Let’s say that we have thousands of hours of you on film. For fun, let’s take all of those thousands of hours of film, give them to an intern, and tell that intern to create, I dunno, a 30 or 45 second montage of you saying things that, out of their context, make you sound insane. Then let’s air that montage non-stop for a week on every television channel on the planet.

This is what happened to Barack Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Clearly, this video shows a militant, angry black man. A racist! A bigot! A liberal. And how can we trust Obama when this crazy, militant, angry black man is the one who brought Obama to Christ, who married he and Michelle, who baptized his daughters??

Who is this militant, angry black man?

Son of a Baptist minister. Member of the Marine Corps and the US Navy. Doctor. Master’s degree in English and Ministry. Professor. As a minister, he grew Trinity United Church of Christ from 87 congregates to over 6,000.

Jeremiah Wright killed the last living unicorn. He was a member of the James Brother’s gang. He hates babies, baseball, and apple pie. He once shot a man just to watch him die.

This is a man who hates America so much that he once saved the life of President Lyndon Johnson. Disgusting.

Obama contends his militant, angry black man is like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with.” He says he “disagree[s] with [those comments].” And “I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. … In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.”

Oh, and, before the montage video, Obama hadn’t heard these comments.

What a coward. Why just repudiate the remarks? No, Barack needs to repudiate the man, quit the church, and never again be associated with the racists that attend the church. Like Oprah. Or this guy. Or this white lady.

So spaketh Sean Hannity. So shall it be done!

So… why doesn’t he? I mean, it would be the politically expedient thing to do, to throw his friend and pastor under the bus. Could there be something more to it?

Something like… context? Let’s go through the montage and discern what’s truly so horrible about it.

Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger!

Frankly, I don’t see what’s so “offensive” about this statement. It’s true. Hillary has never been called a nigger. She will never know what it’s like to be a black man. She will also never know what it’s like to grow up without a father, or to live as a child in Indonesia or Hawaii, or to have a grandmother in Kenya.

Likewise, Barack will never know what it’s like to be a white woman. He will never be called a bitch. He will never know what it’s like to grow up in a nuclear family, to be a child playing in Chicago snow, or to give birth.

Hillary is married to Bill and Bill have been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was ridin’ dirty.

I don’t know how the right wing would find this offensive, when they’ve been shouting about him raping women and killing people and running drugs for at least 15 years.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strikes law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. No no no, not God Bless America, God DAMN America. That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people, God Damn America for treating your citizens as less than human.

Here is the video of the full quote.

The sermon is actually about how governments fail, but God never does. It lists injustices by governments throughout history, that governments change, but God is ever the same. And he doesn’t just talk about black folks when he talks about America’s failures — he lists the Native Americans being forced to reservations, he lists the Japanese Americans being put in internment camps, as well as referencing Jim Crow and Tuskegee, all of which are true. What comes across clearly is that you should put your faith in god, and not your government.

We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back in to our own front yard.

Here is the video of the full quote.

This is his sermon right after 9/11. Here he talks about a movement from Worship to War, quoting Psalm 137:

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is he who repays you

for what you have done to us-

he who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

He talks a lot about revenge and atrocity and what God would want. He lists more than the nuclear bombing of WWII — pointing out that what was done to the Native Americans and to the Africans brought over as slaves would fall under the definition of “terrorism.” He lists the bombings America has done in Grenada, Panama, Qaddafi’s house, Iraq, Sudan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which killed innocent civilians — what the Government talking heads like to call “collateral damage.” And he’s actually referencing this interview with Ambassador Peck regarding America’s intervention overseas and then quoting Malcolm X when he says “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

In the same sermon Wright says that this is a time for self-examination of ourselves and our families, for thanking God for all he has provided, and for social transformation:

Maybe we need to declare war on AIDS. In five minutes the Congress found $40 billion to rebuild New York and the families that died in sudden death, do you think we can find the money to make medicine available for people who are dying a slow death? Maybe we need to declare war on the nation’s healthcare system that leaves the nation’s poor with no health coverage? Maybe we need to declare war on the mishandled educational system and provide quality education for everybody, every citizen, based on their ability to learn, not their ability to pay.

