Delightful.

Wonder what this guy would make of it. (For background, read here.)

More on the latest anti-Obama smears here and an extended look at the phenomenon of right-wing emails here.

Comments (21)

1. crack addicts, fugitives, gay porn stars!!! and a depraved mulato!

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/24/2008 @ 10:57am

2. Racist attacks are a suicide move for the Right, if Obama wins the nomination.

   It doesn't do anything but the REVERSE of what it'll be intended to do...AND it'll force McCain, every week or so, to repudiate some racist attack or smear and in the end, it'll seem as if McCAIN is the one making the attacks!

   Posted by Mask at 03/24/2008 @ 10:59am

3. Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 03/24/2008 @ 10:57am

   Or phrase it this way...

   Limbaugh?....Scooter Libby?....Larry Craig????

   Posted by Mask at 03/24/2008 @ 11:00am

4. Posted by MASK 03/24/2008 @ 11:00am | ignore this person

   nah...them guys are all white...lol...

   fine upstanding gentry!

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/24/2008 @ 11:17am

5. Showing their true colors, as it were. Like Ms. Ferraro did.

   Posted by sloper at 03/24/2008 @ 11:20am

6. Racism is cancer

   When you criticize

   Another's man's skin

   You get skin cancer

   Posted by winyahn at 03/24/2008 @ 11:25am

7. As Mask observes, such absurd and offensive attacks would be suicidal for the right. That is what makes it highly unlikely this attack would have been perpetrated by the right. What exactly is the provenance of the photo? It has all the hallmarks of a false-flag operation by forces of the left, since its only possible effect would be to taint the right (and the Clinton campaign).

   Posted by feinfein at 03/24/2008 @ 11:28am

8. I can't believe that there are people who share this view. Okay I can believe it but it just boggles my mind. Mr. greenwald has a blog? a blog that people read? Seriously? I had no idea there was someone putting this stuff out there on the internet. What am i saying? Of course I did. Unfortunately, he's just one among many. Just sad.

   Posted by k330k at 03/24/2008 @ 11:57am

9. I think America is at a crossroads no less significant (although obviously much less physically dangerous) than the Emancipation Proclamation. We can now say that race will no longer be an important factor in our national conversation, or we can say it is still a serious fault in what America represents. America can be a much better place after this election, or it can continue the downward spiral of the past seven years. One can only hope that the pundits of the Right, intelligent people all, can be made to see this truth before the right-wing slime machine makes a mockery of the ideals of our country. At long last, gentlemen, have you no shame?

   Posted by jread_21205 at 03/24/2008 @ 12:01pm

10. Posted by FEINFEIN 03/24/2008 @ 11:28am

    The existance of a racist element doesn't preclude them trying to go after Obama to aid McCain...and it backfiring on them.

    Racists are generally stupid to begin with, and wouldn't consider how this would HURT the Repubs, rather than help them.

    Posted by Mask at 03/24/2008 @ 12:29pm

11. at this point when I read comments online I really can't tell the difference between right wing haters and some of the Hillary backers.

    Just the other day I was reading a long reply to a positive article about Mr. Obama and believed it was from some white supremicist hate person... then I got to the last paragraph where it drifted off to say "he might be fine in 8 years but he should wait his turn." Say what? Never did I think I would see democrats doing this.

    Posted by Livvy at 03/24/2008 @ 1:07pm

12. From the Snopes.com website:

    http://www.snopes.com/ politics/obama/ familyphoto.asp

    'The photograph displayed above does include some members of Senator Barack Obama's extended family, but the captions added to the picture are fictitious ones created for denigrative political purposes.

    Several of the persons shown in this photograph are relatives and children of Senator Barack Obama's biological father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. The elder Obama was originally married in Kenya, and with his first wife had children who grew up in that country; he later came to Hawaii to attend college and there married an American woman. Barack Obama is a child of that second marriage, which ended in divorce when he was but two years old. (Altogether, Barack Obama Sr. fathered eight children by four different women, and Barack Jr.'s mother also remarried and had another child with her second husband, so Senator Obama has quite a large extended family when half-siblings, inlaws, and step-parents are taken into account.)

