[GCFL-discuss] FW: Is America Really Going to To this?

Tue Oct 28 20:23:45 CDT 2008

Before I click on my Juno dial-up to check what has been going on in the
discussion group for the past 24 hours...

Now that it is NOT 11:00 pm, and I do NOT have to be up at 5:30 am to
drive a ten hour bus route...

I am going to do a more thorough factual dissection of Miss Melanie's
hysterical moment...

She begins with broad sweeping reference to "the madness that's been on
display since 9/11 itself, when swathes of the UK population decided that
'America had it coming to it'
because it supported Israel, and that George W Bush was the most
dangerous
man on the planet."  Leaving aside that the main reason I do not consider
George W. Bush the most dangerous man on the planet is because he lacks
competence to match his ambition, there are indeed people, on both sides
of the Atlantic, who answer to the above description. Barack Obama is not
one of them, and never has been.

Most of these people are my age or older, not Obama's age or younger.
They have spent much of their lives criticizing the government of the
United States for real and imagined abuses of power. They have not gotten
it through their heads that if Osama bin-Laden ever achieved the
world-wide emirate to which he aspires, they would be first in line to
have their heads chopped off. (Al Qaeda is NOT a plucky little guerilla
outfit trying to save indigenous peoples from capitalist exploitation.
And Osama does NOT like liberals at all.) Fortunately, these people are
few, marginal, and without significant influence. Their main function,
aside from contemplating each other's political navels, is to serve as a
foil for articles like this one.

So Phillips is already indulging in deception which rivals that of Joseph
Goebbels (repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it), to
present this as an analysis of the significance of Obama's probable
impending election. It is rather as if I exclaimed that men cheating on
their wives undermines the integrity of marriage, and is unfair to their
children (both true statements) then followed up with "So how could you
possibly be friends with greenBubble?" I have NO reason to believe that
greenBubble has ever been unfaithful to his wife. In fact, it is
statistically unlikely, because that is indeed very rare among Orthodox
Jews. Very rare. But this unlikely to libelous insinuation has about the
same relationship to my concern for family values, as Obama's election
has to the foolishness which Phillips waves to begin her petty tirade.

Then Miss Melanie goes on to condemn "that media class which, in
refusing to tell the public what it needs to know about Barack Obama, may
now finally install in the White House the man who personifies the
repudiation of the American power and western values..." as demonstrated
by "the lack
of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively
serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama,
D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del."

All the specific instances Phillips refers to have in fact been
intensively covered. I've read about them in TIME magazine, and when I
check the NY TIMES web site, there they are again. Articles about the
allegations, articles about what the pundits say about the allegations,
articles about how the allegations are affecting voters' choices... 

Voters don't really care, and that is what infuriates anyone who
desperately wants voters to NOT elect Obama. He was quite upfront about
his grad school drug use, he could hardly deny it, having mentioned it in
two best selling books. What little there is to say about Obama's ties to
Rezko have been dredged up over and over. Everyone knows all about
Jeremiah Wright. It hasn't had the impact that the Swift Vote Beterans
think they had on John Kerry. (I don't believe they had much impact at
all -- Kerry was so lame he would have lost anyway, but he played right
into that kind of innuendo.)

Then there is "Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even
when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took
apart
the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough
question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the
little man." Making Joe larger than life was the miniscule right-wing
bridge club's last hope for an icon that would make a laughing-stock of
Obama, and it flopped. I've read plenty of media coverage. They played up
his question, Obama's answer, everything McCain made out of it. The press
took apart his private life? I don't think so. I haven't read anything
about his divorce, his hypothetical love affairs, what church he belongs
to, what his pastor preaches on Sunday, what sports he enjoys, what he
drinks, whether he uses drugs for recreational purposes... none of that.
I have read analysis of the company he wants to buy, its revenues and
expenses, which strongly suggest that he will get a net tax CUT under
Obama's plan, not an increase. It is all about the difference between
gross revenues and net profit. The current owner of the company (Joe's
boss) doesn't take home $268,000, the company takes in that much revenue,
out of which rent or mortgage, truck payments and maintenance, supplies,
parts, tools, utilities, etc. are deducted (and tax deductible on a
Schedule C -- I know because at a much smaller level I also fill out a
Schedule C). I have also read brief mention of the Plumber's Union
claiming that Joe is not licensed by the State of Ohio, which does
require plumbers to have a license.

