I have really been conflicted over my decision not to attend the McCain/Palin "rally" in Waukesha yesterday.

I saw the clips from the event last night, and woke up this very early this morning wondering who was this guy, the angry black guy, that so moved Senator McCain with his personal attack on Barack Obama that McCain crossed the stage to embrace him, and assure him that after his ass whoppin' here on earth he would surely get his reward in Heaven?

I woke up thinking that this man had to be a plant. Why?

Because it's perfectly Rovian.

This election is in the hands of the 10-12% of voters who remain "undecided". (I believe many of these actually have made up their minds, but for various reasons won't say.)

There are a certain percentage of those undecideds who are undoubtedly leaning McCain, but by the nature of their upbringing in an American culture that has instilled them with the value of racial equality, are put off by the racist tone the McCain campaign has taken on.

Rove thought: "Let's find black people to attack Obama, thereby giving "permission" for undecided white voters to join the lynch mob."

It turns out that the Angry Black Man was not just an angry black man.

He was not, as far as we know, paid by the McCain campaign to denounce and smear Senator Obama, but he was, in fact James T. Harris, a radio host on WTMJ, which is owned by Journal Communications, which is the largest media conglomerate in the state of Wisconsin.

The Journal-Sentinel's own coverage quotes a snip of Harris's comments, but fails to note Mr.Harris' employment by the firm.

The full text of Mr. Harris' remarks goes beyond what is being quoted locally.

 From the Raw Story, which also has video of the exchange, but also did not identify Mr. Harris:

"Senator, at the convention, you asked for us to fight, for you," said the supporter. "I doubt there's anyone in this room that's, pardon me, taken the ass whoopin' I have taken for supporting you, and for supporting your policies."

The crowd roared in approval, then sprang to their feet to cheer the man on.

"Sir, I believe that, the next coming debate, it is absolutely vital that you take it to Obama; that you hit him where it hurts ... the soft spot," he said, drawing another round of audience applause.

McCain crossed the stage and hugged the man.

"Thank you," said the senator. "Thank you for your courage. I believe your reward will be in heaven, not here on Earth."

[ADDED]

Just picked up the newspaper.

The J-S does identify the man as Harris, "a radio host", but does not mention that he works for WTMJ or Journal Communications. I wonder if he also works for McCain?

 

It's too patently Rovian not to consider it.

If anyone has heard any plausible explanation as to why Georgia decided to provoke the Russian bear during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games, please let me know.

I am sure that most Americans were too mesmerized by the Olympic events to pay any attention when tiny Georgia - a staunch U.S. ally with very close ties to John McCain - attacked Russian loyalists in South Ossetia.

If you get all of your news from TV, you could be excused for thinking that it was Russia who is the aggressor. Of course the Russians, for their own political and economic purposes, are happy to oblige by pinning Georgia to the mat, and seizing the real opportunity of taking it back into their borders.

What on earth would make the Georgians think that their actions would result in anything other than a swift and brutal defeat by the Russian army?

Branding himself as the battle-hardened warrior with the military pedigree and labeling Obama as "not ready for the 3 AM phone call", it would seem that every second of video of Russian tanks rolling across Georgia is a campaign commercial for McCain. As we know, when faced with the reality that his "experienced warrior" image was being roundly rejected by Americans in favor of Obama's "change" brand, John McCain made a conscious decision, if hidden from the public eye, to sign up Karl Rove and subscribe to his philosophy that there is nothing off limits when it comes to winning an election. Nothing.

(Rove himself, being widely recognized as the PR shill for the gang that foisted the war on Iraq on us, outed a CIA agent, and innumerable other atrocities, is far too toxic to have an official position with the McCain campaign. He plays a journalist on FOX TV. But his cronies are on board, and his slimy fingerprints are all over McCain's new wave of smear tactics.)

SO, the question stands: Why did the Georgians attack the Russian enclave in South Ossetia now, a mere 100 days before the U.S. presidential election?

Did Bush/McCain give Georgian leadership false assurances that they would receive military support from the Bush administration, or perhaps even coerce them into attacking the Russians?

If it strikes you as incredible that Bush and McCain would knowingly and deliberately sacrifice the lives of thousands of innocent Georgians and throw one of our allies to the Russian bear for political gain, remember that soldiers never decide who lives and who dies in wars. The politicians do.

