"COMMUNITY ORGANIZER"---WINK, WINK: REMEMBER OBAMA IS A BLACK MAN

The GOP and the McCain/Palin campaign has seized on something I knew was eventually going to come out and that is simply to keep reminding the American people that Barack Obama is an African-American.

Notice how many times McCain and Palin talk about Obama as a "community organizer."

That is Republican double-speak, or code words for ginning up the anti-African American vote and you would have to be living under a rock not to see it.

The GOP and the McCain/Palin campaign use "community organizer," which Barack Obama was in Chicago, as just another sneaky way to inject racism into the race for POTUS.

McCain and Palin are under the wing of Republican dirty trickster pro Karl Rove's minions who will use every racial slur they can come up to further divide the United States along racial lines.

Someone once wisely observed: "Politics ain't beanbag."

The GOP and McCain/Palin aren't using a "beanbag" but a sledge hammer to drive home the point every chance they get that Barack Obama is an African-American.

You can expect the veiled "racial slurs" to increase as each day and week goes by until November 4.

GOD HELP THE UNITED STATES WHEN KARL ROVE'S PEOPLE ARE IN CHARGE OF THE McCAIN/PALIN CAMPAIGN.

This campaign is going to set race relations back before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and in the end could spell the end of the United States of America.

Commentary by BILL CORCORAN, editor of CORKSPHERE

SARAH PALIN'S "INTERVIEW" WITH ABC'S CHARLEY GIBSON WILL BE WORTHLESS GOP HYPE

The McCain/Palin campaign picked out the biggest wus in the network news business, Charley Gibson of ABC NEWS, for Sarah Palin to do her first interview.

Why did they bother?

Why didn't they just put her on FOX NEWS or let her sitdown with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or Michael Savage?

NONE of them are reporters either.

Commentary by BILL CORCORAN, editor of CORKSPHERE



Sarah Palin's "interview" with Charles Gibson won't give her any credibility

By Chad
Created 09/08/2008 - 10:15am
Published on BuzzFlash.org (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles)

The McCain campaign has been hiding Sarah Palin, treating her as if she is a China doll.

"She's too delicate to be presented in a one-on-one interview with a reporter who might ask 'tough' questions" is the impression given by the McCain campaign.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis summed it up well on Sunday. "We run our campaign, not the news media. And we'll do things on our timetable."Well, that timetable got thwarted when the campaign realized that keeping her in a box forever isn't going to work. So they decided to grant one reporter a chance to interview Sarah Palin.Now if you run the McCain campaign, you have lots of options.

You can go with a total partisan (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, among others) but that might seem a hollow gesture. You could go with a woman reporter who you know will be soft toward Gov. Palin, such as Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric.

Not only knowing that won't hit hard for political reasons, but also the idea of having a woman interview the first female Republican vice presidential candidate. But perhaps you think that there may be a backlash against Palin being interviewed by a woman (an incredibly sexist thought).

So you decide to pick a white man who will be on your side [1] but have perceived credibility:

ABC's Charlie Gibson. Perfect.We know Gibson's obsession with capital gains tax cuts [1] from the debates, and his utter disdain for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia [1] is legendary. And it gets even worse for the truth: Gibson will travel to Alaska to do the interview.

The idea that Palin will gain the upper hand by having the setup on her home turf diminishes even more so the little credibility the interview might generate.

So when Gibson treats her with softball questions, and treads lightly on any possible issue (and won't address alleged serious corruption issues during her brief reign as governor or as mayor of Wasilla), then the McCain campaign will get to say, "See, she can stand up to the test."By the time the interview will take place, Palin will have been in the national spotlight for two weeks. You know the McCain campaign has been testing her and feeding her material so she can sound somewhat informed.

If the McCain campaign people seriously think they have treated Sarah Palin well in all of this, they are sadly mistaken. The more they treat her like a China doll, the more of a joke she becomes.

Davis also said Sunday that Gov. Palin won't subject herself [2] to any tough questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference." She's a politician running to be vice president of the United States: respect and deference don't come for any candidate.

Short of something more extreme coming out, Palin won't be the next Thomas Eagleton [3]. So as long as Gov. Palin will be in the spotlight, she needs to speak for herself in an objective scenario where she might fall flat on her face.

Vice presidential candidates have done so for over 200 years without much harm done.

We currently have a vice president whom the media is scared of, and won't ask tough questions.

To replace him with a vice president who is scared to take questions isn't a scenario for a democratic republic.

HOW McCAIN AND PALIN INSULTED OUR TROOPS

How Did the RNC Insult Troops and Veterans? Let me count the ways?
Posted: 08 Sep 2008 10:12 AM CDT

http://www.vetvoice.com/

Last week's Republican convention sure made every superficial effort to come off as pro-Troop and pro-Veteran. And, of course, the media ate it up, not challenging a single thing. But to those of us who did serve, it was offense after offense after offense. Let's count the ways:
McCain Didn't Mention Veterans' Care: Maybe it's because he has a terrible record, but not once in John McCain's speech did he talk about taking care of those who served their nation in the military. With exploding rates of PTSD, suicide, homelessness among veterans. With ridiculous wait times for veterans seeking care, and a VA that every major vets group says is woefully underfunded. With administrators dumping vets out of the veterans care system by diagnosing them with a lesser mental injury than they have. Not. A. Single. Word. And, with the shame of...


