[From Creative Loafing.]

As we predicted before the election, Barack Obama's victory has loosed a flood of hatefulness from the racist right in America. Digby yesterday had a detailed post laying out some of the cases that have erupted so far. From an AP report:

Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

In rural Georgia, a group of high-schoolers gets a visit from the Secret Service after posting "inappropriate" comments about President-elect Barack Obama on the Web. In Raleigh, N.C., four college students admit to spraying race-tinged graffiti in a pedestrian tunnel after the election. On Nov. 6, a cross burns on the lawn of a biracial couple in Apolacon Township, Pa.

The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.

I talked to the SPLC's Mark Potok this morning, and here are his observations:

I think there's something remarkable happening out there. I think we really are beginning to see a white backlash that may grow fairly large. The situation's worrying.

Not only do we have continuing nonwhite immigration, not only is the economy in the tank and very likely to get worse, but we have a black man in the White House. That is driving a kind of rage in a certain sector of the white population that is very, very worrying to me.

We are seeing literally hundreds of incidents around the country -- from cross-burnings to death threats to effigies hanging to confrontations in schoolyards, and it's quite remarkable.

I think that there are political leaders out there who are saying incredibly irresponsible things that could have the effect of undamming a real flood of hate. That includes media figures. On immigration, they have been some of the worst.

There's a lot going on, and it's very likely to lead to scapegoating. And in the end, scapegoating leaves corpses in the street.

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This story has little to do with sports, although you wouldn't know it from reading this article. Former center for the University of Texas Longhorns, Buck Burnette, made a racially charged threat against the president-elect of our nation and is lucky he only got kicked off his school's football team and didn't land himself in jail. The article brings up valid points about social networking sites and their potential pitfalls, but the real story here is about a racist pig who threatened our soon-to-be president.

AUSTIN — A template on facebook.com asks, “What are you doing right now?” An ill-advised response led to Buck Burnette’s expulsion from the University of Texas football team.

What began as a private text-message exchange on Election Night between Burnette and a friend soon became available for anybody with a computer to see.

In the status update section of his Facebook page, Burnette posted, “All the hunters gather up, we have a (slur) in the White House,” in reference to Obama’s becoming the first African-American elected to the presidency. Burnette said the comment was a text message he received from a friend and that he exercised bad judgment posting it on his page. He later apologized in a written note that was read by Brown during a team meeting. Read on...

Why is this bigot still a student at the University of Texas? My guess is that if he weren't a starting player for a nationally ranked football program he would already have been expelled and thrown out on his ass. People have been expelled for less, and I'm curious to know if the Secret Service has investigated the incident.

Jim Quinn yesterday on The War Room with Quinn & Rose:

You know, I was thinking about this. You know, if you were a slave in the old South, what did you get as a slave? You got free room and board, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children because that was just, you know, tomorrow's slave. So, you got a free house, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children. Can I ask a question? How's that different from welfare? You get a free house, you get free food, and you get rewarded for having children. Oh, wait a minute, hold on a second. There is a difference: The slave had to work for it.

Yeah, that was the difference. Right.

This raises the question: Are the wingnuts coming so unhinged they are losing any contact with reality?

[H/t to Hume's Ghost.]

From TampaBays10:

The head of the Hillsborough GOP, David Storck, distributed an email from a Republican Party volunteer saying the voters are a threat.

That's because, as the volunteer says in the email, he sees "car loads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama."

It goes on to say, "This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little the he is at minimum a socialist and probably Marxist in his core beliefs." The Republican volunteer says that is because, "After all he is black- no experience or accomplishments but he is black." Read on...

If the McCain/Palin campaign has done anything, it has exposed the worst in our society. Couple that with the hate talk that infests the once-public airwaves from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the xenophobic, racist rants of the right wing blogs and this is what you get.

Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast:

On Wednesday, I reported for The Daily Beast that key leaders of the white supremacist movement are seeking new opportunities to infiltrate and influence the political mainstream, particularly within the Republican base. An exclusive new video, shown here for the first time, offers new evidence of their strategic push.

In the video, shot by an amateur videographer (available here) who provided me exclusive access to his footage, an unidentified staffer from one of the country’s most popular white supremacist radio programs, The Political Cesspool, is seen promoting his show’s website at an October 13 rally for Sarah Palin in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Just feet away, Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, hands out fliers and recruits volunteers to canvas for McCain-Palin.

Though neither Political Cesspool nor Randall Terry have any known contact with the McCain-Palin campaign, their presence at the recent Palin rally presents one of the clearest portraits yet of the far right’s attempts to exploit the Republican base’s anti-Obama resentment for organizational gain.

