Palin's Supporters Shout Racial Epithets

Sarah Palin shows her true colors, and now that she's virtually condoned, wink wink, racism, her supporters show their true colors. The McCain Palin ticket is a disgrace to America.

WaPo: Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain confidant, told The Post's David Broder that the campaign would "go down in history as stupid if they don't unleash" Palin. Well, the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed -- if not unhinged.

Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!" This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she told the Clearwater crowd. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Palin is seriously out of control and needs to be stopped:

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

"See, John McCain is a different kind of man: He believes in our troops," she said.

Obama Biographer Mendell on Spreading the Truth

The republican party has morphed into the slime party, headed by the Gruesome Twosome. They've almost taken to stoning. They've unleashed a hatred that's snowballing. More and more people are feeling like it's okay to call Obama a terrorist. They've crawled out of the woodwork.

As an Obama supporter, it feels like I'm always defending Obama's honor against racial slurs and ugly distortions. Today, I've reached my limit. There's something fundamentally wrong with republicans who are using these tactics to smear Obama. As they smear Obama, they're also smearing me, a voter, a citizen of the United States.

McCain and Palin are unprofessional, dishonorable and unworthy of the positions they're vying for. They're not patriots because they divide people. Oh, and they've also proven themselves to be incompetent.

David Mendell, biographer, has the courage to defend Obama, despite being called a "sympathizer," in the name of truth.

Mendell: Yet, over the past 14 months, ever since the release of my biography of Obama, I have fielded countless questions about Obama that clearly have been based in ugly racial or religious distortion, and I have felt it my obligation to help set the record straight. In doing so, occasionally I have been accused of being an Obama sympathizer. But if that's the price of spreading the truth, so be it.

On Saturday, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," a reference to Obama's acquaintance with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam War-era militant Weather Underground. This Swift Boat-style smear attack has been going on against him for more than year—but until now, we've just never heard it directly from the mouth of a political opponent.

"Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance," Obama responded.
....

But a word to McCain's strategists: I think that any sustained effort to de-Christianize or de-Americanize Obama eventually will backfire. I believe that, deep down, Americans want to cast their votes not on fear, but on knowledge. Particularly at this precarious moment in our history, when we are staring at the potential collapse of the country's economic system, I have to think that voters will grow just as weary of these kinds of distortions as I have.

I hope that with every attack, Obama gains momentum until election day when Barack Obama is overwhelmingly named our new and worthy president. Then McCain and Palin can go suck eggs in Alaska.

Palin's Covert Racist Attack

This has been so obvious to me. Painting Obama as the other or different or palling around with terrorists is simply racism undercover. The McCain camp can't say it outright but these kinds of attacks speak to the people of Appalachia and the old ladies in Florida and Ohio, who are scared of Obama. 
The AP says it: 

The Vietnam-era Swift Boat veterans who attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record started in the spring of 2004 and gained traction in late summer.

''The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There's plenty of time in the campaign,'' said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. ''I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with.''

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee ''palling around'' with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as ''not like us'' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

Another great look at the covert racism going on in this election. Undercover racists are folks who would go to their grave saying they're not racist because they wouldn't actually DO anything to black people. Rather they rationalize their racism in their mind --Obama's middle name is Hussein and that's scary, and stuff like that. They'll say they have black friends so they can't possibly be racist. They'll read black columnists who oppose Obama so that proves they can't be racist. Thomas Sowell is usually one they like to quote. 

NYT: Most of the lost votes aren’t those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.

Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously.

“When we fixate on the racist individual, we’re focused on the least interesting way that race works,” said Phillip Goff, a social psychologist at U.C.L.A. who focuses his research on “racism without racists.” “Most of the way race functions is without the need for racial animus.”