Tomorrow is the First Day in a Brand New America

It's not simply because of the very likely election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.


It's not because he would be the first African-American to hold high office. It's not because he would be the first Democratic President with a Democratic House and Senate in 16 years.


It's because of how he reached this position.


It's because of US, it's because of YOU - because Barack has stood for the Hope and Promise of what American should be and can be rather than wallow in the fear and selfish greed that has come to define the cold stone heart of the Conservative Movement.


Tomorrow will be a brand new America, because the dark cancer of neo-conservativism will finally - be in Remission!

I know I for one have had a lot of anger and frustration of the litany of crimes, malfeasance and out-and-out bullshit that has come year after year from the right-wing.


Failure to respond to the Cole Bombing once the CIA and FBI agreed that it was done by Al Qeada in early 2001. Failure to respond all the warning of an impending attack from Richard Clark, George Tenet, the FAA and the August 6th PDB. Failure to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Manipulation and distortion of the Iraq intelligence, including use of multiple forgeries and information gained via torture in order to begin a War that didn't need to be fought with an unarmed country. Ignoring the impending insurgency. More torture at Abu Ghraib, and Bagram AFB. Patriotism used as a weapon. Blowing the budget surplus, with tax cuts for people who don't need tax cuts and are perfectly fine shipping our jobs and healthcare to China and India. Turning ex-Soviet Gulags into Secret "Black Site/24 Wet Dream" Prisons. Illegal Domestic Spying on American citizens. Freedom Fries! The suddenly shrinking American Dollar. Ignoring New Orleans while the levees collapsed and the city drowned in it's own sewage. The Midnight Ride to save the brain-dead blind woman, Terri Schiavo. Bill Frist and his remote viewing diagnosis. Purple heart band-aids. David Safavian, first Bushie to go from the White House to Jail. Mark Foley the Fondler. Jack Abramoff. Bob Ney. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his yatch "The Dukester!". Haditha. Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens. KBR and the showers of death. David Vitter. Tom Delay. KBR and their date-raped employees. Mamaudiya. Blackwater, the State Dept. own lawless gang of murderers. Voter Suppression.
Disabling consumer protections and regulations while our medicine kills us, our toothpaste has antifreeze, our dog and catfood is poisoned, our toys are painted with lead, our rivers and fish are filled with mercury, our mines and bridges begin to collapse - and then our finally our banks fall apart too!

As of tomorrow - All This Crap is Over!

With all of this, America has been hijacked by a gang of thieves and thugs in the guise of "Real Americans". People that don't believe that government can work, should be running the government.
It only goes one place - INTO THE GROUND!

None of this was an accident, although I wouldn't claim that it was a part of a rational plan. It was the result of two very simple things: Greed and Fear.


Protecting the public from real threats is expensive, so they don't bother doing that - but pretending to protect them from phony threats is a lucrative business venture. It's all about making a buck off the other guy, using them and their misfortunate as your stepping stone to prosperity. Of course they don't care if their fellow Americans are suffering, they figure that's an oppurtunity to make some cash.


They're incredibly afraid that a government that actually works is going to take all that away from them.
They're afraid of The Gay.
They're afraid of the young. They're afraid of the sick.
They're afraid brown, the spanish, the jew, the muslim, and the black all "taking THEIR country away from them".


But it's not their country, it's OUR Country. All of us.


We have to come to realize that the conservative heart is cowardly.
It may be easy to hate them for the hate that they fearfully project onto uthers, but we need to rise above hate and anger. In fact, it is more appropriate to pity them than hate them. Little do they realize the damage they have done, to themselves and to the nation. The past is done, the future is tomorrow.


Tomorrow is the day where we can finally show some courage.


Do we have the courage to trust a man who doesn't just talk about reaching out and working with people who may virulently disagree with him, but has actually done it with Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, Mr.
Khallidi and even Republicans like Tom Coburn adn Dick Lugar- because he certain doesn't agree with them.
We shouldn't have the SHUN people we disagree with, should we? We shouldn't have to inflict loyalty tests on each other.
I've frequently wondered if the self-styled "Real Americans" will ever learn that?

