Yesterday I got a fund-raising pitch for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, courtesy of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Along the way they expressed outrage that:

The other take away is that our opponents are ready to play dirty. CNN recently reported that an anti-choice group calling themselves The Real Truth About Obama, Inc., is trying to Swift Boat Barack Obama by running false ads in key states during the electioneering communication blackout period 60 days before the general election.

They link to a story on CNN Political Ticker as their source. Here’s what the story has to say about this terrible ad:

The Real Truth About Obama wants to post ads on its Web site and on the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity talk shows in key states during the electioneering communication blackout period 60 days before the general election. The ad features an Obama-like voice saying he would make taxpayers pay for all abortions, ensure minors’ abortions are concealed from their parents, appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices and legalize the late-term procedure that abortion opponents call partial-birth abortion.

Oh, please.

Let’s break this down and look at what, if CNN is reporting the contents correctly, the ad actually claims.

1. Barack Obama would make taxpayers pay for all abortions. — Obama opposes the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal healthcare programs from funding abortions. NARAL also opposes the Hyde Amendment. Obama’s opposition to the Hyde Amendment is one of the reasons that NARAL supports Obama’s candidacy. All abortions is no doubt wrong — even if the Hyde Amendment were repealed, it would mainly affect women receiving Medicaid, women in federal prisons, women in the military, and a few other groups of women who receive their healthcare coverage from the federal government. But since Obama, like most progressives, believes in substantially expanding the scope of federally-funded healthcare programs, and believes in repealing the Hyde Amendment, he is also committed to believing that many if not most abortions should be paid for using federal tax dollars. I oppose federal funding of abortions because I oppose all federal funding of healthcare. But I see no reason to discriminate against abortion here as opposed to all other surgical procedures: if you believe strongly in making taxpayers pay for other people’s medical care, and you believe that abortion is a legitimate form of medical care, then why the hell wouldn’t you believe in making taxpayers pay for other people’s abortions?

2. Barack Obama would oppose laws requiring parental notification when minors get an abortion. — Of course Obama would oppose laws requiring parental notification when minors get an abortion. NARAL also opposes laws requiring parental notification when minors get an abortion. As well they should: parental notification laws, which treat young women as if their reproductive organs were the property of their parents, are tyrannical, foolish, and destructive invasions of young women’s freedom, as well as extremely dangerous for young women in abusive or unstable family situations.

3. Barack Obama would appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices. — Of course Obama would appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices. The fact that he would appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices is a large part of the reason that NARAL supports Obama’s candidacy. And for good reason: pro-choice Supreme Court justices are much less likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.

4. Barack Obama would work to repeal the federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortion. — Obama voted against so-called partial-birth abortion bans in the state legislature in Illinois and in the federal Senate. NARAL also opposes these bans, and the fact that Obama opposes them is one of the reason that NARAL supports Obama’s candiday. And for good reason: late-term abortion procedure bans are tyrannical, foolish, and destructive invasions of women’s rights to control their own bodies, and doctor’s rights to choose the safest available procedure for a late-term abortion. The bans endanger women’s health and criminalize doctors for practicing good medicine.

There’s no Swift Boating here, because the ad consists mainly of factual statements about Barack Obama’s positions — positions which Barack Obama is, in the main, right on, and which NARAL agrees he is right on. Of all the claims made in the ad, only one part of one of the claims actually attributes a position to Barack Obama which he does not hold. Only part of one of the claims attributes any claim to Obama that NARAL does not actually support. And only one of the claims attributes any claim to Obama which he is actually wrong to hold. The ad says a bunch of things about his view which are mostly true and which he is mostly right about. His views on these topics may be controversial, but they are only controversial among people who are already anti-abortion, or who are take-one-for-the-party doughfaces and useless hand-wringers without any consistent position. They are certainly not controversial within the pro-choice movement. And what the hell is the point of an outfit like NARAL if not to publicly support and agitate for controversial positions on behalf of the pro-choice movement, rather than pretending as if it were somehow bad to have those positions attributed to you?

A little courage of our convictions, please.

Forwarded by Mark Pilgrim (2008-06-19), who adapted this version from <a rel=”via” href=”http://www.slate.com/id/2193798/>Christopher Beam @ Slate (2008-06-17).

From: Mark Pilgrim
Subject: Teach the Controversy about Barack Obama
Date: 19 June 2008

There are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's PATRIOTIC DUTY to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times, even in the shower. One time he DROPPED THE PIN down the drain, and he PATRIOTICALLY disassembled his entire plumbing to retrieve it.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag, and he has an American flag in EVERY ROOM in his house. Some days it takes him OVER 45 MINUTES to get out of his house. He also ends every sentence by saying, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. On the INTERNET there is video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups. He does FIFTY SITUPS every morning, which is the same number as OUR FOUNDING FATHERS did to commemorate our FIFTY STATES.

Barack Obama take his daughters HUNTING every weekend — HUNTING LIBERALS, that is. Liberals are ALWAYS IN SEASON.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic, which is the language JESUS SPOKE before he learned English. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW. If elected, he has pledged to build a MEGACHURCH inside AIR FORCE ONE.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL. His blood is the color of the AMERICAN FLAG. His fingernails are the color of APPLE PIE. He rubs AMERICAN SOIL on his chest every 20 minutes, then cleanses himself with HOLY WATER.

Barack Obama buys only AMERICAN GOODS. His sole possessions are a FORD PICK-UP TRUCK, a GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL, and HALF THE STATE OF MONTANA. He drinks only APPALACHIAN MOONSHINE, eats only FREEDOM FRIES, and travels exclusively by JOHN DEERE TRACTOR.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW! SPREAD THE TRUTH ABOUT BARACK OBAMA!!!!!