Walter Reed: What a slap in the face. The first photo that John McCain stood in front of was Walter Reed. Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. Chalk it up to someone in the campaign not knowing the difference between the two, but what I find even more offensive is this: At some point John McCain asked his campaign what was going to be on the screen behind him. And someone told him the first picture would be Walter Reed Army Medical Center. John McCain didn't object - even though he voted against closing tax loopholes to help fund military hospitals like Walter Reed. But that wasn't the only bit of fake imagery....
"Phony Soldiers": For the amount that Rush Limbaugh likes to rant on "phony soldiers," there was a big silence and others from the mainstream media on the fact that the McCain campaign used stock footage of actors pretending to be soldiers in a video, intended to show how pro-military McCain is. It's actually kind of fitting - phony soldiers to promote a phony record on military and veterans' issues.


Speaking of phony: Remember that faux-outrage from the McCain campaign when General Wesley Clark dared to point out that being a POW isn't a qualification for being Commander in Chief? Boy, the McCain campaign wouldn't let up on that. Where were they when Fred Thompson said the same exact thing?


Real outrage: But, there were some things to be angry about. First, Sarah Palin repeatedly saying that her son was deploying for Iraq on September 11. First, not only is this not exactly true, but if she sincerely believed it to be true, she would be knowingly violating Operational Security (OPSEC), which says you should never tell the enemy when people and units are going to be landing in Iraq. Thankfully, Palin was fudging the truth, and not endangering the troops. So, she either knew she wasn't telling the truth, or she thought she was and thought violating OPSEC was worth the political points. Second, there's the fact that right after the Republican convention, the party produced a bunch of flags that they stole from the Democratic convention in Denver, in an attempt to "prove" the Democrats were throwing out the flag. In fact, workers in Denver were collecting all the flags left at Invesco Field, to send to community events around the country, where other patriotic Americans might want to wave the flag. So, to promote a complete fabrication, Republicans stole flags that some five-year old kid might have wanted to wave on Main Street. Stay classy...


It's things like this that caused those troops deployed to donate to Obama by a 6-1 ratio.
Though many in the media may lap up the lies, the distortions, and fake representations, troops certainly don't. We know the difference between fantasy and reality.

And that brings me to the last point. Speaker after speaker told the convention that the "surge worked" and we were on our way to "victory."

Except not so much. Bob Woodward, in his new book, explains what those of us in the military always knew - commanders on the ground were against the surge, and knew it would not work strategically. And, in fact, it hasn't worked in stabilizing Iraq's internal political problems, hasn't aided our global strategy, or helped strengthen our military.

But, as the President explained to General Abizaid, and others, success wasn't the point of the surge - the APPEARANCE of success was the purpose. Quoting Woodward's finding, "A surge would "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence," Bush said [to Abizaid]."

In short, Bush knew that since less than one-percent of America had served in the wars, and most commentators were ignorant about what constitutes true military and strategic success, a reduction of violence could be sold as "success," even if it was not.

And that, perhaps, was the biggest insult to those of us in the military, out of many, coming from the Republican National Convention.

AP Doing Everything Except Actually Physically Handing Track Palin Over to Insurgents
Posted: 08 Sep 2008 02:27 AM CDT

Following the example of Governor Sarah Palin's idiotic reference to her son Track's impending deployment to Iraq "on September 11th," the AP has now really outdone itself in terms of compromising the operational security of Track's unit.

In a piece published Sunday, the AP divulged PFC Track Palin's division, his brigade, and even his company. So far as I can tell, the only identifying unit information they've left out is his battalion and platoon--which I assume is simply an oversight on the AP's part. I'm sure if they realized it was relevant, they'd post it.

They went so far as to describe exactly what job PFC Palin would be doing with his unit. They gave away the Iraqi province to which his unit is deploying. They gave the date he would deploy (which his irresponsible mother--the VP candidate--has done as well), where he would go first, where he would go second, and how long he would remain in Iraq.

For good measure, they threw in a photo of PFC Palin.

So let's analyze this now. Let's say I'm an insurgent and I want to take out the potential Vice President's son. I now know where to look for him. I know what unit he's in down to the company level. I know how to identify that unit (because I know how to use "the Google"). If I don't find him immediately, I know how long he'll be in the country--which guides my sense of urgency. And, of course, I know what he looks like.

The worst thing about this is the added danger in which the entire unit is now placed. The men of the unit now face a more precarious situation because there is the potential that the unit will be specifically targeted.

I know everyone in the media is giddy over this deal, but those covering the story need to shut their pieholes. That goes for Governor Palin, too--who should probably now be prohibited from holding a security clearance if--God forbid--she gets elected.
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