That's the way war works, my friends.

 

The language of intolerance is not without consequences. Unfortunately, the intolerant are too weak minded to understand the consequences of their own words.

So-called "conservatives", taking their cue from the "You're with us, or with the terrorists" jargon of their President, love to use the word "hate".

While they constantly accuse those who disagree with them of being "haters", as in "Bush-hater", which is practically a proper noun in their writings, the right-wing began to fall into its current pattern of extremism during the Clinton administration. Clinton is still a favorite target of right-wing haters.

The appropriation of the Conservative ideology by the extreme right-wing has its roots in racism, in reaction to the human-rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, which threatened their social privileges and illusions of superiority. George Wallace nearly rode a wave of fear and hatred to the Presidency, and seven elections later George Bush succeeded in re-mobilizing the hate movement, unifying racists, homophobes, religious fundamentalists and the just plain greedy to form an alliance that narrowly lost the popular vote in the 2000 election.

George Bush's handlers, in fact give some credit to George Bush, were smart enough to recognize that hate is a powerful weapon if you are willing to set your personal morality aside and use it. This is the essence of fascism, and the current culture of right-wing hate lacks only the label. Let's call it what it is; fascist.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 gave rise to a wave of terror among the so-called conservatives, and the language of hate and extreme pseudo-patriotism felt empowering to those whose moral values are insecure, and soothed their fears of a world that is changing around them.The Bush administration stoked this fear and loathing in order to carry out it's dastardly crimes against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. The President, the Vice-President and top members of the administration cultivated hatred as a national policy, and bear personal responsibility.

The radio wave of right-wing hate has subsided somewhat, but it is not hard to find both local and national loudmouths who use ignorance, intolerance and hate to get their dim-witted listeners foaming at the mouth.

Of course, Fox News is now giving these hate-mongers a run for their money, with outright demagoguery masquerading as television news. There is a lot of money to be made pandering to the fearful and weak-minded.

Right here on these pages the implied violence of the right is on prominent display. For disagreeing with the president, I have repeatedly been accused of hating George Bush, the "troops" and my country.

Writers such as Amy Geiger-Hemmer and Jim Hayett frequently base entire blog posts on a message of hate and intolerance. Their comments on other's blogs are peppered with the word "hate".

In their ignorance, they think that whipping out the h-word wins an argument. What they and the right-wing media are actually doing is promoting violence and death. Yet, they deny any personal responsibility for the violence that they promote. Any personal responsibility for the wars that they continue to promote but decline to fight.

Last weekend, one of their kind decided to put his hate into action, and took a shotgun into a Unitarian Universalist church, a church that actively supports human rights and social justice for all people.

This is the end product of the culture of right-wing hate. If you preach intolerance and hate, you are promoting violence.

Personal responsibility may be denied, but it can not be escaped. I hope your God grants you grace.

 

What's all this I hear about needing a bias? I think there's plenty of bias around! Why, just watch the nightly news!

Ohhh...

Never mind.

(Hat tip to the late Rosanne Rosanadana)


But seriously, folks...

On a scale of political bias, the media industry as a whole is no more or less biased than, say, the petroleum industry or the defense industry.

Kiddies, fair is a place where they sell cotton candy.

Remember? The Republicans tossed out the "fairness doctrine" a few decades ago so their friends in the Big TV Business wouldn't have to worry about that whole stupid "public service" crap on their license to use the public's airways. Remember? Socialist crap! Got rid of it!

Oh, and they gave Edward R. Murrow lung cancer just for good measure.

Really. People.

If Barack Obama is tearing 'em up in the Middle East, sitting face to face with every key player in that all-important region, if Obama is knocking 'em dead in Europe, speaking to a crowd of 100,000 flag waving (American flag-waving) Germans, and John McCain is jabbering with Bush's daddy, and getting a lesson from some lady on how to push a grocery cart, does anyone actually expect that 50% of the coverage will be McCain?

The media has one job and that is to sell advertising.

Here. Let me sum it up in a visual for you:

Really, just go back to your FOX.

 

I have to admit it's pretty damn funny.

The utter ineptitude of the McCain camp that is.

I'm really starting to love John McCain - the old codger. I aspire to be a curmudgeon when I get old, and John does a pretty fair job of it.

