US 2008 Presidential Campaign Discussion Thread - Part 9

[U2isthebest]

Have you read this? Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

I knew about some of this before reading it, but still, it's kind of horrifying to see all his misdeeds tallied in one place.

I liked him up until this campaign got going, too. Now, he scares me more than Bush ever did.

I just read that article on rollingstone.com, and I'm glad it's already posted here. This part was similar to the argument I made when I had a heated debate with a couple posters around here a few weeks ago.

Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."

 

[dazzledbylight]

You know, I have to think that a lot of the dirty/ridiculous stuff/tactics that the McCain campaign has been employing have to fall at the feet of Karl Rove or his people that the McCain campaign has working for them.

And then I have to wonder if history will look upon Karl Rove as one of the dirtiest, cutthroat, most conscienceless political operatives of his time.

I wouldn't be surprised- KR involved. Hopefully he'll be "placed" (historicaly) on the shelf next to Lee Atwater & ooops _______ forgot the other guy's name (involved w Fox News).

I love that Sarah Palin is trying to invent Obama scandals while traipsing around the lower 48 states while avoiding a subpoena back at home. Classic.

I hope that ? commisions report from Alaska on her activities will make it out before the election. I know SP's been fighting it.

That's what Obama needs to do.

Go out and just say it, no matter what they are talking about. Just say, I want you to stop incinuating that I am a terrorist. Say it plain and say it looking into his eyes. Either McCain will apoligize and you've got your knockout or he gets flustered and takes it takes him off his game!

This is what I think would be a good idea.

But the Obama campaign seems to want to play these debates so they just tie, that way they stay steady.

I heard on the radio today- a Barack campaign person said he will adress it some form.
I think he can say it in an assertive, but not angry way. And then go back to his topics.

His campaign put out a video on the Keating Five.

Some how between Barack calling him o n this and mentioning the K5--
hopefully McSame will "lose it" on camera!!! :crossedfingers: !!!!

 

[dazzledbylight]

Va. GOP fears McCain could lose state - Jonathan Martin - Politico.com

I live in a targeted state, and a targeted region within the targeted state. Sometimes I feel like I'm just floating through my classes because I never think about them, but I somehow manage to go through the motions of doing assignments and taking exams, meanwhile my mind/energy are entirely focused on the election.

To think...November 5 this will all be over, and it's also my birthday. Less than a month...and it'll probably be the most insane month ever. Virginia will deliver for Obama.

I bet this is pretty surreal, U2dem!

Hopfully you'll get the Big birthday present you've been hoping for!!!

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize!!!!

 

[Earnie Shavers]

I’ve noticed that the vast majority of undecided voters I’ve seen paneled or questioned are all about the issues, 98% personal financial issues (very much including healthcare). They’re also generally the ones that come across as the most worried. Those well entrenched already in either an Obama or McCain vote seem, while certainly worried about the immediate future, seem pretty confident in their respective candidates solutions. The undecided’s though seem clearly the closest to panicked. They’re not making a decision based on hopey dreamy Obama vs All American war hero McCain. They’re not buying into any of that. They want answers and detail and they seem really genuinely worried about making the wrong decision.

That to me suggests that McCain spending the last few weeks on a character attack campaign would be a truly fatal mistake. If Obama keeps it cool and continues to intelligently and informatively work through the issues while McCain simply plays it like one of those old heckler guys from the Muppet Show, he’ll get absolutely steamrolled. To me, it would be a monumentally stupid decision on his part. It might have worked in April if this election were taking place in May, but not under the current climate. Everyone will be paying attention to the guy on stage and what he’s saying, not the guy throwing rotten fruit at him from the cheap seats. They surely can’t be that stupid as to not see this?

 

[Dreadsox]

This is going to get ugly. All hope at issues over the next month are diminishing.

 

[Earnie Shavers]

I think Palin is going to get real ugly. She’ll play up to the extreme end of the anti-Obama sentiment on the right. Suggestive on faith, suggestive on background etc. Not really saying anything out and open, but totally dog whistling the “He’s really a Muslim/Marxist stooge/anti-American” type of extreme stupidity that is definitely out there in droves on the right. Lord knows what McCain is going to do from day to day. Can anyone guess? I’m half expecting him to switch to Richard Branson type stunts any day now. Drive through Times Square in a tank, surrounded by Palin lookalike bikini models or something. Parachute into the middle of an Obama rally and start a water fight. Silly things.