For these, I haven’t found their full counterparts, but they’re easy to debunk without them.

The governments lie. The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.

This one might sound a little silly, but it’s actually a very popular conspiracy theory. This article from 2005 shows that nearly half of African Americans believe AIDS was created to wipe out the black population:

“This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they’re out to get us,” Akbar said. The belief “comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-slavery exploitation.”

There’s a few competing ideas in the “man made the AIDS virus” sub-group:

1. The mistake: A doctor used hastily concocted chimpanzee kidney cultures for a polio vaccine administered to millions of natives in the Belgian Congo. Oops.
2. The military: This one claims that military scientists at Fort Detrick spliced two viruses, Visna and HTLV-1, to create HIV, and injected it in to prisoners who had volunteered for experimentation in exchange for early release, and that those prisoners introduced the virus to the population at large. There are two major problems with this theory that I see: A) HIV was primarily a gay man’s disease in the 1980’s, so unless they only performed the experiments on gay inmates, you’d expect to see a much higher infection rate in the female population once the prisoners earned their release. B) Jakob Segal, the biology professor pushing this theory, was accused KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin as having been disseminating disinformation on behalf of the Soviet Union.
3. The Government: This theory holds that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by US Government doctors and introduced to the population through Hepatits B experiments performed on gay men in the late 1970’s.
4. The Contractors: Same as the The Government, only we outsourced it! To Litton Bionetics!

1 isn’t nefarious enough, 2 is pretty easily disproved, but 3 and 4 fall under “plausible” when you remember that the government of this country infected black men with syphilis for 40 years just to see what it would do.

Governments lie. The Government lied about the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and a connection between 9 11 01 and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

That’s true.

“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” Bush said after a Cabinet meeting. As evidence, he cited Iraqi intelligence officers’ meeting with bin Laden in Sudan. “There’s numerous contacts between the two,” Bush said.

(same day)

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration’s main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Governments lie. The Government lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq being a threat to the United States peace. And guess what else: If they don’t find them some weapons of mass destruction, they’re going to do just like the LAPD and plant them some weapons of mass destruction.

Also true. There’s way too many sources for me to comb through, but if you don’t know by now that there were no weapons, I suspect you’ve been living under a rock. Or in Wyoming.

As for planting them? I try never to pass up a chance to point out the lunacy of Rick Santorum, and I know I can’t possibly be the only one who remembers he and Congressman Pete Hoekstra proudly called a press conference to proclaim:

Congressman Hoekstra and I are here today to say that we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons. Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq?s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.

They cited as their evidence the Bush commissioned Iraq Survey Group, which stated:

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible Indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be Weapons of Mass Destruction!

Here, taken in context, those cherry-picked quotes don’t seem so outlandish. They don’t come across as racist or Anti-American. They’re actually pretty well in line with socially liberal views. The montage condensed by Fox News and circulated to the other networks served as a manufactured story. Goon Seb Tea Fog nailed it:

Jesus Fuck I just finished watching all those Wright videos you posted.

I’m not angry at the mainstream media.

I’m not bewildered by the mainstream media.

I am fucking ashamed of the mainstream media.

In the context of what he was actually saying, Obama was right not to disavow his friend. Other people came to the defense, including Denise Clapsaddle, John Thomas, Francis Schaeffer’s son Frank, John McCain and Mike Huckabee. And all of this led Obama to give so powerful and moving a speech on race, and how far this country has come with regards to it, that many pundits compared him to Lincoln, Jefferson, and Kennedy. Furthmore, the TV was confused, because his speech contained no attacks, no thirty second sound bites, and he spoke to the American people as though the were adults!

On the bright side, no one can accuse him of being a Muslim anymore.

But certain sectors of the Right Wing Wind Tunnel, like, oh, Sean Hannity, continue to ignore the full context and instead push a “guilt-by-association” mentality. You wanna play some equivocation, Sean? Let’s play!

Let’s ignore all the context that’s been laid out. We’ll use Hannity rules, and the assertion that the spliced up montage video and Wright’s liking Louis Farrakhan is enough.

