What;s the difference between the "guilt by association" McCain attacks and McCarthyism?

Nothing, that I can see. I hope people can see through these tactics as a desperate attempt to take the focus off a campaign that is seriously out of touch with what America needs.

How ‘bout some details, @Judi? This is a pretty big swath of a target here. Doesn’t need to be exhaustive, just a couple of particulars to focus the discussion on.

I am not an expert on McCarthyism, but the little I know about it seems to be very similar to what McCain is doing. Aside from this being an election and not Senate hearings, is there anything at all that would distinguish these tactics from being any less reprehensible than the McCarthy tactics?

Yah, I guess I’m asking for exactly which “guilty associations” you have in mind? You mean the Bill Ayers thing? Or the Jeremiah Wright thing? Or the Fannie Mae contributions, for example?

Much of what made McCarthy’s tactics so foul was that a person could be completely innocent of any of the supposed “commie behaviors” and yet s/he was practically presumed guilty, was then blackballed, and subsequently lost his/her livelihood. In some cases, even went to jail.

Fast forward to today: McCain charges Obama of knowingly associating with what some believe to be influential members of organizations with extreme, radical goals. Obama’s associations (friends with Bill Ayers, attended Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years, accepting the 2nd largest amount of money from Fannie Mae) are all true.

Now, it’s obvious watching Fluther that McCain’s taking them further than many would agree to. But he’s trying to paint a picture of Obama using influences outside of his professional congressional career.

Is it illegal to hang out with Bill Ayers today? No. Is McCain stirring up a congressional committee to prevent Obama from finding work anywhere ever again? No. Is McCain using McCarthy-istic tactics to imprison Obama? No. Is McCain saying the Obama is culpable for any alleged activities Bill Ayers participated in or sanctioned 30+ years ago? No.

Is McCain making links & suppositions about Obama and his associates that many folks find questionable, ignorant at best and mean-spirited at worst? Yes. Is McCain trying to point out to that Obama might be sympathetic to the “radical” causes of his friends? Yes.

Am I defending McCain? No. Should we all continually work to educate ourselves with information presented from both sides? Yes.

“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist party?” Did you associate with known or unknown members of the party?

If so, you were guilty.

And yes, that’s exactly the same spurious link that McCain is making. Guilt by association. Unfortunately, far too many people fall for it.

Rob, It may not affect Obama’s livlihood, but if these tactics help win McCain the presidency then it will affect a lot of ours!
You know, I think you enjoy playing the devils advocate and you are good at it. I might even enjoy listening to anothers, skilled opposing point of view, if there was not so much at stake. The fact is, there are a lot of people who will be voting based on sound bites they hear on TV in between watching Dukes of Hazzard reruns and Jerry Springer and they will buy this shit! They won’t bother to research or even think about it long enough to consider that it may not mean anything. All they will remember when it comes time to vote is that Obama guy, oh ya he’s a terrorist, just look at his name!
There is sooooooo much dirt out there about McCain, really bad, evil stuff. Things that don’t take a giant stretch of the imagination to condemn him with, including things he wrote about himself in his own book! Even though I respect that the Obama campaign isn’t going there, I sometimes wonder if they actually shouldn’t hit back with some of this stuff. It’s so clear, McCains campaign is exercising the tactic, that if you can’t dazzle them with facts, then baffle em with the bullshit. They don’t have anything to say that is actually going to help anything that is going on right now, so they have desperately resorted to a 100% smear campaign at this point. Its really pathetic and would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.
Fast forward a half a century, same shit, different decade.

McCarthyism was a kind of witch hunt that totally destroyed its victims, costing a lot of people their careers, and made good citizens look at each other with fear and distrust. They were systematicaly rooting out people who were really perceived as enemies of the State, in cahoots with the enemy.

What MCCain and Obama are doing covers a lot less territory, and is pretty much par for the course for an election season. It’s the usual gimmick of political word-twisting and out-of-context-taking that is as blatantly obvious as it is cliché.

There is no guilt by association with Obama’s associations. It’s a question of judgement. Bill Ayers may not still be blowing stuff up, but he’s never apologized for his terroristic acts and the murder of innocent people that his organization committed, not to mention his comments right after 9/11 where he said that he believes that his organization ‘didn’t do enough’.

Obama’s association with Rev. Wright is questionable because he attended the man’s church for 20 years, while the ‘good’ Reverend spewed hate to his congregation. Rev. Wright’s hate filled sermons are more than just soundbites…It’s all over within the DVD’s which apparently aren’t for sale anymore.

