everything else going on today.

  69. 69.

    Cap'n Phealy

    October 14, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    When the urgency of the presidential election impresses itself, the hope is that these voters will swing back to the familiar, rather than the unknown.

    What this ignores is the fact that McCain 2008 is, to a great many voters, the unknown. It’s become clear that this is not the McCain the press knows and loves (though the reticence of some to leave the tire swing remains). But consider:

    *The pre-2008 McCain was known for his reluctance to discuss his war heroism. (Bullshit, but accepted bullshit.) In 2008, McCain and his campaign pushed this button so hard, they broke it.

    *The pre-2008 McCain was known for his sense of humor. I have to admit that many of his media appearances, even in "liberal" forums such as The Daily Show, revealed a fairly keen wit. To paraphrase Hüsker Dü, he’s not funny anymore.

    *Sarah Palin. WTF?

    So to call Obama "the unknown" is, at the very least, ironic.

  70. 70.

    Bigorange

    October 14, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    And, right on time, Stanley Kurtz:

    Whose Ayers comments by pretty much debunked as lies by http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied_about_bill_ayers.html

  71. 71.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 14, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    Das Base is cutting up the Big Tent for Klan robes

    lolz.

    My friends, that comment alone was worth the price of admission.

  72. 72.

    Kritter

    October 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    Awwww Tucker’s just sore because his gig on MSNBC was cancelled and he hasn’t found a game show that can stomach him as a host.

    BTW if they’re saving the best for last—and this ugliness is just a warm-up then — how could they get any lower than this ??(from Think Progress)

    "Yesterday, the Sacramento County Republican party removed from their website images that likened Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to Osama bin Laden. One of the images “encouraged people to ‘Waterboard Barack Obama’”:"

    "The chairman of the Sacramento County Republican party, Craig MacGlashan, told the Sacramento Bee on Tuesday, “Some people find it offensive, others do not. I cannot comment on how people interpret things."

    Of course not, Craig. I mean you wouldn’t want to act like you’re human, now would you?

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