Let’s start with 9/11:

We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back in to our own front yard.

Is this better or worse than Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians ACLU and the People for the American Way” for causing 9/11?

Oh, and notice the part where Falwell says that God is allowing our enemies to “give us probably what we deserve.” Of course, there’s a difference here. Wright is highlighting our foreign policy, while Falwell is focused on our domestic policy. Under the Hannity Rules, am I to believe everyone watching the 700 Club is an anti-woman, anti-civil liberties homophobe?

Ted Haggard was one of the most influential Evangelicals in America, and had weekly calls with Bush’s administration. Does this mean President George Bush is a gay meth addict?

Billy Graham turned out to be an anti-semite; however, he counseled every President from Truman George W. Does this mean that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush were all jew-haters? OK, maybe that’s a bad example…

John McCain has two guilt-by-association problems. The first is John Hagee, a Protestant Minister whose endorsement McCain sought. Hagee’s fond of calling the Catholic Church “The Great Whore,” an “apostate church,” “the anti-Christ,” and “a false cult system.” He also enjoys long walks on the beach and standing on stage next to John McCain, something Jeremiah Wright has not done with Barack Obama.

His second problem is Rod Parsley, a pastor who claims Columbus sailed to the New World in order to destroy Islam. Which… that doesn’t make any sense.

Getting back on track, how does the Reverend Wright video stack up against this lovely ditty, from the American Value Voters debate held last year? I believe it’s called “Why Should God Bless America,” sung by an American Evangelical gospel choir, and I want it to be my ringtone.

One last thing to ponder before I end this wall of text:Will Sean Hannity leave the Roman Catholic Church because of its decades long sexual abuse of children and the systematic bureaucracy that allowed it to continue?

Is Sean Hannity, by virtue of being a Catholic, himself a kiddie-diddler?

Not as far as I know…

While not quite as old as Geraldine Ferraro, Pat’s old. He hasn’t aged well.

He also lacks Geraldine’s Humongous Balls. She went on television and radio and print with her out-dated views. Pat took to the internet, in what we can only assume was an attempt to hide opinion from the masses — which is amusing, because the internet is vastly larger than his MSNBC audience, and yet it is here he thinks he can hide. Not so. To wit:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks.

I will pause here and let you catch your breath from the hysteric laughter you must now be engaging in.

Take another moment to wipe the coffee you involuntarily spit out in the throws of that guffaw off of your monitor.

Ready?

It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Don’t you see, black America? It’s WHITE PEOPLE like Uncle Pat who brought you here, on luxury cruises, and allowed you to flourish and grow a culture! They gave you Jesus! Don’t you love Jesus?

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

How can you not love us for your opulent government housing, and government cheese? Don’t you owe us your gratitude for all off those college loans, and free public defenders you use when we catch you selling drugs to our white children? We even give you government run health care, something we deny to our white citizens!

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Aren’t you grateful for your soup kitchens and your quotas?

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

White America gives and gives and gives…

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

And Black America just takes and takes and takes…

Don’t you owe White America — and Pat Buchanan — an apology?

Geraldine Ferraro is old. Seventy-three years old. Old enough to have run for VP under Walter Mondale.

Old enough to know better.

Geraldine Ferraro told a reporter for that bastion of newspapers of the local L.A. scene, The Daily Breeze, (a site so important it requires a subscription!), that:

If Obama was a white man he wouldn’t be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Hrm… if he were a white man named John O’Bama, an Irish Protestant, from Chicago politics, with the same lanky figure and looks, the same amazing oratory skills, the same fundraising ability, the same background… would he be where he is today….

She then refused to apologize or recognize the sheer stupidity of what she said, and made matters worse:

She then had the SHEER BALLS to claim people were making a big deal about this because she’s white:

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

Well, it’s snarky, to be honest. We can do snark. Here’s Goon lapse:

Poor white people, always getting challenged by the media when they say something atrociously racist

It wasn’t an off-the-cuff statement, or one given only to a private audience, either. Here she is saying the same thing on John Gibson’s show a couple of weeks before:

And it turns out? She said the same thing about Jesse Jackson back in 1988!