Does America - Both "Real" and Virtual - have to courage to live up to it's convictions that all men have a right to disagree, agreeably? Do we have the courage to fight terror without using terror? Can we show the character and commitment to once more become the moral standard bearer for the world, that we've continually claim to be? Can we face all of our fears, terrorism, global climate change, a multi-national financial crisis, increasing health care costs, falling wages, and disappearing savings with a confident smile rather than a petulant snear?

I think we do. I think "Yes We Can".


We won't fix everything all at once. We won't always make the right choice on the first try. But we have to have the courage to try, with the knowledge that we can't go back to where we've been - we can't go back to the being scared.


Today will be our last day to live in fear. God Bless the Brand New America.


Vyan

And on November 5th, The Real Struggle Begins

I know right now most of us are focused like a laser beam on the election, working the GOTV, canvassing, doing what we can to flip wavering republicans and family members into our column in order to bring profound change to this nation and elect Barack Obama as the 44th President with a significant democratic majority in Congress.

In all likelyhood - with a fairly stable 190 Electoral Vote Advantage according to electoral-vote.com, a 96.2% Win percentage via Nate Silver at 538.com, and absolutely no viable path to victory for McCain even if you give him each and every close toss-up state including both Florida AND Ohio via CNN 's Interactive Electoral Map - Barack Obama will be the next President.

They're even starting to openly cry at the Whitehouse., so you know things are looking good for our side.

I'm not dancing on the five yard line here, I'm just saying we need to start thinking about what happens when Democrats are finally on the hook for everything!

Before I get into the best case scenario, let's first look at worst - which of course would be that somehow, someway, McCain manages to pull an upset against all logical odds.

What the fuck would we do then?

Before packing our bags for Brazil and/or Fiji, I'm thinking we hit LAWSUIT City. Right now the only way for this scenario to play out is through ongoing voter suppression, caging, but most importantly massive election fraud and vote tally recalibration at the machine level, either in stand-alone voting machines or more likely - at the tabulators.

There's nothing can do after the fact for people who've been blocked from voting, but for votes that have been flipped - the party is only just starting on Nov 5th.

We may learn quite a bit about this tomorrow at the Deposition for Mike Connell, a virulent anti-abortion partisan who was instrumental in setting up the Ohio Tabulator systems which may very well have stolen the 2004 election from John Kerry.

Interview with Stephan Spoonamore, a cybersecurity export (and Republican) who has closely examined the activities of Connell and his rabid pro-life associates.


Statements from Spoonamore's Deposition in the ongoing Ohio Election Case.

In the case of Ohio 2004, the only purpose I can conceive for sending all county vote tabulations to a GOP managed Man-in-the-Middle site in Chattanooga BEFORE sending the results onward to the Sec. of State, would be to hack the vote at the MIM.

IN REGARD TO THE DIEBOLD SYSTEMS, Formerly Global, DESI and now called Premier.

In my opinion, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to make a secure touch screen voting system. None. Secure systems are predicated on establishing securely the identity of every user of the system. Voting is predicated on being anonymous. It is impossible to have a system that does both.

It is possible to design relatively secure optical scan machines, but even these can be hacked in even the best of cases. In the case of optical scan you have the ability to recount manually the paper ballot itself, and the ability to spot check the machines for errors against a sample of hand recounting.

Do not kid yourselves, the vote can be hacked: the vote WILL. BE. HACKED!

On November 5th, we need to be ready for this. Ready for strange and curious election results which seemingly have no basis in reality or fact. This year, I believe these attacks are almost certain to come - and with McCain trailing so far in so many states the attempt will either completely fail because not enough states will be involved in the tabulation flip or it will succeed and be blaringly obvious to everyone!

We can't let the media talk us into some B.S. "Bradley Effect" mindfuck. "Oh yeah, it was all the closet racists who lost it for Obama..." Like HELL, sure America has racists and even good people who just aren't yet comfortable with the idea of a Black President - but not enough to flip 7 or 8 States! We're gonna need boots on the ground, voters, poll workers and observers in key polling districts (minority and heavily democratic in red/purple zones) with Election Protection on SPEED DIAL in states that McCain HAS TO WIN such as Missouri, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

1-886-OUR-VOTE.

