My cousin Ron e-mailed me some racist anti-Obama propaganda, using out-of-context quotes from his two books to try to make him out as someone who hates whites and hates Christians. I was appalled not just by the depths to which McCain supporters would sink but that my cousing was so amazingly stupid that he'd send something so blatantly racist to someone who is married to a black woman and whose son is half-black (like Obama is half-black).

I replied...

I thought maybe you'd encountered enough prejudice as a Jew not to buy into this, but I guess you've lost that connection to your roots. I guess you've forgotten all the lies the right has spread about our people over the years. Every time you hear a Republican say "Barack Hussein Obama" ask why they don't use Johnny Mac's middle name. It's because they're trying to emphasize Obama's otherness, how he's not like us, and if you don't think that's racist, I don't know what is.

Bad economic times are the greatest recruiting tool Nazi groups have. And you better pray that your racist friends don't turn on you next... jewboy.

Now, calling him "jewboy" was supposed to be ironic, showing him how the "friends" who would send him this kind of racist propaganda could turn on him.

This was his response...

Its a known fact obama has ties to 9 11 as well and he is muslim most muslims hate jews thats a fact ask any jew or israeli

OMFG. He's not just a dumb-ass, but a moron. I have to assume that comes from his dad's side of the family. Known fact that Obama's a Muslim? What? His dad was. But that no more makes him a Muslim than my dad's time in the high school marching band makes me a tuba player.

Then we have the woman on Friday who told John McCain that Obama is an Arab. McCain's actually having to defend Obama because "Republican activists" are spreading fear through a campaign of poisonous lies. And it's even worse than the swift-boating of John Kerry, because they have to do with Obama's ethnicity, his racial identity, and his faith. These are the three things that most are NOT supposed to matter in America. These are things we've tried to protect from this kind of discrimination in the most fundamental foundations of our democracy. And these are the things that the average Republican is showing he/she has no respect for.

It's hillarious how they can use this racist propaganda as a basis for the claim that Obama is unamerican without realizing that doing so is one of the most unamerican things they could do. This is the America of George Wallace and Bull Connor. This is the kind lying and fearmongering more associated with the KKK and the Neo-Nazis... and I'm hearing it from a Jewish real estate broker.

If you want to vote against Obama, vote against him because you don't like his economic policy, because you don't like his energy policy, because you don't like his health care plan. Those are very valid reasons. But if you're uneasy because someone told you he's secretly Muslim, secretly hates whites, secretly Arab, then that says a lot more about your racism (and that of the person who told you) than Obama. And if you're out there spreading these lies, shame on you. You're the one betraying America.

If a Republican tells you this race is about character, bring up this point.

In 2007, John McCain made $405,409. That's his own income, separate from Cindy McCain's millions. She filed separately.

Of that $405,409, $23,157 came from Social Security benefits. Here's a link to USA Today that discusses his 2007 income.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-mccain-taxes_n.htm

A man who earned $31,771 a MONTH thought that wasn't enough and accepted another $1,933 a month in Social Security funds.

Read the rest of this entry »