(Photo by Mark Lyons for The New York Times) On a visit to her husband’s campaign office in Akron, Michelle Obama made calls to undecided voters, mixing talk about policy with chitchat about Ohio, laughter about her life in politics and tidbits about her family.
Not so long ago, when Karl Rove was still dreaming of a permanent Republican majority based on his “50 percent plus one” model for fighting and winning elections, 2008 was shaping up as possibly the dirtiest election season yet.
The plan was straightforward: to use every legislative and executive lever available to the GOP to suppress the votes of minorities, students, the poor, the transient and the elderly; and to denounce any attempt by the other side to level the playing field as a monstrous exercise in systemic voter fraud.
A lot of pieces of that plan are still in place and could still pose a threat to the integrity of the November 4 elections if any one of them–a crucial Senate race, say, if not also the race for the presidency–turns out to be remotely close.
An increasingly desperate Republican attack machine has recently identified the community organizing group ACORN as Public Enemy Number One. Among ACORN’s alleged crimes, perhaps the most serious is that it caused, nearly single-handedly, the world’s financial crisis. That’s the fantasy. In the reality-based world, it was ACORN that sounded the alarm about the exploitative lending practices that led to the current mortgage meltdown and financial crisis.
Since the 1970s ACORN, which has 400,000 low- and moderate-income “member families” in more than 100 cities in forty states, has been warning Congress to protect borrowers from the banking industry’s irresponsible, risky and predatory practices–subprime loans, racial discrimination (called “redlining”) and rip-off fees. ACORN has persistently called for stronger regulations on banks, private mortgage companies, mortgage brokers and rating agencies. For years, ACORN has alerted public officials that the industry was hoodwinking many families into taking out risky loans they couldn’t afford and whose fine print they couldn’t understand.
Now John McCain and his fellow conservatives are accusing ACORN of strong-arming Congress and big Wall Street banks into making subprime loans to poor families who couldn’t afford them, thus causing the economic disaster. McCain’s campaign is running a one-and-a-half-minute video that claims Barack Obama once worked for ACORN, repeats the accusation that ACORN is responsible for widespread voter registration fraud and accuses ACORN of “bullying banks, intimidation tactics, and disruption of business.” The ad claims that ACORN “forced banks to issue risky home loans–the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we’re in today.”
For months, the right-wing echo chamber–bloggers, columnists, editorial writers and TV and radio talk-show hosts–has pitched in with a well-orchestrated campaign to blame the mortgage crisis on ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), the 1977 anti-redlining law. In a September 27 editorial, the Wall Street Journal wrote that “ACORN has promoted laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which laid the foundation for the house of cards built out of subprime loans” and then falsely claimed the bailout bill would create a trust fund “pipeline” to fill ACORN’s coffers. On October 14 the Journal‘s lead editorial, Obama and ACORN, described ACORN as a “shady outfit” and accused the group of being “a major contributor to the subprime meltdown by pushing lenders to make home loans on easy terms, conducting ‘strikes’ against banks so they’d lower credit standards.”
While some states do allow voters to wear campaign clothing and buttons in the polling place, most states do not. Free speech issues aside, in order to avoid any confusion or delay on Election Day, we recommend that all voters avoid any potential hassles by choosing not to wear political attire to the polls. If you do wear political attire, be prepared to remove it or cover it up with a jacket or poncho if poll workers ask you to do so.
I have yet to hear of any significant problems with this during early voting. Maybe that’s because word is getting out. I hope so. But there could still be problems on Election Day.
Here’s one little thing you can do to help: bring a trash bag to the polls. Anyone who shows up wearing political attire in a state or county that prohibits political attire in the polling place can use the bag as an inexpensive poncho.
Mind you, I don’t think that anyone should have to vote wearing a trash bag. I think that restrictions on passive electioneering are, by and large, ridiculous. But they are what they are, and we should be prepared to deal with them until we can muster the political will to eliminate these stupid restrictions.
Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.
The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.
As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.
The attached video from the Daily Show is a hilarious must watch, but also annoying to see how we in Central Virginia are represented to the rest of the country by this woman. FYI- Jon Stewart attended William and Mary so he knows Central Virginia quite well himself. This woman hasn’t been paying attention and she’s living in the past just like the man she’s working for. Central Virginia, what she refers to as “Real Virginia” is changing and changing fast and she either didn’t get the memo or chooses to ignore it.
Pretending we are not trending blue must be getting harder and harder to say with a straight face no matter how much your paid, what with standing room only at Democratic events, a Dem Gov, a Dem Senator, and Mark Warner expected to win in a landslide Nov 4th. to round out the trifecta.
The icing on the cake was Obama’s visit to Richmond today, filling the Coliseum with 7,000 more outside as an overflow crowd. The city was frozen with gridlock and in my 15 years here I have never seen such electricity. Filled with “Real Virginians”, all locals,a real busy day in Richmond Virginia,the Capital of Virginia. Everybody looked pretty real to me, and really really blue……
Among the photographs taken by the photog Platon of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan was this striking one of Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. Gen. Colin Powell mentioned the photograph in denouncing the religious bias of people who were accusing Sen. Barack Obama of being a muslim.
This issue has bothered me all year long and everyone has acted disgracefully on the subject, even my candidate, Sen. Barack Obama.
“He’s a muslim,” people have said about him.
Obama, who has taken on all questions and issues with elan, somehow could not figure out how to handle this issue.
His response has basically been: “Who are you calling a muslim? I am a christian!”
The accusation of course rests on the premise that all muslims are terrorists, which is a disgraceful lie unbecoming of our great nation.
Americans who use someone’s supposed religion as a wedge issue should be ashamed of themselves. This is what I expected to hear from Obama. He has handled all other questions that have come his way this election season so expertly that I was mystified why the answer to this one eluded him, why he could not find the grace to not only beat back this slander but welcome muslims into his ever widening tent.
Leave it to Gen. Colin Powell in his endorsement statement to restore my faith in our nation. Gen. Powell found just the right words. First, he saidhe was troubled that Republicans (and some Democrats) have been spreading rumors that Obama is a Muslim.
Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.”
This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards—Purple Heart, Bronze Star—showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.
Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.
It was a tremendously clarifying statement and an affirmation of our diverse and pluralistic society, which has been the envy of the world. We largely don’t engage in ethnic cleansing despite our multitudes of peoples. We strive to build a tolerant society. Gen. Powell told us that even, especially, in the pursuit of the highest office in the land, we must remember the nation that we aspire to be.
Since the 1970s ACORN, which has 400,000 low- and moderate-income “member families” in more than 100 cities in forty states, has been warning Congress to protect borrowers from the banking industry’s irresponsible, risky and predatory practices–subprime loans, racial discrimination (called “redlining”) and rip-off fees. ACORN has persistently called for stronger regulations on banks, private mortgage companies, mortgage brokers and rating agencies. For years, ACORN has alerted public officials that the industry was hoodwinking many families into taking out risky loans they couldn’t afford and whose fine print they couldn’t understand.
Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.