Politico picks up the story of Tom McClintock’s fundraising woes, and the fact that he was in the red as of October 1.  I didn’t know this:

But according to his campaign finance reports, he heads into the home stretch without much campaign cash left. McClintock spent more money than he raised, ending September with just $94,000 in his campaign account.

He is not currently airing airing any television ads, and hasn’t been for the last two weeks.

If he’s off the air right now, it’s going to be next to impossible for him to get back on.  The NRCC doesn’t have a whole lot of money to play with, especially considering all the incumbents they have to defend.  And the GOTV efforts, radio, phone calls, mailers, etc., cost plenty of money.  If McClintock’s living from hand to mouth right now, he’s not going to get back on TV.  And needless to say, Charlie Brown has plenty of money to blanket TV in the final two weeks.  It’s incredible.

And what’s amazing is that this is how McClintock handled the primary as well.  He overspent early and wound up running on fumes the last couple weeks.  It wasn’t a big deal against Doug Ose, but against a formidable opponent like Brown it’ll matter.  The supposed fiscal conservative can’t even manage his own campaign stash.

(stay for change. – promoted by David Dayen)

With only two weeks until Election Day, it is more critical than ever to get out and help bring Charlie to victory. For months now, the Charlie Brown campaign for Congress has been burning up the phone lines and pounding the pavement to get our positive message of “patriotism before partisanship” out to the voters of the 4th Congressional District.  

One of our top canvassers is Nate Cox.

Nate is 22 years old and a recent graduate of the Sierra College Fire Academy. While waiting for his first assignment, he’s taking time to help send Charlie to Congress. While following Nate around South Placer County, we learned first-hand about how this race is shaping up in our favor and how we need every available boot on the ground to bring Charlie to victory.

“I’ve never really been interested in politics until I heard about Charlie,” Nate said. “One of my roommates was involved in the campaign and told me about this guy named Charlie Brown running for Congress. After hearing about him and meeting him, I knew I needed to do whatever I could to get this guy elected. Plus, how cool would it be to say I helped get a Congressman elected?”

As we pulled up to the first house, Nate explained how he likes to approach each individual and find some way to connect before even meeting face-to-face. “You can find out so much about a person by their driveway and front lawn. Bumper stickers, toys in the yard… they tell you a lot about who you’re going to talk to.”

The first person we talked to was a man named Gary. A registered Republican, Gary was a little bit of a tough nut to crack. “I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life. Why should I support your guy?” Nate explained Charlie’s 26 years of service in the Air Force, his staunch support for 2nd Amendment rights, and his commitment to balancing the federal budget. Nate also gave Gary a copy of the recent Veterans Press endorsement of Charlie. After a good five minutes of discussion, Gary gave a big grin. “You sure know your stuff. You’re making me think, and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing for my Party. I’ll check out your website and think about it.”

A few “not home” houses later, we came upon another Placer County resident. Iris, a 55-year old school teacher, answered the door. She immediately identified herself as a supporter. “Everyone in this household is for Charlie. There’s no doubt about that. How do I get a lawn sign?” This one was a little too easy.

Nate made “the ask.”

“Is there any way you’d be able to help volunteer some time?”

“Only if I can get that button you’re wearing in return!”

Over the course of the afternoon, it became clear that canvassing in Roseville was a pretty enjoyable experience. Mild weather, beautiful suburban scenery, and pleasant people abound.

The final location of the canvassing trip was an apartment complex. As each door was knocked and literature was left behind, new supporter after new supporter was being identified. Our final knock of the afternoon was to a young college student named Joe.

Joe readily identified himself as someone not interested in politics. Joe admitted to not having ever voted until this Presidential Primary. “I just don’t see how it affects me.”

Nate found a way to identify with the student. “Do you drive to school?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Do you like having smooth roads or driving over potholes messing up your suspension?”

Joe responded “No one likes bottoming out.”

“Then you have a reason to vote. These are the people who decide what to do with your tax money. You can vote for someone, like Charlie, who will work to bring money back to fix our highways and infrastructure and make life a little easier for you.”

Nate is an unusual kid: not appearing to have a care in the world, he surprised us by using his passion for helping Charlie bring in new supporters. A lot of the people we talked to had questions about Charlie’s economic positions and what he was going to do to bring jobs into the district. With the release of our new TV ad, we were able to speak to several voters while the commcercial was playing on their TVs! You can see our newest ad on youtube as well:

We need your help to keep this ad running. Click here to contribute. Any money you donate will be used to fight the slime machine Tom McClintock is employing against Charlie. The time is now, and you can make a difference wherever you are to help Charlie win this election.

All told, 12 Charlie supporters were identified from those that were home, compared to 3 McClintock supporters for the entire day. The votes are out there, but we need your help to bring this victory home.

With one of the best ground games in the nation being implemented here in the 4th District, we have a distinct advantage over our opponent. While he’s busy slinging mud, we’ve built a volunteer base that has dominated in every way imaginable. But in these final 2 weeks, your help will be a crucial addition to our winning strategy.

