In LasVegas, videographer Matt Toplikar captured footage of McCain/Palin supporters as they came out from a rally featuring an appearance by Sarah Palin.

One camouflage-capped fellow captures the spirit of the event:

Obama wins, I'm gonna move to Alaska.

... Haven't you ever heard that the United States is gonna be taken down from within? What better way to get taken down from within than haveing the President of the United States be the one that's going to do it?

It seems they became especially aggravated when they encountered anti-McCain protesters outside. The same Alaska-bound supporter started leading a chant in front of them:

Vote McCain, Not Hussein!

Then there's the Pam Atlas wannabee:

This country needs to wake up! Obama is dangerous! This man is a tyrant to this country. I mean, he has connections to Arabs! His education was paid for by Arabs! He's an abomination.

And of course, the obligatory racist:

Don't be afraid of me! Be afraid of Obama! Obama bin Laden, that's what you should be afraid of!

... Yes, I am a racist. If you consider me a racist, well [unintelligible]. Those Arabs are dirtbags. They're dirty people, they hate Americans, they hate my kids, they hate my grandkids. And people like him [points to another supporter], more power to them.

McCain and Palin have somewhat ratcheted back their rhetoric, but the fuse has been lit.

Ari observes that Sarah Palin refused to acknowledge the existence of right-wing domestic terrorists in her NBC interview that aired last night:

Brian Williams: Back to the notion of terrorists and terrorism, this word has come up in relation to Mr. Ayers -- hanging out with terrorist – domestic terrorists. It is said that it gives it a vaguely post uh 9-11 hint, using that word, that we don’t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the ‘60’s terrorists, under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under the definition?

Sarah Palin: There is no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was um one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon -- that is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or um facilities, that uh, it would be unacceptable -- I don’t know if you could use the word terrorist, but its unacceptable and it would not be condoned of course on our watch. I don’t know if what you are asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that.

Williams: I’m just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers? Protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails, were thrown? People died.

Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

Well, just in case Mrs. Palin forgot, there was a running spate of domestic terrorism in the United States in the 1990s created by the far-right "Patriot" movement, much of it revolving around abortion and hatred of the federal government.

The signature event, of course, was the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. But that was hardly the end of it. Indeed, by the end of 1999, we were able to document over 40 such cases -- many of which were nipped in the bud before they reached fruition. Some were not.

It seems Palin needs a refresher course. The Jed Report video above mentions two abortion-clinic shooters, Paul Hill and Michael Griffin, who were among the murderous terrorists who inspired the federal law that protects abortion providers -- a law John McCain twice voted against.

But that was hardly all. Below, a rundown of other significant domestic terrorists:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (354)

PLAY (218)

To hear Brian Williams and Chuck Todd talk, as they did last night on Hardball, you'd think things were perhaps not so peachy these days over at Camp McCain, after they spent the afternoon interviewing John McCain and Sarah Palin together:

Well, Chris, and this something that I -- I wouldn't blame Brian for not wanting to say this, but -- there was a tenseness between -- first of all, between the two -- there's no chemistry. I couldn't see chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. It was -- I felt as if we grabbed two people and said, 'Here, sit next to each other, we're going to conduct an interview.'

There wasn't -- they're not -- you know, they're not just ... comfortable with each other, uh, yet. The other thing about it is that you can tell they know that they're losing. They just have -- there's an intensity there, they're drained, the entire campaign staff is drained. The two candidates are guarded, they seem on edge. It's not as if they were rude or anything, it's not as if they weren't trying to be forthcoming, it's just, they seemed -- it's a negative intensity. I don't know how else to describe it.

But you'll see, when you see the two of them together, the chemistry's not all there. You do wonder, is John McCain starting to blame her for things, blaming himself? Is she blaming him? You just wonder what's going on inside their heads. Are they upset with how the other has treated them, and is that why her numbers are low? But whatever it is, it's a negative vibe that you get in that room.

This happens to echo the recent New Yorker piece (which Todd in fact cites a little later in the discussion), which described how much McCain wanted to name his favorite fellow Mavericky Senator, Holy Joe Lieberman himself, and as many of us suspected, strongly preferred Joe as his running mate:

By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (341)

PLAY (1244)

It must really suck to be a conservative blowhard these days. Especially when stuck defending Sarah Palin's inanities, such as her cheerily informing us that as vice president she'd be "in charge of the Senate." Obviously, Buchanan was having very little fun yesterday on Hardball.

