Christian Leftist

Bring On the Fashion Police

My advice to voters in this election is this: if you wear campaign buttons, stickers or t-shirts on November 4th, bring a change of clothes. In general, ‘passive electioneering’ is legal on a county-by-county basis. Although the Supreme Court would probably overturn an outright ban on personal opinions covering one’s person, your knowledge of the law won’t help you to vote if poll officials deem you to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the political process. It’s great to make a legal stand — but the chances of winning a court case on civil rights may well depend on who you elect as our next president, so weigh your priorities carefully.

In Pennsylvania, for example, there is pending litigation on ‘passive’ and ‘active electioneering.’ Two poll workers filed a lawsuit against PA state because they want labels, pins, logos and slogans promoting specific campaigns to fall under the label of ‘passive electioneering’ and therefore be prohibited, even though that practice is not technically illegal if people wearing signs or advertisements make no efforts to influence peole inside the polls other than wearing political items. This follows an earlier decision by the PA State Supreme Court that says that poll works should use discretion and decide in each county what constitutes ‘active electioneering.’ The poll workers feel that the vague language forces them to be fashion police.

Hey, poll workers? Before you start yanking people’s pins off their lapels, you might want to enforce the law by keeping all of those taped yard signs off of the front of the church where I votes, because I know that’s within a hundred feet of the voting booths, and no one is standing there wearing them all day.

Voter Suppression

In Lake County, Indiana, voters might have had drive more than an hour to get to the polls early if it weren’t for a federal court appeal that lost on October 6th. Early voting is normally only allowed in a caounty clerk’s office. Around the county center, Crown Point, there are three suburbs along Lake Erie with more than 40 percent of the county’s total population that are more than an hour’s driving distance from that office. Although voters were allowed to go to “satellite” voting offices during the primaries, on Septermber 24th, two Republican election board officials voted against opening up satellite voting centers. The measure passed 3-2, but the county Republican Party argued that state law requires a unanimous vote to approve satellite voting, and they vowed to sue. The county Democratic Party responded that voting centers located in a county clerk’s office don’t fall under such jurisdiction. It was one big mess until a judge in federal court ruled that the early satellite voting could take place.

WINNERS: early voters.

…is that good men do nothing. Or in this particular struggle, to stand by and watch passively as friends, neighbors and peers engage in hideous acts of moral repugnance.

Here are some McCain supporters in Lehigh, PA waiting to get into Lehigh Universty to hear him at a rally.

The transcript:

The protesters line one side of a street leading to a parking lotto the auditorium, while McCain supporters form a fast-moving line on the opposite side with many more people. A quick pan reveals a sampling of the protesters’ signs and slogans. McCain supporters shout insults at the protesters as they file past them, sometimes insulting the reporter as well.

McCain Man 01: …And one thing we don’t need is another lawyer in Washington, and that’s Barack Obama! He’s a lawyer!

McCain Man 02: (to the cameraman/reporter) I think you’re stupid. *woman grins in background*
Reporter: Why, sir?
McCain Man 02: *looks uncomfortable, as if he didn’t expect reporter to reply to his insult* Because if that guy gets elected, he hangs around with terrorists…
Reporter: Who’s [sic] the terrorists?
McCain Man 02: Obama.

McCain Man 03: Obama’s a terrorist! Don’t you know that?

McCain Man 04: Obama’s a Muslim! He’s a terrorist himself!
Reporter: Do you really believe that, sir? *pause* Do you really believe that? Do you believe Senator Obama’s a terrorist?
McCain Man 04: (to reporter) I believe he supports terrorism.

McCain Man 05: (to protestors) *flips them off* Here it is! Love it.

McCain Man 06: Commie f*ggots! Commie f*ggots…

McCain Woman 01: He’s a terrorist.

Some middle-aged woman cackles at an off-camera joke or insult. In the background, another younger women stops and shouts at the protestors.

McCain Woman 02: GO HOME!

McCain Woman 03: *points at protestors* GO HOME!

McCain Man 07: Go get a job! Go get a job!

McCain Man 08: Go get a job.

McCain Man 09: GET A JOB!

…et cetera. It gets worse. Much, much worse. It’s not the only video on YouTube, either. If you have a strong gag reflex, search for “Obama monkey.”

20 more days.

I’ve been so busy with job hunting and volunteering for the Obama campaign that I literally have had to bookmark about 20 or so stories I’ve found in the past week that are so ridiculous or rage-inducing that I have to blog about them someday. I hope I’ll catch up to the present. Here’s one that is both fresh and prescient, a news byte I guarantee will not make the front pages of many papers tomorrow.

From the Davenport Liveblog of a McCain rally by John Deeth of the Iowa Independent:

Before McCain’s arrival, a minister delivering an invocation said, “There are plenty of people around the world who are praying to their god, be they Hindu, Buddah, or Allah, that (McCain’s) opponent wins. I pray that you step forward and honor your own name.”

I ask that you re-read that and let the works sink in for a moment.

This is one of those nasty, devilishly clever smears against one’s opponent that the McCain campaign has let others make for them or don’t care if they make or not because they’ll benefit from the consequences regardless.

1. It states a point that is nearly impossible to prove or disprove and that the Obama campaign may not want to disprove: there are a ton of people outside of the U.S.A., many of them people of color and/or non-Christians, who believe that the Democratic candidate’s victory would be immensely better for the earth at large and who are hoping and probably praying that Obama wins the presidential election.