As GOTV progresses, please come spend some time in CA-04. Walk some neighborhoods with Nate and our team. Make some phone calls in one of our 7 offices to remind voters about Charlie Brown and his positive message of change. If you can’t make it to our district, please send a contribution to Charlie and help us support the flood of volunteers we will be hosting in these final days. You can also contact our campaign headquarters to find out other ways to help.

We appreciate your help, and look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail.

Sincerely,

Neil Pople

Director of Online Communications

Charlie Brown for Congress

That’s the bottom line.  As the Sacramento Bee reports, Tom McClintock is Epic Fail:

Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican in a Democratic-dominated state Legislature, is the only state lawmaker to fail to shepherd a single piece of legislation into law in the last two years.

Not that he seems to mind.

In all of 2007, he passed not a single bill.  And, according to the article, this year, he passed one, but it was vetoed by the VetoNator.

So…since Tom McClintock isn’t exactly a legislator, what does he view his job as?

“I came to the conclusion a long time ago that minority legislators have a choice,” said McClintock, who has served for 22 years in Sacramento. “One is to tinker at the margins and win very minor victories on unimportant matters and the other is to try to drive the public policy debate on major issues, sacrificing legislative victories for broader policy victories.”

See, McClintock doesn’t view himself as a legislator representing his constituents.  He actually sees himself as a conservative ideologue using a position in elected office to push a broader ideological agenda.  And it doesn’t matter what the office is, or whom he would technically represent.  What matters is that it’s an office he thinks he can win–which is why he’ll carpetbag hundreds of miles to a district he doesn’t even know.

Attention Mr. McClintock:  If you want to push a narrative, go work at the Heritage Foundation.  Go push public opinion at Fox News.  If you want to push the debate, there are plenty of places designed for just that where you can do that.  But do us all a favor, Tom, and leave the legislating and representing of constituents to someone who…oh, I don’t know…actually gives a shit about the job.

Voters in CA-04 have a choice.  That choice is Charlie Brown.

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This year,  We are holding Charlie’s Football

Gentle Readers, volunteers, and fans of one of the most beautiful districts in the nation, CA- 04, this one’s for you.  You walked, you talked, you called, you organized, you typed, you wrote, you attended, you spoke, you applauded,  you got up in the morning and you did it all again. And again.

You saw what was wrong, you wanted to make it right, and that meant you had to pick it up.  You couldn’t let the the Charlie Brown down. And that meant volunteering.  It makes a difference.  (more over the fold)

He doesn’t look too happy, does he ?  McClintock’s 3rd Quarter fling from Oct 15 shows his campaign is broke and in debt.    Charlie Brown (D) and Tom McClintock(R, seated)  in Oroville on Oct 2, 2008.  

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Our District:

In 2006, the White House threw a life preserver to the last Republican in Congress who could have implicated George Bush in the Jack Abramoff scandal.  

In 2008, they tried to run a Fox Faux News and White House and Move America Forward guy in the Republican Primary, and the Republicans said no.

They tried to run an old retread from another district, who helped impeach Clinton, and the Republicans said no.  They tried running an ex state senator with enough baggage to fill a 18 wheeler, and the Republicans said no.  They tried running a Libertarian Ron Paulian Republican named Terbolizard, and the Republicans said no. Then they brought in the Republican Icon from a district 400 miles away in Southern California, who was terming out of state office.  And the Republicans said…..  yes.  We’ll take that one.  

Fox News and MAF,  Literally Looking Over His Shoulder, March 2008, Auburn

Because these fools don’t deserve any better.    

And a few of you worried, but you don’t win by worrying. You just get up, and you get ready, and you go out there, and you do it again, because all of you know somebody who is in a world of hurt right now, and these people are depending on us.  People who are hungry. And can’t afford to buy food. People who were downsized. People who lost their jobs. People who lost their houses. Or their rental place.  People who are sick.  People who can’t afford medicine. People who served their country overseas, but they got hurt.  People who are wondering what happens next.

So you looked that Republican Icon in the eye, and you said NOT THIS TIME. NOT HERE. NOT NOW.  ENOUGH.  We need a local Representative. We have to do this.  We can’t rely on the pundits or the experts.  We have a huge task ahead of us.

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Volunteers for Charlie Brown, April 26 Day of Action

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And now we’re in that home stretch.  Today is October 16.   We have 19 days to get this done.

And we cannot get complacent.   You saw the title.  Tom McClintock, the Republican Icon, is broke. He has more debt than cash on hand.    http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…  

By my rough estimate, only about 5% of his itemized individual donations come from inside the district on this latest FEC filing.  Schedule of upcoming events on his webpage today. None.    http://www.tommcclintock.com/e…

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 Will work for per Diem.

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Charlie Brown, the Democratic candidate for CA- 04,  is not broke.  And he’s busy meeting and talking to people.  http://www.charliebrownforcong…    Considering the district demographics, and the tough economic times, and the fact that he’s supported by so many individual donors instead of Big Money Interest PACs, it’s a miracle.

