US 08 Presidential Campaign General Discussion Thread #8

[Irvine511]

what's happening, to me at least, is this.

if you go back and read the RNC thread, i thought i respected McCain a great deal. i disagreed with him, obviously, but that speech reminded us who it was he once appeared to be. i hoped that despite the rank political expediency of the Palin pick we might again see the John McCain of 2000 back in our midst.

now, with this lipstick/pig lie, and the sex ed lie, it's apparently clear that John McCain doesn't even meet the basic threshold of integrity to hold public office, let alone the presidency. the people putting out these ads, and McCain himself, know that they are lying to the American public. and you know what? they're betting that you're too stupid to know better or too lazy to care.

these ads demonstrate what McCain thinks of you, his supporters.

you need a better candidate. one who doesn't play you for fools and idiots.

[2861U2]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

doesn't even meet the basic threshold of integrity to hold public office, let alone the presidency. the people putting out these ads, know that they are lying to the American public. and you know what? they're betting that you're too stupid to know better or too lazy to care.

these ads demonstrate what McCain thinks of you, his supporters.

you need a better candidate. one who doesn't play you for fools and idiots.

I could say this exact thing about Obama. It's politics.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by 2861U2

I could say this exact thing about Obama. It's politics.

show me any Obama ad that has the same level of dishonesty as the two ads released by McCain yesterday.

ask better of your candidate. he is degrading you as a supporter.

hell, even George HW Bush didn't put his name on the racist Willie Horton ad.

[Tiger Edge]

Originally Posted by TheEdge U2JT

You guys all seem like your going to defend Obama to the bitter end, willing to overlook just about everything along the way.

The same can be said about any candidate of any party in any election year. Some people can be apologists to the "bitter end," but it's equal on BOTH sides.
If Obama released an ad about McCain's "___" and you thought it to be a misrepresentation, McCain supporters would be the first in here to bitch and moan about how evil Obama and his campaign are.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Tiger Edge

The same can be said about any candidate of any party in any election year. Some people can be apologists to the "bitter end," but it's equal on BOTH sides.
If Obama released an ad about McCain's "___" and you thought it to be a misrepresentation, McCain supporters would be the first in here to bitch and moan about how evil Obama and his campaign are.

i still don't think there's any equivocation to be made between the utterly false McCain ads on the "lipstick/pig" lie or the "comprehensive sex ed" lie.

McCain has disgraced himself and his campaign. he'll say and do anything to win. he thinks voters are stupid and he continuously insults his supporters.

[deep]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

i still don't think there's any equivocation to be made between the utterly false McCain ads on the "lipstick/pig" lie or the "comprehensive sex ed" lie.

The lipstick lie ??

sorry, your bias prevents you from looking at this episode objectively


the sex ed ad ??

I am re-evaluating my opinion,
after a little more investigating
I can safely say, I am not 100% comfortable with it


I may have a little time tonight to post more


I will have a busy day today

I will be moderating a televised debate between five candidates for local office.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by deep

The lipstick lie ??

sorry, your bias prevents you from looking at this episode objectively

thank goodness we have you to see clearly for us, because you've never assumed the worst about Obama and pronounced that the sky was falling.

if you look at the full quote in context, you'll know it has nothing to do with Gov. Palin. it is your bias that assumes the worst about this particular candidate and wishes for every slander, lie, and falsehood to be true so that you can feel some sort of vindication that HRC was the better candidate.

that is bias.

I will be moderating a televised debate between five candidates for local office.

good luck. i hope you get a good debate that focuses on issues and not personal narratives.

[anitram]

I have very little respect left for McCain.

I don't think he is a stupid man, so that leaves him as a liar.

The mainstream media is pretty much saying so today too - so much for fringe leftist bloggers.

[anitram]

YouTube - Obama Blasts McCain on Lipstickgate: Enough of the lies and distractions!

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by anitram

The mainstream media is pretty much saying so today too - so much for fringe leftist bloggers.