Placid of demeanor but pointed in his rhetoric, Jackson struck out repeatedly today against those who suggest his race has been an asset in the campaign. President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don’t ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his “radical” views, “if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”

Clearly, there’s a pattern…

Oh, sigh. It gets worse, folks.

Barack Obama’s chief strategist said Tuesday that a comment by one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black — coupled with Clinton’s “own inexplicable unwillingness” to deny that he was a Muslim during a recent interview — indicated “an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed.”

David Axelrod called on the New York senator to drop former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro from her finance committee. “When you wink and nod at offensive statements you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” said Axelrod.

And then Clinton responds:

“I dont agree with that, and I think its important that we try to stay focused on issues that matter to the American people,” she said. “And both of us have had supporters and staff members who’ve gone over the line and we have to rein them in and try to keep this on the issues. There are big differences between us on the issues - lets stay focused on that.”

And Ferraro responds, taking another huge bite of her foot:

“I do think this was a mistake on part of the Obama campaign,” she said in an interview with NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, RI. “They didn’t have to do this, and they did it to hurt Hillary. I just think that’s bad. I think it’s bad business, and I think it’s bad politics. I was accused of being divisive. I think those tactics are divisive.”

Saying she “was talking to the facts,” Ferraro stressed she did not make a mistake and was not the one who brought up race in this primary fight.

Only later that evening does she step down from her official position in the Clinton campaign, saying in her resignation letter “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.”

The media’s giant hydra head spins relentlessly. But at least Keith Olbermann had the vocabulary to speak clearly on this issue, in one of his Special Comment’s:

To Senator Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness…

And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns — a disturbing, but only borderline remark…

After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the “3 A-M” ad… a disturbing — but only borderline interpretation…

And after that moment’s hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama’s religion — a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness…

After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern… false, or true.
After those precedents, there are those who see an intent… false, or true.
After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign’s anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe — falsely or truly — as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice which still haunts this society voiced… and to not distance the campaign from it.

We agree. And we could go on and on and on debunk this, or we could let The Senator speak for himself:

“I think that her comments were ridiculous. I think they were wrong-headed,” he said. “The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.”

Vote John Harry O’Bama ‘08!!

The trial of Tony Rezko started this week in Chicago, prosecuted by our favorite bulldog US Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald. So, of course, it’s back in the news.

JohnKWilson over at DKos debunks the 10 most popular Obama/Rezko myths. Absolute required reading. I will include just two of the ten here:

Myth #3: Obama underpaid for his house in a deal with Rezko

Claim: Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass wrote: “Rezko paid more than the asking price for the side lot, and Obama paid less than the asking price for the big house. It’s the Chicago way.” Kass claimed that Rezko was “Obama’s Real Estate Fairy” and this is “the story of the dream house the Obamas wanted and couldn’t quite afford and how the Rezkos helped.”

The truth: None of this is true. The seller decided to divide the lot in offering it for sale, not Obama or Rezko. Rezko had paid the list price for his lot, not an excessive amount (as the resale value later proved). The owner reportedly had already been offered $625,000 for the side lot, so Rezko didn’t offer any more money and there was no way Obama could have gotten a special deal this way. The only special arrangement Rezko provided was selling the two lots on the same day, which simplified matters for the seller. Obama paid $1.65 million for a house originally priced at $1.95 million. His was the higher of two bids for the main property. It’s not unusual at all in the Chicago real estate business to see a 15 percent price cut on an expensive house that’s been on the market for four months. Nor is it unusual that a vacant lot next door would sell to a condo developer without such a discount. In the Hyde Park market, there are a lot of upper-middle-class residents making six figures, but not very many millionaires (it’s not Lincoln Park or the Gold Coast). Therefore, a pricey mansion is very difficult to sell, while a $300,000 townhouse is very common.

So he paid the normal less-than-asking-price for the house; what about that yard???

Myth #5: Obama underpaid (or overpaid) for the slice of Rezko’s lot

Claim: John Kass declared: “Obama’s appraiser told him the fair market value of that slice was $40,500. Since that’s one-sixth of the Rezko side, it means Rezko paid $625,000 for property that was actually worth $243,000. That would make Rezko a complete fool. But he’s no fool.” Fox News Channel incorrectly reported that Rezko “sold half that lot to Obama for 1/3 its original value.”

