An Open Letter To Joe Scarborough

Inspired by Bob Cesca.

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From: Broadway Carl
To: joe@msnbc.com
Cc: phil.griffin@nbc.com, steve.capus@nbc.com

Subject: Who is the real John McCain?


Dear Mr. Scarborough,

I am writing this e-mail in response to watching your show on MSNBC this morning, October 9th.

You spent a good amount of time speaking of the negative campaigning that's been going on in the McCain campaign, their suggestions that we don't know who Barack Obama is and Palin's comments trying to link him to rehabilitated domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

As you well know, their caustic campaigning over the last few days have brought about frightening and angry outbursts from members of their audience. Shouts of "terrorist," kill him" and "treason" accompany the rallies, and although the McCain campaign has put out a statement condemning these outbursts, they seem very passive when those cries are actually happening. In fact, their choice to make their campaign an attack on Obama instead of speaking on the issues is inciting the crowd to this frenzied behavior.

I know that you and your journalists on your daily panels have to report these incidents, but what I don't understand is that if you're going to go on for approximately 20 minutes on Obama and Bill Ayers, showing clips of McCain and Palin with their negative message trying to cast Obama as an unknown, where is the objective reporting on Sarah Palin and what her associations could possibly be? You'd have to agree that Palin's past has not been nearly as scrutinized as Obama's as she's only been on the national scene for about a month now.

Here's what I would like to know:

- After all the criticism Obama received because of Rev. Wright, what is Palin's relationship with her Rev. Muthee, a man who drove a woman out of a village for witchcraft? Does Palin believe in witchcraft?

- Why is John McCain "palling around" with G. Gordon Liddy, a former Watergate burglar who instructed people how to murder federal agents?

- What is Sarah Palin's relationship with the Alaska Independence Party, a party that advocates seceding from the U.S. and whose founder, Joe Vogler, was gruesomely murdered under mysterious circumstances, some say in an apparent illegal plastics explosives sale gone bad? This same founder said, "the fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag ..." What is Todd Palin's association with Vogler?

- What is her husband Todd's relationship with the AIP?

- Why is Palin sequestered from the press? We haven't seen any press conferences from Palin. What is she hiding?

- Why did the McCain campaign try to block a bipartisan investigation into the Trooper-Gate scandal? What is Palin hiding?

- Why is McCain not condemning those introducing him at rallies who attempt to disparage Obama by using "Hussein" anymore like he did with radio host Bill Cunningham a while back?

- The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. John McCain was on the board. Why was McCain on the same board with Nazi sympathizers?

Of course, there are many more questions than just these to ask and your team, being fair and balanced journalists, should ask them. If you're going to "report" and play the guilt by association game on Obama, then the pendulum should swing both ways and questions of McCain's and Palin's associations should be answered as well.

Thank you
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Maybe you should write a letter as well.

Joe Scarborough
joe@msnbc.com

MSNBC
Mr. Phil Griffin,
Senior Vice President, News
NBC Television Network
30 Rockefeller Plz
New York, NY 10112
phil.griffin@nbc.com

Steve Capus,
President, NBC News
steve.capus@nbc.com

MSNBC
letters@msnbc.com
MSNBC/Microsoft-NBC
30 Rockefeller Plz
3rd Fl
New York, NY 10112
(212) 664-4444

Palin's Terrorist Ties

Two can play at this game.

In what seems to be a circling-the-drain moment for the McCain campaign, their Alamo if you will, their last "surge" akin to the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, these last 30 days before Novemeber 4th are going to be chock full of negative ads against Barack Obama. Going negative is one thing, being dishonest about it is another. And that dishonesty has been opened up by Governor Sarah Palin.

As only Palin can do in her perky, little twangy way, she has accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists."

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Well, with that last sentiment, I couldn't agree more. But if Palin had actually read "all" the papers that have been put in front of her over the years, she would know that the Bill Ayers smear to which she is referring, has been around for over a year and has been debunked. She would know that the extent of Obama's "connection" with Bill Ayers was that they both served on a charity board several years ago and has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities. She would know that Barack Obama was eight years old at the time that Ayers was part of Weather Underground and that connecting Obama to Ayers would be like connecting Palin to Joe Biden for speeches he made in the Senate while she "was in like, second grade." She would know that charges against Ayers were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct and that he has been a professor at the University of Illinois since she was parading in swimsuit competitions.

But as I said before, Palin is correct in stating that Obama doesn't see America as she does. You see, Barack Obama pays his taxes, which may be the real reason why Palin said paying taxes was not patriotic during her only VP debate. Barack Obama doesn't have investigators checking on whether or not he fired someone for refusing to partake in a personal vendetta. Barack Obama is not married to someone who belonged to a secessionist party, which is considered treason if I'm not mistaken, nor has he attended secessionist party conventions.

The same cannot be said of Governor Palin. Her wife, Todd was a member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995-2002 and associated with AIP founder Joe Vogler -the same Joe Vogler who said, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." The same Joe Vogler who said, "there is more Justice in a whorehouse than in the Supreme Court... the fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag ...". The same Joe Vogler who was found murdered, his body found a year and a half after his disappearance in 1993, wrapped in a blue tarp and duct tape, in what was described as a plastic explosives sale gone bad.

Perhaps she could clear things up if the McCain campaign made her available for press conferences without the "filter" that she claims made her look like a boob in interviews which were hand picked by her own campaign, instead of sequestering her from the media. But alas, her usefulness is not outlasting her foibles. Soon, McCain will no longer be able to hide behind Palin's skirt as her approval ratings plummet with each passing day the more the public sees of her.

In an anticipatory response to the overt use of negative ads that the McCain campaign admitted it would resort to in order to avoid talking about serious topics like the economy, the Obama campaign is countering with their own ad calling him "erratic in a crisis," and after what we've seen from McCain these last two weeks regarding the financial crisis, it's nice to see some truth in advertising.



So be careful what you say, Governor Palin. You may open up a Pandora's Box and get your face eaten off by a wolf you missed¹ from your airplane².
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¹ ² Warning - graphic images.