Buchenwald, Shmuchenwald, Auschwitz.. Vat’s da difference? Looking to make some new friends among Holocaust survivors? Lie about your support for groups and individuals hostile to Israel. Claim your great grand-daddy liberated one of them heinous Nazi death camps. Which camp? Who cares?

Pandering to Jewish voters on Memorial Day. Wow! Talk about breathing fresh air into old politics! Getting Buchenwald and Auschwitz mixed up shows just how much the Holocaust actually means to Obama. The folks involved in the liberation of Nazi death camps do deserve immense credit. Folks trying to exploit that sacrifice and then bungling it? Not so much.

Family war stories get murky in the re-telling. But if a candidate is going to grandstand on the national stage on the graves of the greatest crimes of the modern age, and make a great big fucking deal about how important it is we all remember the horror and how it happened, the mouthpiece might at least get his fucking facts straight.

Obama’s problem is that many believe Obama couldn’t give a shit about Israel, Holocaust survivors, women, the poor in America, or anything but getting elected. How unfair! Especially when Obama has dedicated his whole life, not to national service or working with the poor in other countries, as he preaches others should do, but building the Obama brand: Change you can believe in Inc.

Obama has written two inspirational books about Himself, in which potential investors/devotees can examine all the un-varnished details as he Himself describes Himself without a hint of self-aggrandizement or dishonesty. The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me, Me.

Clapping hands, singing about Satan and the sin of lying with another man, accusing the ‘woman’ of using her female tricks to win sympathy, standing on the graves of the dead to win a few more votes, this is truly change you can believe in.

Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Michelle Obama, Donnie McClurkin, Mary-Mary, Bernadine Dohrn, it don’t matter who said what or when; none of these folks in any way speaks for the Obama whose grand-daddy liberated Auschwitz/Buchenwald/ America.

After Obama ascends: No more politics of division, or hate, or cynicism. Any connection between Obama and McClurkin, Ayers, Wright, Michelle Obama et al is purely coincidental. Their actions and statements in no way reflect the deeply-held views of the candidate whose heart brims only with love and hope for all, especially on this special day for all the Jew folks who died in those death camps way-off in Germany/Poland wherever it was; and who, each and everyone of them, owe their liberty to me, my family and my grand-daddy. Whatever.

Don’t forget to vote and God Bless America!

Sunday Times Only Bill Clinton can save the Democratic party? That’s what the Obama camp is claiming, according to the Sunday Times. No wonder Obama is trying to scale back the attacks on Hillary and Bill:

If anybody can put their arms around the party and say we need to be together, it is Bill Clinton,” a senior Obama aide said.

“He’s brilliant, he has got heart and he cares deeply about the country. It’s tricky because of his position as Hillary’s spouse, but his involvement is very important to us.

“Bill Clinton will give permission to Hillary supporters to come into our camp and become one party. He is critical to this effort.”

Racially offensive Bill Clinton? I can just imagine how the Obama campaign will spin this: ‘Bill Clinton has done so much to destroy the Democratic Party over the last two decades, first as  the only two-term Dem President in memory and second for providing economic stability and growth, that Bill fucking owes Dems big!

Historic McCarthyism? One big reason I dumped Dems is succinctly detailed by a seasoned observor of US politics.

The massed ranks of male pundits gleefully pronounced that Clinton had lost the battle with Obama immediately after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, despite past precedents that strong second-place candidates (like Ronald Reagan in his first, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 1976; like Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown) continue their campaigns until the end of the primary season and, in most cases, all the way to the party convention.

None of these male candidates had a premature political obituary written in the way that Hillary Clinton’s has been, or was subjected to such righteous outrage over refusing to quiesce and withdraw obediently from what, in this case, has always been a knife-edge race. Nor was any of them anything like as close to his rivals as Clinton now is to Obama.

…The danger is that, in their headlong rush to stop the first major female candidate (aka “Hildebeast” and “Hitlery”) from becoming president, the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever.

Hillary Clinton: Sociopath? I’ll add the necessary qualifier that I’ve found almost all real-life supporters of Obama to be extremely civil. These same folks are also of the opinion that HRC and her husband are driven by ambition and have engaged in the worst form of politics.

The Obama campaign has succeeded in convincing many of its most ardent supporters that Bill and Hillary Clinton are destructive, divisive forces in the Democratic Party. The Sunday Times, however, claims that the Obama campaign is hailing Bill Clinton as the one individual who can bring the Democratic party together.

I’m glad to be rooting for the non-Dem. I suspect the ‘Hillary is sticking around until Obama is assassinated’ media campaign will drive all but the Obama bots and a few die-hard Dems straight into the arms of the non-Republican John McCain.

Who could have imagined?

Any mention of “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” is ‘low class’. The candidate for change is planning an end-run around Dem primary voters this week. A 41% whipping in West Virginia, a close race in a former stronghold, and sure defeat in Kentucky, probably by double-digits, has the candidate for change spooked.  

Christian America has long been cynically manipulated by politicians eager to win support and cash to fuel earthly ambitions.

Database Mining in a good suit means that most supporters will never see their candidate portrayed so transparently as the Second Coming, unless they self-identify officially as ‘church-going’ Christians.