Obama’s associations with the aforementioned does not make him a terrorist or a hater of whitey, it’s a question of how these individuals have influenced him. The company you keep does say a lot about your character. For example, If I were running for President, and you found out that I had been hanging out with, say someone high up in the Klan (yes, I consider the Klan a terrorist org.), wouldn’t you start to ask questions about my character? The same is true with Obama. I wouldn’t have as big a problem with Ayers if he had repented and paid his debt to society for the murder of innocent people, in fact, I’d think he’d be an asset since he knows how a terrorist thinks better than most people. But, Ayers has not done so yet.

Had these questionable associations belonged to McCain, you libs would be going for his jugular.

Now to answer the question…no, it’s not McCarthyism. If Obama loses the election, he will still have his job in the senate, and he’ll still have friends.

If Obama loses, we all lose, including the folks who voted for McCain.
@win There are plenty of questionable associations in McCains past. The information is out there, google it. The difference is that you are not hearing about it. The Obama campaign hasn’t resorted to the desperate, issue distracting, sleazy tactics that is all the McCain campaign seems to know how to do.

Not hearing anything negative about McCain? http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-aviator6–2008oct06,0,7633315.story

Dude was shot down, captured, tortured daily, every bone broken, refused early release/special treatment just b/c his dad was admiral, and now limps and can’t raise his arms above his shoulders. Then, “upon leaving the military, he moved to Arizona. His 17 military awards and decorations include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and Navy Commendation Medal, for actions before, during, and after his time as a POW.” [ Wikipedia ]

And now the L.A. Times wants to go back over 30 years to investigate why his training planes crashed on such-and-such dates.

@rob
You don’t think many of those awards were also because of who his daddy was? Anyone else wouldn’t have been allowed to fly over Vietnam after proving to be such a crappy arrogant pilot.

Oh. My. Gosh.

@Judi, actually, it’s not uncommon in our military for guys people to be passed over for medals because their daddy’s an admiral. Precisely to avoid any appearance of that kind of nepotism.

However McCain got captured and placed in the “Hanoi Hilton”, he acted with courage and honor in spite of murderous conditions.

Why on earth you or anyone else would want to attack that is beyond me.

You don’t have to vote for the man. You don’t have to like him. You don’t have to agree on any single point of policy. But you certainly should be willing to honor his service and sacrifice for this country. C’mon!

rob I said it was out there, google it. (Your link does not work btw.) Again, the difference is that it is not all the Obama campaign talks about. It has beome nearly the only thing that comes out of the McCain campaign. Its pathetic, desperate and speaks volumes about “character”, an issue near and dear to McCains heart. He was not the only POW and you left out a lot of details about his capture. Those details change the picture a great deal. He immediately let his status as an admirals son be known to his captors, because he knew what a valuable commodity that would make him. He was nearly last in his class in Annapolis and spent his military career using his admirals son status to get special assignments, position himself for awards and commendations, and take special leave. He was a terrible pilot, basically a screw off and underachiever. Not to mention the lack of respect he has for women, by his own admittance, he was a womanizer and carouser. He calls his wife vile names and sends her out on the stage to say that Obama did not vote for funds for her son in Iraq. That is enough for the McCain supporters, they won’t even acknowledge the fact that McCain voted the EXACT SAME WAY.We all appreciate what sacrifice he made for our country, but that in itself does NOT qualify him for the presidency. He does not have the tempermant, the compassion or the character to be President. If he gets elected, I guarantee, it will be more of the last eight years on steroids.

New link: http://bit.ly/IpDZO to the L.A. Times story.

I still think he was a crappy arrogant pilot. My husband is a pilot and when I heard about him yelling at an air traffic controller because he had to divert his plane to make room for traffic it made me sick. He is a man who thinks that by merit of his name he has some sort of privilege.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain
Yeah for him for going to Vietnam, and even for staying when he could have left. That said he does not get a free pass and is assumed a “good Pilot” or a “good leader” because he failed his mission and was tortured in a prisoner of war camp. I don’t like to hear about anyone having to deal with the brutality of a POW camp, but that is not the experience needed to run the nation. He wasn’t even a commander!

@rob, thanks for the correct link. :-)

@Soap, I not sure how to resolve for myself two very contradictory images.

1. Where you said that he “spent his military career using his admirals son status to get special assignments, position himself for awards and commendations”.

- vs. -

2. Where he specifically refused early release from captivity just because he was an admiral’s son.

—

So he’d take advantage of special status just to goof off when it didn’t matter… but not when he’s facing horrible torture daily?

If both statements are true… then all I can assume is that he grew up, matured, and learned from past mistakes.

I simply can’t know… except that I’ll tend to put more weight and importance on how he handled his most challenging trials moreso than what some might call the indiscretion of youth.

