But buried in these charges of socialism, Diuguid, the Star's in-house racial cryptographer, finds clear racist intent. He explains that "J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality." Indeed, "freedom fighters" like "W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization [and] Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice..."
This is a sort of reverse McCarthyism; the presumption that because an activist was denounced as a 'socialist' he was obviously no such thing. But here Diuguid is, whether out of luck or ignorance, partially correct. Du Bois and Robeson were most certainly not socialists—they were Stalinists.
Footage of John McCain being interviewed as a bedridden prisoner during the Vietnam War has been released by the French national archive.
The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.
It's unfortunate for McCain that Barack Obama famously has never smoked anything in his life; not crack, not pot, not even a single cigarette. Oh, wait!
Apparently the media have been much more critical of John McCain's campaign than that of Barack Obama:
Media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama, a new study says.
Of course, the shocking part is that it's only three times as negative; I would have guessed ten times would be more like it. And for some more evidence, look at this ridiculous "Fact Check" by the Washington Post today:
Politicians routinely twist each other's quotes. Sometimes, all it takes to construct a false straw man argument is the addition of a single, seemingly inconsequential word to an otherwise accurate quote. Take the common, four-letter, word "just." Surreptitiously inserting the "just" word into a quote can transform a bland statement into a falsehood or a dangerous policy position. The sentence "He is just a guy in my neighborhood" has an altogether different meaning from "He is a guy in my neighborhood."
The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.
J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.
To help the McCain campaign, here are some other words that mean "black":
Liberal Communist Redistributionist Terrorist Democrat Inexperienced
In most parts of America, getting money back on taxes you haven't paid sounds a lot like welfare. Ah, say the Obama people, you forget: Even those who pay no income taxes pay payroll taxes for Social Security. Under the Obama plan, they say, these Americans would get an income tax credit up to $500 based on what they are paying into Social Security.
Just two little questions: If people are going to get a tax refund based on what they pay into Social Security, then we're not really talking about income tax relief, are we? And if what we're really talking about is payroll tax relief, doesn't that mean billions of dollars in lost revenue for a Social Security trust fund that is already badly underfinanced?
Revealing article by Stanley Kurtz, who has been doing the mainstream media's job for them in investigating Obama's past connections.
To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace; Steve Cobble, political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion; prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven, coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN; economist Juliet Schor; black historian Manning Marable; historian Howard Zinn; linguist Noam Chomsky; Todd Gitlin; and writers like Gloria Steinem and Barbara Ehrenreich. Socialist? Readers can draw their own conclusions. At one point, Sifry does describe the party’s goals as “social democratic.” In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.
Zinn, Chomsky and Ehrenreich? That's pretty far left.