    Bararck Obama saw his biological father, who died in an automobile accident in 1982, on only one occasion after the divorce. As far as we have been able to determine, Barack Obama did not meet any of the people shown in this photograph until he was an adult.

    The persons pictured here are: Front row (left to right): Auma Obama (Barack's half-sister), Kezia Obama (Auma's mother), Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama (the third wife of Barack's paternal grandfather), unidentified woman. Back row (left to right): Unidentified man, Barack Obama, Abongo [Roy] Obama (Barack's half-brother), unidentified woman, unidentified man, unidentified man.'

    Posted by HonestLiberal at 03/24/2008 @ 1:25pm

13. WHAT!!! Barack has blacks in his family?? This is an outrage! WE NEED TO WARN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!!!

    Posted by mpeng at 03/24/2008 @ 1:32pm

14. Posted by MASK 03/24/2008 @ 12:29pm

    You may be right, oh MASK, the Only-Slightly-Less-Omnipresent-and-All-Pervading-Than-Before, but I beg leave to disagree with your analysis.

    I begin with the premise that everyone is capable of racism, just as everyone is capable of murder, larceny, peculation, and lying. Ergo, there is a vast reservoir of potential racism for political operatives to draw upon. And in America, that is 5x the norm for other cultural contexts, since we have such long and deeply entwined relationship with racism, racial persecution, racial discrimination, racial profiling, etc. (It is interesting to compare, for instance, the attitudes toward "race" in Cuba or Brazil, say, vs. those in the good ol' USA.)

    Anyhow, racism always pays because it is a "reptile brain" issue. No one is neutral on the issue of race. And it has a mainline connection to the underbrain centers of emotion, impulse, instinct and other CNS responses unmediated by what, in some, passes for rational thought. Brain scan research supports this notion long borne out by practical experience.

    So, the question is not whether race will work as a strategy, but on whom and how. Here's my analysis.

    The folks who are with Obama are of two types: 1) Obama believers who like black people and identify with their aspirations and/or hate palpable, virulent racism in all its forms (and yeah, they do get squirmy when they hear invective by black clergy against whites, jews, Koreans, etc. on a racial basis [though it's not 100% clear that Koreans are a "race" per se]) 2) ABCers who would vote for Mike Gravel if he were the lone remaining alternative to the money/power/corruption nexus that is the core of Clintonista politics.

    In a general election, hypothetically speaking, the Obama believers will stay. But they represent at most 2/3 of his support. The others will sigh with relief that the Billary Beast has been halted (hypothetically) and will disengage to entertain other considerations. Such as, how much do I hate Bush for what he has done to our nation, its economy, my civil rights, and the nausea I experience now when I behold the Stars & Stripes, former symbol of pride & devotion? Hypothetically speaking, of course. And such as, how much do I blame John McCain for the stuff that went down when his 2000 primary opponent went on to take the White House? When the conventions are over, there will be a period when popular sentiment that seems so hardened & calcified now will reliquify, flux and flow. This is the hour of the Swift Boaters, of Willie Horton, of large-tongued rumors and outright lies, the very witching hour of electoral politics. Rev. Wright is only a hint, a mere scintilla of what will circulate then. And who do the Republicans think they will be risking then? Only the Obama believers, and they won't vote Republican in any event (unless Clinton wins the nomination, as she will on the first ballot in Denver). The rest of the nation is persuadable and in flux. They will fall at least under the shadow of doubt when photos (actual photos!) that show Osama bin Ladin presiding over Obama's bar mitzvah surface on NewsMax and make lead story on Fox 'n' Freunden in the morning (cue Steve Doucy: "Now, I didn't know that Obama was Jewish, too, did you Brian? Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . ")

    Bottom line is that the GOP buzz machine has little to lose and much to gain by leveraging race as an issue in a contest against Obama. This the Supers know, and this is why they will find ways not to swing his way and will go with Team Clinton instead. They know that the public never walks the high-minded talk about equality, justice, and blah, blah, blah. When the money's on the line, the Supers will choose expediency over principle every time.

