Join The Fight The Smears Blogroll

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Mash

The Barack Obama campaign has launched a website to fight the right-wing smears against Barack Obama. The website is called "Fight The Smears".

Since the Obama campaign is a people powered campaign, I suggest that we the people join Barack Obama in combatting these Internet smears. With your help, we can push these smears into the Internet memory hole.

Today I am launching the "Fight The Smears" Blogroll. If you have your own blog, I urge you to join us and become part of the blogroll. By doing so, you will be helping spread the truth about Barack Obama while helping push the smears into Google search oblivion. As more people join the Blogroll and add the blogroll to their blogs the more prominent the blogroll will become. So join and do your part in stopping the smears.

To join this blogroll, follow these easy steps:

  1. Write a post on your own blog about fighting smears (much like this one) with an invitation to join this blogroll.
  2. Leave a comment on this post with the URL to your post or send me the URL to the post via my contact page. I will add a link to your post on the blogroll.
  3. Add the following code to the sidebar of your blog to add the blogroll:
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=85f5e52059597a9de3b3d92696f28530"></script>
  4. Sit back and watch the blogroll grow and the smears disappear from search results.

The "Fight The Smears" website currently debunks the following smears:

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

If You Build It They Will Come

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Mash

The Obama campaign has released video of Barack Obama’s pep talk to his Chicago campaign staff on June 6th. It is a rare behind-the-scenes look at the Obama campaign and the inspiration at its center.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

Barack Obama’s Victory Speech

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Mash

Posted in Politics | 6 Comments

Making History

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Mash

Barack Obama and Bobby Kennedy

Barack Obama is currently 12 delegates away from officially becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for the president of the United States. Obama need 2118 delegates to secure the nomination. Thanks to a carefully choreographed rollout of super delegates, he will go over the top when primary results come out in the last two primaries of South Dakota and Montana tonight.

Today the Democratic party will have as its nominee an African American candidate. And in November we may have America’s first African American president. That in itself is history. Today also resumes a journey that was interrupted nearly 40 years ago to the day when, in the early morning hours of June 6 1968, Bobby Kennedy was taken away from America and the world.

Barack Obama carries on his shoulders the aspirations of not only the African American community of America, but of a generation who were denied their dreams four decades ago, and a new generation which now dares to dream some of those same dreams again. It is a tremendous burden on Obama’s shoulders, but it is one that we the citizenry can help him carry. The challenges lie ahead – from here to the general election in November, and beyond.

For Barack Obama and for all of us who are walking this historic journey with him, Bobby Kennedy’s words are worth remembering:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

That is my hope today, on the cusp of history.

 

Posted in Personal, Politics | 16 Comments

Liz Trotta: There And Back Again

Posted on May 26, 2008 by Mash

Yesterday Liz Trotta of Fox News made a dangerous mistake on air. Today she apologized. Unlike Hillary Clinton, she did not say she "regretted" if "anyone was offended". She said she was "sorry". That is how it is done. Contrast her apology with Hillary Clinton’s non-apology for the RFK assassination remarks.

Liz Trotta made a mistake. She took responsibility for it and apologized. For many the apology will not be enough. For me it is.

When I heard and saw her remarks yesterday I was stunned. Coming from a respected journalist like Trotta it was mind-boggling. So, I am glad she apologized. The permission slip that Hillary Clinton handed out with her RFK remarks will be hard to withdraw, and these moments are likely to repeat themselves this election season, but at least Liz Trotta has stepped up and tried to repair the damage she caused.

With her apology she gets the benefit of the doubt from me. She also gets the benefit of the doubt because I am familiar with her early work in conflict zones, especially Bangladesh in 1971 and 1972. She was one of the few American journalists who were on the ground in Bangladesh reporting on the genocide that killed up to 3 million people. Of her many reports from Bangladesh, one stands out to me. I provide the below NBC News report from 1972 without comment:

I was a child in 1971 when the Pakistani army and their Islamist collaborators were butchering my people by the millions and raping Bengali women by the hundreds of thousands. I am one of the lucky ones because I live today. I, like my parents’ generation before me, live with the scars of genocide. As part of my own coping mechanism I document the history of 1971 for my child and future generations. To do that, I rely on reports from Liz Trotta and others. Journalists like Liz Trotta, against very difficult odds, played a part in keeping the perpetrators of genocide from burying the truth.

For her part in telling our story, I am sincerely grateful. I know that her comments yesterday are not excused by her brave reporting from decades ago. But, still, I thought it may be worthwhile sharing with you a different view of the person who made those comments yesterday.

[Cross posted at the Daily Kos]

 

Posted in Bangladesh, Bangladesh Liberation War, Human Rights, Politics | 11 Comments