@Judi, again… disagree with his political record, position, skillset, education, leadership qualifications all you want. But besmirching his military service just to get in a point should be beyond any of us.

BTW, a pilot is an officer and they do have leadership responsibilities for several enlisted men. There’s more than just flying a plane involved in their day-to-day job. And, of course, simply being part of a highly refined command-and-control structure is educational in and of itself.

I agree that flying a plane, withstanding torture, winning a lot of medals does not alone qualify the man for president.

Here is a link (just info, I am not vouching)to read more about such things and reference Judi’s link above. Again, suffering is not the only thing that qualifies a person to be a leader.

Yes, there is more, but not enough more. And when hireing a president EVERYTHING is up for scrutney, including how he was able to continue flying after most pilots would have been grounded.

Why, @Judi… that last sentence might sound a little McCarthy-istic to the uninitiated. ツ

He has never seemed to get over his “indescretions of youth”. He promptly came home, was apalled by his wifes disfigured appearance after being in a horrible car crash and immediately began screwing around on her. He knew he would never reach the military status of his father , turned his eye to politics. He found Cindy, who was rich and had a father who was well connected to people in politics. He promptly divorced his wife, married her and began a long career of self serving politics. Believe me rob, he does not care about you or me. I cannot believe more people cannot see this! His maverick talk is total bs, he votes the way the wind blows. He is not even popular with his peers. Some (in his own party) have expressed concern about his tempermant being appropriate to be president.

BOTTOM GUN

In the cockpit, McCain was not a top gun, or even a middling gun. He took little interest in his flight manuals; he had other priorities.

“I enjoyed the off-duty life of a Navy flier more than I enjoyed the actual flying,” McCain writes. “I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free hours at bars and beach parties.” McCain chased a lot of tail. He hit the dog track. Developed a taste for poker and dice. He picked up models when he could, screwed a stripper when he couldn’t.

@ rob
How so? It doesn’t have anything to do with his associations, only his actions, his choices, his behavior.

This and the above are excerpts from the Rolling Stone article…
In the air, the hard-partying McCain had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight. He was still in training, in Texas, when he crashed his first plane into Corpus Christi Bay during a routine practice landing. The plane stalled, and McCain was knocked cold on impact. When he came to, the plane was underwater, and he had to swim to the surface to be rescued. Some might take such a near-death experience as a wake-up call: McCain took some painkillers and a nap, and then went out carousing that night.

Off duty on his Mediterranean tours, McCain frequented the casinos of Monte Carlo, cultivating his taste for what he calls the “addictive” game of craps. McCain’s thrill-seeking carried over into his day job. Flying over the south of Spain one day, he decided to deviate from his flight plan. Rocketing along mere feet above the ground, his plane sliced through a power line. His self-described “daredevil clowning” plunged much of the area into a blackout.

That should have been the end of McCain’s flying career. “In the Navy, if you crashed one airplane, nine times out of 10 you would lose your wings,” says Butler, who, like his former classmate, was shot down and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Spark “a small international incident” like McCain had? Any other pilot would have “found themselves as the deck officer on a destroyer someplace in a hurry,” says Butler.

“But, God, he had family pull. He was directly related to the CEO — you know?”

More
There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain’s broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.

But the subsequent tale of McCain’s mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they “give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades.” Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no “statements disloyal to my country.”

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”

This part adresses his refusal of early release…
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”

Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the “crown prince,” they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. “It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral’s son,” he writes, “and I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival.” But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was “moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated.” He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.

THE CONFESSION

In the company of his fellow POWs, and later in isolation, McCain slowly and miserably recovered from his wounds. In June 1968, after three months in solitary, he was offered what he calls early release. In the official McCain narrative, this was the ultimate test of mettle. He could have come home, but keeping faith with his fellow POWs, he chose to remain imprisoned in Hanoi.

What McCain glosses over is that accepting early release would have required him to make disloyal statements that would have violated the military’s Code of Conduct. If he had done so, he could have risked court-martial and an ignominious end to his military career. “Many of us were given this offer,” according to Butler, McCain’s classmate who was also taken prisoner. “It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to ‘admit’ that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was ‘lenient and humane.’ So I, like numerous others, refused the offer.”

“He makes it sound like it was a great thing to have accomplished,” says Dramesi. “A great act of discipline or strength. That simply was not the case.” In fairness, it is difficult to judge McCain’s experience as a POW; throughout most of his incarceration he was the only witness to his mistreatment. Parts of his memoir recounting his days in Hanoi read like a bad Ian Fleming novel, with his Vietnamese captors cast as nefarious Bond villains. On the Fourth of July 1968, when he rejected the offer of early release, an officer nicknamed “Cat” got so mad, according to McCain, that he snapped a pen he was holding, splattering ink across the room.

