The Mean Machine Gets Checked

Posted on October 8, 2008 in Campaign 2008

Oh they just keep going on and on. First, the McCain campaign’s latest tactic is that they are keeping the press away from Palin’s supporters:

When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?” and turn the person around.

When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past, negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility.

Guess cranks attract cranks and they don’t want some crank who isn’t on the ticket upsetting things for the cranks who are. Then there is the matter of the Palin rape kit charges. Despite what the McCain campaign says, they are a real thing:

Wasilla once had a policy on the books — publicly supported by Palin’s hand-picked police chief — that it would charge rape victims or their insurers to collect evidence of sexual assaults. (Or to be more precise, the town would no longer pay for the fees out of its own budget and would seek reimbursements.)

And while that policy was in effect, Palin was mayor, and Palin approved the town budget. In 2000, though, that practice was deemed so offensive that the Republican-leaning Alaska Legislature stepped in and quickly passed a law so that towns like Wasilla could not charge victims.

And guess what? That’s all still true.

Pity the media doesn’t push this story more. Still she and McCain are doing aplenty to stick their feet in their mouthes, chew off their toes, and spit the bloody mass in the general direction of the Democrats.

Sean Hannity, one of their favorite minions, found himself tried by his own rules recently:

[Obama aide Robert] Gibbs decided he just wasn’t having any more of it, and in precisely the sort of parry that one wanted to see turned the guilt-by-association game on Hannity, asking him, “Are you anti-Semitic?” Soon, the conversation was a mess of yelling and crosstalk, with Gibbs loudly asking why Hannity would give a hatemonger a primo forum, and Hannity responding, “BENJAMIN NETANYAHU BLURBED MY BOOK! YAAHHHH! LOUD NOISES!”

Why’d he ask that? Oh, because Sean Hannity built an entire smear-job “news” program around the lunatic ravings of an anti-Semitic loon named Andy Martin. He’s not the only man of that ilk that Hannity pals around with, either.

Whoops. There’s probably a better case for Hannity being a closet anti-semite here than for Obama being a terrorist, don’t you think?

And the day is not yet over. Following yesterday’s disastrous debate showing, John McCain is going to keep it dirty. The so-called citizen’s militias are doubtlessly piling their assault rifles high for an attack on the White House and the Federal government. At very least, Republican jingoism is going to keep a sizeable segment of the American people divided from the rest for many years to come — unless Obama pulls yet another rabbit out of the hat.

I’ve always said that the greatest president is yet to come: the one who reverses all the damage done by Bush and the Republicans these past fourteen years (I’m counting the damage done by the Republican congress such as [[deregulation]] and the [[Donut_Hole_(Medicare)|Donut Hole]]). Maybe Obama will be it.

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A look at Main Street Wasilla from one of Jon Stewart’s reporters.

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[tags]campaign 2008, John McCain, Sarah Palin, jingoism, sleaziness, sleazy politics, sleazy campaign, Mean John McCain, Barack Obama, Obama, McCain, mudslinging[/tags]