Digby has been following the Conservative Illuminati as they do their best to try and smear Obama with Blagojevich.

Today on MSNBC, Shuster had on Pat Buchanan who said that Obama reacted "abnormally" to the Blagojevich news and failed to disclose which of his aides may have spoken to the Governor about his seat. Harold Ford very ineffectually defended Obama.

Buchanan replied:

Let me tell you, the problem is not that Rahm Emmanuel or Axelrod are involved in some deal.It is that they may be "tainted" by the fact that they talked to a Governor who is trolling and selling his Senate seat. They may have talked to him and if they did, they are supposed to report that to the US Attorney. Let me tell you Harold, a lot of my friends in the Nixon white house didn't do a thing when some guy came running in saying our guys just got caught breaking in and they didn't do anything with it.

{snip}

It's politics as scandal theatre, where Obama is judged by his performance on opening night. You can see by the energy and excitement among the gasbags that they want nothing more than to wallow in this thing as long as they can.

The Media are doing their very best to smear Obama and make ridiculous accusations and conclusions when Fitzgerald did not.

The Politico's awkward attemp to hype the Blago/Obama drama

AP's Sidoti smears Obama

The WSJ's awkward attempt to hype the Blago/Obama "ties"

Bob Cesca has found the word of the day.

Obama Unfairly Tainted by Crimes He Didn't Commit

During the Automotive crisis that has erupted in the last few weeks, many false narratives are being implanted by the right wing thugs that helped push our economy off the cliff. Eric Boehlert tackles this latest smear that our media is ignoring. Don't you think it would be important for our media to actually do some in depth reporting on this issue instead of reciting misleading, conservative talking points?

Indeed, that $70-an-hour meme, actively promoted by the anti-union conservative media, has ricocheted around the traditional press as well as the political landscape, where it was picked up by congressional critics last week during hearings and used to argue against aiding GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

But what's obvious to me is that it's harmful to public discourse when the press, on such a central issue facing our country, fails to clearly state the facts and instead perpetuates misinformation with sloppy reporting -- reporting that seems to hold blue-collar workers to a different standard than their white-collar counterparts.

But having the media echo conservative misinformation and bandy about urban-myth salary figures about allegedly high-on-the-hog GM workers does not constitute a careful review of the facts.

Question: Is the press just being sloppy on this issue of supposedly pampered autoworkers, or are there other elements in play? Because honestly, I've had trouble escaping the not-very-subtle elitist, get-a-load-of-this tone that has run through the media's misinformation on the topic; i.e., "These autoworkers get paid that?!"

Answer: No, they don't, so please stop reporting it. (And why has the press been so reticent to note that Big Three autoworkers recently made significant concessions to management?)

Make no mistake: The $70-an-hour claim represents a classic case of conservative misinformation. It's also a very dangerous one. The falsehood about autoworkers is being spread at a crucial time, when a make-or-break public debate is taking place, a debate that could affect millions of American workers...read on

And as Jane says, the UAW has done a terrible job in handling their side of the PR battle:

This is largely because the UAW has, without question, executed the worst, most non-existent public relations campaign ever. It's just shocking how bad they are at this, leaving everyone to scramble in their defense. Tying their fate to the automakers and leaving it to the CEOs to present their case seems fraught with risk. (If I was Gettlefinger I'd be on a plane to China looking for buyers to save my members' pensions, but nobody asked me.)

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Scarce)

There is a coordinated effort by Conservatives to play the "Obama is stealing elections" game since they've been resoundingly rejected by the American people. The RNC is actually sending out fundraising letters which are blatantly claiming that Obama and activists are actively stealing elections away from Republicans. Mike Duncan, soon to be exc-RNC head is called out on this lie by CNN's American Morning host John Roberts who thought Duncan was way out of line too.

Roberts...but this fundraising letter clearly said that they are trying to steal these election victories.

Duncan: Well, we have to be careful. There have been a lot of reported irregularities in this election going back to ACORN when....

Roberts: Is it accurate to say that they are trying to steal these elections or did that language go too far?

Duncan: John, haha, I've not got that in front of me right now, but I want to make sure that we are vigilant and allow anyone to irregularly out influence the outcome of this election and we have to have resources to do that.

Roberts: It just seems to me to steal these election victories is pretty charged language and you should have something to back that up.

Duncan: Do you want anyone to steal an election?