“They taught you too well, Mac Kane,” Cat snarled, kicking over a chair. “They taught you too well.”

The brutal interrogations that followed produced results. In August 1968, over the course of four days, McCain was tortured into signing a confession that he was a “black criminal” and an “air pirate.”

“John allows the media to make him out to be the hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals,” says Butler. “John was just one of about 600 guys. He was nothing unusual. He was just another POW.”

McCain has also allowed the media to believe that his torture lasted for the entire time he was in Hanoi. At the Republican convention, Fred Thompson said of McCain’s torture, “For five and a half years this went on.” In fact, McCain’s torture ended after two years, when the death of Ho Chi Minh in September 1969 caused the Vietnamese to change the way they treated POWs. “They decided it would be better to treat us better and keep us alive so they could trade us in for real estate,” Butler recalls.

By that point, McCain had become the most valuable prisoner of all: His father was now directing the war effort as commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. McCain spent the next three and a half years in Hanoi biding his time, trying to put on weight and regain his strength, as the bombing ordered by his father escalated. By the time he and other POWs were freed in March 1973 as a result of the Paris Peace Accords, McCain was able to leave the prison camp in Hanoi on his own feet.

Even those in the military who celebrate McCain’s patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. “It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on,” says Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. “It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don’t think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I’m not sure that’s the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I’m not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn’t do something to you. Doesn’t do something to you psychologically, doesn’t do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament.”

@SoapChef, the final paragraph you’ve got there makes perfect sense to me and I agree with it.

To my observation, McCain gets a lot of acknowledgment for his POW status in particular and his military record in general… but I do not perceive that as being put forward as his primary qualification for the office of president. Twenty six years as a congressman and senator counts a lot more.

It’s an awesome and terrible story. Of course it gets a lot of play. But I think that’s all it is. Like it or not, presidential candidates (and other public office, too) will always play up a positive military record.

@rib;
even the volcanic temperment part?

Yes, I agree that Colin Powell’s former chief of staff said of people who had spent much time in a prisoner-of-war status that they might be “a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in [their] temperament.”

And I noted that he used the qualifier “little”. And also that he made a blanket, sweeping statement that sounded a bit like a stereotype regarding a certain class of people.

He might be right. Whatever. It’s his opinion.

If Obama had hung out with Ayers to talk about how to blow something up, that would be chilling and terrifying and the association would be rightly made. However, Ayers had long put that behind him and had become a prominent figure in the educational community. If Obama wanted to improve education, it was natural that they would associate, and I actually admire someone who is willing to work with all kinds of people in order to get positive business done.

I think McCain’s association with John Keating (by taking trips to the Bahamas on Keating’s dime, and then helping get less regulation on Keating’s industry) is far more sinister. McCain was reprimanded for this impropriety. Very different.

To compare, let’s look at what we would think if both candidates did these things again. Obama would be furthering education and McCain would be taking something that looks a little bit like a bribe. I know which one I’d prefer in office.

The prosecutor in charge of the Keating investigation (a registered Democrat) recently stated that in his investigation at the time, he believed McCain to be exonerated of all impropriety.

Ayers, on the other hand, in a 2004 interview explained that America deserved to be attacked on 9/11 because our military acts as a global terror force.

If Timothy McVeigh had gotten tenure later in life, would we be so quick to forgive? Would we want our presidential hopeful hanging out in his home?

Oh… interesting: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/10/mccain_denounces_pitchforkwave.html

Judi-

When you first asked this question I thought it just barely straddles the line between nasty political tactic and McCarthyism, but what for me was the big difference was that all McCain had been doing was trying to raise doubts in the court of public opinion. Attacking your opponent’s character is a tried and true political tactic, and guilt by association, though something I think any rational, thinking person will generally reject out of hat, does impact how some people think. For me, the bottom line on guilt by association is that it does not judge a man by HIS actions.

Ayers to me is someone who did very bad things when Obama was 8, and Obama in his professional career, as would ANY community organizer working in Chicago, ended up working with him. I say if you judged everyone by the actions of people they’ve worked with, not a single member of Congress would pass muster…even you and I would probably have some co-workers in our past whose actions we would not want ascribed to us. Yet that is the tack they are using.