This does not mean it’s over.   Those out of state corporate interests are going to throw the kitchen sink AND the garbage disposal at us.  This is a BIG district geographically, and it’s so important because the mountains on the west side catch the winter snows and then that snow feeds us in the summer, literally. Water flows down to the areas of population and commerce to the State Capitol and to the Bay area and her port cities.  Where the water goes affects all of us.  And it effects all living things, plants and animals.  We cannot kill the delta without killing both the city and the fish and wildlife and farmland that depend on it having an inflow of fresh water.

When Charlie Brown first started running for Congress, he was running as a reformer against the corruption of the Republican Party.  He led by example and by hard work.  There wasn’t a lot of fancy rhetoric. You don’t get stuff done in the military by pointing fingers, bringing up wedge issues to try to divide people and make them mad at each other,  and hiring lobbyists to tell you you’re wonderful.  You define the problem, pick a solution, improvise if necessary, and just do it.  Charlie Brown wanted accountability in government, so he decided to run for office.  Just by the act of running, he forced the current Congressman to come out of Washington DC and interact with the district he was supposed to be representing.  Just by running, he helped other Democrats get elected, because the 50- state strategy works.  We stood there in the Opera House in Roseville in November 2006 and screamed ourselves silly every time an election return came back showing another Democrat had taken the lead, even if they were from out of state. I remember telling another kossack that Pombo was going down. She didn’t believe me at first.  I remember coming up the stairs at one point, taking one glance at the screen, and seeing the total number of House seats hit the magic number to guarantee a Democratic majority.  I knew right then we had changed things, no matter what the final count was for us.

This is what Dr Bill Durston     http://www.durstonforcongress….     (CA- 03, Lungren ,R) and Jeff Morris   http://www.jeffmorrisforcongre…  (CA-02, Herger, R) are doing for us now, by taking on these other Republican incumbents. And they actually do have a chance of winning. That’s what is so incredible.

In our district, the incumbent decided not to run against him again, after he won by only 3 percentage points.  They brought in the ringer. If you have read my past series of diaries, you can see that the ghost of Doolittle is still haunting Tom McClintock.  They may not have appeared together on stage anywhere, but McClintock took John Doolittle’s old playbook of hate politics, the one with the yellow highlights drawn over the talking points of creating fear and loathing, and tucked it under his pillow at night.  But even worse, he took his campaign financial technique of deficit spending, and he thought the lobbyists would come through for him, just like they kept coming through for John Doolittle.  And it seemed to work, at first. He forgot one thing.

Even John Doolittle has better people skills than Tom McClintock.   I hate saying that, but it seems to be true.  Look at him, he’s not in jail yet. That took some serious talent on his part.  

But Charlie Brown is still going to need our help to finish this task he started, of changing how we interact with government.  

As I said, the entrenched Republican establishment is going to throw the kitchen sink AND garbage disposal at us. They are using organizations with non profit tax status to push these horrible wedge issue propositions at the voters as hard as they can.  There has been a lot of ugly subtext going on under the surface.  

We need grace.  We need patience.  We need grit.  Because we can’t let up now.  And we need to run ads.  And these propositions have extraordinary amounts of lobbyist money supporting them.  They give it to the state assembly and state assembly accounts, and the state candidates go crazy paying for all these alleged non profits affiliated with politicians and consultants to run advertisements and slate mailers and the radio and the television and the blogger letters to the editor comment sections. That’s why I wrote about McClintock’s account yesterday.  http://www.dailykos.com/story/…  “Dear Treasurer” (McClintock’s)        People don’t see that.  They don’t see they’re being used.   They’re sincere, but this election is not about those issues.    And McClintock’s other campaigns have had a history of getting very large last minute donations.  Don’t take anything for granted.

It’s about the economy.  And the economy went into the drainpipe because George W. Bush didn’t learn a damn thing at college because he was too busy partying, and all of his life, when he screwed up, somebody related to the family bailed him out.  He thought our nation should be run like any other business.  But he has no business sense.  Screw up? Oh well ! Start a war, borrow some cash, take another mortgage, sow the seeds of fear and divisiveness. Terror alert.  Drown a city, blow away another.  Problems? Go shopping. No money? Too bad. You should have been a Republican.

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Summer 2008 in Lincoln. Get your free list of foreclosures here.

Enough.

Enough.

Enough.

This district is NOT going to send another Southern CA carpetbagger to Washington DC who is just using us as a mailing address with snowmelt.  We are going to send somebody who cares about the district because this is his home and these are his neighbors. And that person is Charlie Brown.

Now you know what we need to do.  Stay on the real issues. Volunteer.  http://www.charliebrownforcong…   Donate. https://www.charliebrownforcon…   http://www.actblue.com/entity/…     Talk. Walk.  Write.  Whatever.  Don’t give in to the temptation to be dragged into the muck.  The Republicans are frantic at this point.  They can’t see the future.  We can.  It’s going to be okay. A little rough, but okay.  Hang in there. Now let’s get out there and bring this one home.