And when you have someone like Mark Green reminding the public that Palin has her own extremist pandering -- to the Alaskan Independence Party -- lurking in her background, well, I can imagine most of the right-wing talking heads with any brains capable of exploding just wind up looking for a nice corner they can go hide in.

[H/t to Heather for the video.]

The video from that Sarah Palin rally in Ohio last week probably said it all -- that not only are racists herding in John McCain's direction, but that previously obscured racism among mainstream conservatives is now bubbling up at an increasing rate.

A New York Observer report from Florida tells a similar kind of story:

“I don’t believe these polls,” said America Blanca, a 44-year-old small business owner from Miami who wore a red dress and was visibly pumped up by the rally. “Not one of them. Because it’s the kids answering the polls on the computers. Their parents are not home and they are answering and they will not be voting. I think if he is losing, it is only by a little spread. Very little.” She held the tip of her pointer finger about two inches from the tip of her thumb.

Asked if her business made more than $250,000 a year, the cap under which Obama has proposed cutting taxes, she said it did. Told about Obama’s proposal, she answered, “I don’t give a shit. I will never vote for a black man.”

I half-expected to hear the same thing from "Joe the Plumber" last week when it was pointed out to him that he would actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan.

It's clear that the campaign to defeat Barack Obama -- which is what the McCain campaign has rapidly devolved into, ever since it became self-evident that McCain himself couldn't give us a single good reason to vote for him, beyond his moose-in-the-headlights running mate -- is in fact creating an environment in which these kinds of sentiments not only are encouraged, but are now considered normal.

Sure enough, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are reporting that they're making big inroads these days:

Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement, says the government classifies his group as a domestic group of interest, not domestic terrorists. The FBI would not comment.

Interest in the group "has really spiked up," says Schoep, who would not say by how much.

"Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that's how movements like ours gain a foothold," he says. "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people.

"And now this immigrant thing in the past couple of years has been the biggest boon to us," Schoep says. "The immigration issue is the biggest problem we're facing because it's changing the face of our country. We see stuff in English and Spanish. … They are turning our country into a Third World ghetto."

Continue reading »

Sarah Palin breaks with John McCain, telling CBN's David Brody that she would support a "Federal Marriage Amendment" effectively banning gay marriage:

I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

This is how the McCain campaign is using Palin to keep the religious right on board even as he stages a supposedly "moderate" agenda in pursuit of suburban votes. Palin's sending a signal to the Dobson faction that was responsible for her ascension that their agenda is in play.

When I was in Wasilla a couple of weeks ago I had dinner one night with the crew from The Wasilla Project, which has been busy producing first-rate videos about Sarah Palin's background in her Alaska hometown.

The most recent is especially damning:

After 8 years of a Republican White House, there still seems to be a reality distortion field around the concept of “Fiscal Conservative”. Governor Palin presents herself as a fiscal conservative who has a record of helping taxpayers in her state. The reality has often been quite different.

It’s surprising that someone who came into office as mayor to cut wasteful spending and lower property taxes, actually left office with Wasilla over $20 million in debt, when records show that she entered office with city debt at one million or less.

Some $14-15 million of that debt was due to a hockey rink she built while in office, land for which Wasilla negotiated the purchase for $145,000. They eventually paid out nearly $1.5 million for the land, not counting legal fees, due to Palin moving forward on the project before the city had clear title to the land. This echoes in significant ways Palin’s later negotiations as governor on the Alaskan pipeline, where she committed $500 million in taxpayer money, without assurances that a Canadian company would even build the pipeline.

As the economy worsens in the United States, markets around the world are crashing and people are losing their homes and pensions, it’s irresponsible not to question the economic positions and records of the candidates. In the case of Palin, her record has been extremely troubling and reflects part of the reason that she has lost credibility with so many Alaskans in recent weeks.

It's true that the current economic mess was a bipartisan affair -- Democrats participated almost as eagerly as Republicans in the whole deregulation of the financial sector that occurred in 1997-2006, which was the root of this disaster. But regardless of party, the entire philosophy behind deregulation was conservatism -- it's been one of its economic cornerstones.