But his campaign? Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot straight. I am reminded of the classic western scene where the cruel guy shoots at the feet of some innocent bystander yelling "Dance!" "Dance!", and the poor dude jumps around in a cloud of dust trying to avoid getting a foot blown off, much to the amusement of the heartless spectators. Except in this case, the guy doing the shooting is the same guy doing the dancing!

LOL

For months, John McCain and his ever-changing lineup of lobbyist/handlers have been trying to parlay McCain's undistinguished Navy career into some kind of foreign policy "expertise". He was constantly appearing in military settings, scowling most impressively. (Great scowl John. Way better than your grin... which is scary.)

But every time he opens his mouth he steps right into it - repeatedly mixing up those Sunnis and Shites, and repeatedly being corrected on camera by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, his personal apologist. Yesterday, McCain expressed his concerns about recent developments on the border between Pakistan and Iraq. I wonder if he knows Iran is in between.

McCain has also been discussing how our proposed missile shield will be received - in Czechoslovakia. That country that has not existed in fifteen years. CBS has a scorecard of the McCain gaffes here, but you get the idea.

It's hard to sound all presidential when you mix up Germany and Russia. They're so sort of... different.

SO ANYWAY, see, the McCain boys devised this great strategy to portray our boy Obama as unconcerned with foreign affairs, even dissing the troops in Iraq by not showing up at their house. They would put Obama in a trap, see? They would challenge him to go to Iraq!

He would have to admit he didn't care about the troops, or.. or... go to Iraq.

LOL

Yeah, so Obama flies into the Middle East and most of the world's media, including all three American network anchors follow right along, watching him take the place by storm - leaving grumpy old John sitting by himself. Then, before he even landed in Iraq, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki told the German press that Obama's plan for bringing American troops home in something like 19 months was just about the timetable that the Iraqis were thinking of. Which sort of gave Obama some major credibility, and made Bush/McCain look like they were totally misreading their own ally and were left out of the loop - I don't know...intentionally?

Now, Obama is touring U.S. military bases and being treated like a rock star. The soldiers love him! The generals are completely down with him in photo ops. He listens to them respectfully, and talks to them like he were their Commander-in-Chief.

He is on the agenda of virtually every head of state in the Mid East, and the Europeans can hardly wait to fist-bump the man and gaze into his soulful eyes. (See last night's Daily Show. I'm sure it's on YouTube.)

And worst of all, the man looks SO damn good doing it. Presidential, you might say. They are saying.

He is cool, authoritative and confident and has so far not given the press the satisfaction of putting a foot wrong while waltzing all over the world stage.

McCain is actually lucky that no one is listening to his sad attempts to piece together an economic vision in public, but it has so distressed him that there is a rumor going around that he will announce his selection for a running mate this week - to take attention away from Obama's sold-out Iraq tour!

Talk about shooting off the big gun!

McCain may be ready to take a shot in the dark. Hope he doesn't hit the new Vice President.

Sorry, I know it's cruel, but...

"Dance, John, Dance!"

Senator John McCain, his campaign collapsing yet again, has turned over the stick to the Bush team, including Steve Schmidt, who is acting as the invisible hand of Karl Rove.

Demonstrating his concern for the economic insecurity being experienced by American families, McCain has been hobnobbing down in Columbia with big-time banana executives, notorious for hiring personal armies to terrorize their own workers.

Think the campaign needs help?

Karl Rove, who has been acting as a stealth advisor to McCain while simultaneously masquerading as a news reporter on Fox News, is of course, an acknowledged genius of dirty campaigning, and architect of the Republican’s well-worn strategy of terrorizing voters with images of Osama bin Laden.

That he is resorting to calling in the Bush team and the disgraced Rove, who was forced to leave the White House after his involvement with outing a CIA agent, the U.S. Attorney firings and the master plan to overturn elections nationwide to achieve his dream of a one-party state, speaks loudly of McCain’s desperation.

1. Clearly, McCain is incapable of running an organization as complex as a presidential campaign.

2. Obviously, he has no compunction about using any means necessary to achieve his objective of sitting in the Oval Office.