Roberts: I don't want anyone to steal an election. but if there's no evidence that anybody is than it's hard to reconcile with how you put that language in a fundraising letter.

So he's telling us that the one and only Mike Duncan, the head of the RNC doesn't know what his own fundraising letter contained in it after he signed it and sent it out. What a liar.

Orrin Hatch is also engaged in similar behavior.

From an Human Events email blast:

Help Defeat MoveOn.Org

I'm so sick of this freaking clown already. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinions, but this guy is a full-blown McCain surrogate now and McCain should be forced to repudiate this kind of divisive crap.

ABC:

"McCain has fought and bled for our country, loves our country," said Joe Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber," who has campaigned throughout Ohio with and on behalf of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "There's too many questions with Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country. And I question that greatly."

Fox News' Neil Cavuto tried to clarify: "You're not doubting that he's a good American. Or you are?"

"His ideology is completely different from what democracy stands for," said Wurzelbacher.

Murray Waas is reporting:

So who put together that last minute national television buy of those advertisements featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

As it turns out, Scott Wheeler, the executive director of the National Republican Trust PAC, the group which paid for and produced the ad buy– worked on the infamous Clinton Chronicles– the discredited documentary that accused Bill Clinton of murdering his political opponents, engaging in drug running, and all kinds of other nefarious things that were largely either imaginary or fabricated. For those who don’t recall, or are too young to know, with the backing of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, more than 400,000 copies of the video were distributed and although the film’s allegations were rightfully marginalized in the mainstream, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page amplified– sometimes as legitimate– many of the film’s most lurid allegations.

Here is an article I did way back in 1998 about how the Falwell backed Citizens for Honest Government often paid “witnesses” who had lurid stories to tell about Clinton to compensate them for appearing in the Clinton Chronicles and other conspiratorial films about Clinton which they produced. Many of the false allegations made by the “witnesses”– sometimes influenced by payments arranged by the group– were repeated as gospel on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, on the pages of the American Spectator, and on talk radio...read on

Murray has the Rev. Wright ad up on his blog. This is pretty despicable stuff, but McCain has sold his soul for a chance at the White House. You have to believe that Rick Davis and McCain knew this was coming.

Take one cherry-picked quote, say that a newspaper has been "hiding" it when it has been on their website all along and hype the result through several different rightwing noise-makers. Result - a scandal which says that Obama would like to drive the coal industry bankrupt. One good enough for Sarah Palin to tout on the stump.

The original quote, presented in a cropped clip of an Obama interview that discussed his policy on climate change and carbon "cap and trade", looked terrible for Obama. Especially in places like West Virginia and Ohio:

That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

But it's just the Right cherry-picking its quotes again to fabricate a smear out of whole cloth.

This from the same interview - and unmentioned by the unethical smear-merchants at Newsbusters, who first floated the rightwing's version of the truth:

"But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives."

Shows clearly that Obama meant only plants not using clean-coal technology would be hit.

And that is also McCain's position.

On June 21, 2005, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told McCain in a Senate debate that his legislation to curb climate change would "put coal of out of business." McCain didn't contest that claim. Indeed McCain agreed that his legislation would "require sacrifice" acknowledging that critics said it would cost "thousands of jobs."

But you won't be hearing that from Newsbusters, Drudge, Malkin, Fox News, Palin or any of the many others who climbed on this "November Surprise" bandwagon.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

[ Find Your Polling Place | Voting Info For Your State | Know Your Voting Rights | Report Voting Problems ]

Download | Play    Download | Play

Barack Obama has been saying for months now that the success of his campaign message of change, despite all the nasty and scurrilous attacks lobbed his way, has "vindicated his faith in the American people." Seems innocent enough, no? In fact, seems like an awfully positive thing to say about the country. But John McCain doesn't see it that way. Seeing the presidency slowly recede from his grasp, Senator McCain took his campaign to yet another new low and distorted Obama's remarks in an attempt to question his patriotism.

"This has been a long campaign but recently we've learned more and more about Senator Obama. He said the other day that his primary victory 'vindicated' his faith in America. My country has never had to prove anything to me, my friends. I've always had faith in it and I've been humbled and honored to serve it."

The McCainiacs out there can try to spin this whatever way they want but it's clear to anyone with the ability to read between the lines exactly what's going on here. So much for McCain's promise to run a "honorable campaign." Tuesday can't come soon enough.

