Gird your loins folks because the political sh-t is really about to hit the fan.

Over the next next days we can expect the McCain campaign to unleash an unprecedented wave of slanderous attacks and lies aimed at attacking Sen. Barack Obama as un-American, terrorist-loving Muslim on a mission from Iran to destroy America. And, let’s not forget that Obama is BLACK.

McCain and his Rovian henchmen are hoping that by appealing to the most base fears of low-information white voters that they can squeak out a narrow victory or at the very seriously damage Obama should he become president. To lead this effort, McCain has hired three masters of political destruction who helped to torpedo McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 by spreading the lie that McCain’s adopted daughter was really his love child fathered with a Black prostitute.

Here is McCain in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace defending his campaign’s use of robocalls, a tactic McCain called “hate-filled” in 2000:

These calls are so offensive that Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine asked that the campaign cease running the calls in her state.

A group supporting McCain is now raising funds to air a radio ad targeting Black voters in swing states claiming that Sen. Obama is a slumlord who wants to “create a fund that gives his slumlord buddies $500 million a year.” This ad by the National Black Republican Association has no basis in truth, but as Sen. Obama pointed out a while back “the Straight Talk Express seems to have lost a wheel.”

The GOP effort to demonize the voter registration work of ACORN is already in full effect with McCain himself claiming that the group which is focused on building political power for low-income communities “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. ” The GOP’s smear campaign against ACORN has resulted in the group receiving hate-filled messages like this:

Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He’s a fucking nigger, and he’s a piece of shit. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They’re gonna get all hung honeys, they’re gonna get assassinated, they’re gonna get killed.

We have also seen the McCain campaign compare Sen. Obama to Hitler, a McCain supporter attack a reporter, an Obama-labeled ghost hanged in effigy in man’s yard and shouts of “kill him” when Sen. Obama’s name is mentioned at McCain/Palin rallies.

A recent New York Times editorial warned that the McCain campaign had moved “into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia.” And that’s just the beginning of what we can expect. The next 15 days will see McCain with no sense of decency appeal to id of American electorate.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo accurately points out:

Stripped down to its components McCain’s message to voters is this: “Don’t forget. He’s definitely black. And he may be a terrorist.” That’s the message. The nuts and bolts is a concerted effort to keep Democrats from voting — through intimidation, by striking new voters from the rolls, which is going to happen to lots of them, clogging polling stations to create delays that keep late day (predominantly) Obama voters from voting altogether. Smears in the air and voter suppression on the ground.

What we are fighting for is not just the election of Barack Obama as our next president. We are fighting to break the stranglehold that the right-wing extremist base that is the Republican Party has had on our national politics for far too long.

Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate and Log Cabin Republican’s BFF, recently said that if elected she would push for a Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban marriage between same-sex couples. That did not sit well with newlywed Ellen DeGeneres.

In this clip Ellen shares how she really feels about Palin and her plan to write discrimination against LGBT people and our families.

We must work as hard as we did when Obama and Sen. Joe Biden were down on the polls and Sarah Palin had just begun winking her way into the hearts of (male) right-wing ideologues. That’s why you should read the following and do all that you can to get out the vote for Obama and Biden on November 4.

TOP 5 REASONS OBAMA SUPPORTERS SHOULDN’T REST EASY

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some states. They’re whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCain smear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history… In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win. Races can shift—fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

If you agree that we shouldn’t rest easy, please sign up to volunteer at your local Obama office by clicking here:

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/office.html?source=blog&id=14534-4287560-uoUVCox&t=1

In an interview with Fox News reporter Chris Wallace John McCain said that his decision to pick Sarah Palin as his VP nominee was a “cold, political calculation” to “counter the liberal feminist agenda.”

So much for putting country first.

With little more than two weeks before election day, now is the time to pull out your little black book and contact everyone in it about Barack Obama.

This election is the most important in at least a generation and for LGBT Americans it is even more crucial. We have the chance to play deciding role in electing the most pro-LGBT president in history. And, the difference between Sen. Obama and John McCain could not be clearer.

Allowing McCain to be elected as president would four more years of the kind of anti-LGBT policies that we got from George Bush. Electing Sen. Obama has president opens up the definite chance for us to finally pass an inclusive ENDA and the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and to finally develop a national AIDS strategy.

The Obama campaign’s Hometown Pride outreach program offers this suggestion to help you get started talking to friends and family:

Find five people back in your hometown to talk to about Barack and Joe. When you talk with these people, tell them why you personally support Barack. These are your friends and people who know you – tell your own story.

Think about people you’re still close to, like family members – but also think about people you might not have talked to in years, like old teachers, mentors and friends.