Oregon voters are extremely unlikely to see this incarnation of the candidate for change. My own distrust of the candidate began in his equivocation on the role of religion in politics. As a person of faith who prays daily I absolutely reject any suggestion that faith has any role to play in the political process. I don’t want to know whether a candidate prays or not, what his or her sexual orientation may be, or whether they prefer to shop at Target or Saks.

Preacher Mike Huckabee is far more open about his Christian identity. Are all the highly intelligent voters who support the candidate for change and who have such contempt for folks  for the clinging religious voters aware that a vote for change is a vote for Christian more of the same?

We’re approaching something close to a crisis, where folks who want experience and some level of candor liberate themselves from the pundits and party loyalty to look to the real challenges we all face.

Flying under a false flag might strike many as a sign of sound judgment and integrity.

We won’t see these depictions of Obama as Jesus in New York or Oregon.

Fair enough?

Bushco efforts to suppress images of Bush appointee Julie L. Myers awarding a prize to a federal employee ‘dressed-up’ as an escaped Hispanic or AA felon failed. Wapo finally published the damning images. Click to see the snap.

In a Nov. 8 letter replying to questions by McCaskill, Myers said that she was “shocked and horrified” to learn that the employee was wearing makeup but that within minutes of leaving the party she instructed her chief of staff to direct ICE’s events photographer “to delete all photos of the employee.”

“Although I didn’t know that the employee had disguised his race, I believed I had made an error in judgment in recognizing an escaped prisoner,” Myers wrote.

Double-standards at work?

…let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out — is this wrong?

Glenn Beck, May 17, 2005.

The well-springs of poison are about to open up…

Given the body count already of key Democrat politicians and American civil rights leaders and labor activists who have been assassinated in America, in the Americas and around the globe; given the levels of hostility and invective from the right this cycle already, I have a question:

Will Americans allow right-wing cranks to promulgate homicidal fantasies over the air-waves unpunished, as they have in the past?

What happens when, not if, Glenn Beck, Don Imus, Andrew Sullivan or some Fox crank ‘hypothetically’ discusses the assassination of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama or whoever the Dem candidate happens to be?

There was a diary titled: ‘Breaking: …. Dead’. Few laughed. We know what the wing-nuts are thinking. And it’s only January, the crap hasn’t even started yet.

Turnout for Dems has been fantastic. Americans, hungry for change, are registering and voting in record numbers. The world is paying attention. I watched HRC win on TV on a rush-hour train in downtown Tokyo.

Yet, for the frightened, the idea that a woman, a person of color, a liberal, a Democrat, might actually win the election in November is both an anathema and a blessing. While the prospect fills the wingnut with horror and self-loathing, it also offers the long-awaited opportunity to indulge in the sickest of fantasies. The one where the good guys have to shoot down the bad. For real.

Because, for the misogynist, this election isn’t about Hillary.  For the racist, 2008 isn’t about Barack or his religion. For the authoritarian, this isn’t about John. It’s about fear and hate, plain and simple. The idea that someone supposed to be lower on the totem pole might actually grasp the golden ring fills these sad, sick souls with grief, impotence and rage. It’s not like that’s a secret.

So when you listen to Sullivan and Reynolds fan the flames of Hillary hatred; or listen to Fox speculate about whether Barack is secretly a Muslim, be clear: Reynolds and the other so-called ‘responsible’ media types are tip-toeing right up to the edge of the line, pandering knowingly both to the worst instincts in us all, but also to the sickest in society, hoping/fearing something just might happen as a result.

Appealing openly to the murderous appetites of the right is a form of terrorism; and it’s a form of terrorism that works. A war was sold to America by playing on just such fears. And, lest we forget, that was no dream when Glenn Beck fantasized about murdering Michael Moore on the air two years ago.

…let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out…

That’s a major media figure fantasizing about murder. Next time, he might not ask if it’s wrong…

More at rattlesnakepoint…

For the last two years, younger women listened to men explain how cold, calculating and manipulative Hillary Clinton actually is; older women made dinner for their families, sat with their knitting, or worked the late shift, and sometimes watched and listened, too.

Professional and working moms balancing infants on one knee and a bag of groceries on the other while watching Tweety and other six-figure earners explain to them how Hillary didn’t really deserve an equal place at the table. Men, as well, watched and listened to the spew.

And then, on January 8th, 2007, these women and men voted.

When the dust cleared the first woman in American history with a serious shot at winning the White House had won the nation’s first primary. Pundits reeled and moaned.

‘What about Hillary’s negatives?’, they asked. ‘Everybody hates Hillary’. Few even now have a clue what all this Hillary hate actually means, which is simply:

99% of the people around Hillary would happily take a bullet for her.

All that hate over the years has built up an enormous sense of loyalty, in many. And the reason the talking heads don’t understand that is simple: many of these fighters are women.

In Tweety’s world courage always wears a cod-piece and sounds like John McCain.

Susan B. Anthony would understand.

Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan and the like, dedicated only to their own careers, never will.

When the talking heads figure that out, the news may once again be worth watching.