I just really hope Obama stays above any ugliness. He’s done well so far to stay mostly above, all the way through the primaries and this campaign. Would be a real shame for him to stoop to the Republican level so late, and I really don’t think he needs to or should. Would be a mistake as I said above. Stay on message and on the issues, it’s certainly what people are listening for. The voters that will make a difference couldn’t give a fuck whether his middle name is Hussein or not.

 

[deep]

Real clear projection -

Obama/Biden 364 McCain/Palin 174

RealClearPolitics - Electoral Map


I think this is the best Obama can do, he may still get 11 more (Indiana)

to make it Obama/Biden 375 McCain/Palin 163


which means he can not do as well as
Clinton/Gore 379 Dole/Kemp 159,
Reagan/Bush 489 Carter/Mondale 49, or
Nixon/Agnew 520 McGovern/Shriver 17


too bad we didn't get a Clinton on the ticket.

 

[JOFO]

This is going to get ugly. All hope at issues over the next month are diminishing.

Yeah, and your candidate is the one starting it, or I should say, your candidate and his pit bull soccer mom.
-First she calls him hanging out with terrorists and suggests a racial problem
-then he comes out and call Obama a liar for no reason, but saying "We don't know anything about him..." blah blah.

All BS and they know it and they're doing it because they're desperate.
Good, keep it up. "Let you hatred flow throw you; anger, come to the dark side".......

 

[U2isthebest]

Yeah, and your candidate is the one starting it, or I should say, your candidate and his pit bull soccer mom.
-First she calls him hanging out with terrorists and suggests a racial problem
-then he comes out and call Obama a liar for no reason, but saying "We don't know anything about him..." blah blah.

All BS and they know it and they're doing it because they're desperate.
Good, keep it up. "Let you hatred flow throw you; anger, come to the dark side".......

dread is voting for Obama....

 

[namkcuR]

Yeah, and your candidate is the one starting it, or I should say, your candidate and his pit bull soccer mom.
-First she calls him hanging out with terrorists and suggests a racial problem
-then he comes out and call Obama a liar for no reason, but saying "We don't know anything about him..." blah blah.

All BS and they know it and they're doing it because they're desperate.
Good, keep it up. "Let you hatred flow throw you; anger, come to the dark side".......

In all fairness, Dreadsox has said repeatedly that he thinks McCain is nuts(or something like that) and that he will be voting for Obama.

 

[deep]

dread is voting for Obama....

In all fairness

So people that say they are voting for Obama have a right to bitch about the campaign?


The Obama camp have been using the term McSame or Bush 3 for months now.


That is less than honest.
So McCain gets ugly after much ugliness thrown at him.

 

[U2isthebest]

So people that say they are voting for Obama have a right to bitch about the campaign?


The Obama camp have been using the term McSame or Bush 3 for months now.


That is less than honest.
So McCain gets ugly after much ugliness thrown at him.

I've never heard anyone from the Obama campaign refer to McCain as McSame. They've said he will be more of the same policies. The only thing ugly about it is the fact that it's the ugly truth. All one has to do is look at McCain's voting record to know that. He will absolutely be a third term of Bush following the same disastrous policies of deregulation in the financial, education, energy, and health care industries, the lack of coherent plan to get our troops out of Iraq, the desire and push to privatize Social Security, the slashing of the social programs that will help poor and increasingly struggling middle class Americans get through the economic crisis brought on by John McCain's support of policies of less regulations, the continuation of being in bed with oil while our environment suffers without alternative fuel and green energy, and the list goes on. John McCain is W with a maverick mask. If Americans can't see that, there's no hope for us.

 

[anitram]

If McCain didn't want to be compared to Bush then he shouldn't have crawled so far up Bush's ass that he's coming out of his mouth.

 

[Vincent Vega]

Yeah, and your candidate is the one starting it, or I should say, your candidate and his pit bull soccer mom.

dread is voting for Obama....

In all fairness

Context...

 

[BVS]

The Obama camp have been using the term McSame or Bush 3 for months now.


That is less than honest.
So McCain gets ugly after much ugliness thrown at him.

How is that ugly? Bush is a Republican, one McCain has supported very consitently... Shouldn't it be a compliment?