Here are a few quick talking points:

Barack Obama:

• supports an inclusive ENDA
• supports the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act
• supports the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
• supports the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act
• opposes state constitutional amendments banning marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships

John McCain:

• opposes basic civil rights protections for LGBT Americans
• supports the ban on openly gay Americans serving in the military
• opposes gay adoption
• would appoint Supreme Court justices that would overturn Roe v Wade

In short, a vote for John McCain is a vote for discrimination against LGBT people while a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for civil rights for LGBT people.

For more information, read:

Gays Won’t Let Friends Vote McCain
No Way. No How. No McCain/Palin.
The LGBT Case for Barack Obama

On Facebook: Gays Won’t Let Friends Vote McCain

David Plouffe, Barack’s campaign manager, reported the news to supporters via a special online video update. The average contribution was $86. The previous record was $66 million set by the Obama campaign in August. The total number of people that have contributed to the campaign is 3.1 million.

This news will undoubtedly make the McCain/Palin campaign and the GOP go apoplectic. They will unleash a wave of racist, xenophobic and slanderous attacks against Barack and Joe Biden unlike anything we have seen in recent presidential campaigns. Already McCain has hired three of the attack machine specialists who spread the lies and innuendo that sunk McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000. Among the lies they spread during the 2000 South Carolina primary was that the Bangladeshi child that McCain and his wife Cindy adopted was McCain’s illegitimate Black daughter. If they are were willing to go after a member of their own party like this, can you imagine the bile they are prepared to unload against Barack?

This makes it all the more important that for the next 16 days we do all that we can to ensure that Barack is elected our next president. The time for the viciousness of hyper-partisan Republican politics is over.

That’s what a poster that greeted visitors to the John McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach, Florida has to say. The sign was headlined “Barrack Hussein Obama” and compared Obama to Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, and Fidel Castro. The poster questioned Obama’s call for change:

Who else called for change in this fashion? Each and every one called upon youth movements.

Karl Marx. Joseph Stalin. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini. Fidel Castro.

And you want Obama for President? Are you nuts!

More after the jump…

Jeffrey Sanders, a registered Republican, raised concerns about the poster when he stopped by the office to pick up tickets for a McCain rally at Florida International University:

To label someone as the next Hitler is beyond outrageous [and] offensive. And it needs to be addressed. And if Barack Obama does the same thing to McCain I would expect the same reaction. That was not American.

When confronted by about the sign by a Sun-Sentinel reporter, Broward Republican Chairman Chip LaMarca said he was “disgusted” by it and would immediately go to the office and remove it.

I’m speechless at the ignorance. It’s not something we can condone.

We’re trying to promote positive messages for our candidates. I understand people want their candidate to win. It’s ridiculous. I’ll find out who put it up there, and maybe they’ll volunteer somewhere else.

Let me see if I have this straight.

A McCain Campaign office has a poster comparing Obama to horrendous figures like Hitler and Mussolini – and also mocks youth voters – in plain view for who knows how long, yet the Chairman is surprised and “speechless”? And his solution is to move the person behind it to another office to keep working for the campaign?

Way to tamp down the crazy rhetoric…

I wonder if this has any connection to the “Vote Republican or the Terrorists Win” flier that has been going out to Florida voters. Maybe they’ll just move the person behind that bit of fear mongering “somewhere else” as well.

Wait- that was Charlie Crist behind that flier…

Looks like there is a lot of shuffling around to do in the Republican Party.

That is the question that popped into my mind this morning while reading yet another story about the gutter style politics of John McCain. You remember The Grinch, right? He was dead set on stopping The Whos from celebrating Christmas.

Let’s look at the evidence after the jump…

1. The Grinch, as you may recall, tried to kill the spirit of The Whos by stealing their Christmas presents and destroying their decorations.

McCain is trying the desire of the American people for serious political change by unleashing a wave of negative attack ads. McCain and the RNC spent $11 million on ads attacking Barack Obama between September 28th and October 4th.

Nearly every TV ad Republican John McCain ran last week was negative, compared to just 34 percent of those by Democrat Barack Obama, according to an analysis released Wednesday.

The harsher tone in McCain’s ads mirrors the sharper attacks he and his running mate Sarah Palin have been making on the campaign trail as polls show Obama opening up a lead.

And, as Waymon pointed out, McCain and Sarah Palin are engaging in rhetoric that is inciting anger, hate and threats of violence.

2. The Grinch wore a permanent mask of bitterness and contempt because his heart was two sizes too small.

Here’s John McCain at the presidential debate on October 7th:

3. The Grinch had the nasty habit of raging against anything that smacked of joy, tolerance and community celebration.

McCain, in attack ads, speeches and interviews, has repeatedly made sarcastic reference to Barack Obama’s message of hope and progress and the desire of many Americans for political change.

But, unlike The Grinch who sneered at The Whos to their faces, McCain doesn’t have the courage to look Obama in the eyes while talking his trash.

Of course, this comparison isn’t 100% conclusive, but you have to admit that the parallels are striking.

You’re a mean one Sen. McCain….