McCain’s painful personal history - having failed to achieve the rank of admiral like his grandfather and his father, being captured and humiliated by the enemy, and finally dropping out of the Navy to pursue political power - is scarily reminiscent of George Bush’s story of repeated business failures and his turn to politics.

In Bush's case, his deep feelings of inferiority caused him to envision himself as a “War President”, and seek victory on the battlefield as a means to personal redemption and validation.

It seems very likely that a President McCain would welcome an expanded war as a means of demonstrating his personal machismo. This country does not need another "War President".

If Intelligent Design is so intelligent, why aren’t we?

I’m pretty sure most people think they are, which begs the question. They think their brains operate in the logical and efficient manner of their “personal” computers.

“Facts” are learned and stored away, waiting to be retrieved when needed. These bits and bytes are ordered and compiled according to strict rules, and bug-free code is processed, resulting in a coherent and consistent organization of related, tested and established information called knowledge. And truth. Maybe even wisdom.

Your brain likes to think it’s sooo smart.

The evidence proves otherwise. In reality, your brain is quite squishy and highly susceptible to all kinds of misinformation, especially if it’s repeated or highly charged with emotion. New “facts” ooze through layers of previously gelled facts and are colored by the range of your emotions. (Unless you’re Vulcan, of course.)

Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, puts it simply in the title of his piece “Your Brain Lies to You”.

As your mushy old brain slogs information from short-term to long-term storage, “facts” can get soggy, squished or even dissolve altogether. (This never happens to me, by the way.)

For example, you may accept something as gospel truth, know it’s right with every fiber of your being, but have no idea where you learned it or why you believe it.

According to Wang (see, I remembered!) “source amnesia“ can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.”

“With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength.”

Implications? Such as?

I wonder… if someone were to say something about some particular country… and a mushroom cloud…

Or…

…if someone were to mass circulate an email claiming that one of the presidential candidates is a Muslim, won’t say the pledge of allegiance and is - I don’t know - not really an American…

Oh, Karl ROVE! You are a GENIUS! I heard that somewhere…

FOX News WASHINGTON - Well, who can you trust to blindly, mindlessly, small mindedly support Our President and Our One Nation Under God if not the presumptive Republican Nominee for the President of the United States?

Shockingly, Senator John McCain revealed yesterday that he personally has great difficulty in working up any sense of pride at all in this, the Greatest Nation in the History of the Earth, our Homeland, the very country whose generous people who have blessed the apparently ungrateful McCain, an old white guy, with the opportunity to run for the Presidency of the United States of America.

McCain, the former patriot, went on to excoriate the Commander-in Chief, War President and Honorary Combat Hero George W. Bush, left-hand man of War Vice-President and proven marksman D*i*c*k Cheney, McCain even going so far as to imply that history will not recognize President Bush as one of the most intelligent, decent, and courageous presidents of all freaking time.

Further, traitor McCain, who claims to be a war hero, went on to trash America’s highest leadership, civilian and military, saying that they are incompetent, and have performed “very badly” in securing Our Great Nation against Islamo-terrorists and are failing in establishing an American colony in the Middle East.

Of course, this is not the first time McCain has confessed under duress. His record as a prisoner-of-war is well known, but we won’t mention that here because that would be going over the line, don’t you think? (We’ll save that for later.)

McCain has failed to state that he loves the American flag for almost 28 hours now, so we are forced to assume that he disrespects it and hates the colors red, white and blue.

HOT wife, though

Reuters WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate John McCain admitted on Saturday it can be difficult at times to be proud of the United States.

“I’ll admit to you … that it’s tough in some respects,” McCain said when asked by a questioner at a town hall meeting how to be proud of the country.

“We have not always done things right and we mismanaged the war in Iraq very badly for nearly four years.”

Rep. Dennis Kucinch of Ohio introduced a bill containing thirty-five articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives late Monday evening.

 

It is no surprise that there has been virtually no corporate media coverage of this historic event.

 

The only thing more disgraceful than the media silence is the near-complete failure of Democrats in the House of Representatives to co-sponsor the bill. For the record, the exception is Congressman Robert Wexler (District 19, FL), who stated “The Articles present a stunning narrative of offenses that go well beyond previous crimes committed by any U.S. chief executive.  In fact, no President or Vice President in history has done more to undermine our constitution.”