Burn that number into the back of your eyelids people.

If you can get involved in Video The Vote, to help document the election process before, during and after.

In 2004, only Senator Barbara Boxer stood up and dared to challenge the election results. Her Number is 202-224-3553. Lock that into your Cell RIGHT NOW! Also make sure you have both your own Senators and Congresspersons number at the touch of finger.

We're going to need to lobby the FRAK out of Congress to challenge the results in the Senate, then have them subpeona Spoonamore and Connell to testify with expert opinions on what did or didn't happen on November 4th. If necessary Congress may have to fix this by rejecting the results. It could get very messy, but we have to stay the course.

Our way of life depends on it.

And we still have to prepared for all this to fail and for the eventuality of a (shiver) President John McCain and Vice President (gak) Sarah Palin. (You Betcha. Also) Madre de Dios!

If that horror does happen - we have to remember that we still have a Democratic Congress with very likely either 58 or 59 Democratic Senators. It's going to be rough road, but we've been on it for sometime so we know all the curves. We know the house will pass some great legislation only to have it buried by Senate Republicans - and Lieberman. We know that McCain will probably follow in many of Bush's footsteps with Iraq, deepen the chasm with Iran, continue to ignore bin Laden and al Qaeda, continue to play Daddy Warbucks with his corporate cronies as we slip-slide our way into a deeper depression, and fully open the spigot that is spewing American jobs into China, Taiwan and India like a Firehose. Still, McCain might actually get a couple things right if the Wild winds of Crazy Horse Maverick-ness happen to blow the right way. I'm not sure what those will be - No one is, NOT EVEN McCAIN - but we need to be ready to help make sure there more of those moments, rather than less.

It's gonna suck donkey balls, but we need to realize that this massive Amazing organization the Obama has built doesn't need to wither away. WE CAN STILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE, but continuing to organize, by lobbying and petitioning Congress, targeting those few swing Republican Votes in the Senate to help break their blockade, to rally reluctant Democrats to stand firm and hold the line instead of wimping out - like usual...

And on the other hand if Obama Wins -

All the ABOVE STILL APPLIES.

We're still gonna have massive election fraud to deal with and cleanup. HAVA needs serious reform. Rove needs Jail, badly. The entire federal government is now filled with ideologues in permanent positions who will continue to press forward the Bushie agenda and undermine President Obama. There are thousands of ridiculous signing statements to undo. We've got to close Gitmo, repeal the Military Commission Act, get our troops safely out of Iraq while ensuring the ongoing stabiilty of that nation, finally get serious with Afghanistan and Pakistan, close off access to lose nukes, get our financial and economic house back in order, balance the budget, save Medicade and Medicare, permanently ban pre-existing conditions, get the FUCK OFF OF FOREIGN OIL and start building a 21st Green Collar industry, fight Climate Change, prosecute a big steaming pile of ex-Bushies for violating the Hatch Act, for War Crimes, Domestic/Political Espionage, Malfeasance and Negligence and general Shit-headerry.

We've got a lot of work to do - a whole heaping ton of heavy-lifting - win, lose or (shudder) draw - November 5th isn't the day we rest...

It's the day we finally GET TO WORK!

Vyan

Best. McCain. Rant. Ever!

And this comes from a former Conservative , now voting this year for Barack Obama - and it's not about Barack, it's about Bush, McCain and Palin.


-----------------------------------------------
When I turned 18, I made my family proud and registered to vote as a Republican. I could not have fathomed the political rollercoaster that awaited me.


Four years ago on election night I jostled for position around the bar in the band room of our fraternity house, it was like watching a road game. Almost all of us voted for Bush, including me, except for one die hard kerry supporter we were sure to mock every time they called a state for our boy dubya. Poor guy. He was the only one not drinking and I'm pretty sure I called him a "fucking pansy" a few times. I've tried to forget the other mindless drivel that shitted itself out of my mouth about Kerry; thank you very much to the winning combination of poor critical thinking skills + televised propaganda.


Two years ago, long after the reality of our foreign policy predicament was depressingly clear, I voted a straight blue ticket. If it were an option, I would've voted a straight "not-red" ticket. I kept my registration checked "Republican," for ideological reasons, namely my advocacy for smaller government, which I still feel is best.