According to its "Statement of Principles," the Political Cesspool "represent[s] a philosophy that is pro-White" and which "heartily endorse[s] and accept[s] as our own, the founding tenets of the Council of Conservative Citizens [CCC]," America’s largest white supremacist group. A 2007 article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report noted that, “The Political Cesspool' in the past two years has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America.”

Your "soulmate", Senator McCain, the one you say "energizes the base" that you're so proud of is pallin' around with white supremacists and people who advocate harassment of Planned Parenthood offices. What a fine person of which to be proud.

VetVoice:

A Republican attack ad invites viewers to "meet the real Ashwin Madia," but the still photos featured in the spot present a noticeably darker version of the 3rd District DFL congressional candidate.

"At least three of the photos of Madia were obviously darkened, using one method or another," public affairs and media consultant Dean Alger told KARE 11.

The NRCC's statement:

Reached by phone in Washington Wednesday, NRCC spokesman Ken Spain replayed the ad on YouTube and told KARE, "We stand by the ad."

Ashwin's Campaign's statement:

"It's just deplorable that the national Republicans have chosen to sink to this level," Rosenberg said, "I've seen negative campaigns but nothing as deplorable as, or disgusting as this advertisement."

Tell the NRCC and Eric Paulsen that you won't stand for these disgusting and dishonorable attacks by dropping Ashwin some coin here.

The Republican Party: Not Even Trying To Disguise Their Racism. I guess when you've so completely screwed up the country entrusted to you, the only thing you have left is to sell the Fear of The Other.

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From Countdown, Monday Oct. 27, 2008. Keith tells John McCain that he needs to speak out against those who would use Friday's racist hoax attack perpetrated by Ashley Todd as a means to re-open the racial divide in America.

Transcript available here:

OLBERMANN: Finally, a "Campaign Comment" about the fraudulent race attack claim since acknowledged and recanted by a John McCain campaign volunteer in Pennsylvania. You know the story well, by now. It's a sad and demoralizing tale of a woman who could be summarized by the awful term B actress. Ashley Todd was not sexually assaulted by a big black man. He did not carve the letter B on her face to punish her for supporting John McCain.

It apparently never dawned on her it resembled less a cut than an abrasion done by a weapon no more sinister than a nail file. She was not even at the ATM where she claimed the attack took place. It apparently never dawned on her that the machine had security video and she would not be on it. And clearly, somewhere in her mind was a calculation that a story like this one with layer upon layer of racial threat could be some kind of game changer for the presidential candidate she worked to get elected in at least two states for at least two months. Her saga is pathetic. She now claims mental illness. If this too is not true, Miss Todd might think she's pulling another fast one over on the rest of us. In fact her claim seems to be accurate, whether she knows it or not.

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John Murtha stuck his foot in his mouth last week when he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area."

Looking to take advantage of the gaffe and impute Murtha's comments onto Obama, McCain brought it up during an event in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't have botched it any worse.

"You know, I think you may have noticed that Senator Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately," McCain told the audience in the town of Moon Township. "And you know, I couldn't agree with them more." I couldn't disagree with you. I couldn't agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most god-loving, most, most patriotic part of America, and this is a great part of the country."

Oops. The look on the faces of the people behind him is classic.

And the hate from the McCain/Palin supporters continues. Check out this video.

Watch CBS Videos Online

CBS News:

As the crowd cheered at a Sarah Palin rally this morning in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a man in the audience grinned as he held up a stuffed monkey doll with a Barack Obama bumper sticker wrapped across its forehead.

After Palin finished her remarks this morning, the man holding the stuffed monkey seemed to notice that a video camera was pointed at him, at which point he removed the Obama sticker from the doll’s head and crumpling it up in his hand. He then handed the doll to a young boy who was watching the rally from his father’s shoulders. The boy’s parents later told CBS News that they weren’t acquainted with the man who gave their son the stuffed monkey

As I wrote before, this is an extension of the psychotic behavior being injected into our society from right wing talk shows, Malkinite bloggers and movement conservatives. Sadly, it'll only get worse during the closing weeks of the campaign and will continue onward and upward after the election.

The hate is world wide.

A man told today how he was shot three times in a London street for wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt.

Dube Egwuatu was buying a mobile telephone top-up card in an off-licence when the gunman confronted him and glared at the top, which carries an image of the Democrat US presidential candidate underneath the legend 'Believe'.

The man then launched into a tirade of racist slurs, shouting 'I f***ing hate n*****s' and urging 36-year-old Mr Egwuatu to leave the shop with him.

<>

'I couldn't believe it was happening - and just because I was wearing an Obama T-shirt. He was trying to make me walk somewhere quieter, saying: 'I've got something for you,' and 'I'm going to kill you.'