The problem with Wright is that the most “offensive” rhetoric was really only SO offensive when taken so deeply out of context…first you take one sentence like “God Damn America” out of the context of the words surrounding them, and take that out of the context of the idea, take the idea out of the context of the sermon, and take the sermon out of the context of the black church and the black experience, and without any setup just expose it to people who have no conceptual framework, it’s going to come off as something that could be unacceptable under any circumstances. Wright gave a sermon called “Confusing God with Government”, in which he was trying to teach that we should not confuse the laws of God with the laws of man. In the sermon he was making the point that governments are not Godly and do not always act in accordance with the way God would behave. Some of the things America has done, some of the institutionalized sins of our past (racism/segregation/slavery being the most poignant example to the flock to which he was preaching) would be actions that God would “damn”. That is where this rhetoric comes from, and as a white, non-religious person, I can say without any concerns about my patriotism or love of my country that Reverend Wright was 100% correct and 100% justified in what he said, and it was only when Fox News got its hands on every second of footage they could, and spent countless hours culling through it to find the most incendiary words they could strip of their context and meaning and play ad nauseum in infinite loops over and over and over again, that anyone eve cared. One looks at Reverend Wright’s career to see that he was written 4 letters of commendation by the Johnson White House, he was considered one of the 15 most influential Reverends in the US, he was well respected nationally and had built an organization that served the less fortunate in his community very well for 35 years. He was a loyal veteran of the Navy and a positively brilliant and patriotic man who had done more for his country than 99.999999% of the idiots who damned him on the basis of a few of his words taken out of context. But to then not only damn him so easily, they choose to say there is something wrong with Obama for being one of tens of thousands of people who have attended his church? Even if you can argue that you are judging Wright by his own words/actions, you can’t argue that you are judging Obama by his.

Rezko is another situation….he was a friend and supporter of Obama who got greedy. Obama however DID NOTHING WRONG. When Obama bought some land from Rezko to expand his own property, he PAID MARKET PRICE. When Rezko was brought up on charges, Obama returned his donations. So, tell me, you’ve never done business with someone who has maybe done some shady things? Hell, I shopped at Petter’s stores, and founder Tom Petters was just indicted for fraud…I paid shelf price, I guess that makes me somehow party to the fraud?

That in a nutshell is why guilt by association is ignorant, myopic, and a distraction meant to confuse the uncritical. But such is politics…this is not new. One can argue that McCain has many of his own associations, not the least of which is Keating 5, He has connections to Watergate. He has connections to a 60s era radical. He has connections to preachers who have said some pretty incendiary things. Obama is not out there placing robocalls trying to scare people into thinking that he’s going to bomb their houses. That’s going a bit too far. But OK, again, Presidential politics is a nasty business, and the candidates can and will use everything they can. If Obama was as far behind as McCain would he be exploiting McCain’s past associations? Maybe, I doubt it, but maybe, can’t say with any certainty. But I can say that Obama is 100% right when he says that McCain pushing these guilt by association tactics says more about McCain than it says about Obama.

So, I let it go until now without answering this question. But it’s starting to go too far. The death threats at Palin rallies are worrying, McCain however has repudiated a couple of people who’ve gone too far, I applaud him for that. The ACORN thing is making me very angry though, because ACORN has DONE NOTHING WRONG, and essentially this is a pot calling the kettle black tactic which is allowing Republican operatives to question and invalidate people’s ballots…another attempt at outright election theft. The facts are that there have only been about 24 known occurrences of people trying to cast fraudulent ballots, but millions of ballots are being thrown away to keep this rare occurrence from happening. See this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote

Now, the real problem though is that stupid rednecks are not only going to Palin rallies and spouting off racist rhetoric:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHrExRHZnm0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/16/racism-at-mccain-rally-bl_n_135303.html

but they are also vandalizing ACORN and issuing death threats TO A COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION SET UP TO HELP POOR PEOPLE FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/730636.html

But now it’s gone WAY too far. Minnesota’s own Congresswoman, Michele Bachman, best known for barricading herself in a bathroom for half an hour because she was afraid a gay person was going to spread his gay germs on her, is now channeling McCarthy, by calling for an investigation of lawmakers for their anti-American associations!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/gop-rep-channels-mccarthy_n_135735.html

We HAVE to put a stop to this. Donate to her opponent and sign the petition to have her censured. Speak out, share this information. And take steps to protect your vote. Tell others to do the same. We have 17 more days and it’s getting UGLIER than I’ve ever seen before. Racists and right wingers are scared to death…and I’m scared of what they will do next.

Wow! That last video was scary! The answer to that crazy congresswoman should be, “And what about Todd Palin’s anti American separatist associations? Doest Palin associate with “anti- Americans?

Judi,

I’m sure that doesn’t count. Why? I don’t know. But it never seems to count when we’re talking about Republicans’ associations. She makes me feel dirty being from Minnesota.