The truth: The appraiser was clearly wrong (probably basing the low value on the fact that 1/6th of the lot was too small for any house, which would dramatically reduce its value standing alone). That’s why Obama decided to buy 1/6th of Rezko’s lot for 1/6th of what Rezko paid for it ($104,500). A year after the 10-foot-wide strip of land was sold to Obama, a Rezko business associate bought the rest of the lot for $575,000, resulting in a profit for the Rezkos of $54,000 from the two land sales. This sale proved that Obama paid fair market value for his portion of the land.

By the way, do you think the irony of accusing someone else of shady land dealings has hit home with the Clinton Campaign? Well, apparently not:

“When Sen. Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be commander in chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Sen. Clinton,” Wolfson said. “I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president.”

So now her campaign has likened him to George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Ken Starr. Man, she does not like Barack Hitler Stalin Hussein Osbama. Next week expect an apt comparison to him as the little boy in the first grade who used to push her down.

Back to Rezko. From DKos via Margie Burns, we relearn that old adage about glass houses and stones:

Since the name of Chicago defendant Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko has come up in national debate, it seems fair to look at donations from other defendants in Chicago’s “Operation Board Games.”

Of the other five defendants, three have donated to the Clintons or to Clinton supporters, three have donated mostly to Republicans, and at least two have donated to Obama’s political opponents. None have donated to Obama.

Margie compiled the information from the publically available FEC data on opensecrets.org, and it’s well worth the read.

Meanwhile, Obama has given back all of the money that may have ever come within 10 feet of Tony Rezko, but Clinton is refusing to give back $170,000 from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment. In fact, IPA is involved a massive EEOC suit brought by 113 women who detailed shenanigans from comments to groping to sexual assault, at least one RICO suit, an addition 125 individual lawsuits, and the Illinois Attorney General’s office is investigating the company for fraud.

You would think the candidate that has been endorsed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) would give back the money from the contributor under federal sexual harassment indictment, especially after the lead attorney on the case says “This is probably the most egregious case of sex harassment that the Chicago district office has seen.”

Dear Internet,

I am sorry to inform you that, for all of your effort, Barack Obama remains decidedly not Muslim. Despite your attempts, he remains devout and outspoken about his Christian faith, and what it means to him and in today’s world. Good try, though!

This open letter, written by eight religious leaders spanning all religions and denominations, was written over a year ago, and yet the lies persist:

Many of you have seen hateful emails, blog postings and reports circulating on the Internet and in the media about Senator Barack Obama and his religious upbringing. These outrageous charges began as reports of his potential candidacy for President emerged and, as has become a shameful custom of modern politics, it has swirled through cyberspace with a vengeance and now has been picked up as fact by Fox News and some partisan commentators.

We are writing to deplore this despicable tactic and set the record straight. We have had enough of the slash and burn politics calculated to divide us as children of God.

So what’s the big deal? Why is calling him a Muslim or saying his middle name HUSSEIN HUSSEIN HUSSEIN so awful?

Well, first, because he’s not a Muslim, so it’s a lie. Second, it’s really not polite to Muslims to insinuate that he is Muslim. I am certain they wouldn’t wish to be mistaken for Christians. Third, though, is the most troubling, and something for which I am ashamed and disgusted by my countrymen.

In the last seven years, if not more, we have equated Muslim with Terrorist. By saying Obama is a “Secret Muslim,” people mean to imply he is a “Secret Terrorist.” Which, frankly, is stupid, because who on Earth would answer that way?

“Oh, I’m in sales. You?”
“I’m a terrorist. Yeah, real busy these last few years. Business is booming!”

It’s pretty disgusting race baiting, and if you don’t think so, I’ll ask you to indulge me this little game. Read the following sentences out loud:

Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Barack Obama is a Jew.
Barack Obama is a Catholic.
Barack Obama is a Klingon.
Barack Obama is a Jedi.

Be honest — which one made your knee jerk more? Which one less?

