McCain/Palin's Anti-American, Racist Pals

[Joanne98]

by David Drissel
Sun Oct 05, 2008 at 09:35:06 AM PDT
It’s not surprising the McCain/Palin campaign has decided to start attacking Barack Obama for his alleged ties to former sixties "terrorist," William Ayers. This is just one more example of a very desperate campaign willing to say or do anything to get elected. But this is the same old chauvinistic approach of McCarthy-style “guilt by association” politics. Besides, Gov. Sarah Palin is the one who’s actually endorsed the “vision” of an anti-American, terrorist-prone group, as I describe in the later half of my essay. Moreover, Senator McCain has served on a board that is clearly racist and anti-Semitic.

David Drissel's diary :: ::
On Saturday, Palin unleashed a new attack line on Obama, accusing him of "palling around with terrorists" for his association with former Weather Underground leader-turned-college professor Ayers. This is just another attempt from the kooky far right to raise questions about Obama’s “patriotism.” For months, we’ve heard this kind of paranoid drivel especially from the ultra-conservative media – Sean Hannity of Fox News in particular. Hannity rants and raves about Obama’s “ties” to fellow Chicagoan Ayers every chance he gets.

This whole line of “debate” about William Ayers is ridiculous, bringing American politics to a new chauvinistic low. So what if Obama briefly served on the same board with this guy? You know, I’ve served on boards with all kinds of people in my life. Am I supposed to run a background check on everyone with whom I come into contact? Ayers was never even convicted of anything, for crying out loud. This is the worst kind of McCarthy-style tactics: To insinuate or even say flatly that a person who has met an “undesirable” (fill in the blank) is somehow “corrupted” or “infected” by that association.

Personally, I’m a whole lot more concerned about a Presidential candidate such as John McCain who was directly involved in one of the biggest financial scandals of the 20th century – “The Keating Five.” Along with four other U.S. senators, McCain was investigated for improper conduct and institutionalized bribery that fueled the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early nineties. Significantly, the Senate Ethics Committee found in 1991 that McCain exercised “poor judgment” in this affair. Moreover, McCain sat on the board of the far-right U.S. Council for World Freedom - which has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League as "a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-semites."

I’m also very concerned about Palin’s unapologetic vocal support of the overtly anti-American secessionist group, the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). As AIP founder Joe Vogler once said, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He also is quoted on AIP's website as saying, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." Dexter Clark, AIP Vice Chairman, even seemed to endorse armed rebellion against the U.S. government when he stated at the AIP convention in 2007, "The longer this situation continues, the harder it's going to become for a peaceful solution."

The ideology of AIP is clearly terrorist-prone, based on the doctrine of "insurrectionism --the belief that the Second Amendment grants individual citizens the right to confront their government with force of arms when they feel it has become ‘tyrannical’ (the same view which Timothy McVeigh used to justify his attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City)."

This past year, Gov. Palin sent an official videotaped message to the AIP’s annual convention, in which she endorsed their “party’s vision” and referred to AIP as “inspiring.” Palin doesn’t simply have associations with AIP; she blatantly supports the party. Her husband Todd was even a member for years, from 1995 to 2002.

So, the latest attempts at negative fear mongering by the McCain/Palin campaign are completely irrelevant to Obama’s candidacy. Unlike McCain’s involvement with the Keating Five and Palin’s gushing support of the terror-prone AIP, Obama’s “relationship” with Ayers was very minimal and inconsequential.
Hopefully, such neo-McCarthy tactics will not succeed, especially if the American public understands that this is simply another example of desperate tactics from the far right. It’s definitely time to return to the issues that truly matter to average Americans.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/5/114426/851/660/620729

[Democat]

1. Obama should consider a limited run AIP ad to warn McCain!

I'm sure that McCain thinks that Obama will go on the defensive, not the offensive.

If Obama wants to stop these attacks, he can't just defend himself, he will need to go on the offensive and make McCain and Palin pay for starting these ads.

All of this is assuming that the negative turn by McCain doesn't blow up in his face and cause him to drop further in the polls.

But, Obama's team should have some very brutal attack ads of his own ready, in case the American people start to fall for this bullshit again.