Mike Huckabee, too, is coming to Obama's defense.

what a crap story.

why the fuck are we talking about this when we're looking at a projected 6.2% unemployment?

[diamond]

Obama is tanking.

<>

[Tiger Edge]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

i still don't think there's any equivocation to be made between the utterly false McCain ads on the "lipstick/pig" lie or the "comprehensive sex ed" lie.

McCain has disgraced himself and his campaign. he'll say and do anything to win. he thinks voters are stupid and he continuously insults his supporters.

It's just smart politics, even if it is assuming the worst about American society. He knows what will get on the front page of the rags, he knows what the media will discuss and debate ad nauseum.
If a lie is told on the news, the truth will only be discovered by those who do the research themselves. You can't expect even 10% of American voters to look up the facts. Maybe the independents who have yet to swing one way or the other, or the political diehards who will look up everything anyway. You have to deal what you're given.

I guarantee I'm going to get an "Obama hates women" or even "Obama hates pigs... cause he's a MUSLIM!" email forward sometime this week. The other side will use it as fodder to convince the undecided and anger the supporter. I can't tell you how many times I've had to reply to these emails with the quotes put into context to disprove the original "point."

[Irvine511]

^ hence, John McCain has just failed a test of basic integrity.

i don't believe he is fit to be president.

[anitram]

Ouch.

Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists--including me--for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house.

Now he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it, but here's the McClatchy fact check.

I just can't wait for the moment when John McCain--contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat--talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

Apology Not Accepted - Swampland - TIME

[Tiger Edge]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

^ hence, John McCain has just failed a test of basic integrity.

i don't believe he is fit to be president.

But 90% of Americans won't care about this. The only people these ads can affect at this point are the independents. The right is going to
vote for him anyway, regardless of what he says or does. Same with Obama and the liberals.
There's no point in you saying you've lost your respect for him, or think he's fit to be president because you wouldn't vote for him regardless! Unless you plan on campaigning for Obama and can use this argument to sway others.
I think everyone in FYM has already decided who they are voting for anyway, which makes the debate more about fun than facts. Maybe this is where deep is coming from?

I guess my point is that most people are stupid, but that would be just stating the obvious.

[anitram]

Meanwhile librul Business Week published this librul lie:

So where does the reality lie? According to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two Washington think tanks, this round goes to Obama. The TPC took a look at the various tax proposals put forth by the two candidates and estimated that Obama's plan would lead to a boost in aftertax income for all but the highest earners, while taking a smaller bite out of government tax revenues than would McCain's plans.

...

"It's just flat wrong" to say people would do worse under Obama, says Burman. "Most lower- and middle-class people would pay less taxes under Obama than they would under the proposals being put forth by McCain."

Obama vs. McCain: Taxing and Spending

[Tiger Edge]

As an aside: Am I remembering this wrong or did John McCain say that there would not be negative attack ads coming from him? Or maybe it was something about negative attack ads not working. Someone around here might have the quote handy...

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by anitram

Meanwhile librul Business Week published this librul lie:

what communists! John McCain's very own ads have told me that if i made more than $42K a year then Obama will raise my taxes.

and John McCain is a Straight Talker. so it must be true.

[anitram]

Another day, another ridiculous ad.

What's with the Republican obsession with wolves?

If Obama is the big bad wolf, does that make Palin one of the three little pigs?

YouTube - Fact Check

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Tiger Edge

As an aside: Am I remembering this wrong or did John McCain say that there would not be negative attack ads coming from him? Or maybe it was something about negative attack ads not working. Someone around here might have the quote handy...

i don't like posting the blog posts of others, but since this post has been linked to by several blogs, i'm going to post it here because it so perfectly puts what's happened since Palin in perspective. and this comes from gay catholic Tory and former neocon Bush-endorsing-in-2000 McCain fan Andrew Sullivan:

McCain's Integrity

10 Sep 2008 01:40 pm

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.

And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.