He added: 'Obama inspires me, his educational track record alone is quite unbelievable - that is why I was wearing the T-shirt.

'I did not think for one minute it could stir up such powerful feelings of hatred and I never said a word to him.'

In March of 2000, Katie Hong, a Korean-American woman who worked for the Washington state government, wrote an article for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about Senator John McCain’s remark to reporters on his campaign bus.

He said, “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”

Although he attempted to explain he was referring specifically to his Vietnamese prison guards while he was a POW – his habitual justification for just about everything he does or says – he refused to apologize for his use of a racially offensive epithet generally regarded as applicable to anyone of Asian background. Ms. Hong was not only hurt by his comment, having committed to serving her country as a place where equal opportunity and justice for everyone regardless of their skin color could become reality, she was disturbed by how little reaction his remark generated from the media.

It is eight years later, and McCain’s second run at the White House. In that time, he’s dropped numerous F-bombs, called his wife the C-word, and used racially charged language in his campaign to refer to his opponent. There is no reason to believe that his attitude toward “gooks” has changed all that much, either. McCain’s unmanageable irritability and use of inappropriate and offensive language has generated serious questions “whether he has the temperament, and the political approach and skills, we want in the next president of the United States.”

But a deeper and far more troubling uncertainty concerns me. This particular McCain Macaca Moment is not excusable just because he was a POW, and it’s disconcerting that McCain himself is incapable of seeing it, saying, “Do I insult anybody or fly off the handle or anything like that? No, I don’t.” But far more importantly, this is indicative of a dangerous and intransigent racism that not only offends a large percentage of American citizens – and not all of them need be Asian to be offended – it has no place in a presidency that may well be called upon to negotiate with the aforementioned “gooks”, some of whom have nuclear weapons and others who own a good deal of our national debt. To “hate the gooks” is bad enough, but to declare “I will hate them as long as I live” demonstrates a pig-headed obstinacy that is antithetical to anyone aspiring to hold the most influential and powerful office in the country, if not the world.

But just how many more McCain Macaca Moments is it going to take?

   Tallahassee.com:

A Marianna middle-school teacher has been suspended for 10 days without pay after he wrote a racially charged interpretation of a commonly used phrase in the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

While some parents and community activists were outraged by the actions of Greg Howard, Jackson County NAACP officials want to gather more facts before the group considers taking action. But some parents feel Howard should be fired.

Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials determined Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a dry-erase board in his class Sept. 26 at Marianna Middle School.

It said, "C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A (N-word) Get Elected."  Read on...

The article goes on to say that there were six black students in this idiot's class. If Howard truly did this, he should be fired and had better lawyer up. If the Jackson Co. School District hasn't lawyered up yet, they had better do so as well.   

Wow.  Talk about really tone deaf moves.

   Pam's House Blend: 

You just can't make this stuff up. I really didn't think the Allen asshattery of this week's "Americans are not addicted to oil. Americans are addicted to freedom" comment could be topped, but this takes the cake.

Northern Virginia Republicans, realizing they need to improve their appeal among the region's large ethnic population, will stage a "unity" rally Saturday that they say will draw 1,000 people.

Organizers said the annual rally, which has grown in recent years, is particularly significant this year because ethnic minorities represent an increasingly powerful voting bloc that will help decide which presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, wins the state Nov. 4.

...Hyland said he expects as many as 1,000 supporters to turn out for the event at Edison High School, where former senator George Allen and Reps. Tom Davis and Frank R. Wolf are expected to speak. Former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III is planning to attend, as is a widely known surrogate from McCain's campaign, organizers said.

Exactly what kind of outreach does the GOP think Allen -- the man who gave us the word "Macaca", kept a confederate flag and a noose in his office, hangs out with buddies of a white supremacist group, as well as bragged about stuffing a deer head in an African American family's mailbox -- will be able to do?  

Video is comedy gold from The Brooklyn Comedy Company (mature language).  But what a sad state of affairs:

Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

Julia has the full run down...

Yep, one of the minds which brought you Obama waffles is teaching our children about God for Rupert Murdoch...

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I guess they just can't help themselves. Kudos to the organization for doing the right thing and forcing this clown to resign.

Yahoo!:

The leader of a statewide group of college Republicans has been forced to resign after posting racially insensitive comments about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on the Internet.

Adam LaDuca, 21, the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, wrote on his Facebook page in late July that Obama has "a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)"

LaDuca, who previously had called Martin Luther King Jr. a "pariah" and a "fraud," also wrote: "And man, if sayin' someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we're ALL in trouble."