    Posted by goyadad at 03/24/2008 @ 1:59pm

15. Posted by GOYADAD 03/24/2008 @ 1:59pm

    Under what scenario, except the extreme possibility of some "BIG Obama scandal" that guts his support in the remaining primaries and lets Her Majesty win by 20% in every remaining state...

    does Hillary become the nominee and not see 1/3 or MORE of the Democratic Party get monumentally pissed and stay home (or even vote Nader) in November?

    I don't see another one. She either wins by 20% from Pennsylvania ON...or they "fix" Michigan and Florida so that she gets the lion's share of them... else he has more delegates, more states, and more of the popular vote.

    And if the Supers "give" it to her based on some "fear of what the Repubs will do" or "how racist America 'really' is"....she loses anyway due to an imploded Democratic Party.

    Posted by Mask at 03/24/2008 @ 2:06pm

16. Lets not get too self righteous there, CHRIS. I still remember a lot of left wing crap portraying Bush as Adolph Hitler, equally ridiculous

    Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 03/24/2008 @ 2:20pm

17. Posted by MASK 03/24/2008 @ 2:06pm

    Indeed, MASK the Mighty One! That is exactly my analysis. It's lose-lose for DNC White House strategy at this point. I'm not persuaded that there's much actual in-camp strategy about a 2012 2nd try, but it might as well be the actual plan. Her Royal Clintonesse is ready to be Queen of the Americas NOW, not sometime in a mythical future, and she doesn't care how many grass huts and wooden villages she has to burn to get the job done--TODAY.

    In practical terms, it means the Billary strategy turns on 2 points: 1) Get "wins" by hook, crook or handgrenade between now and August (this means finagling Michigan & Florida, as well as wins in Indiana, N. Carolina & Pennsylvania). This builds the "momentum" argument. 2) Continue with the sleaze war against Obama. It's like the NCAA tournament. If you have a superior opponent who leads you by 10 pts. in the final 3 minutes, what do you do? Foul, foul, foul. Lots of things can go wrong with free throws & inbounding the ball, so who knows? You might just eke out a win. And in politics as in B-ball a W is a W, now matter how dirty you gotta play to get it.

    Posted by goyadad at 03/24/2008 @ 2:46pm

18. Posted by GOYADAD 03/24/2008 @ 2:46pm

    I've offered the third possibility, GOYA....a varient on your #2.

    She costs Obama the election by so weakening him this spring and summer, that McCain wins, and she gets to run against a weak (VERY elderly looking Maverick John) in 2012. No other "black guy" would run after an Obama loss in what-should-be an "easy year" and the regular "white guys" couldn't take it from her.

    The TRICK is...not to make it LOOK like she's cost him the election this year, and risk pariah status in the Party (and nation-wide for that matter).

    Posted by Mask at 03/24/2008 @ 3:18pm

19. Perhaps I missed something pertinent, but there still has been no evidence produced as the provenance of this smear. And since there is not yet any such evidence, the conventional wisdom among some of the Solomons here is that it absolutely must have been produced by the Neaderthals of the right. Then why not go out and arrest or at least crack the heads of some of those racist folks right now since you're so all-fired sure? I've got a big old aluminum baseball bat and a crowbar you can borrow. Just punish any old racist folks since any of them could have and probably did do it.

    How about instead turning the massive brainpower of the progressive blogosphere toward uncovering the perpetrators?

    Posted by feinfein at 03/24/2008 @ 3:18pm

20. Posted by MASK 03/24/2008 @ 3:18pm

    To quote Ed McMahon, You are right, Sir! And what I'm wondering is what abomination will the GOP offer up as the VEEP for the fall campaign? Is Cheney up for 4 more years? I don't think Amend. 22 applies to him.

    "Darth Vader for Sith Lord in 2008!"

    Posted by goyadad at 03/24/2008 @ 4:23pm

21. Posted by GOYADAD 03/24/2008 @ 4:23pm

    McCain HAS to pick some young, personable "loved-by-the-evangelicals" guy, to pump a little fully-oxygenated blood into his campaign AND keep the LVLIB guys in line.

    Posted by Mask at 03/24/2008 @ 7:44pm