First published in Bay Windows, October 9, 2008

All the talk of mavericks during the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate started me humming the theme from The Magnificent Seven. There they are, a ragtag bunch of rugged loners in a wild country. Will they learn to work together in time to save the beleaguered townsfolk from the marauding villains? Hey, wait a minute — they ARE the marauding villains.

Maybe I just have movies on my mind, since Washington’s gay film fest starts next week; but the McCain campaign increasingly feels like a movie in which the director is desperately trying to make us suspend our disbelief and buy the Republican nominee as the guy to fix the wreckage wrought by the Republican incumbent over the past several years.

Barney Frank is having none of it. The congressman from Massachusetts pounds a simple point he has made for years regarding the gay dimension in politics: that the far better record of Democrats on gay rights points to a partisan conclusion.

Defending their endorsement of John McCain, Log Cabin Republicans tout his opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment; but he also endorses anti-gay state initiatives that Barack Obama opposes. They point to Democratic politicians’ opposition to marriage equality (displayed by Joe Biden last week) to discredit gay Democrats, but Obama supports civil unions legislation while McCain does not. Sarah Palin’s talk of tolerance mirrors the ex-gay movement’s love-the-sinner rhetoric, and her suggestion that private contracts are sufficient for gay couples is contradicted by the experience of family law attorneys working to protect LGBT families, who have found that wills and powers of attorney are a poor substitute for marriage.

Frank wrote in 2004, “Only if an attempt to make gay bashing a national political platform clearly fails will Republicans who dissent from that view begin to get the political strength to free their party from its shackles.” The Palin choice suggests that the GOP’s shift in emphasis this year does not reflect an ideological change.

On Real Time with Bill Maher in 2006, Frank noted conservative dissent against the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling overturning sodomy laws: “The Republicans do think it should be a crime, and I think there’s a right to privacy, but the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. And people who want to demonize other people shouldn’t then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves.”

Long one of the smartest and wittiest people in Congress, Frank is now one of the most powerful. As Financial Services Committee chair, he has been instrumental in addressing the financial crisis. On Sep. 29, after a vote on the $700 billion financial recovery bill fell a dozen votes short and Republicans blamed partisan remarks by Speaker Pelosi, Frank was withering: “Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country…. Give me those twelve people’s names, and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them, and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they’ll now think about the country.”

Frank is one of the sharpest debaters the House has ever had, and his toughness is essential. A favorite Republican tactic during the current Congress is introducing motions to recommit in order to derail bills that are about to pass. Responding to one such motion in April 2007, Frank said, “Members on the other side had every opportunity at the committee and in this open rule fully to debate this and to offer amendments. They chose not to. They chose instead to legislate by ambush.”

Frank was addressing a similar motion in November 2007 during debate on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act when he grew emotional while describing the impact of homophobia on 15-year-olds and concluded, “Please don’t turn your back on them.” The House erupted in cheers.

Frank has no shortage of detractors (a right-of-center gay Washingtonian recently created a Facebook group called “Capital Punishment for Barney Frank”), but that is a sign of his success. As I watched him respond to Bill O’Reilly’s charges of cowardice and unmanliness last week by rebuking the Fox News demagogue for his ranting and bullying, I thought how lucky we are that Frank, as The Almanac of American Politics wrote in 2006, “is one of the intellectual and political leaders of the Democratic Party in the House – political theorist and pit bull all at the same time.” He’s one of us, he’s right where he should be, and he’s at the top of his game.

Copyright © 2008 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.

Rick Rosendall can be reached at rrosendall@starpower.net.

Disgusting.

That is all that comes to mind when I heard Cindy McCain unleash yet another low blow attack on Obama while stumping in Pennsylvania. Funny how the campaign that kept screaming “leave families out of it” when it came to very valid discussion of Palin’s teenage pregnant daughter and abstinence only teaching is now using their children as political pawns. Here’s part of Cindy’s screed:

The day that Sen. Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body. I would suggest that Sen. Obama change shoes with me for just one day and see what it means … to have a loved one serving in the armed forces and more importantly, serving in harm’s way. I suggest he take a day and go watch our fine young men…and women deploy, get on those buses and leave with a smile.

Video after the jump…

Wow. How low will this campaign sink?

Funny how Cindy didn’t mention her husband also voted against war funding because it included a timeline. Where was that cold chill then?

And no mention of Biden’s son going to war as well? Imagine that.

I am sick and tired of this party and their twisted “family values”- which apparently includes using their kids as props. From Palin bringing her kids (including her newborn and the father of teenage daughter’s baby- but don’t talk about them!) on stage every time to Cindy’s latest comments- not to mention their continued war on intellectualism and the continued push to incite violence and fear- it is clear that this campaign has no moral compass whatsoever.

I’m not sure how much more of these gutter politics I can take- and I’m not sure how much more our country can either.