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Bush Admin. Outs Obama Auntie
Politics Daily —
... $260 to Obama's campaign. This story, that the Associated Press picked up and confirmed from Rupert Murdoch's Times of London and trumpeted on Murdoch-owned Fox News and of course Drudge, has some interesting twists not readily apparent in the original story. It looks like Bush administration may have helped the right-leaning media, and hence the McCain campaign, with some helpful information on Onyango's immigration status. Highlighted by Talking Points Memo, is a portion of the AP story that missed some scrutiny: ...
Bill Moyers on the corrupt influence of Rupert Murdoch
culturekitchen - fresh dissent served daily —
... While researching my previous post on Murdoch I stumbled upon this scathing assessment of Murdoch by that champion of independent media, Bill Moyers. You have to listen to every single word Moyers says because the way he connected the dots last year still resonate today.
Do not underestimate the corruptive power of Rupert Murdoch: He has made it a sport to steal elections for the Republican Party. The current upheaval over Obama's aunt is not a coincidence :
In other words, it looks like someone in the Bush ...
Ax Suggests Something Fishy About Breaking Story About Obama Aunt
Political Punch —
... breaking now, with three days left in the presidential race."The campaign issued a statement on that, you know, and I don't have anything more to add to it," Axelrod told reporters, "other than I think people are suspicious about stories that surface in the last 72 hours of a national campaign. And I think that they're going to take that - they're going to put it in that context." Liberal websites such as Talking Points Memo have gone so far as to call the story a "smear," noting that the aunt's presence in the U.S. first broke in the Times of London, owned by conservative ...
The McCain-Bush-Murdoch Axis
Oliver Willis —
... That’s who is responsible for the story about Sen. Obama’s aunt, conveniently pushed the weekend before the election (not to much effect, honeslty). Murdoch is a private citizen and while his actions are despicable, they are within the laws from what we can see. But the actions of the immigration services in service of the McCain campaign, in addition to previous FBI work in favor of McCain/Palin, show us the massive housecleaning that will be required should Sen. Obama win. ...
The Politics of HOPE
Whiskey Fire —
... 1) It took an illegally disseminated Republican smear for the media to talk about impoverished people & how they're dealt with administratively. Her story is sympathetic, and if I was the Obama campaign, I wouldn't push back too hard on it. ...
Anatomy of an Anatomy of a Smear of a Smear
Jules Crittenden —
... Bear with me, it’s a little complicated. Here’s how it works. Talking Points Memo intones in serious, knowing, disgust-tinged tones about the painfully obvious, none of it revealing any previously unknown anatomy or any smear, then adds unsupported speculation, as well as some distortion, for verisimilitude: TPM notes that Murdoch-owned Times of London writes about Obama’s Auntie Z. It’s unclear how the paper learned of the woman’s presence in the U.S. (Italics mine. Looks more breathless that way.) TPM then notes that it gets picked up by right-wing echo chamber. From ...
Did You Read It First At DRUDGE, Or At JustOneMinute?
JustOneMinute —
... of $200 or more and does not necessarily capture smaller donations that sum to more than $200, which seems to have happened here. So how did the Brit reporters learn of her donations? Maybe they asked her! HMM: Wasn't it Sidney Blumenthal's theory of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy which incuded the hatching of the rumors in the Brit tabloids, after which the mainstream US press legitimized them? Still, the Times of London a tabloid? Not exactly, but it is Murdoch-owned !
About That Latest Right-Wing Flail…
Comments from Left Field —
Re: the (illegally) manufactured half-assed October November Surprise currently popping a slow news day, Marc Ambinder (!) breaks it down:
Republicans think anti-immigrant forces are going to be rallied by attacking a middle aged woman in her fifties? This is what’s going to swing independents back to McCain? Reminding people (a) of an actual human face on the receiving end of anti-immigration policies and (b) that the Democratic candidate is personally affected by a complicated issue facing many ...
Midday Open Thread
Daily Kos —
... Talking Points Memo discusses the "Anatomy of a Smear" as it relates to the leak of the immigration status of Obama's aunt. John Conyers is ...