Here's the Obama campaign's stern response:

"It's pathetic that John McCain would take a statement Barack Obama has been making for a year about his faith in the American people and distort it to attack his patriotism," spokesman Bill Burton said in response to McCain's attack Saturday. "Sadly, this is what we've come to expect from a desperate, dishonorable campaign that will say anything in a failed attempt to win this election."

Yep.

Download | Play    Download | Play

Just in case you forgot, Tom DeLay appeared on Hardball this afternoon to remind us just how much of a scumbag he is. Chris Matthews asks about the tone of the campaign and whether it's been appropriate. Of course not, Delay responds, McCain hasn't been assertive enough. Get that? McCain's campaign hasn't been sleazy enough according to this a$$hole. In order to make his case, DeLay goes down the laundry list of Obama smears, including but not limited to, he's a Marxist, a radical, a black liberation theologist, terrorist sympathizer, and Constitution-hater. Please don't watch this clip if you have high blood pressure. It should really go down in the Hall of Shame, something we can look back on in five or ten years from now and marvel at.

"He must agree with the Marxist theology of black liberation theology."

"I tagged Barack Obama as a Marxist months ago. [...] He's a Marxist, or a socialist at best."

The AP, to their credit, does a great job of debunking DeLay's despicable smear of Obama re: his views on the Constitution.

Whatever you may think of Tweety, he usually does a good job of smacking around wingnut Congressmen. For some reason, though, he always grovels at DeLay's feet. I just don't get it. I really don't get why any network (other than FOX, of course) would give this putz a platform to spew his crap.

The wingnut website run by Charles Johnson, who attacked kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll when she was first released channels the ghost of Lee Atwater and says: America is close to electing a President who compares his own country to Nazi Germany.

Oliver Willis explains:

To Attack Obama, Little Green Footballs Defends Segregation

With a week to go it's only going to get worse. I'm waiting for the headline on FOX News that says:

Obama is an Alien, but the MSM doesn't want you to know!

Do everything you can to Get Out The Vote. Our country can't stand four more years of this garbage.

I've been trying to ignore this jerk lately, (it seems McCain has kept him off of the TV screen. Probably bad internal polling numbers) but it's time I did a little update because one of the benefits that we'll all receive if Obama wins the election will be to see Joe Lieberman get his reward for betraying Obama and becoming McCain's side kick just to save a dying political career. Maybe he'll even get a job as a FOX News analyst. He does join the FOX News, right wing chorus when he says:

NAPOLITANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

He knows full well Obama is not a Marxist.

And Digby has more.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, one of John McCain’s closest political allies, said Friday he does not believe that Barack Obama is unprepared to be president.

“I’m saying he is less prepared than McCain,” Lieberman said.

But what about Sarah Palin?

Is she ready?

“If, God forbid, an accident occurs or something of that kind?” Lieberman said. “Um, she’ll be ready. You know, she’s had executive experience. She’s smart and she will have had on-the-job training.”…

“[McCain] is ready to be our president at this very difficult time,” Lieberman said. “And Sen. Obama is not as ready. It’s as direct as that.”

It's nice to see at least some people in the McCain campaign still have standards.

TPM:

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

The 'Great Unraveling' continues. There are lightweights in the pundit field and there is a class of them I am now calling "Pinkertons". And I don't mean the people that chased down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This guy is the lamest of the lame. I've written about him a few times, most notably when he said this on FOX News Watch about the media:

Pinkerton: The media typically come at the Bush administration from the left. They say the Iraq war is a terrible idea. The idea of going after the administration from the right as it were, that they're not supporting the troops enough, not body armor enough, not Humvee enough, not helping at Walter Reed enough. That is an angle that reporters don't naturally think of when they're waking up in the morning...(see video here)

Anyway, after attacking Obama over Bill Ayers relentlessly, he's found a new connection that will shift the election back to McCain in his new column "The Devil Is In The Details: Another Obama Connection You Ought to Know About.

Could Lucifer play a role in this presidential election? It may sound crazy, but one of the candidates in this race has publicly praised, even emulated, a writer-activist who himself paid tribute to Lucifer. That’s right, Lucifer, also known as the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub—you get the idea.

{snip}

Do you think that admiring a Lucifer-admirer would make a difference to some voters? So why hasn’t he highlighted the Alinsky-Lucifer connection?