Less than a year ago, I voted for Ron Paul in the Republican primary.


Today, I voted for Barack Obama.


I'm writing this for a purely cathartic, personal reason; because I'm quite sure I'll explode if I don't vent somehow, in someway, about this almost virally infectious political season.


[Rant]

Am I the only one who is locked in some horrifying political Orwellian nightmare? But it isn't just a nightmare, it's a crazy, quantum "what the fuck" circus nightmare of a nightmare. The kind of things nightmares have nightmares about when they're not being nightmares.... I honestly have no idea where to begin, or where I am, for that matter. Let's just pick something at random. How about that horrendous three word noun that has been force-fed to my cerebral cortex.
Did somebody say "Joe the Plumber?"

Sweet Slidin' Jesus on a stripper pole what in the fuck is going on with Joe the Plumber? Truth be told I sent my mother a link to that video Before the debates. I had decided on my vote a few months prior and after seeing the video I sent it to my mom, I felt it showed my candidate practically applying the rhetoric of his campaign to a real world situation, and I wanted her to see it. Maybe she'll mention it to her friends, I thought. "Bulletproof." I felt vindicated about my presumption of his commitment and intelligence, and importantly to me he didn't come across as a politician....and I abhor politicians. Now I'm going to jump ahead here, past my shock at the unpredictable ascendancy of Joe the Plumber in the public eye, and for the sake of argument, just go along with me. Forget the fact that the conversation revealed a depth of understanding by Obama about the application of economic policy, forget that the hypothetical scenario being discussed very likely would end up better for "joe" under Obama's plan than McCain's, forget that Joe's name is Sam, forget that Joe was stretching the truth at the very best and being a schilling-douche at worst (Uncle Keating, was it?)...forget everything. Everything except for the fact that this political tool now has a PUBLICIST and is attempting a COUNTRY RECORD DEAL. This is the point that a casual political observer would glibly offer the cliche pronouncement that, "You can't write this stuff." Well that's just incorrect. YOU CAN ONLY WRITE THIS STUFF. The real question is What the Fuck is it doing in my reality? I mean seriously, how is this happening in the actual universe? The only answer is that we exist in a pocket of space time that is dictated by the whims of an author of political satire writing his brilliant masterpiece, "Thank God We Don't Live There: A Novel about Political Inanity." You think it can't get worse, and then.......

BAM! Sarah Palin!

Everyone together with me now....."What. The. Fuck." I have never been so insulted in my life. You know what made me turn on Bush? No WMDs in Iraq and suspending Habeus Corpus didn't help, sure.... But somewhere along the way, I became convinced that I could do a better job. I'm betting some of you know the feeling well. I wasn't even 21 when I first had that thought, but I was convinced I could be a better President than the man sitting in the oval office, and that realization was devastating. I was just starting to figure the world out and somehow I found myself demonstrably smarter than the man in charge of the free world? Put a different way, this fucking idiot has the launch codes? And just when I thought I couldn't lower the bar any lower for the highest office in the land for the country I'd die for, in comes a tv-anchor/beauty-pageant-winner/crytal-meth-capital-book-banning-mayor gliding in on her helicopter fresh off an aerial hunt for wolves, and all of the sudden George Bush looks like Norman Borlaug, and I'm trying to kill myself with a wooden spoon to the ear. Man walked with dinosaurs, no global warming, witchcraft! Take your pick. Apparently if you believe one crazy thing, the media will harp on it until you're extinct, yet if you believe a hundred crazy things, you somehow become immune to criticism. If, just last year, 365 days ago, you would have asked me to give a list of ideas that would categorically disqualify someone for the office of President of the United States, I swear to God "man walking with dinosaurs" is number 8. The next time you're near a time machine and want to make someone cry, go back to about a year ago and tell me my number 8 is wrong. Matter of fact, if you want to be nice about it, kick me in the balls for 5 hours and then tell me number 8 is wrong, at least then I'd have something to distract me from the pain.


I could go on, but I won't, I'll simply leave you with this. If only because the title of this diary likely leaves you wondering why I voted the way I did, so here goes...