It’s an eternal fear of the other — he doesn’t look like us and his name is funny, and, frankly, he doesn’t talk like the average American. He uses, you know, words. Big ones! And smaller, smarter ones. So if we keep saying HUSSEIN MUSLIM HUSSEIN enough, people will snap out of the spell his pretty words have woven, and realize he’s just a Manchurian Muslim, hellbent fucking Liberty while we all take the happy pills!

And what, pray-tell, could he possibly do to Liberty that hasn’t already been done?

A relative of mine constantly refers to Barack as “B. Hussein Obama.” This allows her to reinforce the racist stereotype without coming out and being overtly racist. She also says the name “says something about his roots,” which is blatantly false, as he hardly knew the father that gave him his moniker. “He could have changed his name,” the argument goes. But who would not have seen that as simple political expediency? And why does no one say “H. Diane Clinton” or “J. Sidney McCain?”

Regardless, it got me to thinking. What really is in a name?

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. His name was changed when he entered the United States Military Academy.

Dwight David Eisenhower was born as David Dwight Eisenhower.

Warren G. Harding. The G stands for Gamaliel.

Three Presidents used their middle name as their given name: John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. went by Calvin; Stephen Grover Cleveland went by Grover; Thomas Woodrow Wilson went by Woodrow

Gerald Rudolph Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, and while we all know the story of how his name was changed to reflect his step father, did you know that change didn’t come until he was 22 years old?

Harry Truman’s middle name was only an initial; the “S” didn’t stand for another name.

Jimmy Carter’s full name is James Earl Carter.

Seventeen of the 42 presidents to date have no known middle name.

28 Presidents were named after their father or grandfather, just like Barack. 29 if you count Ford twice.

My favorite bit of name trivia comes from a Presidential Adviser, and not a President. Robert S. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. The S stands, literally, for Strange.

Robert Strange McNamara.

Robert Strange Hussein McNamara.

I didn’t blog about this at first, because it seemed to come and go quickly. But like all things I have a tendency to put off, it always festers in to something horribly awesome.

The big stink this week is that Obama and Deval Patrick both used the same line in some speeches they each gave. Check out the side by side:

But the thing is, Patrick and Obama have been friends for a long time. Patrick is a national co-chair of the Obama campaign. Patrick says he is not upset at all, and the Obama team point to Hillary and McCain both using his “fired up and ready to go” line recently.Pressed on the matter, Obama said that Patrick “suggested that we use these lines…I thought they were good lines. I’m sure I should have [given him credit], I didn’t this time.” Patrick responded by saying he didn’t need credit.

And that should have been the end of that, if Clinton didn’t like to nit-pick in an attempt to get something, anything on Obama. Tonight’s CNN debate:

BROWN: I think one of the points — I think one of the points that John King was alluding to in talking about some of Senator Clinton’s comments is there has been a lot of attention lately on some of your speeches, that they are very similar to some of the speeches by your friend and supporter Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, and Senator Clinton’s campaign has made a big issue of this. To be blunt, they’ve accused you of plagiarism.

OBAMA: Right.

BROWN: How do you respond?

OBAMA: Well, look, the — first of all, it’s not a lot of speeches. There are two lines in speeches that I’ve been giving over the last couple of weeks.

I’ve been campaigning now for the last two years. Deval is a national co-chairman of my campaign, and suggested an argument that I share, that words are important. Words matter. And the implication that they don’t I think diminishes how important it is to speak to the American people directly about making America as good as its promise. Barbara Jordan understood this as well as anybody.

And the notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co-chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think, is silly, and, you know, this is where we start getting into silly season, in politics, and I think people start getting discouraged about it…

…

BROWN: Senator Clinton, is it the silly season?

CLINTON: Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That’s, I think, a very simple proposition. And, you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox. And I just don’t think…

And because she’s so vehement about this, we can assume absolutely that she has never plagiarized, and if she did, certainly no one will be fast enough to find and post it within an hour of the debate ending…

Oh.

Bill Clinton, 92: “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”

Hillary Clinton, tonight: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”

Which just goes to show how completely silly and spurious the attack was in the first place.

