…and it is truly disturbing.

There has been lots of discussion regarding the fear mongering scare tactics used among the right-wing ticket and many of it’s supporters in recent weeks. Claims that Obama is a terrorist. A scary Socialist. Muslim. Arab. It’s a dangerous world in a dangerous time. Spreading and condoning this culture of fear has generated racial slurs and hate crimes. Following hot on the heels of the Obama effigy, verbal threats, vandalization and assault have become familiar.

Against a backdrop of GOP-backed allegations that it is involved in voter registration fraud, the activist ACORN group has been targeted with emails and voicemails threatening its staff as well as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

One of the aggressive messages, secured by HuffPost’s OffTheBus, says that “all the ni**ers,” including Obama, are going to get “assassinated” and “hung.”

The threats come at a time when the McCain-Palin campaign has been publicly linking the non-profit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now directly to the Obama campaign while suggesting the group is engaged in a coordinated effort to register ineligible voters.

In addition to the verbal threats and racially offensive messages, ACORN offices in two cities were recently vandalized, and a 58 year old Obama campaign volunteer wrongly assumed to be associated with the group was assaulted Saturday.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said numerous employees of the group nationwide have started receiving threatening telephone calls, voicemails and emails and described the intimidation as “a byproduct of [the Republican] voter suppression campaign” and “what happens when you pursue the politics of fear as your electoral strategy”

Click here to read the full story and hear the audio clips.

This is U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s solution. What’s next? Blacklisting? This is treading in some deep, dark waters.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: So this is a character issue. You believe that Barack Obama may — you’re suspicious because of this relationship — may have anti-American views. Otherwise, it’s probably irrelevant to this discussion.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN.: Absolutely. I absolutely…
MATTHEWS: Do you believe that… Barack Obama may have anti-American views?
BACHMANN: Absolutely. I’m very concerned that he may have anti- American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about. That’s why they want to know what his answers are. That’s why Joe the plumber has figured so highly in had the last few days…
MATTHEWS: OK. I just want to get off this…
BACHMANN: What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.

COLIN POWELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: If you are an American, you’re an American and this business, for example, the congressman from Minnesota who is going around saying “let’s examine all congressmen to see who is pro- America, and who is not pro- America.” We have gotta stop this kind of non sense. Pull ourselves together, and remember that our great strength is in our unity, and in our diversity. That was really driving me, and put this on people like Mr. Ayers, are trivial issues, for the purpose of suggesting that Mr. Obama would have some kind of terrorist inclinations. I thought that was over the top. It was beyond just good fighting back and forth. I think it went beyond.

Read full story here.

She doesn’t adhere to the ideology and goals of liberal feminism or to the sense of community momentum and solidarity that feminism offers by providing choice and support for all women.

Thanks to the women at Feministing for today’s post containing the following clip:

Whoa!  Really?  Is this a political campaign in the United States in 2008?  “Kill him” as in the “terrorist” Obama at McCain-Palin rally in New Mexico. Read here.

Palin claims that Obama is “palling around” with terrorists.  Read here.

The women at The View continue to hash it out. Read here.

Olberman to Palin:

Ah, finally!  More and more publicly accessible commentaries on the fallacy of the McCain/Palin maverick status.  Theresa alerted me to the recent article in Rolling Stone that takes on McCain and exposes him as just another opportunist that will take any measure, including political stagecraft and myth making, to put himself (not country) first.  That’s no maverick.

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather…

…This, of course, is not the story McCain tells about himself. Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In Mc- Cain’s version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put “country first.” Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a “reformer” and a “maverick,” righteously eschewing anything that “might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office.”

On utilizing the media:

“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.

Thanks for the update, Justine.

Update: Sarah Palin will be at the Home Depot Center in Carson earlier in the day on 10/4 for a rally for her volunteers. Please attend and rally outside against her anti-woman policies and show your support for Obama and Biden.