I believe in small government. I believe that our constitution is the greatest achievement in the history of humanity, born our of the spurns of the Enlightenment, a monument to secular rule, civilized dissent, and individual liberty. Yet, when I entered the voting booth today, I didn't base my vote on policy, or ideology, or affiliation. I didn't vote in the hopes of a bigger government, or a more liberal social policy, or for the advancement of a political party. I didn't vote "for" a Democrat or "for" a Republican or "against" the greater of two evils. I didn't vote to change our policy in Iraq, or to get troops into or out of Afghanistan, or to give homosexuals the right to marry or to ban prayer in schools. I didn't vote for experience and I didn't vote for change. I voted for the one thing that has been categorically absent for as long as I can remember noticing: Reason. Anybody can latch on to policies and advance them blindly on faith alone, both sides of the aisle have demonstrated that for decades, but for the first time in my life I feel like I have a leader who would listen to an argument and actually change his position if he were wrong. Naive? Maybe. But what an inspiringly audacious Hope it is.


It may seem small, but after living in this circus for entirely too long, it's everything. Now go vote so we can take this fucking tent down.


[/Rant]

--------------------------------------------------------------

Amen, brother Amen.


Orifinal Version Posted Here

A Vote For McCain

is vote in support and solidarity with THESE PEOPLE!



Now, everyone has a right to make their own choices, but since McCain and Co have made such a huge issue of who you are "associated with", it's only fair to ask - who is the real John McCain if these are the people he inspires.


"Bomb Obama"

"I don't wanna sound racist here, but I don't want a Black man running our counrty"

"He wasn't born in America"

"Communist"

"No Way, HUSSEIN!!"

"Child Killer!"

"If you associate with terrorists - You're a Terrorist!"

"NOBAMA"

People may have legitimate reasons to prefer McCain, he was incredibly valiant to refuse early release from a vietnamese prison unless all his fellow Americans were going to be released also - HE WAS A HERO - but if McCain he won't reject and repudiate these vicious lies, distortions, horrific and potentially violent hate speech against a fellow American - then he deserves to be tarred with the obvious implication.


Just remember, the future of our nation is at stake, can we really afford to validate what these people are spewing?

Vyan

Keith Exposes Sarah the Socialist!

In tonight's campaign comment, Keith Olbermann, exposes the vile, dangerous commie, totalitarian, schemes of Sarah Palin's dark socialist agenda against our sweet, helpless nation.




In their battle to defeat the equally dreaded Barack Hussein Obama and his plot to "redistribute the sacred lifeblood of the wealthy" by taking our tax plans all the way back to the way Bill Clinton made them in the long lost 90's when the U.S.
only Generated 22 Million jobs, somebody forgot to mention Sarah Palin has done almost the exact same thing in Alaska.


This is a story that's been out there for quite some time, in fact it's surprising that it took this long for someone to notice (besides Keith, Thinkprogress wrote about it yesterday and I almost wrote about it then) that when Sarah Palin famously took on the Oil Companies in Alaska with her full Mavericky fervor, few have bothered to mention that what she actually did was implement a Windfall Profits Tax on those companies.


Who else has proposed a Windfall Profits Tax on Oil Companies?

Senator Barack Commie-Socialist Obama.

..RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Monday he would impose a windfall profits tax on U.S. oil companies as he sought political gain from Americans' pain over high gasoline prices.


Launching a two-week focus on the economy after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama drew a sharp contrast between his economic policies and those of John McCain, his Republican rival in the November election.


"I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills," the Illinois senator said.
..

Commie-scum talk like that obviously makes Super Sarah Pro-PRO-PRO-AMERICAN just plain mad as a wet but perky red hen in designer vanity glasses and a bulbous boufant.




Ok, well - I just wonder what a Social-Commie bastard like Barack Hussieny Osama bin Lyin would like to do with all that hard fought for Oil Profits money? Punishing the sucessful fruits of hard work and rewarding the lazy no doubt. Yeah.
Just like this...

..
"And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources.
So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. ... It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans" stated Palin.


