So Fox News evidently decided to pore through our millions of user-created pages on My.BarackObama.com and put a screenshot of inflammatory content on the front page of FoxNews.com.
You see, more than 700,000 people have created accounts on the system. You can create one right now if you choose, in about a minute — anyone can.
Now, from time to time people get up to no good — creating fake profiles (like one for Sean Hannity created today), or posting profane or inappropriate content. When they do, the community reports the offending content and if it violates our terms of service it is removed (as the Sean Hannity profile was).
My.BarackObama.com has been at the core of our bottom-up organizing strategy. The tools available have been put to work by a community of supporters that is bigger and more powerful than anything presidential politics has ever seen.
Evidently, Fox News didn’t think it was a big deal that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans are participating in the democratic process creating groups and local events in communities all across the country.
But they did think it was a big deal that one random person on the Internet, without the knowledge of the Obama campaign, posted a profile in the system with the image of the New Black Panther Party on it.
When we were alerted of the existence of this page, we pulled it down. Yet even after we pulled the page, Fox News continues to disingenuously and prominently feature this “story” on their homepage.
From a purely strategic standpoint, it would have been wiser for Obama to distance himself from the firey pastor at some earlier stage in the development of his political ambition. The entire situation has provided the right wingers with the Swift Boat narrative of 2008 and it’s not going to go away. Sean Hannity, who is exceedingly proud of the fact that he was the first major media figure to provide the Swifties with a platform in ‘04, continues to replay the pastor’s incendiary sound bites a couple dozen times each hour, and if that’s not enough, to draw further guilt by association — When is someone going to ask Barack Obama if he’s ever met with Louis Farrakhan?, followed by an incendiary Farrakhan sound clip.
Hannity has actually been asking that last question for at least a month. As a major media figure with a nationally syndicated radio program and an hour long show on one of the biggest cable news networks, you’d think that Sean could just ring up the Obama campaign and ask the question himself — my guess is someone would get back to him with an answer within the hour. But then he couldn’t keep mentioning Louis Farrakhan and Barack Obama in the same sentence, over and over again, day after day. Scary scary black scary.
The strategy is simple, as is appropriate to the simple minds to which it is intended to play: continue the guilt-by-association until voters cannot hear Obama’s name without subconsciously visualizing him peering out a window with a carbine rifle in his hand. (Another example: buried somewhere in the public portions of Obama’s website there is a link to the New Black Panther party, which prompts Hannity to ask repeatedly and with great concern, Why is Barack Obama linking to the New Black Panther party?, as if the link is contained within a giant flashing banner ad at the top of Obama’s home page, personally sanctioned by the candidate himself.)
Add to this the rest of Hannity’s litany — Obama’s shocking refusal to, um, wear a flag pin, and his wife’s blatant anti-Americanism, as expressed in a poorly-worded remark at some event somewhere — and you’ve got trouble with a capital B-L-A-C-K.
Here’s the thing: Hannity’s a front line combatant in the propaganda wars, and an utterly reliable harbinger of whatever achingly stupid right wing tangent will occupy our political discourse in the months ahead. Occasionally someone will send me an email suggesting that there’s no point in paying attention to what the radio nutjobs are talking about, as if they have no influence, everybody already knows they’re nutjobs, so why bother. To which I can only reply, tell it to President John Kerry.
Spencer Ackerman on Jeffrey Goldberg and Stephen Hayes
Spencer Ackerman has written an excellent look back for the Washington Independent at the role of Jeffrey Goldberg and Stephen Hayes in taking the U.S. to war, and their unrepentant behavior since. Criticizing fellow journalists and journalistic institutions is rarely a good career move, and Ackerman deserves credit for doing it.
BUT THERE’S ONE GLARING FLAW: The article fails to mention this.
No Evidence For Administration’s Claim On U.S.-Iraqi Declaration Of Principles
There’s been conflict between Congress and the Bush administration in the past several months over the Declaration of Principles Bush and Maliki signed last November. The Declaration of Principles appears to commit the U.S. to defending Iraq from both internal and external threats. Such commitments have previously only been made by treaties, which require Senate approval.
Last Thursday the Politico reported that a “senior administration official” claimed this was all a misunderstanding stemming from an Arabic-to-English translation of the Declaration of Principles. I’ve written a new piece for Democrats.com examining whether there’s any evidence for this. The answer appears to be no.
The foolishness of this John McCain “gaffe”, to use the media’s favorite understatement, should terrify anyone who actually thinks the commander-in-chief should have a basic understanding of the wars we’re fighting :
Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.
He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”
Wow. If foreign policy is supposed to be the area in which McCain is an expert, I’m terrified of what he might do to the economy.
Also, I should point out that Bob Harris passed the “commander-in-chief test” five years ago. Maybe if John McCain spent less time kissing the press’ asses and more time studying, he’d understand why the Iraq war is a colossal clusterfuck. More importantly, he might start to understand why the “surge” isn’t “working”.
Reports in India of a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary in the sky have led about 50 people to blind themselves by staring at the sun.
The visions are said to appear over the former home of a hotel owner in the Kottayam area in southeast India, The Daily Telegraph reported. One hospital in the district reported 48 patients had been admitted with burned retinas since last week, the British newspaper reported.
NESS CITY, Kan. - A man should be charged for allowing his girlfriend to sit on their toilet so long that her body became stuck to the seat, the sheriff said Thursday.
Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple was among authorities who discovered the woman last month living in the bathroom of a mobile home she shared with her boyfriend, Kory McFarren.
“The house was cluttered but not in shambles,” he said. “The smell was overpowering — a terrible smell about the house, obviously coming from where she was at.”
McFarren, 36, told police his girlfriend, Pam Babcock, 35, had a phobia about leaving the bathroom and may not have left the bathroom in two years, although he’s unsure how long she was in there.
He said during that time, he brought her food, water, and clean clothes.
“The only thing I am guilty of is I didn’t get her help sooner,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday.
