bodhi tree swaying

Georgia Representative George Broun is apparently worried that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,”

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I love Gail Collin’s sense of humor. She manages to be hilarious while being insightful, which makes her a very attractive woman in my eyes. Here she is on Elizabeth Dole’s scurrilous campaign ad:

North Carolina tossed Elizabeth Dole out of office despite her ad campaign aimed at convincing the state that her opponent, Kay Hagan, was an atheist. This was accomplished, you may remember, through the creative strategy of showing Hagan’s picture along with another woman’s voice saying: “There is no God!” If Dole had won, by the next election we would have been bombarded with ads that appeared to show candidates saying “I support adultery!” or “Let’s kill the puppies!” Now that won’t happen. Thank you, North Carolina.

More hilarity can be found here.

And in case you missed it, here’s the ad. Watch it now before Dole uses the DMCA to have it pulled from YouTube.

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A brief mention of Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham’s, passing was posted on Lucianne.com a right-wing “news forum”. The comments became so toxic that the site owner had to remove them.

Conservatives rejoiced. Conservatives implied that her death had been “conveniently timed” to help Obama win the election. That she’d been killed to boost him in the polls. A MsMontana commented, “R.I.P. old woman…you deserve it.”

I have to say I fear for America. Where is all this poison going to go now that Obama’s been elected? Is it just going to dissipate as people find that Obama is a likable, honorable, and talented president? Or are these people so out of touch that they’ll continue to adopt a poisoned view of everything about him?

Because they lost the election, and because of the nature of hatred, some of the poison will be …

There was a lot of coverage a few weeks back about research showing that people with a tendency to experience anxiety are more likely to favor right-wing political views. To put it bluntly, Republicans scare easily.

That’s amply demonstrated in a post that the excellent Mahablog links to, in which Jonah Goldberg purports to write from 2012, reporting on Obama’s failed presidency. It’s a bizarre, even hysterical, piece of writing in which, apparently, Obama’s administration will be damaged by Biden making bizarre statements:

…he told the Russian foreign minister he’d “rather punch a nun in the throat” than cooperate on an Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama administration knew they had a problem on their hands.

The strange comments and behavior kept coming: at an international summit on child poverty, he accused the Dalai Lama of issuing a “brain fart,” he phoned Supreme Court

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WoodMoor Village Zendo flags up this disgusting piece of smug McCarthyism. Sanchez (is that the name? does a fantastic job of exposing McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb’s vile trick of guilt by association, in which he claims that Obama has a “long history” of associating with anti-semites, but is unable to name a single one. I’m sure a certain segment of the extreme right, who see refusing to provide answers to questions as a badge of honor amongst their leaders, will be waving their hats in the air over this, but for any reasonable person this has to turn them away from the McCain campaign of smears and innuendo.

When I told a British friend about the email that was sent out last week from the Pennsylvania GOP, likening voting for Barack Obama to the Holocaust, and falsely alleging that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’” he was flabbergasted. In Britain, he pointed out, the newspapers would be all over this. In the US such outrage is reserved for $200 haircuts. The story seemed to have no traction here.

Anyway, here’s another outrageous email from a GOP leader, this time in Florida, where it’s of great concern that so many black people are coming out to vote, and that this might result in a black president. I wonder if this will get as little attention as the Pennsylvania story?

Temple Terrace, Florida – The long lines of early voters at the Temple Terrace Library have

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There are no words to express how disgusting the McCain campaign has become:

A new e-mail making the rounds among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania this week falsely alleged that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’’ and equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the “tragic mistake” of their Jewish ancestors, who “ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.”

So a vote for Obama is a vote for what … a new Holocaust?

Why? Because he’s really in league with Muslim terrorists?

At first blush, it was typical of the sorts of e-mails floating around with false, unsubstantiated and incendiary claims this year.

But where most of the attack e-mails against Mr. Obama have been mostly either anonymous or from people outside of mainstream politics, this one had an unusually official provenance: It was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s “Victory 2008” committee.

And it was signed by several

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