So here’s a petty, vindictive little number to cloak your racism with.  You can send it to all your fellow klansmen friends:

OBAMA STOPS WOUNDED SOLDIER FROM SPEAKING!! *THIS MAN HAS GOT TO GO*

Sent by Retired Vice Admiral Bob Scarborough, of Arlington, Va.:

“I wanted to give you all some disturbing information on our wonderful president.  I work with the Catch-A-Dream Foundation, which provides hunting and fishing trips to children with  life-threatening illnesses.  This past weekend we had our annual  banquet/fundraiser event in Starkville.  As a part of our program, we had  scheduled Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube to come; he is a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret and inspirational speaker who was severely injured while  deployed overseas and didn’t have much of a chance for survival. Greg is stationed at Ft. Bragg , NC and received permission from his commanding officer  to come speak at our function. Everything was on go until Obama made a policy that NO U.S. SERVICEMAN CAN SPEAK AT ANY CHRISTIAN FAITH-BASED PUBLIC EVENTS ANYMORE.  Needless to say, Greg had to cancel his speaking event with us. Didn’t know if anyone else was aware of this new policy.  You’re just starting to see the Obamanation. This is just how the Nazis did it in the  1930s —  slowly, one step at a time.  This should be forwarded to  everyone  regardless of party affiliation!

Whew!  Boy, talk about your Nazis.  Note the ominous threat of “disturbing information” about our “wonderful president.”  I’m angry already!  But as it turns out, the part that’s supposed to upset me (in red) is utter bullshit.  In typical fashion.  That’s what right-wing political strategists do with their Nazi-style propaganda: start with a little bit of truth and build a horrifying lie out of it. There is no such policy regarding “faith-based” events; the dude wasn’t permitted to speak because those crazy lefties at the Department of Defense have a policy of not endorsing charities.  So, to recap: the policy doesn’t exist, and nothing ever had anything to do with Obama, but that won’t stop the people who write this shit from comparing Obama to Nazis.  Because the more scared you are of that black man in the White House who’s not like you, the more likely you are to give money to and/or vote for incompetent nutjobs.  And that’s what this is really all about.

Stats from my inbox:

Number of inboxes this appeared in prior to mine: At least 229

Number of forwarders (direct lineage): 9

Now that I’ve set that up, I immediately depart from the concept (hey, it happens sometimes) to bring you an actual printed piece of propaganda: one of many versions of a fake censusy-looking document the national Republican Party has been mailing over the last several months. Any Maddow watchers out there have already followed the arc of this story:  Republicans (both the RNC and the NRCC) mail deceptive anti-Obama censuslike letters out to the general population, Congress passes law specifically to prevent these letters from being mailed, Republicans ignore law and send out letters anyway.

The problem is not that anyone who reads one of these is going to confuse it with an actual census form sent out by the US Government.  The problem is that A) this is likely to reduce participation in the Census (people ignore and trash the actual census letters), thereby costing us more taxpayer money in follow up mailers and personal visits (hence the law), and B) it gets Republican misinformation in front of the eyes of people who would not normally read it.

Note the questions, and the way they imply that the Democratic party advocates total amnesty for all illegal immigrants, giving immigrants retroactive and unlimited welfare benefits, eliminating all performance standards for teachers, raising the average person’s taxes, a government takeover of healthcare, and a bunch of other BS they do not advocate.  It’s a nice mixture of race baiting, government hatred, and direct appeals to selfishness.  Par for the course with the Republican Party.

To my knowledge these documents are still being sent out despite the law (as the strict constructionist types at the RNC have found loopholes in the law that was specifically written to stop them).  This is one of the mailers received by a non-Republican in the Atlanta area:

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”