 

[JOFO]

ok already I thought Dread was voting republican based on his attack against me the other day so yeah.

 

[Diemen]

Speaking of less than honest

So McCain gets ugly after much ugliness thrown at him.

Yes. Clearly it was Obama who made McCain renege on his pledge to hold a respectful campaign.

 

[maycocksean]

Yes. Clearly it was Obama who made McCain renege on his pledge to hold a respectful campaign.

damn straight! Shoulda held those town hall meetings like he said. . .

 

[yolland]

Obama’s Personal Ties Are Subject of Program on Fox News Channel

By JIM RUTENBERG
New York Times, October 6

During a weekend of Republican attacks on Senator Barack Obama’s personal associations, Fox News Channel ran a program Sunday that made provocative assertions about similar connections, called “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism.” Sean Hannity, the conservative radio and television host, was the host of the hourlong program, which raised, among other things, unsubstantiated accusations that Mr. Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago was “training for a radical overthrow of the government.”

The statement came from Andy Martin, a conservative writer and frequent political candidate who is credited as being among the first—if not the first—to assert in a chain e-mail message that Mr. Obama was secretly a Muslim...Peppering his statements with phrases like “in my opinion” and “my view is,” Mr. Martin said Mr. Obama’s political career had been engineered by Bill Ayers, a founder and former member of the radical Weather Underground and now an education professor in Chicago. Various reports, including ones in The New York Times, have found no evidence that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers were particularly close, although they have had various points of contact. Mr. Ayers was host of an event for Mr. Obama early in his political career, they served together on a charitable board, and both worked on an educational project financed by the billionaire philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg.

Saying he believed that ties between Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers were deeper, and reporting that Mr. Ayers had been an admirer of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who, in turn, is an acolyte of Fidel Castro, Mr. Martin said, “If you love the Cuban revolution and Castro, and if you love what’s happening in Venezuela with Hugo Chávez, you’ll love Barry Obama—Barack Obama, as he calls himself—in the White House.” For good measure, Mr. Martin, who made a failed bid to run on the Republican line in the 2004 race for a Senate seat from Illinois that Mr. Obama won, added, “We are basically going in the throes of a social revolution which attempts to essentially freeze out anybody who is not part of this radical ideology.” ...Mr. Martin said he was careful not to present his theories about Mr. Obama as proven fact. “That is my opinion—expert opinion—if you will,” Mr. Martin said of his commentary on Mr. Hannity’s program. “I don’t pretend to be an exclusively fact-based reporter, though I try as hard as I can to get the facts.”

An article about Mr. Martin from the conservative broadsheet The Washington Times, December 22, 1999:

An attack ad against George W. Bush now running on New Hampshire's largest television station was bought by a Florida man who has run for office in four states and who once said the purpose of one of his campaigns was to "exterminate Jew power." Andy Martin, who has run for offices under other names, appears in his own 30-second spot ad on WMUR-TV. The ad says: "George Bush had a cocaine problem. His brain suffered from alcohol abuse. Don't trust Bush with your vote until he trusts you with the truth about his past."

New Hampshire Republican Party officials say Mr. Martin is one of about 50 fringe candidates who perennially file papers to run in the state's Republican presidential-nomination primary..."This guy has run for everything from dog catcher to president, and he is not a credible candidate," Jaime Wilson, executive director of the Florida Republican Party, said.

...In 1986, when Mr. Martin ran as a Democrat for Connecticut's 3rd Congressional District seat under the name "Anthony R. Martin-Trigona," his campaign committee filed papers saying its purpose was to "exterminate Jew power in America and impeach U.S. District Court of Appeals judges in New York City." Florida party officials say Mr. Martin has a law degree but is not a member of the Florida bar or any other bar. That hadn't stopped him from filing lawsuits for much of his life--until a Connecticut federal judge finally barred him from filing any more federal lawsuits without permission. The judge said Mr. Martin has pursued legal actions with "persistence, viciousness, and general disregard for decency and logic."

...In a New York bankruptcy case, he referred to a judge as a "crooked, slimy Jew." During the bankruptcy dispute, he filed a civil-rights lawsuit claiming Jewish bankruptcy judges and lawyers were conspiring to steal his property. He asked a court to bar "any Jew from having anything to do with plaintiff's property." In another motion in the case, he wrote: "I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property."