Howie Klein has a look at the state of congressional races in California as voters are heading to the polls in what should be a tsunami year for Democrats.

Over the flip…

The most likely district to go from Republican to Democrat this year is CA-04 where corrupt Republican incumbent John Doolittle– along with the equally corrupt Mrs. Doolittle– will soon be headed for prison and the GOP is trying to slip in an ideological doppelganger in the form of L.A. right wing extremist Tom McClintock. First McClintock, widely seen as an interloper and carpetbagger, will have to get by the Democrat who came close to beating Doolittle in 2006, local boy Charlie Brown, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel known for standing up for working families.

There are two other Blue America candidates running strong races, Russ Warner in CA-26 and Debbie Cook in CA-46, both awakening red districts represented by entrenched rubber stamp Republicans David Dreier and Dana Rohrabacher. No one ever mentions the two most glaring anomalies about the two Republicans: Dreier is a hypocritical, self-loathing closet queen who takes his lover/overpaid chief of staff on exotic vacations all over the world at taxpayer expense; and Rohrabacher is out of his mind and the biggest– probably only— supporter of Taliban terrorists in Congress. Instead, battles in both districts are being fought on familiar turf– both incumbents have taken massive amounts of “donations” from special interests like Big Oil and commercial banking and insurance and have always voted for their interests instead of the interests of the working families in their districts.

Three other California Democrats are making credible cases to displace out of touch incumbents. Up near Sacramento, far right extremist Dan Lungren is facing his stiffest challenge ever from Bill Durston. Meanwhile Mary Bono Mack, who doesn’t have any connect to her district any longer, is getting a run for her (big corporate contributors’) money from Julie Bornstein. The sixth challenger with a real shot at winning is Nick Liebham who’s taking on corrupt rubber stamp lobbyist Brian Bilbray in Northern San Diego County. This afternoon Nick talked with me about Bilbray’s shameful record concerning veterans. “Bibray’s voting record as it concerns veterans really speaks to his distorted priorities and values,” said Nick. “Irrespective of how you feel about the war, and I have called for a timeline to withdraw our troops, we as a nation have an obligation to provide for our heroes when they return home.  Brian Bilbray will send them to a war into perpetuity but wont send them to college.  He is a disgrace.” Nick’s campaign got a tremendous boost in the last couple of weeks when a local hero, former Marine Gen. Joe Hoar not only endorsed Nick, but started campaigning for him and cut a devastating TV commercial as well.

As Howie notes, the disgusting decision by Democrats to focus on an incumbent protection redistricting following the 2000 census means that we are in the second cycle in a row where it is unbelievably difficult for Democrats to take advantage of a nation that has realized Republicans are an awful choice. While it is important to talk to your parents about voting Republican, it is quite difficult to beat them in California. So if you live in a competitive district, please do all you can to help out. And since it is likely you don’t live in a competitive district, sending money is helpful. And hopefully, following the 2010 census, Democrats will follow a Burton redistricting model that is far more Phil than John.

( Didn’t really want to write this, but since the comment to the story about  McClintock’s KKK endorsement kept expanding, it gets its own diary.   I noticed some skepticism towards this topic at dailykos, and since I had a lot of background material already available,  it is relevant. )

This “endorsement”  would explain why one of McClintock’s supporters keeps on using

…..This.

This was in the local paper 9/21/08.  It’s from a McClintock supporter who posts blogs or comments on a daily basis.  Most of his stuff I won’t repeat because it’s too inflammatory. I just try to tell people that these wedge issues are being used to do internet fundraising targeting senior citizens based on a fear of minorities, and that provoking these fears is wrong.  

Regarding the above screenshot of a blog post in my local paper, I know who this is,  and I know he’s a long time financial supporter of both the Republican incumbent and the imported Southern California Republican challenger. (and I found a write up about him on a Christian website, which was not… complimentary. He has a long history of this sort of activity, which other people do not think is charitable towards others )  I’ve posted this image on dailykos before, when he first put it up. It’s following a theme they started when McClintock and Dan Logue decided to do that “Minutemen” “Secure the Borders”  tour this spring up in the northern part of the district, during the Republican Primary.

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March 4, 2008.  left to right, Dan Logue, Eric Egland, Tom McClintock, Sue Horn, as McClintock announces he’s running for Congress.

Dan Logue, state assembly candidate, appeared with McClintock on the “Secure the Borders” tour with the Minutemen group in May,  and his state Cal- access campaign money records for this cycle shows he paid the group that did the tour, “Secured Borders Consulting, Inc” and Jim Gilchrist.

http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/C…

Eric Egland is a former CA- 04 candidate, a Fox News spokesperson, has served as President Bush’s spokesperson on mideast trips, has donated thousands of dollars to McClintock’s campaign, and has worked with MAF, which created the swiftboating ads currently being used against Democratic candidate Charlie Brown.   Sue Horn is former state assembly candidate whose husband works in the building/real estate developer business.

 Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen Project, endorsed McClintock.  The other Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (the founders split into 2 groups) which uses a cleaned up Chris Simcox as its spokesperson and consultant, appeared in Nevada City with McClintock on May 7th. Simcox also endorsed McClintock.  This is what bothered me so much when I saw the flags and other war (Minutemen and the US- Mexican 1847 ) insignia on the parade float the Republicans used during the 4th of July Parade in Lincoln this year.

Links about Jim Gilchrist:

 Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen Project, endorsed McClintock:

 http://www.redcounty.com/place…

Gilchrist’s Minuteman homepage:

http://www.minutemanproject.com/

Gilchrist’s myspace page                           http://profile.myspace.com/ind…

Links, Chris Simcox, other Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, tours with Logue and McClintock  http://www.redcounty.com/place…

Simcox’s MCDC page:   http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/

Simcox has troubled past:  http://www.splcenter.org/news/…

Simcox and various political financial scandals:  Minuteman money mystery, 2006 article by Bill Berkowitz of Media Transparency  (very good Simcox link below)

http://www.mediatransparency.o…

Both Minutemen groups are associated with white supremist groups, such as the Council of Concerned Citizens, altho both deny it.  The CCC has changed its name to the CCIR.   http://www.ccir.net/

Basic information on the CCIR: http://www.splcenter.org/intel…

Some older backstory on the CCC link:  http://www.adl.org/MWD/ccc.asp

The CCC is so secretive they will not publish a membership list and require referrals before they will send you information on their organization.

These racist organizations are NOT dead, they are alive. They peaked in popularity during the first term of the Bush administration, waned, and now with the uncertain economic fallout, they are regaining some steam.  Barbara Coe, a member of the CCC, has been heavily involved recently in Minutemen border events in Southern California this summer, making appearances with  politicians running for office. Coe is also a member of the CCIR, the CA Coalition for Immigration Reform.

The Orcinus blog did a very good write up of the history of the Minutemen groups and their split, and how they front for political consultants, on June 28, 2006.  http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2…

The Rift in the Minutemen

The Subway Canaries blog (now thepinkflamingo.org)  did a write up of this relationship between the KKK and Immigration and the Minutemen groups in October, 2006, with a lot of links:

http://www.thepinkflamingo.org…

The Southern Poverty Law Center said in 2002, that most of the anti immigration “movement” is the result of work by John H Tanton, who founded, served on the boards, and funded many of them.  http://www.splcenter.org/intel…

If you are going to read just one link in my post, read this one from the Southern Poverty Law Center, from summer 2002  Note the remarks from Brian Bilbray, who was to run again in 2006 in the San Diego area and narrowly win election to the current Congress.   The article says that this network of anti immigration groups is not so much grassroots as astroturfing being done by John Tanton and Numbers USA.   Richard Mellon Scaife family foundations has been funding these groups, along with the McConnell Foundation, the Shea Foundation, the Weeden, Salisbury, Smith Richardson, Blair, and Sikes foundations.

4 page story

http://www.splcenter.org/intel…

http://www.splcenter.org/intel…

http://www.splcenter.org/intel…

http://www.splcenter.org/intel…

“The Puppeteer

The organized anti-immigration ‘movement,’ increasingly in bed with racist hate groups, is dominated by one man, John Tanton.”

The meeting with Tancredo and Bilbray  – and the entire lobbying operation in mid-February – was masterminded by NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration group that had recently opened a “government relations office” in a three-story, red-brick Victorian near the Capitol.

NumbersUSA hosted an afternoon open house at its plush new digs, where the lobbyists relaxed, nibbled on catered food, and conversed with the leaders and other officials of key anti-immigration organizations.

Patrick McHugh of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which purports to be a squeaky clean think tank that rejects racism, was there pressing the flesh along with Barbara Coe, head of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, who repeatedly referred to Mexicans – as she has for years – as “savages.”

The Citizens Informer, a white supremacist tabloid put out by the Council of Conservative Citizens ( CCC ) hate group, was available.  

Here is another overview with links of the Minutemen, from an Australian site:

http://www.nationmaster.com/en…

The interesting thing about THIS site is that it mentions Minuteman Bryan Barton and the 2005 T- shirt incident.

T-shirt incident

On April 6, 2005, three Minuteman Project volunteers convinced a 25-year-old illegal immigrant to hold a T-shirt and pose for a photograph and a video with one of the volunteers. The T-shirt, which was also worn by volunteer Bryan Barton, read “Bryan Barton caught me crossing the border and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”.

Bryan Barton (link to one of his spoof sites   http://www.votebarton.com/abou…   ) claims to have a journalism certificate from the same school that graduated White House pool “Reporter”  Jeff Gannon, the right wing “Leadership Institute. ”   Bryan Barton has a large body of past work available for viewing on the internet, some of which has content not suitable for family viewing, containing images that are disturbing in content, meant to defame individuals based on their race, sex, or religious creeds, or depicting scenes of past activities of the Bush administration which were inflammatory or disgusting from a human rights content. He claims it’s humor.  It’s not.  It’s porn.