As to the "criminal fundraising" -- there is nothing in the way of decent
footnotes or evidence. "The gentleman who started the ball rolling" is
not even named. IF a campaign as smooth and sophisticated as Obama's
intended to collect campaign donations beyond the legal limit from a
wealthy donor, can anyone tell me any reason it would carefully suspend
standard security, monitoring and compliance procedures to accept
donations under the cover names Phillips cites? Wouldn't anyone with half
a brain prefer these illegal donations to be in the names of John Smith,
Curtis Jones, Albert Hutchinson and Jerry Lee Briggs?

The whole accusation sounds like a set-up or a con job to me.

Rashid Kalidi, whatever else he may be, is not a candidate for a post in
the Obama cabinet. I have friends from high school who were members of
Young Americans for Freedom. I would hate to run for office and find
myself accused in a liberal-leaning district of sharing every tenet of
their beliefs. I'm not sure why Phillips bothers. If voters have by and
large been able to distinguish between a candidate and his ex-pastor, a
candidate and someone who sat on the same board, a candidate and someone
who once held a living room fundraiser for him, why wouldn't voters be
unable to distinguish between what Obama's policies will be and what
someone he has had valued conversations with might advocate in circles
that are certainly not connected to the United States government?

Incidentally, I could see some distinct parallels between Zionist
settlers on the west bank and Osama bin Laden, just as I see parallels
between the loud minority of Christians who want their particular view of
"Christian politics" to become the dominant power in the United States
and Osama bin Laden. I have read articles reporting from Israel, in which
west bank settlers who were active in religious parties in Israel told
the reporter that they have more in common with Islamic fundamentalists
than they do with secular or reformed Jews! Please, let's leave some room
for discussion, without concluding that every word you listen to with
some degree of respect becomes a hallmark of what you would do if elected
to high office!!!

ACORN: The main reason that either government authorities or the media
have information about fraud in ACORN's voter-registration efforts is
that ACORN meticulously checks the paperwork before turning it in, caught
and reported most fraud itself, and dealt promptly with any other
questionable registrations brought to its attention after they were
turned in. There literally is NO story there. ACORN, like many voter
registration campaigns, hired people, who were generally down and out and
needed the money (because the rest of us are working at the jobs we
already have), and made the common mistake of paying them by the
registrant. The inducement to make up names is obvious. These street
workers are largely NOT committed by principle or inspiration, they just
want to make some money. Most do it honestly, and may even appreciate
what they are doing. Some are not honest, and they are fired as that
becomes clear.

"Over the past seven years, the media has created the Big Lie that
America is
the biggest rogue state in the world, with Israel its proxy." Nonsense.
Only in Melanie Phillips's overactive imagination. Show me a collection
of articles in any daily print of broadcast media, any widely subscribed
and commercially viable weekly magazine, which makes any such case. It is
simply not true. You have to dredge up obscure monthlies published by
tiny little ideological organs infatuated with a sense of their own
importance to find such warped perspectives.

"Now it is ensuring that a man who will act on that very premise to crush
America and
destroy Israel will be placed in the White House to do so." Yeah, right.
Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley are dupes of a messianic cult???
Keep in mind that a sometime associate of Ayers and Dohrn in SDS,
although NOT a member of Weather Underground, Tom Hayden, currently a
state senator from California, told a reporter "we're trying to encourage
people to vote for Obama, but it doesn't help that he wants to step up
the war in Afghanistan and go after Osama bin Laden." That is the real
picture. 

The only menace going on is the very realistic fears of Melanie Phillips,
Ann Coulter, and all their cohorts that their own little reign of error
is about to end, because voters indeed are not buying the ludicrous smear
campaigns they have been running for the past twenty years or so.
Incidentallly, they have become well known and widely read precisely
because those big bad media outlets they love to kick have given them so
much coverage and lucrative publishing contracts.

Siarlys
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