The McCain/Palin campaign might want to think twice before heading down that dangerous path toward guilt by association, as the candidates at the top of the Republican ticket have plenty of guilty associations of their own, some of which might even be fresh news to even the most attentive voters.
For example I had no idea about John McCain’s shady associations with the Iran Contra scandal until reading about it this morning in Politico, where former Tacoma News Tribune reporter Ken Vogel (one of the few ex-reporters around here to move up in the biz instead of moving out) sheds new light on McCain’s association with John Singlaub and the US Council for World Freedom.
Since the mid-1980s, there’s been almost no attention paid to John McCain’s long-ago association with a controversial group implicated in a secretive plot to supply arms to Nicaraguan militia groups during the Iran-Contra affair.
But now, with the Republican presidential candidate stepping up his negative blitz against Democratic opponent Barack Obama, some Democrats are hoping that the group – the U.S. Council for World Freedom, and its founder, John Singlaub – will become for McCain what Bill Ayers has become for Obama: a fleeting past association used as ammunition for political broadsides.
[…] “This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign,” Democratic strategist Paul Begala said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group.”
McCain later claimed that he “disassociated himself” from the group after learning of its secret program to arm the Contras, circumventing a Congressional ban on aiding the rebels, but he never informed authorities of these illegal activities. And he never seemed too bothered by the group’s known anti-Semitic leanings.
Singlaub founded the council in Phoenix in November, 1981, as the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League, which he also helped run for a time. The league billed itself as a supporter of “pro-Democratic resistance movements fighting communist totalitarianism.” But the Anti-Defamation League in 1981 alleged that the anti-Communist league also had had “increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact, for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”
An aide to McCain told Politico that “McCain has a long and consistent and strong record on issues involving Israel and he would never be associated with anything that was anti-Semitic in any way,” but, as Sarah Palin’s church has proven, being pro-Israel and pro-Jew are not the same thing.
After being sparked by a brief comment Sunday from Democratic strategist Paul Begala on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Singlaub story is quickly gaining some media traction on a path McCain may soon regret choosing.
WaPo …
McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
Philadelphia Daily News
http://www.philly.com/philly/b.....riend.html
Re #2
http://www.boston.com/news/pol.....felon.html
@1
Opps-didn’t see Goldy’s post.
http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/51016/
“McCain-Palin: Lies We Want You To Believe In”
People with character don’t lie on a daily basis and expect to be rewarded for it. People with honor don’t consort with criminals and traitors (Palin’s secessionist party) and expect us to believe their denials. John McCain has left behind any shred of character, honor, and decency in the course of this campaign. His loss of the election will be well-deserved because it is accompanied by the loss of his reputation.
I don’t see how Palin can say she’s not associated with the Salem Witch Trials. We don’t need that sort of thing to happen in our country again. Halloween should be renamed “Sarah Palin Day” in memory of the innocent people her friends hanged at Salem.
Kenya Has An Immigration Problem Too
“NAIROBI, Kenya (Oct. 7) – The American author of a … book attacking Barack Obama is being detained in Kenya because he does not have a work permit, a senior immigration official said Tuesday.
“Jerome Corsi … was being held at immigration headquarters in Nairobi after police picked him up …. Corsi did not have a temporary work permit needed to conduct business in Kenya.
“According to a statement announcing Corsi’s visit, he arrived … at the invitation of Christian missionaries …. Corsi was planning to file daily dispatches all week, the statement said.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Note: Corsi co-authored the 2004 smear book against John Kerry titled “Unfit To Command”.
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I hope they keep his ass in jail until after the election! That’s what he gets for working without a green card! ha ha ha ha
@1 Republicans hate reporters almost as much as they hate the Bill of Rights.
@7 I used to respect John McCain but I’ll never respect him again. He lowered himself into a gutter too deep to ever crawl out of in this campaign.
You know, it’s not that Sarah Palin is a tax cheat, fakes her phony populist accent, makes her family a publicly-funded spectacle at political events (not that WE can talk about them), encourages hatred against Obama (or at best fails to ever DIScourage it), has a bigger “pastor problem” than Obama ever could have, is associated with America-hating secessionists, abuses the powers of her various offices to the point where she is under one or more active criminal ethics investigations, is documented in the newly-credible National Enquirer as cheating on her husband, thinks that Dick Cheney’s “flexibility” with the powers of the vice-presidency is a great thing, refuses to answer whether she thinks the vice-president is part of the executive branch, won’t hold a press conference, lies about her opponents’ positions and statements…..
oh, well I guess it really IS pretty much those things….