I don’t personally have a problem with that, though it is clear from the context of the location where the minister spoke the words, his explicit identification of non-white and non-Christian people of faith, and the sentence that the minister does. When every single country in the world outside of ours except for Russia, Israel and religiously-controlled dictatorships would elect a Democrat over a Republican, a Leftist over a Rightist, a Liberal over a Conservative as defined in America, I have to conclude that they might have a point. They feel their interests are intimately connected to our own. They have seen, fron far less biased viewpoints, in most cases, the cause and effect of American politics and our government’s economic and foreign policies. It has very little or nothing to do with their individual religion in most cases, except when they’re bemoaning the path on which George W. Bush’s religion of blind faith and blockheaded attitude has taken him during his quest for “freedom.” This brings me to the second point.

2. By stating that scary, non-Christian brown people (OMG! OMG! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!!!1!11) want Obama elected, the minister implies that everyone outside of McCain supporters are in on some big secret that they aren’t. That Obama is a Seekrit Muslim, maybe?

Thus, the actions of millions of people over whom Obama has absolutely no control prove that ‘Obama is a dangerous terrorist who must be stopped.’

…Say whaa?

3. But wait, that’s not all! Not only do you get a nice, healthy dose or race-baiting, fear-mongering medicine, but you also receive a free sample of religious prejudice and judgemental hypocrisy!

You see, anyone who votes for Obama, That One, The Other Fella, well, they aren’t REAL Christians. They’re just fake Christians who will burn in Hell when Jesus shows up and takes over. Don’t count on receiving Communion if your priest sees that O-shaped bumper sticker on your car.

This, my fellow human beings, is how you smear someone without actually coming out and saying what you really feel. Wrap it up in the professional cloak of one’s religion, disguise it as pseudo-fact, then repackage it as a call to arms for the faithful and sell it back to the sheeple in a somber prep speech.

What’s the worst part about this? It probably happens every day in pulpits across the country. We just don’t see it because most of us have never wanted to look for it before.

Well, you knew the gloves were going to come off when the McCain campaign became desperate to stop its ticket from bleeding voters. Now we know the depths of utter depravity that they will sink to in order to win.

They can’t win on the economy, as McCain’s own advisor has pointed out:

McCain and his agents are “gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance,” Obama added. “They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. It’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time.”

McCain’s course correction reflects a growing case of nerves within his high command as the electoral map has shifted significantly in Obama’s favor in the past two weeks.

“It’s a dangerous road, but we have no choice,” a top McCain strategist told the Daily News. “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose.”

What they’re doing instead is trying to create an air of ‘dangerous mystery’ about Obama, as if no one’s been scrutinizing his entire life under a miscroscope for the past four years and he’s too risky a bet to make in the face of our current problems. They have used William Ayers, a former Weathermen radical who is unrepentant about his role in bombings during the turbulent sixties and who now teaches as a professor in Chicago, as proof of Obama’s hatred of this country. Apparently, because Ayers and Obama served on the boards of two charaities together and Obama once let Ayers hold a coffee event at Ayers’ house for him before he knew who Ayers was, Obama is frolicking through the meadows of democracy in a skip holding hands with terrorists.

Oh, please. McPalin, tell me you have a few useful cards tucked up your sleeve. Tell me you haven’t staked your presidential bid on the hope that we’re all going to ignore our livelihoods falling apart all around us and the world economy crumbling into dust and instead listen to you spout off veiled hate speech. Tell me you aren’t betting your presidency on the Islamophobia and bigotry of the American people. TELL ME you have a better plan hidden away that THAT.

Here are a bunch of links, starting with one to the video above:
Olbermann 2008.10.07 - McCain Campaign Incites Mob Mentality
Obama Hatred At McCain-Palin Rallies: “Terrorist! Kill Him!” (a shorter excerpt from the clip above)
McCain Rally Speaker Refers to Obama’s Middle Name
McCain renewing harsh criticism of Obama (Associated Press)
Call Off the Pit Bull (by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post)

… Damn.

So why didn’t McCain bring this up during the second debate last night? Well, the questions Tom Brokaw chose didn’t address the personalities of either candidate, and when Obama simply tried to answer McCain’s blatant lies about his tax policies, Brokaw told him to abide by the rules, so Obama talked about them in the next answer in a clever tie-in and McCain ridiculed him for it. It just highlights how the format of debates, even town hall meetings are too restrictive to free conversation. On the other hand, McCain might have done himself even more harm, as independents, especially women, saw McCain’s attacks last night as irrelevant, distracting, and annoying.

McCain’s really in a lose-lose situation: if he doesn’t address these issues, he looks two-faced, and if he does, he looks petty. So why say them at all? Because he has to shore up his base of racists, sexists, and ignorant jerks, naturally, and the best way to do that is to shout “Taxes! Taxes! Taxes!” and scare people away from his opponent.

It’s not sad that McCain is probably going to lose this fight. What’s sad is that there are enough petty-minded, hypocritical, shallow, evil people to make such a strategy effective.

Not that this is new, but it bears repeating.

Sarah Palin allows hunters to shoot at wolves with 12-gauge shotguns from helicopters.

Not only is this unnecessary and selfish (supposedly, she allows this so that local hunters can have more caribou to hunt and eat), it’s a cruel, vile, disgusting form of butchery. It’s not about ending a wolf’s life peacefully. Usually, the wolf receives only crippling and painful non-fatal wounds and writhes on the ground before a final round of shots finishes it off. The helicopters don’t provide good vantage points for shooting moving targets, so they run the wolves down until they’re too exhausted to keep going, then the hunter shoots them.

I almost cried watching this video.