A former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York, he also once tried to get elected mayor of Chicago. In 1980, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for mail fraud, but a federal appeals court overturned the conviction.

This is Hannity's idea of a credible guest commentator?

 

[Earnie Shavers]

This is Hannity's idea of a credible guest commentator?

Credible? Hannity? Huh?

 

[Utoo]

Real clear projection -

Obama/Biden 364 McCain/Palin 174

RealClearPolitics - Electoral Map


I think this is the best Obama can do, he may still get 11 more (Indiana)

to make it Obama/Biden 375 McCain/Palin 163


which means he can not do as well as
Clinton/Gore 379 Dole/Kemp 159,
Reagan/Bush 489 Carter/Mondale 49, or
Nixon/Agnew 520 McGovern/Shriver 17


too bad we didn't get a Clinton on the ticket.

I'll take that. It'd be seen as a relative "tsunami" compared to the last two elections.

This is going to get ugly. All hope at issues over the next month are diminishing.

I'm hoping that Obama can stick 95% to the issues---he'd look that much better for it. Have the surrogates out there questioning McCain, while Obama throws down just a few, brief & decisive "final punches," then spends the majority of his time on the issues. As Earnie pointed out, the people whose votes are up in the air seem to care more about the economy.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

McCain does nothing as supporter calls Obama a "terrorist"

At Palin's freak show in FL another "upstanding American" weighed in:

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience."

 

[U2democrat]

And they say Obama supporters are psycho...

 

[U2Fanatic4ever]

^seriously.. geez.. that's all we need to worry about now... frickin lunatics like that.

 

[U2Fanatic4ever]

If McCain didn't want to be compared to Bush then he shouldn't have crawled so far up Bush's ass that he's coming out of his mouth.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

by Bruce Springsteen

The following are my comments from the stage at yesterday's Vote For Change rally in Philadelphia:

Hello Philly,

I am glad to be here today for this voter registration drive and for Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.

I've spent 35 years writing about America, its people, and the meaning of the American Promise. The Promise that was handed down to us, right here in this city from our founding fathers, with one instruction: Do your best to make these things real: opportunity, equality, social and economic justice, a fair shake for all of our citizens, the American idea, as a positive influence, around the world for a more just and peaceful existence. These are the things that give our lives hope, shape, and meaning. They are the ties that bind us together and give us faith in our contract with one another.

I've spent most of my creative life measuring the distance between that American promise and American reality. For many Americans, who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no healthcare, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities, the distance between that promise and that reality has never been greater or more painful.

I believe Senator Obama has taken the measure of that distance in his own life and in his work. I believe he understands, in his heart, the cost of that distance, in blood and suffering, in the lives of everyday Americans. I believe as president, he would work to restore that promise to so many of our fellow citizens who have justifiably lost faith in its meaning. After the disastrous administration of the past 8 years, we need someone to lead us in an American reclamation project. In my job, I travel the world, and occasionally play big stadiums, just like Senator Obama. I've continued to find, wherever I go, America remains a repository of people's hopes, possibilities, and desires, and that despite the terrible erosion to our standing around the world, accomplished by our recent administration, we remain, for many, a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down.

They will, however, be leaving office, dropping the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis in our laps. Our sacred house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs care; it needs saving, it needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts, and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama's understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, compassion, toughness, and faith, to help us rebuild our house once again. But most importantly, it needs us. You and me. To build that house with the generosity that is at the heart of the American spirit. A house that is truer and big enough to contain the hopes and dreams of all of our fellow citizens. That is where our future lies. We will rise or fall as a people by our ability to accomplish this task. Now I don't know about you, but I want that dream back, I want my America back, I want my country back.

So now is the time to stand with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.

YouTube - Bruce Springsteen Performs "The Rising" for Obama Rally!

 

[diamond]

ok already I thought Dread was voting republican based on his attack against me the other day so yeah.

there's still plenty of time for dread to come to his senses.

<>

 

[anitram]

Reports out of early voting states say that African American turnout is MASSIVE. I think it actually may be exceeding the Obama campaign's already high expectations. Just awesome news.

 

[Utoo]

McCain does nothing as supporter calls Obama a "terrorist"
[/i]

Here it is:

YouTube - Obama called a terrorist in front of erratic McCain

 

[diamond]

there are black conservatives.

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