Last week, Republicans on Facebook and elsewhere jumped all over a video Drudge posted of a random women on the street talking about receiving a free "Obama Phone." A couple of things before debunking this nonsense.
First, what's the point, Republicans? Honestly. Is there some sort of phone entitlement crisis that's bankrupting the nation? Oh wait. I think I know. Welfare queens and layabouts demanding handouts. I get it.
And now, the debunking. There is, in fact, a non-profit free phone program called SafeLink Wireless that offers phones to low-income households -- with a whopping one hour of free call time per month. Wow! Lavish! And when did this program start? In 2008 before Barack Obama was president. Additionally, it's not even funded with tax-payer money. Meanwhile, subsidized phone services for low-income Americans goes all the way back to 1984. I believe Reagan was president at the time. "Obama" has nothing to do with any free phone program.
Additionally, conservative anti-Obama crackpots are going after the president's late mother, Ann Dunham, in the worst way possible.
For a while now, pictures purporting to show Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, modeling in 1950s bondage and fetish porn have been floating around the darker corners of the Internet. Now, though, they’ve made their way into a pseudo-documentary, Joel Gilbert’s Dreams From My Real Father, which is being mailed to voters in swing states, promoted by several Tea Party groups and by at least one high-level Republican. At the same time, Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book, Obama’s America—the first of all his works to hit the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list—has a chapter essentially calling Dunham a fat slut. [...]
What matters here is not that a lone crank made a vulgar conspiracy video, one that outdoes even birther propaganda in its lunacy and bad taste. It’s that the video is finding an audience on the right. Gilbert claims that more than a million copies of Dreams From My Real Father have been mailed to voters in Ohio, as well between 80,000 and 100,000 to voters in Nevada and 100,000 to voters in New Hampshire. “We’re putting plans in place, as of next week, to send out another 2 [million] or 3 million, just state by state,” he told me.
There's a special place in hell for whomever is peddling this awfulness.
Once again the Republicans have brazenly attacked political non-combatants. This time, in addition to a woman who died decades ago and can't defend herself, it was a heretofore anonymous woman -- a nobody -- who appeared to be unaware of what was going on. And Drudge plastered her face above his logo for the gawking, cackling amusement of Republican thugs and bullies who routinely like to attack people who aren't involved in the every day political discourse. What's next, Republicans, you honorable tough guys? Mugging homeless people?