Tom McClintock, last month,  used the same Bryan Barton as a spokesperson for the follow up Swiftboat “hanging effigy”  advertisement they recorded in front of Charlie Brown’s Campaign office building, whereby Byran Barton asked supposed passerby to look at pictures taken in 2005 at that anti war rally counterdemonstration,  and asked them if a blurry picture of a man wearing a camo jacket over a tee shirt and jeans was the same as a man standing there in full military uniform. It was called “Charlie Brown Uniform Shuffle.”  Link from McClintock’s campaign site:

http://www.tommcclintock.com/m…

So I’m looking at this advertisement posted on McClintock’s front page of his campaign website for several days, knowing that “Bryan Barton of the Minutemen” is this paid Republican operative now working for McClintock, and I am waiting for somebody else to make the connection. Oh well.  Here goes.  One of McClintock’s largest local donators, Fred Sacher, is involved with this Republican “journalism” school that has now given us both Jeff Gannon (of the Valerie Plame – Scooter Libby outing coverup ruse)  and Bryan Barton.   link to page which has clickable pdfs of the Leadership Institute’s financial 990’s that can be studied  http://www.leadershipinstitute…

I guess we’ve just hit the Big Time here in Northern California. Back to the KKK ~~~    

Here’s a link page from a KKK member which is very interesting if you study his site  http://kelticklankirk.com/amer…

Note the Minute Men symbolism used at the top of the page, see the various link names to these extremist groups with it or derivatives of it. The Minute Men symbol is also used by a lot of these white supremist organizations.

Warning. The home page on that KKK site manages to offend every thing. I found the co – opting and perversion of “Celtic” belief particularly vile and wish to state that Irish, Christian, Celt and Pagan ? does not equal Klan, and the use of these Celtic art symbols in this context, which have their own meanings, is really bizarre.  http://kelticklankirk.com/

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McClintock’s float, the 4th of July parade in Lincoln, CA.  Flags, Republican GOP, CA state Bear Flag, American Flag, “Christian” Flag.  

The Christian Flag, the white one on the right hand side seen above, with the blue corner and red cross, is also used by the KKK in some parts of the country. Click here and scroll down to near the bottom to see an example:    http://www.kelticklankirk.com/…                   Another flag similiar to it, a pure white flag with a small confederate canton and cross in the corner is also used.  Click here for an example  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadsh…            Notice how the Christian flag is flying same level with the other flags on this float.   The CA Bear Flag is also used by Save Our State, another white supremist group.  http://saveourstate.org/index.php     That combined with the heavy symbolism of the Mexican – US War of 1846- 47 and Minutemen symbolism on the parade float (most people did not know what they were looking at, but the few who did, it provoked quite a visceral response  )  really gave me a completely different outlook on the McClintock candidacy.   Whoever put this together wanted it to be provocative and stir up certain feelings of pitting one group against another, based on race and ancestral nationality.

The City of Lincoln, before it underwent the explosive population growth in the past decade with the population nearly quadrupling,  when the Del Webb retirement subdivisions went in, was more racially diverse and more laid – back and had a larger number of Latino Americans by percentage.

The Mexican American War ended up disenfranchising hundreds of Mexican citizens and Native Americans which were living in the southwestern  territory that the United States ended up with, because they did not get legal citizenship as was originally implied by the preliminary treaty, which the Senate then modified afterwards.   There was a lot of LDS symbolism on that float, such as the Wagon Wheel,  that also commemorated the Mormon Battalion, which marched across country from the midwest all the way to the California Coast during the same war.  The territorial gain by the United States was seen as another example of the righteousness of the theory of Manifest Destiny. The distinctive officer’s uniform on one of the soldier figurines on the float was very similar to what would have been worn by General Winfield Scott, a famous general in that war.  General Scott has another role in history, when in 1838 he also moved the Cherokee from their original homeland in Georgia to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears. Before the move started, 4 thousand Cherokee would die in confinement.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W…

Scott arrived at New Echota, Cherokee Nation on April 6, 1838, and immediately divided the Nation into three military districts. Within two weeks he had every Cherokee in North Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama who could not escape to be captured or killed. The Cherokee were rounded up and held in rat-infested stockades with little food. Private John G. Burnett later wrote, “Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokees who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the matter.”[3][4]  

So …. that was a very complex parade float.  

Here’s another detail from that 4th of July parade float:

Detail, McClintock’s 4th of July parade float, Lincoln CA.  Minutemen plaque behind L M’s shoulder.

Here’s the whole float from a distance, I posted this pic before in another diary:



July 4 McClintock parade float

And if the casual viewer couldn’t “get” the point that day in Lincoln, they had another person on a lawn tractor towing a big fiberglass trio of Minute Men figurines behind the parade float carrying the McClintocks.  