An anecdote: I just went to my local grocery store (I’ve been going there for 12 years and know everyone) and was chatting with a checker
when she lowered her voice and told me about a guy who came through her line yesterday. He told this “joke:” Obama had died and was at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asked him why he was there and Obama replied “I got elected.”
John McCain and Sarah Palin are making this type of talk acceptable.
Man shot three times in street by racist gunman – for wearing Barack Obama T-shirt
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:01 PM on 07th October 200
A man told today how he was shot three times in a London street for wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt.
Dube Egwuatu was buying a mobile telephone top-up card in an off-licence when the gunman confronted him and glared at the top, which carries an image of the Democrat US presidential candidate underneath the legend ‘Believe’.
The man then launched into a tirade of racist slurs, shouting ‘I f***ing hate n*****s’ and urging 36-year-old Mr Egwuatu to leave the shop with him.
Dube Egwuato was racially attacked
Respect: Dube Egwuatu wearing the Obama T-shirt that provoked a racist attack
The man then left the shop but when Mr Egwuatu re-emerged, the attacker was waiting for him in broad daylight with a threatening-looking dog and holding a gun behind his back.
Realising what had sparked the increasingly violent assault, the terrified Mr Egwuatu zipped up his jacket to cover the image of Mr Obama and walked to his car.
But the shaven-headed man, who was white, followed Mr Egwuatu and after pulling open the passenger door pointed the gun at him.
After pleading with the man to leave him alone, the married former street warden put the keys in the ignition and turned the engine on.
The attacker then fired the gas-powered ball-bearing pistol three times, hitting the civil servant in the face, hand and shoulder.
Fearing for his life and bleeding heavily, Mr Egwuatu raced away in his car and found somewhere safe to call for help.
He was taken to hospital and later sent to have a piece of metal removed from his jaw.
Mr Egwuatu, a data analyst with Croydon Council, said: ‘The venom in his voice was frightening.
‘He was telling me that he was going to kill me.
‘I couldn’t believe it was happening – and just because I was wearing an Obama T-shirt. He was trying to make me walk somewhere quieter, saying: ‘I’ve got something for you,’ and ‘I’m going to kill you.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....l?ITO=1490
Hillary Clinton outpolls Sarah Palin among women by 61% to 27%. Women also think Clinton is a better mother than Palin, by a margin of 35% to 24%. Source: Daily News.
The stock market is fluctuating wildly this morning; one minute it’s down 350 points, the next minute it’s down 240 points.
16 RR
I’m afraid that these wild swings portend a big crash.
Hey wingnuts here’s a Republican that “palled around with a terrorist”:
http://www.npr.org/templates/s.....d=95442902
Ok let’s see you do that guilt by association on Diana Nelson.
Funny, I forgot completley about Sarah Palin approving of her city requiring rape victims to pay hundreds of dollars for the rape-evidence kits the police used, a practice that no doubt discouraged women from reporting rape in a state with twice the national average of this crime, and a practice so inhumane that the legislature passed a law SPECIFICALLY to force Wasilla (and a handful of other communities) to halt the practice.
LINK Case Name Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank Fair Housing/Lending/Insurance Docket / Court 94 C 4094 ( N.D. Ill. ) FH-IL-0011 State/Territory Illinois Case Summary Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982.
Who did this?
Obama, Barack H. (Illinois) FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000
@ 20
Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994
Pathetic.
Puddy,
Read this. Note how the author doesn’t merely assert facts. He backs up each one of them with links. Note, also, that he doesn’t leave out important facts. This is how one constructs a cogent argument, and why, as you continue to parrot arguments that have been debunked in this way, you remain the inveterate fool that you are.
And this:
Is worth a thousand of your inane attempts at coherence.
Yesterday I caught Palin in the background while working in the kitchen. By the tone of her voice and the crowd responses – even without hearing any words – broutht me back to times in the 50s when people who had “discovered” the Holocaust would ask me to translate Hitler’s speeches – even at parties. The similarity between those speeches and Palen’s terrifies me. I want Joe Biden to get back into action as soon as he can. This must not go unchecked!