Consider this post a sort of open question. (It’s not quite a LazyWeb post, exactly, because there’s not a single well-defined answer that I’m looking for.)

Electoral politics are weird, and anything could still happen. But the chances are very good at this point that, a little more than half a year from now, (1) the Bush administration will be gone, (2) the Democratic Party will hold even larger majorities in the House and the Senate, and (3) there may well be a Democratic President and administration, probably — although, again, you never know for sure — headed by Barack Obama. This after 6 years of trying to get by under a Republican-dominated government, and 2 years of divided government, which has largely maintained the status quo without much challenge or change.

The most important point to make is that even if there is a massive change-over in the balance of power in Washington, D.C., it won’t change much of anything fundamental. There will be shifts on the margins — some for good, some for ill, and most of them neutral shifts of patronage and privileges from one set of power-brokers to another set of power-brokers. Whatever may be the case, radicals will have to go on organizing and go on fighting uphill against the warfare State, paramilitary policing, plutocratic state capitalism, government managerialism, the forced-pregnancy brigade, the War on Drugs, the border Stasi, and all the rest of it.

But also, presumably, the changing of the guard in the State citadel will mean that some of the facts on the ground are going to change, as is some of the rhetoric and some of the constituencies of Power. Presumably that means that we are going to have to make some shifts in tactics and strategy for outreach, organizing, education, evasion, resistance, etc. in the coming months. The time to start talking about this, and to start laying the groundwork for what we will be doing in the coming years, is now, if not yesterday. We need to start thinking about where should we go, who should we talk to, and what should we do from here on out

So, with that in mind, what changes are there likely to be in the challenges we’ll face during the post-Bush era, and under a consolidated Democratic Party-dominated regime in D.C.? What changes in strategy, tactics, propaganda, and institutional infrastructure do you think that anti-statist liberation movements need to make, and what should they start doing now in order to be able to make those changes?

Let’s talk about it in the comments. (Or on your own blog, if you want the extra space; just leave a comment here with a link back to your post.)

Me am Anarchist shock troop Number 1 for Obamarchy!

William Mayer brings us the latest in political news from Htrae’s election season:

If you think Chicago 1968 was bad then the prospect of what could happen in Denver is truly frightening. Picture a million people in the street with bombs going off and the central downtown business area burned to the ground.

Denver is a very liberal city, ala San Francisco and Seattle there is nowhere near the political will, nor is there sufficient police power to stop committed rioters.

You think I’m kidding?

Get real, the potential is there because Obama’s natural shock troops, something that has not been discussed anywhere in the MSM that we can find, consist of the same crazies that have caused so much trouble at various anti-globalization demonstrations around the world.

It’s therefore an international force.

Hell, when taken as a whole the nutcase hard lefties are the least dangerous people in that universe. The anarchists, and trust me, thousands of them could be mobilized from the Western United States, will constitute the SS divisions in this pro-Obama army. These folks live to cause trouble and are totally unpredictable and uncontrollable.

— William Mayer, PipelineNews.org (2008-04-26): Is Denver Burning? – Hillary Must Stay In Race To Ensure Destruction Of Obama

If those of us who are anarchists on Earth were half as numerous, well-organized, and uncontrollable in our efforts to undermine and ultimately destroy State authority as the Bizarro Anarchists are in their efforts to get a smooth politician invested with the authority of the President of the Bizarro Divided States of Acirema–well, then I’d be a lot more sanguine about the near future than I am.

(Via Dan Clore on the LeftLibertarian2 listserv.)

As far as I can tell, Jamie Kirchick, assistant editor for The New Republic,^[*] has devoted most of his young professional life to becoming exactly the sort of bright boy at the The New Republic whom Randolph Bourne had in mind when he wrote The War and the Intellectuals, and who, decades later, would make the best and the brightest into a bitter national joke. In any case, here’s something from his latest, a TNR blog post on Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his recent speech on race:

Finally, what concerns me most about the Wright controversy isn’t the Pastor’s racist statements or even his unhinged views of Israel. I don’t think Obama agrees with any of that nonsense. What concerns me is the sort of comment that Wright made about Harry Truman’s ending World War II, that We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. This smacks of the Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky/Nation magazine wing of the American left that Democrats serious about this country’s security (and winning in November) should not want within 100 miles of the next administration.

— James Kirchick, The Plank (2008-03-21): Thoughts on a Speech

Let’s set aside, for the moment, Rev. Wright’s confusion about personal pronouns. I didn’t bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and I don’t think that he did, either. But that’s apparently not what Kirchick has a problem with. What he has a problem with is what such statements about the U.S. government smack of.

But, Mr. Kirchick, no matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Hiroshima?

No matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Nagasaki?

No matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed somewhere around 210,000 civilian men, women and children — about 70 times the number of civilians killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

As far as I can tell, nothing that has provoked Jamie Kirchick’s outrage here is actually, you know, false. Perhaps he thinks that these are facts which it is rude to mention in public. But if being taken for serious about this country’s security (which is TNR-speak for this government’s wars) requires not mentioning them–that is, if being taken for serious requires silence or dissembling about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of a shared vision of American power, then it is well worth asking just who the hell these assholes are who we’re supposed to prove our seriousness to. And what their notion of seriousness really amounts to. And why anyone should think she has to prove a damned thing to them.

(Via David Gordon, via Lew Rockwell 2008-03-23.)

Further reading:

• GT 2006-02-06: Dr. Strangeread, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Our Troops