Alaska is sometimes described as America’s socialist state, because of its collective ownership of resources—an arrangement that allows permanent residents to collect a dividend on the state’s oil royalties.

..


Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share (ACES) program, which manages the redistribution of oil wealth in Alaska, provides for so much money that the state needs no income or sales tax.


This year, after spreading the wealth of the oil companies ACES will provide every Alaskan with a check for an estimated $3,200.

America should be afraid, very afraid of Sarah Palin: Commie Alaskan Socialist Slime.


/snark

Vyan

Ashley Todd does not deserve our Forgiveness!

Although she may deserve our pity and certainly our empathy, the fact is that what she did was a Hate Crime and that's unforgiveable.

Look, people - certainly she may require medical attention, counseling and psychiatric care - but that's no excuse! The claim had clear shades of the kidnapping and murder of Emmet Till, a young boy who was lynched for daring to whistle at a white woman (although in actuality, he only whistled to help control his stutter).

This was an attempt at repeat the story of the Scottsboro Boys who were tried multiple times for a rape that never happened.

Lets we think we've come a long way since the 1930's and 1950's lets not forget the false claims of Susan Smith in 1994.

Yes, what we're dealing with here is indeed a disease, but Ashley Todd isn't the only one who has it.

Bare with me, I've got a lot to get off my chest on this one. This isn't just a "Racial" issue, or even a political one - it goes far deeper than that.

For those who may who so quickly forgotten:

In 1994, Smith led the country on a wild goose chase for nine days by blaming a fictitious black man for carjacking her Mazda with her sons still in the car. The practice of unjustly blaming blacks and imprisoning them with alarming racial disparity, is not fictitious. It is a real national tragedy being revealed in studies by human rights groups and government agencies.

The truth was the Smith had sank her own car in a lake, with her children still in it. And her first attempt at a plausible alibi was to make up a story about a "black man in a knit cap."

Flash forward to today and Ashley Todd.

It is commendable that the police were vigilant enough to discover the truth of her story within a day. (Clearly the fact the "B" carved into her face was backwards was a bit a of a give away...) But suppose they hadn't? Suppose they hadn't decided to put her through a lie detector? How long could this have gone on?

And how many times have we seen this story played out before?

How viciously savaged in the press was the black girl who accused several members of the Duke LaCrosse Team of assault in 2006?

How many times do we see deference given to the "sympathatic" character in these situations and how often are those persons - young, (relatively) pretty and white?

We all know the story of the Pretty Private Jessica Lynch who was dramatically rescued from her Iraqi captures. Except that the rescue never happened.

Lynch herself doesn't remember a single thing and all the nurses and doctors and eyewitnesses on the scene say the Iraqi fedayeen guards had fled the day before the "rescue," and there was no danger whatsoever, no resistance of any kind, the U.S. forces could just walk right in, and they knew it.

And the hospital doors were wide open, and the nurses and doctors had gone out of their way to provide decent care for our precious Jessica, considering the circumstances, and doctors even tried to return Lynch to U.S. forces themselves.

Here's another thing, Jessica wasn't alone - she was with her whole unit. Jessica got the cover of Time Magazine, what kind of press coverage did Shoshanna Jackson get?

This is about more than just Ashley Todd's lies. This is about a sickness that America has, not neccesarily against black people - but to give undue and unreasonable deference to people who simply don't deserve it, and to deny it to those that do.

Clearly Ashley was fired up by weeks of charges by the McCain Campaign that Barack Hussein Obama was some kind of "Terrorist Sympathiser". "We can't trust him." He's a "Socialist!" "Kill Him." "He's an Arab".

The Fear of a Barack Presidency has been ginned up and deliberately set ablaze by McCain to keep his fading election hopes alive.

There should be little surprise that it's begun to erupt among the least stable among us. But let's just take a second and really think about this entire "William Ayers the Terrorist" thing.

Ayers and the Weatherman were Vietnam Protestors. They didn't set of bombs to "Kill Americans", they were doing it to try and end a war which killed 53,000 Americans. The only person killed by a Weatherman bomb - was a member of the Weatherman in an accident.

