Obama on The View July 29 Video

In this first clip, Obama tactfully (and oh, so satisfyingly) shuts down the often uninformed Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Facts, unfortunately, don't outweigh politics.

After the heavy stuff, The View hosts ask Obama about Snooki, Mel Gibson, Lindsey Lohan, Chelsea's wedding.... Full show is here. In the meantime, you might also want to check out Obama's education speech today at the National Urban League convention.

On the fluffy stuff:

Preview of Obama on The View July 29

Update: Obama gently and tactfully shuts down Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who's often uninformed, on the topic of jobs. I'll post the full video when it's available.

Obama talks about Roses & Thorns. He'll be on The View tomorrow:

Whoopi Catches Glenn Beck in a Lie About Her

Barbara Walters had it right when she said Glenn Beck is "making a lot of noise." Noise pollution.
Watch this clip. 
He apologized to Walters.
Anyway, this is a perfect example of how Rush, Beck and all the blowhards do radio. Take an incident and exaggerate it to fit your world view --listen at your own risk. 
"You're a lying sack of dog mess," Whoopi told him.
He tried to defend himself to no avail. Meanwhile Glenn Beck fan Elisabeth Hasselbeck sat with pursed lips and said nothing. 

Hasselbeck Comes Around on Michelle Obama

Elisabeth Hasselbeck of the The View finally has something genuinely nice to say about Michelle Obama:

That view is a long way from this slam, when Hasselbeck was supporting Palin:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck an Obama Supporter

We'll forgive her. Look how far she's come. Elisabeth went from this...

to this:

What if McCain Wins?

With only four days left, I ponder this. I dread this. And I try to find a way to feel okay with it.

The worst part of a McCain win would be the ugly people, the ones who've been shouting racial epithets and other horrible things at the McCain Palin rallies, would feel validated. They shouldn't be validated. They should be shamed.

McCain doesn't deserve to win after his nasty, low road campaign.

The other worst part is Palin. In reality, she's not fit to govern and is unworthy of even running. The other worst part -- there are many -- is McCain is erratic on economics.

He also seems to lack organizational skills and doesn't seem to know how to attract talent. He's got Joe the Plumber, Palin and TV host Elisabeth Hasselbeck vouching for him. That says everything. Joe the Plumber said Obama would mean death to Israel. If McCain had any honor whatsoever, that would've been the end of Joe the Plumber.

I've lived through 8 years of Bush, so I know I could hunker down for four more years of McCain. Maybe McCain, the McCain of old that everyone talks about so glowingly, would rear his head and actually do something good.

But if Obama can't win after all this momentum, after all this hope, perhaps politics isn't a means to changing anything.

Here's to hope and phone banking this weekend.

Hasselbeck Consorts with Fringe Opens for Palin

The View co-host embarrasses herself opening for Palin in Florida. Elisabeth Hasselbeck tries to bring back the whole sexist argument, which just isn't flying any more, except with the fringe. I can see it now: The Palin and Hasselbeck Show.

Palin claiming Obama is going to take over your family. Oh, and she ignores a racial slur that is screamed from her sorry supporters.

How far gone the McCain camp is

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Offers up More Obama Smears

Barbara Walters suggests that the women of The View stop slinging mud but Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a full-fledged wingnut. She really needs to step out of mainstream media -- Fox is her place -- because she's bought the right wing extreme train of thought, which is Obama is a radical terrorist. I kid you not. These people are nutty. Check out this site to see what they all read. Jerome Corsi, author of an anti Obama book, went to Kenya to prove that Obama is a secret Muslim and has secret ties with Kenyan government. No kidding. Read it here at NPR. Corsi was detained and deported.

Back to Elisabeth. Seriously, a republican point of view on the show is worthy but Elisabeth is a bit extreme. The View could do better. 

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Smears Obama

Barbara Walters says let's move on from attacks.

Whoopi explains Bill Ayers pretty well, putting his actions in context with what was going on with the nation during that time, but not well enough for Hasselbeck or other conservatives who are out to smear Obama.

Hasselbeck, a mouthpiece for wingnuts, totally brainwashed, a little loony for daytime TV, says accusing Obama of being a terrorist is not a smear. She also has attacked Michelle Obama.

Watch a good fight:

Obama Fights the ACORN and Ayers Smears

Wingnuts gone wild! This is their last best hope to help elect their man McCain.

Fox and the republicans have stepped up its attacks, trying to tie Obama to a group called ACORN. And the Internet is rife with rumors about Obama and former weatherman William Ayers.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a host on The View, is also in on this smear, mentioning it whenever she gets the chance. She also smeared Michelle Obama when Michelle wasn't looking. 

A DVD that tries to tie Obama to terrorists is also making the rounds. 
I got a lovely note just today from Gary Kreep, executive director of the Republican Majority Campaign PAC, who's asking for donations.

P.S. Thanks to our campaign to expose the TRUTH about Mr. Obama and his radical terrorist friend and mentor, THE WORD IS SPREADING. The mainstream media is being forced to finally report on this relationship, because the grassroots across America are demanding it. Clips like this one on YouTube are being uploaded and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people online -- but we MUST get the word out even more in the mainstream media to be able to IMPACT this election!

I like their use of CAPS. 