I have also seen blatantly racist material at another Republican booth at a district public event,  and in the window display of a district Republican headquarters building with both McClintock and John McCain signs in it.  Once, it could be an anomaly.  Repeatedly seeing it over and over again, it becomes a theme.   The question became, for me personally, should I address this issue and let it distract from the real campaign issues, or should I just follow the money trails and see where the McClintock supporters are going with this, and will it bring them national level support?

Then, when Republican John McCain picked Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, and I started seeing a lot of graphics of Palin with her high powered rifle, peering thru the scope, juxtaposed with pictures of our candidate Barack Obama, with the caption “She’s a Better Shot than Cheney,” I knew where the Republicans were going to take their campaign.  

Damn, I’m old enough to remember the 1960’s.  Why are they deliberately doing this?  Why is one of McClintock’s local supporters repeatedly using a hanging effigy theme?

Just like in the July parade, Tom McClintock wanted to be provocative when he stood there on the State Capitol steps early last month (Sept 2) during the “Minutemen” rally and called for the Federal government to cut off funding for San Francisco. And for the Federal government to deport millions of people.  There was a giant sign parked down on the road which says “Build the Wall, Deport them All,” the loudspeakers are playing some sort of dreadful screed about how people of Native American Indigenous ancestry have to perform a blood sacrifice when they reach adulthood, and are secretly plotting to turn California and the American southwest back into the Aztec state, “Aztlan” (this is the same stuff I’ve seen on the Council of Concerned Citizens site )  and then the group of teenaged kids in white dress shirts and dress pants and some sort of red satin sashes show up with the big “Save Traditonal Marriage” Sign on the sidewalk.  They hopped in a van and drove off when they realized they were being recorded for posterity.  

It was pretty surrealistic.

Just another day at the California State Capitol, campaign 2008, McClintock version.

Here are 2 images from the Republican Booth at the Gold Country Fair in Auburn the first week in September on Saturday the 7th.

The first one shows the Christian flag flying over the booth just to the left of McClintock’s name.  The second is the closeup of one of the bumper stickers they had for sale, to the left of the man in the striped shirt. “Liberalism, the imaginary distance between church and state.”

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My ancestors are doing so many flips in their graves that this is what passes for political fodder in 2008 California,  I half expect an earthquake.  

I see there is some skepticism about the link between McClintock and these extremist groups concerning a “guilt by association” of an old endorsement by the KKK.  Some people do not think this is relevant, others think it a distraction.   So I’m posting my observations on this relationship, reluctantly, because I don’t want to give Karl Rove the satisfaction of driving the dialogue here . But this subtext of forced removals of the “others,” based on their supposed cultural inferiority,  as being justified by a Higher Power, and therefore the Republican candidate is the “Right One”  has been running all thru McClintock’s campaign for CA- 04.  

Mercifully,  I see a lot of people in this district are finally starting to reject the use of these wedge issues.   I would hope the national level Republican campaign, based on what I’m seeing at McCain’s events, could come to grips with the fear issues and stop trying to scare people into voting for them.

But I also want to emphasize that we here in the district not imagining things when we say we see a relationship between the creed of the KKK and the campaign theme being used by McClintock.   This side of the aisle is rejecting the use of fear to divide us and ostracize us from each other.  

Perennial candidate Tom McClintock is a beloved figure on the far right.  We just didn’t know how far.

It turns out that in 2003, when McClintock was running for his eleventy-teenth political office in the California governor recall election, he was endorsed by none other than the KKK.

Dateline: September 27, 2003

Ku Klux Klan Announces support for Tom McClintock

The Imperial Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (IKA) have announced their full support for Tom

McClintock’s bid for the governorship of California. Their support is announced in what they term “the

lesser of all evil candidates.”

When interviewed, Mr. Chris Johnson (Grand Dragon or State Director of the IKA’s California chapter) had this to say regarding the announcement, “While Mr. McClintock is not the perfect candidate for California Governor, we have more in common with his ideology than any of the other candidates. We are in congruence with his stand on illegal aliens infecting our land and his courage in standing up to the invasion.” Mr. Johnson went on to say that, “Mr. McClintock echoes our anti-abortion stand, and our opposition to oppressive taxation.”

I guess the McClintock campaign can spin this by saying that at least the KKK called him evil, even if he was the lesser of all the rest?

Here’s the thing: organizations can choose to endorse anybody they want, and the candidates have no control over that.  But McClintock never said a peep five years ago when he got this endorsement.  And there’s a Chris Johnson on McClintock’s donor list from that 2003 gubernatorial race.  Chris Johnson is obviously a common name, and the donation is $100, so take it with a grain of salt.  But certainly, McClintock needs to answer the question of why he never rejected the endorsement and why they never sought out and returned money that would even have the appearance of coming from the Klan.

More to the point, McClintock is just the kind of guy to demonize an opponent’s associations.  In fact, when running for governor in 2003, McClintock compared then-Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante’s association with the Hispanic student group MEChA to, you guessed it, the KKK.

State Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican rival, recently likened the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, also known as MEChA, to the Ku Klux Klan.

“It’s like saying, ‘Oh, I was a moderate member of the Klan,'” McClintock said last month on the San Diego radio station KOGO. “It’s incumbent on Cruz Bustamante to clearly and completely renounce …

The idea that the KKK finds ideological kinship with McClintock is pretty much a no-brainer.  His demonization of illegal immigrants as the cause of so much of the nation’s economic woes plays to the baser instincts of the racist right.  He’s running a campaign against Charlie Brown that has recently seized on Brown’s appearance at an anti-war rally before the invasion of Iraq as somehow un-American.  It’s really not too much of a logical leap here.

Stay tuned for more on this…

Here are some things happening around the state:

• CA-04: The most important debate evah is tonight!  No, not that Biden-Palin thing, it’s Calitics Match candidate Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock in Oroville.    Meanwhile, the air war has begun in earnest.  Brown is up with a 60-second ad featuring a local family as a third-party endorser, explaining their struggles to stay ahead in this economy and how Brown is the right choice.  I think it’ll play well (Brown has an American Jobs Plan which includes investments in infrastructure and green jobs, which is key to the needed reindustrialization of society).  On the other hand, Tom McClintock has decided to use Grandpa Fred.

“The financial crisis our nation faces is complicated, and I don’t think anybody’s got all the answers,” Thompson, a well-known actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee, says in the commercial. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll feel a lot more confident with Tom McClintock working on it, rather than some amateur.”

Shorter Grandpa Fred: “All this book-learnin’ and financializin’ is hard to figger.  Pick the guy who’s never voted Yes on a budget in his entire career.”

• CA-11: If you want to know why Dean Andal isn’t getting any traction in his race against Rep. Jerry McNerney, this quote says it all:

Elected in 2006, McNerney is in a better position for reelection than many expected. But he sits in a district that gave President Bush 54 percent of the vote in 2004, a sure sign that the freshman Democrat ought to be looking over his shoulder.

His Republican opponent, former state Assemblyman Dean Andal, may not be in a position to capitalize, though. The Lodi News-Sentinel reported that an Andal spokesman took the curious position that “it would be inappropriate of Andal to comment on the bailout bill, because he is not in office.”

Yes, it would be terrible to actually give your viewpoints on national issues during a political campaign.

• CA-46: You know that Calitics Match candidate Debbie Cook is gaining traction in her race against nutjob Dana Rohrabacher by this – Rohrabacher has gone negative.  He’s sent an attack mailer that takes a Cook comment about gas prices out of context and really goes to great lengths to greenwash himself.  He mentions his sponsorship of a bill to completely eliminate environmental review for solar projects, which is irresponsible but which he is trying to cynically use as proof of his green energy bona fides.  It also calls Cook an extremist liberal who opposes drilling.

What’s hysterical is that Rohrabacher sent the mailer to everyone in the district but Democrats, meaning that Greens got it.  And I’m told by the Cook campaign that they received numerous calls from Green Party members saying that they were voting for Debbie BECAUSE of the mailer!

In other news, Rohrabacher is certifiably crazy.

According to a September 25, 2008, Pasadena Weekly article by Carl Kozlowski, Rohrabacher believes that the Los Angeles Police Department has for 40 years hidden the fact that Sirhan Sirhan, the lone man convicted of shooting Kennedy, worked as part of a “real conspiracy” of Arabs […]

In early 2007–39 years after the killing and right around the time that he blamed global warming on dinosaur flatulence, Rohrabacher decided to solve his murder mystery for “the Kennedy family.”

Anyone familiar with Rohrabacher knows this story is now headed for unadulterated, wacky bliss.

At some point, Sirhan sent Summer Reese, one of his lawyers, a letter telling her that “a Diana was coming to see him.”

Reese told Kozlowski, “Sirhan didn’t know it was the congressman because his visitor was presented as a woman.”

Rohrabacher. Undercover. In drag. Using the name Diana?

Perhaps this sheds light on why ex-Congressman Bob Dornan (R-Garden Grove) liked to call Rohrabacher “a fruitcake.”

I actually know Carl, maybe I’ll track him down and interview him about this.

• AD-26: I’ve noticed a lot of Republicans afraid to debate this year.  Here’s another example.

Stretching from Turlock to Stocton, the 26th Assembly District is fairly even in voter registration and is a target on both party’s lists. So why would one candidate take a pass on a critical opportunity to face his opponent and make his case to voters? That is the question being asked by Democratic candidate John Eisenhut who was at a League of Women Voters debate in Modesto Friday night. His Republican opponent, Bill Berryhill, had a “scheduling conflict.”

In a conversation with Eisenhut the night after the debate he said that Berryhill didn’t want to debate him. This in spite of Berryhill being quoted by the Modesto Bee saying,

“People deserve some dialogue and to know where we both stand.”

• AD-30: Fran Florez runs against Sacramento  in this solid new ad.  Is she also running against her own son, State Sen. Dean Florez?