Yes, they were using extreme methods and certainly criminal - but they didn't "Hate America." This was the same time period that the American Indian Movement repossesed Alcatraz by force. This was the time of the SLA and the Manson Family. This was after Kent State. This was during COINTELPRO, which not so coincidentally is why Ayers was never successfully prosecuted, the FBI and police broke the law and participated in criminal actions which destroyed the case. What Ayers did and didn't do should be looked at in context of the surrounding events, not in a vaccum. 40 years later Ayer's is a college profession, education activist and winner of Chicago's 1998 "Citizen of the Year" award. He has no good reason to still be fighting to end a war that ended long ago. He and Barack live in the same neighborhood and have apparently only met about 6 times.

This is your dreaded Ameri-Qaeda member? A 60 year-old ex-war protesting professor? Really?

Yet, the drum beat of fear has marched on even after the fact as the McCain Campain specifically steered the media toward the story.

The McCain campaign steered reporters’ attention to the story yesterday. John McCain even called the 20-year old woman. Sarah Palin called her family. Well, tonight that woman is charged with making a false report

It's probably fair to note that McCain and Co didn't know it was a hoax, but it also shows that they were quite willing to believe it could be true and take advantage of it!

Ashley was providing them with exactly the Mean Liberal Scum they been trying to frighten America with. But the sad part is that you can't completely blame McCain and Palin, as I said before this story has been told for a long, long time and the consequences have been devastating.

About half of all the people who are murdered each year in the United States are black. Yet since 1977, when a firing squad in Utah initiated the modern era of capital punishment, the overwhelming majority of people who have been executed -- 85 percent -- had killed a white person.

Only 11 percent had killed a black person.

Such a huge disparity seems to suggest that racial factors may be influencing how the death penalty is dispensed -- but in different ways than some people had suspected.

While death penalty opponents had long feared that the race of the killer would play a pronounced role in determining who would be executed and that blacks would be put to death far more frequently than whites, several studies suggest that the most significant distinction is the race of the victim.

If about half he people killed in the U.S. are black, and the other half white - while 85% of the attacker of the white person goes to DEATH ROW, just what's going on with all the black people that are killed year in and year out? Just whose really getting away with Murder around here?

Even worse, over the past decade or so 223 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated by the Innocence Project using DNA evidence. False Witness Testimony, Miss Identification, Police and Prosecutorial misconduct, False Confessions, Forensic Fraud, Lying Informants and just plain bad Lawyers have put hundreds, thousands, and (even if these failures only represent a fraction of 1% of the total cases) there are more than likely tens of thousands of innocent people behind our bars.

Over and over again, the guilty go free while the innocent are punished.

The truth is that's the crime here isn't that Ashley cried "Black Man" in a crowded theater, it's the fact that she was so easily believed - particularly by the McCain Campaign - and immediately garnered national media attention when she never deserved it.

How many muggings usually get on the CBS News?

It's just like how the Jon Bonet Ramsey Story was blown completely out of all realistic proportion andh nearly ruined the life of her parents although they were innocent the entire time.

Just like Jessica Lynch (but not Shoshanna).

Just like the story of that poor girl who "disappeared" in Aruba.

Just like the Jennifer Wilbanks, the Runaway Bride, who original said she'd been kidnapped. Not so much.

Just like the Astonaut in the diaper.

Just like Anne Nicole Smith, who everyone knew was going to die from drugs - so of course we all just made some popcorn and watched her slow, sad decline, completely wrapt.

Just like the latest missing girl, Carrie Holmes, and her apparently murderous mother who spent a month driving around supposedly looking for her daughter while her body (it seems) rotted in the trunk.

It's like a fixation.

We can't seem to tear ourselves away from pouring all our sympathies into these liars and overhyped stories that quickly plug into our own most deep seated fear - that WE MIGHT BE NEXT - we can't stop ourselves from making excuses for them, identifying with them, for immediately trying to "Forgive" Ashley Todd... but she doesn't deserve our forgiveness.

She doesn't and they really don't. Not when it comes at the cost of our ignoring all the real victims of violence, hatred and intimidation.

How much coverage has the tires of Obama supporters being slash received?

How much of the stories of Obama supporters cars being vandalized been covered by the national media?