Obama camp fights back. 

From Fight the Smears:
Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack’s career, check out our Obama bio.)

Ken Blackwell is best known today for disenfranchising Democratic voters in his dual role as Ohio Secretary of State and chair of George Bush’s Ohio campaign in 2004. To see him shed crocodile tears for the integrity of the vote while making accusations about Barack and ACORN with absolutely no basis in fact is disturbing.

Blackwell’s attacks against ACORN and community organizers continue a vile Republican pattern of mockery and viciousness against this noble profession. Community organizers are the very individuals Republicans should be celebrating for helping people to help themselves rather than depending on the government.

Next up:

In 2004, Harold Simmons was the biggest funder of the manipulative smear group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In 2008, Simmons is the sole donor funding a vicious attack ad in some battleground states that uses tortured logic and clumsy innuendo to invent a tie between Barack Obama and terrorism.

The ad goes completely beyond the pale by cynically exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 in an unfounded connection with Chicago academic William Ayers. Then it claims that Ayers somehow “launched” Barack Obama’s career — an assertion so outlandish that not even Simmons’ fellow discredited Swift Boater Jerome Corsi included it in his smear book.

The ad may even be a criminal violation of campaign finance laws. Simmons has previously been fined tens of thousands of dollars for campaign finance violations – including forging the signatures of his own daughters to make political contributions from trust funds.

Here's who Ayers is today:

NYT: Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform.

“He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview this week, explaining that he has long consulted Mr. Ayers on school issues. Mr. Daley, whose father was Chicago’s mayor during the street violence accompanying the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the so-called Days of Rage the following year, said he saw the bombings of that time in the context of a polarized and turbulent era.

“This is 2008,” Mr. Daley said. “People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.”

Here's the silly video that Gary the Kreep linked to in his email as evidence. Wingnuts must think people are as dumb as they are. Sometimes I wonder if they really believe this stuff themselves or if they're just desperate to win an election. I mean, where are the critical thinking skills?

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Slams Michelle Obama

I occasionally watch The View (they talk politics) and Elisabeth is about as conservative as you get, and I typically respect, or at least try to understand, her opinion, but this is low, low, low. It looks like she tried to channel Ms. Mooseburger. Good luck with that job at The View Elisabeth. Send an email here to the show's producers. I'd like to know what she was trying to suggest: that Michelle Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist? What is Michelle Obama trying to hide? 

Elisabeth calls Palin a "true American."

Update: 9-9 mainstream press has some reaction

The View Perpetuates Rumor That Obama Leaked Prayer

Update July 31: The View redeems itself, sort of. The Obama campaign, right on top of it, sent a note to The View and Whoopie announced that the charges were false, though they never should've brought it up in the first place. It was after all, a deep underground rumor that hadn't even made it to CNN. Still, the rumor persists on the anti-Obama sites. But The View hammered on McCain's new ad today (see video below). Hasselbeck, of course, defended it.  

My original post:
I had avoided writing about this prayer incident because the whole thing, from someone stealing Obama's prayer to newspapers printing it, didn't seem right.
Now, bloggers and media outlets, including The View, the women's chatfest on ABC, have perpetuated a nasty rumor that Obama leaked his own prayer.

The View, with co-hosts Barbara Walters, Whoopie Goldberg, Sherri Shepard and Joy Behar, should know better. But co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a major supporter of John McCain, likely introduced this rumor to the panel. The producer of the show also is a republican. Always take into consideration the source.

If we've learned anything from this election it's that some people will do and say anything. Look at the soldier who lied about Obama and McCain's attempt to smear Obama with his lunatic ads. The guy is off his rocker. Really.

These rumors are all political sideshows designed to divert attention from the issues because Obama wins hands down on leadership, competency, brilliance and the rest.

It's too bad The View introduced this piece of gossip that hasn't even made it to CNN yet, because many people watch The View. They need to come out with a big fat apology tomorrow. They crossed the line in my opinion.

At this point, the GOP and the McCain camp are doing whatever it takes to bring Obama down.
They've gone full negative, so always question what you read.
This rumor that Obama leaked his prayer to the newspaper has been flying around the Internet all day. But it is NOT true.

TNR: Yesterday, I posted an item about an accusation from Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv that the Obama campaign had leaked a copy of his Western Wall note to the foreign press (rather than Ma'ariv having bought it from some yeshiva kid who stole it out of the wall). After some additional reporting last night, I noted that the story sounded a bit fishy--not only has Ma'ariv not offered any tangible evidence to support this claim, but they also have only made the claim via a spokesman to various Israeli papers rather than printing the accusation in their own paper.

I just got off the phone with a Ma'ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is "completely false," and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma'ariv. "No official spokesman for Ma'ariv told this to any of the papers." I've got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I'll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that "the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing."

Talk Show Host Hasselbeck Takes on House Speaker Pelosi

I like Elisabeth, one of The View's co-hosts, despite her support for the republican cause no matter the candidate, and I admire her guts -- she's outnumbered on the show by democrats.

BUT she takes on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asserting that the "surge worked" and Pelosi explains the purpose of the surge. And in the context of the purpose of the surge, to make political gains, it did not work.

The sorry fact is that this is all McCain has to hang his hat on.