We’re told that she still intends to be at Segerstrom at 4:30:Orange County Performing Arts Center, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa 92626

Join the crowd at the event at 3:30.

Hillary Clinton and Cecile Richards were featured in the Opinion section of Friday’s New York Times.

“Last month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.”

Many of you have probably received the mass email encouraging donations in Sarah Palin’s name or came across the post on Feministing.com.

If not:

Go here and donate NOW!

Every time a donation is made, a card will be sent to Sarah Palin informing her of the donation made in her name.  You will need to include an address that indicates where the card should be sent. Use the following address:

McCain for President

1235 S. Clark Street

1st floor

Arlington, VA 22202

Yes, one day soon I will blog on someone besides Palin. Right now, though, it is too important not to.

“Evangelicals and social conservatives have embraced McCain’s vice presidential pick for what they call her “pro-family,” “pro-woman” values. But in Alaska, critics say Gov. Sarah Palin has not addressed the rampant sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence and murder that make her state one of the most dangerous places in the country for women and children.

Alaska leads the nation in reported forcible rapes per capita, according to the FBI, with a rate two and a half times the national average – a ranking it has held for many years. Children are no safer: Public safety experts believe that the prevalence of rape and sexual assault of minors in Alaska makes the state’s record one of the worst in the U.S. And while solid statistics on domestic violence are hard to come by, most – including Gov. Palin – agree it is an “epidemic.”

For the complete article, read here.

In Saturday’s Huffington Post, Erica Jong asks John McCain exactly how stupid he thinks women are and forces the McCain/Palin camp to confront their own peverse sense of reality.  Even Karl Rove brought attention to their advertsing campaigns and the blatant lies contained therein. From the looks of it, the McCain/Palin camp have come to believe their own lies in a twisted postmodern political fairytale.  The current political campaign eerily resembles a reality show wherein the fictional becomes more real than reality. 

Jong in an open letter to McCain:

“We’re not that stupid. Sure it would be nice if the women of America believed that everyone with breasts and a vagina believed in equality. But it ain’t so. Women have differing views — just like men.

Some like beer; some like chardonnay. And some prefer AA. Some like automatic weapons; some don’t. Some think every pregnancy is sanctified; some don’t. Some think presidents should be qualified for office; some don’t care.

But to take the struggle for equal rights that has gone on for two centuries and embody it in the person of Sarah Palin is not just misleading but abusive. Charging rape victims for rape kits is a travesty of equal rights. Insisting that government impose your own views of abortion on others is anti-equality. Cutting funding for black teenage mothers is anti-feminist and racist. Lying to the electorate about your record is insolent. Do you think we’re too stupid or indolent to check?

We have checked. You are lying and so is she. But you must think that a big lie repeated over and over becomes the truth. And it seems that many Americans are with you on that. “

Carly directed me to a beam of light at the Daily Kos (additional coverage here).

As I posted on September 10, the media’s claims that the McCain/Palin ticket is taking the lead over Obama is a statistical claim that needs to be seriously questioned before it is swallowed whole-heartedly.

After reading today’s post at the Daily Kos and watching the accompanying clip from a rally that was held in Alaska yesterdy, it is evident that the claim that Palin has an 80% approval rating is another “fact” that must be called into question.

The women’s rally that was organized and held in Anchorage yesterday was clearly a threat to the image that has been constructed for Palin as the beloved female crusader that is committed to women because she will represent  all women’s interests when she “shatter (s) that glass ceiling once and for all.”

“An anonymous caller contacted the local media on Friday afternoon and told them they were one of the organizers, and the rally had been cancelled. Someone even faxed forged a document saying the Secret Service had cancelled the permit for the rally, even though no permit is required.  Some people were putting an awful lot of effort in to making sure no dissent would be heard from Alaska.”

Recalling Hillary Clinton’s message at the DNC to move forth in the face of resistance, the women came together and made it clear that not all women will vote for another woman just because she is  a woman…even in Palin’s home state.