How much coverage has their been of the hacking of the Ohio Secretary of States Website?

How much coverage has their been of the Obama campaign supporter who really WAS assaulted and accused of being a member of the dreaded "Acorn".

Or the mysterious White Powder sent to the Philadelphai Obama offices?

Or the mutilation of Obama in Effigy?

No, I can't forgive Ashley - not when she's helping take attention away from what's really going on, from the real victims and the Real American Terrorists in our midst.

Vyan

Update: Different people seem to have different definitions of "Forgiveness" - for the purposes of this diary, I was taking it to mean that she shouldn't face any responsibility for her actions, that she should get a little treatment and pat on the head. My position is that that simply isn't good enough, it's sweeping under the rug the consequences of what she did. NO ONE should suffer from false accusations and our entire justice system is currently far from accurate and effective for exactly that reason, the rush to judgement and "closure" by "Getting the Bastard" has far too often trumped fact, truth and "justice".

I'm not advocating hate or vengence of any kind against her. I'm saying what she did is SERIOUS and needs to be understood in the context of history!

She should get treatment AND be prosecuted.

Dana Milbank is Looking for the Real America

Two hours before Barack Obama's appearance at a campaign rally here Wednesday, they played the national anthem -- and people stood and sang. Some even put hands on hearts! In the first row sat a woman -- we'll call her Margaret the Corporate Trainer, in Joe-the-Plumber style -- wearing an actual flag pin on her shirt. "I'm American!" she said proudly. Really.

Then Obama took the stage and gave a stirring speech about those soldiers who "fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America! They haven't served a Blue America! They have served the United States of America!"

The audience took up a chant of "USA! USA!"

And these are Democrats?

This scene did not fit neatly into the Sarah Palin view of the world. In that view, there is the "real America," the "hardworking, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," the place where "we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans." We can identify this part of America because they vote Republican.

By inference, there is also a faux America, where people are slothful, unpatriotic, anti-American, misanthropic, bad and cowardly. We know these areas because they vote Democratic.

By that definition, you can't get much more real-America than Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy and the political center of a state that hasn't voted for a Democrat for president in 44 years. And yet, a CNN poll released Wednesday found Obama leading Republican John McCain by 10 points in the Commonwealth.

In recent elections, Democrats were cowed by challenges to their patriotism. But the crowd in Richmond, confident of an Obama victory, brushed off the Palin insult with laughter, a survey of the first row in the arena revealed.

"I'm a terrorist," said Kathleen the Food Vendor.

"We're probably communists," added John the Other Food Vendor, sitting with Kathleen. "I've been hating America ever since I was a young man."

"I was a baby terrorist," offered Terrence the Unemployed Guy.
If anything, it is those who have lobbed the anti-America charge who are in retreat. Palin herself apologized -- sort of -- for "the way it has come across." In Minnesota, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann found her previously safe seat in jeopardy after going on MSNBC's "Hardball" to question Obama's patriotism and to urge media outlets to find other "anti-America" members of Congress. And Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.) had to climb down from telling the crowd at a McCain rally that "liberals hate real Americans."

By contrast, the phony American folks at the Obama rally in Richmond -- those who got in before the arena reached capacity -- were in a celebratory mood. They danced, hands overhead, to Kanye West's "Touch the Sky," then to the party favorite "Celebrate," then, "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now."

"There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq; there are patriots who opposed it," he said. "There are patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Virginia and all across this country who serve on our battlefields, some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some are independents, but they have fought together and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag."

In the heart of real America, the crowd gave Obama a cheer that did not seem at all phony.

Footage from Barack Obama in Virginia.

With the challenges and crises we face right now, we cannot afford to divide this country by race or class or region; by who we are or what policies we support. There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation - we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from.

Amen.

Conservatives for Change

Following in the footsteps of many Republicans who have rejected the vicious and erratic campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin, including Gen Colin Powell, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Buckley, Susan Eisenhower, Micheal Smerchonish, David Brooks, George Will, Peggy Noonan and so many many others a filmaker - who found members of his own family who had been lifelong devout Republicans were now choosing to vote for their ideals and values instead of their party - decided to document the phenomenon.