 

The crimes of this administration, specifically President George Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, in spite of their conspiracy to avoid documentation and considerable efforts to destroy the evidence, are well documented.

 

The lack of will to prosecute the crimes of these men can be traced back to the massive campaign of misinformation that was flooded into the media after the attacks of 9-11. Millions of Americans still believe that Saddam was a planner of those attacks. Millions of Americans also believe that we attacked Iraq based on “bad intelligence” regarding their weapons capability.

 

The facts are clear, and were clear, that Iraq had no role in 9-11, had no significant relationship with the people who did, and had obliterated their nuclear weapons program several years before our invasion.

 

The administration suppressed, obfuscated, and outright lied in order to start this war, and then launched a straw man “war on terror” to justify illegal activities across the board, ranging from unconstitutional spying on American citizens to sweetheart contracts giving multi-billion dollar payoffs to their business associates.

 

The media, having pumped up the hysterical 9-11 rhetoric, having served as the propaganda arm of the administration in the “run-up” to the Iraq war, and having marketed the “war on terror” as a brand, is of course burying the truth rather than acknowledge that war and terror are good for their business.

 

The Democrats, having utterly failed to execute their duty to represent the interests of their constituents, want to see Bush and Cheney slither out of office, perpetuating  the myth that they themselves were innocent victims, rather than passive participants in this shameful era of American history.

 

In time, it is inevitable that the facts will overwhelm the myths, and no one will be able to deny that these wars were unnecessary – that as many as a million Iraqis were murdered, that 4-5 million were turned into refugees, thousands of Americans died, that the economy of our country was mortgaged and wasted, and that the motive for the “war on terror” was profit, pure and simple.

 

Bush and Cheney should be held accountable for their crimes before they leave office.

 

This may be the only way to prevent them from covering their tracks by starting another war.

 

[UPDATE] from rawstory.com:

 

"The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to send articles of impeachment against President Bush to the Judiciary Committee for review.

The impeachment resolution’s sponsor, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, requested a recorded vote on the motion around 3 p.m. Wednesday, and 24 Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in voting to send the impeachment measure to the committee.

The motion passed 251-166."

Some years back, one of my personal heroes, Neil Young, recorded the song “This Note’s for You”, which was a play on the very popular Budweiser ad campaign at that time, featuring a dog named Spuds McKenzie - “This Bud’s for you”. This was in the era when rock and roll was making the transition from counter culture to big business. It’s a great tune.

One verse goes:

Ain't singin' for Miller
Don't sing for Bud
I won't sing for politicians
Ain't singin' for Spuds
This note's for you.

As far as I know, the “Community Bloggers” writing in this space are totally independent of the editorial and news operations of the Journal-Sentinel, which owns the Lake Country Reporter, Kettle Moraine Index, etc. We receive no direction, and no compensation or any other consideration from the J-S Corporation for our work. At least I don’t. I blog because I feel the need to generate public consideration and discussion of issues that I think are important to me and to you.

I believe the previous paragraph applies to all of the Community Bloggers. From this point on, please be clear that I am speaking only for myself.

A month or so back, the editors of this site began integrating actual news reports into the same format and directory as our blogs.  I’m sure you have noticed this. I expressed concern, and got some support from fellow bloggers at that time, that news and opinion were mixed without any obvious distinction between the two. The editors made an attempt for some delineation, at least on some of the pages.

It’s not that I feel ownership of the space. But I believe there is an expectation of readers that news and opinion will be kept separated, as much as is possible. The lack of visual distinction between news stories written by professional journalists, who have a professional obligation to strive for objectivity, and the unabashedly personal opinions of us bloggers is troubling to me. Perhaps my expectations of the media have become quaint, but I think that editorials should be confined to the editorial page.

Journalistic ethics also demand that the business side of the company must not influence the reporting of the news. News coverage (or non-coverage) should not be for sale.

Now, the Journal-Sentinel Company has begun selling “blog” space. Or at least space that is visually indistinguishable from a blog, and is mixed right into the blog listings.

I have a real issue with this.

This program of integrating news, opinion, and now advertising in this space is troubling to me. I’d like to know what you think.

Please comment, and let me know if it troubles you that the blog you are reading might actually be a subtly written advertisement. The editors are listening.

Just for the record, this blog is not for sale.