John McCain hasn't brought this up because it's idiotic and borders on outright lunacy. Of course he's got a nice gig with FOX News to peddle this insanity to. Even the FOX commenters on his post are a bit stunned with his column. As commenter RC says:

This article is a joke, right? Seriously… it’s a joke? RIGHT?

And there's more hyjinks in the comment section....

Continue reading »

How low can John McCain go?

The McCain campaign has authorized another vicious robocall that claims Barack Obama and Democrats would cut off funds for the military, have accused American troops of "war crimes," and pose a threat to national security.

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t CSPANjunkie)

As McCain's campaign is falling apart, so are the right-wing talking heads. This is a sickness that runs deep. Case in point: Republican strategist Brad Blakeman actually attacks Obama for visiting his sick grandmother in a campaign plane. These people have no conscience.

Schuster: Brad, if it's so important not to be spending money like a drunken sailor and I haven't asked you this but I'm curious to hear your view of the the amount of money that was spent, 150,000 was spent on Sarah Palin's clothes at high end stores like Saks and Neiman. I don't even think you shop at Saks and Neiman.

Blakeman: No I don't, but let me tell you this. You know what the outrage is today? Is Barack Obama taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit his grandma.

Forget about the energy that is wasted, what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a private trip when this guy should be humping his bags on a commercial plane or taking a smaller plane. Taking a 767 of campaign money from people who could least afford it is more of an outrage in my opinion.

Shuster: That is one of the most valiant tries I have ever seen in this entire debate about Sarah Palin's clothing allowance.

Blakeman: It's a fact!

Shuster: Nice try, Brad.

How was he supposed to get there, walk? He is under tight security, remember, Brad? Really, they will say and do anything at this point. They have no arguments to make so they dream up garbage like this. America is really taking a good look at these people I think for the first time and it's ain't pretty. Keep it up, Brad. You only help our case against conservatives.

Huff Post:

Responding to a question about how John McCain could square his opposition to wasteful spending with the RNC shelling out over $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin, said that the real outrage is Barack Obama "taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit Grandma."

Download | Play    Download | Play

It's so nice to see signs of real depression enter into the Conservative movement. Bill O'Reilly was asking Newt Gingrich to make believe he's running McCain's campaign (which he basically is along with Hannity) and give advice on what McCain can do to turn the election around in the next two weeks. Newt's big plan is to have McCain attack Obama by scaring the people that they will have the country run by the very scary Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I'm serious. That's what it has come to for these people. (rough transcripts)

O'Reilly: We're doing tactics...he's got to go in now and make his point. One central point. That Barack Obama is a far left, income redistribution guy which Americans you contend don't want. And that by doing that he's going to harm the economy further? Are you going to make that?

Gingrich: Yea....

O'Reilly: ...I'm not saying the American people are stupid. I don't believe that for a second. But let's face it. We've had three debates and McCain has made that point over and over again. That his policies of tax cutting are better than redistribution policies of Obama. But the public hasn't bought it/ What the public has bought is that McCain said the economy is fundamentally sound in the middle of a meltdown, which is not what he meant, but that doesn't matter because he said and it was used against him. So I'm not sure in two weeks with the same message, unless there's a difference in the way you present the message that that's not going to work because it hasn't worked so far.

Gingrich: Well first of all I think if you connect Obama to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and you say these three people want your money so they can redistribute it their friends

So you throw their pictures up. Reid and Pelosi, but remember only 15% of the American population knows who Pelosi is and it's probably 2% for Reid.

Gingrich: But if you never explain it, they never learn therefore they never connect anybody. I've tried to make the point again and again before. Sen. Obama is going to try and govern with a very liberal Democratic Senate and House...

BillO tries to deflect McCain's statement about the fundamentals of the economy and said he didn't really mean it, but anything Obama says that is taken out of connect with Obama, that's fact. What a joke the man called Newt is. Has he divorced his third wife yet? I can't remember how many times he's dumped all his wives, but for some reason he's on my TV screen almost as much as Obama, giving advice and attacking liberal values. Here's a quick reminder to Newt. The Democratic Party is "Left" and Conservatives are "Right." MKay? Conservatives have destroyed our economy, made torture part of our culture, lied us into war, failed to respond to Hurricane Katrina, but we're supposed to fear Harry Reid? We are hearing all this, we're a Conservative nation garbage coming from the Villagers and this is what Newtie is going to use to build up his own movement in the coming months.

Here's John Meacham:

"Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal -- a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril," he writes.

I'll have more on this narratve soon enough.