So this economic disaster is best understood as a failure of conservatism generally. And no one better exemplifies the misbegotten nature of conservative governance -- particularly in the way it bankrupts the public while claiming to be "responsible" -- than Sarah Palin.

It was kind of strange, dintcha think, that John McCain came to the defense of his supporters last night after Barack Obama pointed out that people at McCain/Palin rallies were shouting out "terrorist" and "kill him!" in reference to Obama.

Now an Al Jazeera camera crew caught the honest sentiments of McCain/Palin supporters at an Ohio rally:

“I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?”

“When you got a Negra running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer.”

“He seems like a sheep - or a wolf in sheep’s clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin - she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.”

“He’s related to a known terrorist, for one.”

“He is friends with a terrorist of this country!”

“He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama.”

“Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody’s still kinda - a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but… I dunno, it’s just kinda… a little unnerving.”

“Obama and his wife, I’m concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that.”

“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash… because we’re not!”

Yep, McCain must be so proud.

The rest of us, well ... let's just say those polls should tell the story.

[H/t to Ta-Nehisi Coates, via Spencer Ackerman. Transcript via Prose Before Hos.]

UPDATE: Transcript altered to reflect, as some commenters point out, that the man in the video did not use the actual "N word."

While Max Blumenthal was up in Alaska gathering information on Sarah Palin's background, he managed to sit down and interview two of the African-American community leaders in Anchorage who'd had dealings with Palin as governor: Gwen Alexander, the president of the African-American Historical Society of Alaska, and Bishop Dave Thomas, a distinguished black pastor from Anchorage.

As you can see, Palin made clear to them through her refusal to participate in the state's traditional Juneteenth celebration, as well as her refusal to work on their concerns about minority hiring for the gas-pipeline commission and on her staff, that race relations are pretty low on her priority list.

Much of this was reported a few weeks ago by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, but the impact of Palin's behavior comes home here: It's clear that the African American community in Alaska feels thoroughly disenfranchised.

Then there was the news today that Palin's rural adviser has quit because of the governor's shoddy treatment of Alaska Natives. Among other items: Palin appointed a white woman to a game-board seat traditionally held by a Native.

What exactly is Palin's problem with minorities? She's happy to trot them out for photo ops, but her actions on the ground speak much louder.

UPDATE: (Nicole) Uh oh. Palin Advisor quits, citing race problems...this time with the native Alaskan population.

DOWNLOAD (499)

PLAY (664)

I wanted to offer a little deeper detail on the report in Salon that Max Blumenthal and I put together on Sarah Palin's radical-right friends in Wasilla and the extent to which they worked together -- partly because some of the details reveal a good deal about Palin's approach to governance.

As the story explains, when Palin was elected mayor in 1996, one of her first acts was to attempt to fill her former city council seat by appointing one of the leaders of the town's Bircherite faction, Steve Stoll. She was blocked in that effort by a single vote from former councilman Nick Carney.

Here's a PDF of the minutes from that meeting. What's particularly noteworthy is that Palin was on the verge of ramming the appointment through over Carney's head.

The situation was this: Wasilla's city council comprises six seats. Two of those had been vacated by the just-finished election -- Palin into the mayorship, and another councilman who'd been elected to the Mat-Su Borough Council. The city charter requires all votes to be a majority (that is, 4-2, 4-1, 5-1, 5-0, or 6-0) in order for a measure to pass, including council-seat appointments. Since there was no quorum of the council available, any of these seats had to be approved 4-0 by those council members remaining.

So when Carney refused to put Stoll on the council, it made the vote 3-1. The council minutes tell us that the situation lingered for a week, for a follow-up meeting on Oct. 21, and when they came back, Palin announced that she had some legal opinions saying she could proceed despite Carney's opposition:

Mayor Palin following consultation with several attorneys suggested that since there appeared to be an impasse, that Steve Stoll and Mrs. Dianne Keller be appointed to the vacant council seats based on a 3 to 1 vote previously made by the council.

Evidently, much wrangling then ensued, during which Palin ultimately backed down and nominated a compromise candidate, Darlene Langill, who was appointed to the seat.

Continue reading »