OK, this might be my new favorite line of attack. I get a new one every week, like Primary Chanukah!

“There’s a big difference between us — speeches versus solutions, talk versus action,” she said.

“Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank or fill your prescription or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.”

Why is this my new favorite? Goon Tensen put it best.

I must say, as mindblowing as Senator Clinton giving a speech about how useless speeches are was, the biggest moment for me was the line “Speeches don’t pay the bills.”

…she does know how her husband made them rich after they left the White House, doesn’t she?

Speeches only put food on some people’s tables.

Dubbed The Snub by the media, and played up endlessly, this photo has been getting a lot of airtime:

Not content to just let the media talk about it, Clinton talked about it, too:

Hillary went on ABC News on Tuesday night to insinuate that he had been rude Monday.

“Well, I reached my hand out in friendship and unity and my hand is still reaching out,” she said. “And I look forward to shaking his hand sometime soon.”

That would have been a pretty horrible diss by Obama, if that’s what had actually happened. Let’s look at it from another angle, shall we?

Oh, look at that. He turned, actually, because Clair McCaskill had asked him a question. You can clearly see that he’s turned before she has. He didn’t even see Hillary. But, by all means, keep playing it up as something else.

I’ve heard that if you stand in front of a mirror and say his name three times it will summon him from his unholy rest…

Obama gave a candid interview to the Reno Gazette-Journal in which he said something that turned out not to be demonizing enough about Ronald Reagan:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was: we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

The Lefty Blogosphere went nuts over this quote, completely missing the point. The 60’s saw an amazing upheaval of popular culture, politics, economy, etc.. We saw the end of segregation, the beginning of the feminist and gay rights movements, the emergence of rock and roll, the anti-war movement. We saw all of our most liberal leaders killed.

The 70’s brought Cambodia, Watergate, fuel shortages, a recession, the Iran Hostage Crisis, a rise in violent crime, homelessness, and drug use, to name just a few. People were looking for a father figure. People were looking for someone to tell them that it was morning in America, and that he could make things all better. It was transformative, and came in the guise of a B-movie actor who was really good at connecting with his audience. And it worked.

But oh no no. We can’t say that because, as we all know, Ronald Reagan was the devil and he invented AIDS. Goon Periodiko points out the obvious:

In the rush to accumulate evidence that Obama is actually a Republican manchurian candidate no one is bothering to note that he’s talking about a historical event in a neutral tone as a point of comparison for christ’s sake. No reasonable person would read that and assume he was making anything remotely resembling a policy judgment about Ronald Reagan. Any reasonable person would read this and realize that he is focusing on Ronald Reagan’s significance and weight as a politician and the positive perceptions that he rode to office. There is nothing in there that condones, opposes, or even deals with Ronald Reagan outside of this aspect. It’s such desperate, willful misinterpretation it’s getting embarrassing.

That’s not all Obama said about Reagan, though. He also said, in the same interview:

The Republican approach I think has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

Oh boy. This quote was picked up by Clinton, so here we go.

I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years. That’s not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years.

I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to Medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.

He didn’t say better. He didn’t even say “good.” He said they had ideas. This, right here, is what we close observers call a lie. But since getting caught in a lie has never stopped anyone, let’s get Barney Frank to say it, and then let’s get Bill Clinton to say it and get everyone to say it some more!

Yes, how dare he give credit to Reagan. He even did it in his book!

Audacity of Hope page 31:

That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his kills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become to cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.

Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.

My GOD, man. But, what if maybe others have said stuff about Reagan?

It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Washington Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn’t allow to pass their lips.

Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan’s “rhetoric in defense of freedom” and his role in “advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back.”

“The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing,” Clinton declared.

His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to “set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan.” Clinton’s “readiness to defy his party’s prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it,” the paper wrote, “is one reason he’s a candidate to watch.”

Uh ho. Well, but Bill’s not running for the Presidency this time. This time it’s Hillary.

But no president can do it alone. She must break recent tradition, cast cronyism aside and fill her cabinet with the best people, not only the best Democrats, but the best Republicans as well.. We’re confident she will do that. Her list of favorite presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan - demonstrates how she thinks.