McCain’s November Surprise Is a Dud
Comments from Left Field —
... Commission show Onyango gave $265 to the campaign. Foreign nationals who do not hold Green Cards are not permitted to donate to American presidential campaigns, though legal permanent residents are allowed to do so.
“Given the information that has been brought to our attention, the contributions are being refunded,” Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, told The Washington Post this morning.
The real story here, though, is how this became a story at all:
Here’s how the ...
The illegal Auntie
Stop The ACLU —
... to leak such information. We’ve seen this same tactic used recently by the Bush administration. Earlier this month, law enforcement sources leaked the news, also to the AP, that the FBI has begun a nationwide investigation into ACORN. Again, the obvious purpose of the leak was political — to bolster a Republican campaign to stoke fears about voter fraud, in an effort to de-legitimize an Obama win. The Justice Department still has not confirmed the existence of the investigation. Source Posted by ...
The Unexplored Character Issue-- Is John McCain Fit For Public Office At All?
DownWithTyranny! —
... . A little late to do any good and probably less effective than the right's Aunt Zeitini Onyango smearorama, which started at Murdoch's London Times and then got picked up moments later by Murdoch's Fox News (thanks, Bill Clinton!) and the less and less relevant Drudge. Soon the ...
Conyers calls for investigation into Aunti Zeituni info leak; Joe the Plumber still on his own
Michelle Malkin —
... on the anonymous leak. And the liberal blogs are up in arms . The MSM abhor anonymous leaks — unless they’re helping to undermine Bush administration anti-terrorism programs or conservative causes and candidates. Laughably, the Obama cultists suspect that Bush administration officials are in cahoots with the McCain campaign and the Associated Press. These people have reading comprehension and reality comprehension problems. It’s the Bush administration that has moved to protect Aunti Zeituni. It’s the pro-shamnesty Bush administration that will ensure that nothing happens to ...
Links for 2008-11-01 [del.icio.us]
FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog —
... Not!
IBD/TIPP Daily Tracking Poll
Obama's lead firmed heading into the final weekend as he drew even with men, made inroads down South and added to his new lead in the suburbs. But this may have been due to parents out with trick-or-treating kids. McCain held on to married women and Catholics but can't seem to get traction among independents or in the middle class.
++++++
McCain will need a break to win this race. Is there a Bradley effect?
The Anatomy of a Smear - TPM
You mean someone in the government might actually leak ...
TPM: Obama being "smeared" by...ummm, the truth
Ace of Spades HQ —
TPM: Obama being "smeared" by...ummm, the truth Printing the ummm truth about the Messiah's dear illegal alien Aunt is apparently a "smear". Smear or projection? I'm going with projection. Come on guys, you can't smear someone with the truth. The truth simply IS WHAT IT FUCKING IS. A smear would be hyping the Obama illicit affairs story, because there's no hard evidence (yet) he was banging Vera whatshername. There's just circumstantial evidence they were delivered to the same address. They might have just been having a torrid night of Parcheesi playing, or ...
links for 2008-11-02
FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog —
... (tags: sarah_palin)
The Anatomy of a Smear - TPM
You mean someone in the government might actually leak something not damaging to the GOP?
Go figure……
(tags: barack_obama)
IBD/TIPP ...
The Imperial Presidency Lowers The Boom?
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
Zachary Roth accuses the Bush administration of trying to smear Obama at the eleventh-hour.
The Smear Machine
Neptunus Lex —
... - rather informally, from a legal standpoint - in Boston public housing and contributing, once again informally, to his campaign. But the focus of The Chosen One’s digital Praetorians is to say that the real story should not be sainted Aunt Zeituni’s problematic legal status, nor yet her poverty amidst such familial bounty, but rather the suspicious provenance of those pushing the story. Because the story is most assuredly not the story, comrade, and McCain had that divorce, that one time. These days, it seems, telling the truth about a candidate is ...
The aunt and the smear: The right-wing effort to make an issue of an Obama relative
The Reaction —
... The whole "story" has been a right-wing smear. As TPM Muckraker reported on Saturday, it was The Times, a Rupert Murdoch-owned British newspaper, that first "broke" the story. "From there, the story quickly got taken up by the right-wing echo chamber. ...
