Sep 28, 2008 04:30 AM
http://www.thestar.com/News/USElection/article/507738#
Washington Bureau
OXFORD, Miss.–Elizabeth Corsetto was returning from Saturday errands last weekend when she wheeled into her suburban New Jersey driveway and saw what she thought was a local newspaper wrapped in plastic laying on the pavement.
When she stooped to retrieve it, however, she saw doctored photos of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, including one that made him look like Osama bin Laden, asking whether she really wanted a black president.
The flyer went on to link black-ruled nations to instability, violence and high HIV infection rates.
On a late summer afternoon in a largely white, largely Republican suburb, Corsetto had unwittingly entered a dark side of this presidential campaign, a world just barely under the radar where race, religion and age – the trio of taboos – are fair game.
Some of the ads, pamphlets, bumper stickers and other paraphernalia are the work of fringe groups, which are operating more openly as the Nov. 4 election day approaches.
Others are the work of political action committees working apart from, but in support of Obama or his Republican rival, John McCain.
Some of the nastier ads by the campaigns themselves are garnering disproportionate publicity, or so-called "free media," because they are being highlighted in the mainstream media even if they are only released on the Internet or in limited play in targeted markets.
Corsetto said she found the flyer ridiculous and she called the police.
Some of her neighbours, she said, were "sickened" by what had been dropped in front of their homes.
"I believe in free speech," she said. "If you have something to say, stand up and make your point and let's debate it.
"Don't throw your crap anonymously at the end of my driveway."
The flyers were the work of something called the League of American Patriots, an organization based in nearby Butler, N.J.
On its website, it says it is committed to halting the "rapid demographic decline of the European peoples in our homeland," and calls on Canada and Australia to similarly reverse the tide of non-whites entering their country. Calls to a number listed on the website were not immediately returned.
At a Christian college in Oregon last week, a life-size cut-out of Obama was found hanging on a tree, attached by fishing wire, decrying a minority program at the school.
The FBI has opened a preliminary investigation to determine if a federal law has been violated and a shocked George Fox University president Robin Baker wrote a letter of apology to Obama, inviting him to campus to speak.
In predominantly white Macomb County in Michigan, a group called Freedom's Defense Fund, a group with links to Jerome Corsi, the author of an anti-Obama book, Obama Nation, are running ads linking Obama to disgraced former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Both ads use the tag line, "Do you know who Barack Obama's friends are?"
"Our donors are demanding that we be strategically relevant in this campaign," fund spokesperson Todd Zirkle said in a statement.
"We will stay active in Macomb County, as we believe it critical to the Michigan outcome. Michigan will be decisive to the national result."
In recent months, more and more Internet babble has tagged Obama as the Antichrist and an online store called the Red State Shop is cashing in with T-shirts sporting a stylized O with the horns of the devil sprouting from the letter.
Obama, The Anti-Christ mugs sell for $16.99, a pack of 48 Obama, The Anti-Christ lapel stickers for $24.99. It also sells Hamas (hearts) Obama, "Change We Can Bleed In," stickers for $2.99 or Ob(H)ama(S) for the same price.
Attacks on McCain generally centre around his temperament and age. An organization called Democracy for America, headed by James Dean, the brother of Democratic National Committee chair and group founder Howard Dean, has aired an ad from a former prisoner of war detained in North Vietnam with McCain, questioning his temperament.
An ad airing yesterday on MSNBC takes aim at his age and health.
"John McCain is 72 years old and had cancer four times," the ad's text says over an image of McCain with the left side of his face bandaged after surgery in 2000. "Why won't McCain release his medical records?" Some networks refused to run the ad. Obama has not released his medical records.
_______________________________________________
I read a posting on Craigslist from a pensioner living in a retirement home.
For whatever reasom he deduced he'd be much better off ($50,000.00) under Obama but when he tried to convince the other retirees they all said "We're never going to vote for that N word Muslim"
http://www.thestar.com/News/USElection/article/507738#
Washington Bureau
OXFORD, Miss.–Elizabeth Corsetto was returning from Saturday errands last weekend when she wheeled into her suburban New Jersey driveway and saw what she thought was a local newspaper wrapped in plastic laying on the pavement.
When she stooped to retrieve it, however, she saw doctored photos of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, including one that made him look like Osama bin Laden, asking whether she really wanted a black president.
The flyer went on to link black-ruled nations to instability, violence and high HIV infection rates.
On a late summer afternoon in a largely white, largely Republican suburb, Corsetto had unwittingly entered a dark side of this presidential campaign, a world just barely under the radar where race, religion and age – the trio of taboos – are fair game.
Some of the ads, pamphlets, bumper stickers and other paraphernalia are the work of fringe groups, which are operating more openly as the Nov. 4 election day approaches.
Others are the work of political action committees working apart from, but in support of Obama or his Republican rival, John McCain.
Some of the nastier ads by the campaigns themselves are garnering disproportionate publicity, or so-called "free media," because they are being highlighted in the mainstream media even if they are only released on the Internet or in limited play in targeted markets.
Corsetto said she found the flyer ridiculous and she called the police.
Some of her neighbours, she said, were "sickened" by what had been dropped in front of their homes.
"I believe in free speech," she said. "If you have something to say, stand up and make your point and let's debate it.
"Don't throw your crap anonymously at the end of my driveway."
The flyers were the work of something called the League of American Patriots, an organization based in nearby Butler, N.J.
On its website, it says it is committed to halting the "rapid demographic decline of the European peoples in our homeland," and calls on Canada and Australia to similarly reverse the tide of non-whites entering their country. Calls to a number listed on the website were not immediately returned.
At a Christian college in Oregon last week, a life-size cut-out of Obama was found hanging on a tree, attached by fishing wire, decrying a minority program at the school.
The FBI has opened a preliminary investigation to determine if a federal law has been violated and a shocked George Fox University president Robin Baker wrote a letter of apology to Obama, inviting him to campus to speak.
In predominantly white Macomb County in Michigan, a group called Freedom's Defense Fund, a group with links to Jerome Corsi, the author of an anti-Obama book, Obama Nation, are running ads linking Obama to disgraced former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Both ads use the tag line, "Do you know who Barack Obama's friends are?"
"Our donors are demanding that we be strategically relevant in this campaign," fund spokesperson Todd Zirkle said in a statement.
"We will stay active in Macomb County, as we believe it critical to the Michigan outcome. Michigan will be decisive to the national result."
In recent months, more and more Internet babble has tagged Obama as the Antichrist and an online store called the Red State Shop is cashing in with T-shirts sporting a stylized O with the horns of the devil sprouting from the letter.
Obama, The Anti-Christ mugs sell for $16.99, a pack of 48 Obama, The Anti-Christ lapel stickers for $24.99. It also sells Hamas (hearts) Obama, "Change We Can Bleed In," stickers for $2.99 or Ob(H)ama(S) for the same price.
Attacks on McCain generally centre around his temperament and age. An organization called Democracy for America, headed by James Dean, the brother of Democratic National Committee chair and group founder Howard Dean, has aired an ad from a former prisoner of war detained in North Vietnam with McCain, questioning his temperament.
An ad airing yesterday on MSNBC takes aim at his age and health.
"John McCain is 72 years old and had cancer four times," the ad's text says over an image of McCain with the left side of his face bandaged after surgery in 2000. "Why won't McCain release his medical records?" Some networks refused to run the ad. Obama has not released his medical records.
_______________________________________________
I read a posting on Craigslist from a pensioner living in a retirement home.
For whatever reasom he deduced he'd be much better off ($50,000.00) under Obama but when he tried to convince the other retirees they all said "We're never going to vote for that N word Muslim"