Well yeah OK but that’s just some endorsement from a newspaper but not her own words even if it is published on her own site. I mean, it’s not like there’s a book out on shelves now where she says:

[Reagan] was a child of the Depression, so he understood it (economic pressures on the working and middle class). When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.

Zombie Reagan ‘08!

In the Nevada Debates, the candidates were all asked what their greatest weakness is. Let’s go to the transcript, Bob!

RUSSERT: You said each of you have strengths and weaknesses. I want to ask each of you quickly, your greatest strength, your greatest weakness.

OBAMA: My greatest strength, I think is the ability to bring people together from different perspectives to get them to recognize what they have in common and to move people in a different direction. And as I indicated before, my greatest weakness, I think, is when it comes to — I’ll give you a very good example.

I ask my staff member to hand me paper until two seconds before I need it because I will lose it. You know, the —- you know…

(LAUGHTER)

And my desk and my office doesn’t look good. I’ve got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff. And that’s not trivial; I need to have good people in place who can make sure that systems run. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s why we run not only a good campaign, but a good U.S. Senate office.

RUSSERT: Senator Edwards, greatest strength, greatest weakness?

EDWARDS: I think my greatest strength is that for 54 years, I’ve been fighting with every fiber of my being. In the beginning, the fight was for me. Growing up in mill towns and mill villages, I had to literally fight to survive.

But then I spent 20 years in courtrooms fighting for children and families against really powerful well-financed interests. I learned from that experience, by the way, that if you’re tough enough and you’re strong enough and you got the guts and you’re smart enough, you can win. That’s a fight that can be won.

It can be won in Washington, too, by the way. And I’ve continued that entire fight my entire time in public life. So I’ve got what it takes inside to fight on behalf of the American people and on behalf of the middle class.

I think weakness, I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain that I see around me, when I see a man like Donnie Ingram (ph), who I met a few months ago in South Carolina, who worked for 33 years in the mill, reminded me very much of the kind of people that I grew up with, who’s about to lose his job, has no idea where he’s going to go, what he’s going to do.

I mean, his dignity and self-respect is at issue. And I feel that in a really personal way and in a very emotional way. And I think sometimes that can undermine what you need to do.

RUSSERT: Senator Clinton?

CLINTON: Well, I am passionately committed to this country and what it stands for. I’m a product of the changes that have already occurred, and I want to be an instrument for making those changes alive and real in the lives of Americans, particularly children.

That’s what I’ve done for 35 years. It is really my life’s work. It is something that comes out of my own experience, both in my family and in my church that, you know, I’ve been blessed. I think to whom much is given, much is expected.

So I have tried to create opportunities, both on an individual basis, intervening to help people who have no where else to turn, to be their champion. And then to make those changes. And I think I can deliver change. I think I understand how to make it possible for more people to live up to their God-given potential.

I get impatient. I get, you know, really frustrated when people don’t seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other. Sometimes I come across that way. I admit that. I get very concerned about, you know, pushing further and faster than perhaps people are ready to go.

And with those responses from Clinton and Edwards, the entire country rolled its eyes so hard that America had a seizure. David Brooks in the NY Times puts it better than I could ever hope to:

The third thing that happened tonight is that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards disgraced themselves in the minds of debate-watchers everywhere. At some point in each campaign, candidates are asked to name their greatest weakness. Only the lamest political hacks answer that question this way: Goshdarn it, I just care too much. I am too impatient for good things to happen.

Giving that answer is an insult to the art of politics. And yet Edwards and Clinton both gave that answer. They didn’t even give artfully disguised versions of that answer. They gave the straight, unsubtle kindergarten version of that answer. Obama, honestly, admitted that he’s bad at organizing his paperwork. Truly, here is a man willing to stand for change.

However, the Clinton campaign actually made this an issue. Because they are desperate. They’ve insinuated that his honest answer means he’ll be disinterested or disorganized in running the country.

Obama, for his part, added the dust-up to his stump speech, to great applause:

Because I’m an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, `What’s your biggest weakness?’ If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, `Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don’t want to be helped. It’s terrible.’