The New York Times editorial board is appalled by the tone and content of the McCain/Palin campaign. And it takes an awful lot to appall a New Yorker…
It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.
They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.
It is a sorry fact of the news biz that editorialists too often attempt to balance the transgressions of one candidate by pointing to the transgressions of their opponent, even when there is no reasonable comparison. But in recent weeks the McCain/Palin campaign has simply slipped too far over to the dark side to make such journalistic equivalency even remotely believable.
Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying.
That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she’s done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers — and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, “sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.
They called the sound man a “nigger” and commanded him to “sit down, boy.” But then, that’s the sort of visceral response Palin is shooting for.
In a way, we should not be surprised that Mr. McCain has stooped so low, since the debate showed once again that he has little else to talk about. He long ago abandoned his signature issues of immigration reform and global warming; his talk of “victory” in Iraq has little to offer a war-weary nation; and his Reagan-inspired ideology of starving government and shredding regulation lies in tatters on Wall Street.
But surely, Mr. McCain and his team can come up with a better answer to that problem than inciting more division, anger and hatred.
No, probably not. What we are seeing is the logical conclusion of the Rovian strategies that secured narrow electoral victories by exploiting the cultural tensions in an otherwise closely divided nation. As the failures of the Bush administration and his Republican Party have become too overwhelming to ignore, and have started to impact the day to day lives of average Americans, large segments of the electorate are shifting to the Democrats, even if only because they are not Republicans. Thus as the political divide widens, the obvious Rovian response is to turn up the divisive rhetoric in a last ditch effort to keep swing voters in line through their weapons of choice: fear, anger and hate.
It will be interesting to see how Republicans respond to a second straight cycle of devastating congressional losses, and a likely Obama victory. It would be best for both them and the nation if they abandon Palin, and the dangerous fascistic streak she clearly embodies.
This is the Republican Party’s last chance to survive as a mainstream political party. They either must abandon these tactics and repudiate the Roves and Palins, or become a shadow organization like the KKK of yesteryear and today’s militias and “posses”.
A funny article right out of bowels of the DNC.
The dems are in state of fear as the election isn’t where they thought it would have been on Oct. 8th.
So either:
1) Obama didn’t know about Ayers past as an unrepentant terrorist. Which makes him too fucking clueless and unqualified to be President.
or
2) Obama did know about Ayers past as an unrepentant terrorist. Which makes him a slimy lying socialist Chicago politician and unqualified to be President.
Which is it?
@3
Knowing Nobama as we do it’s both.
Dear Republicans,
I just wanted to let you know that I am not stupid. I am not falling for the fear mongering, the race baiting and/or the xenophobia anymore.
Wall Street is in the dumper, I can’t afford gas to visit family at the holidays, I can’t afford a plane ticket to vacation, milk is a luxury at $5 a gallon. I have not forgotten lax oversight on imports and the animals that were put at risk. I have not forgotten the war you started in the wrong place against the wrong enemy. I have not forgotten the shredding of our constitution and a VP who take power where there is no power for him to take. I have not forgotten a president who puts party first, last and always.
I want health care for every American. I want the proper oversight on Wall Street. I want alternatives to the fuel crisis. I want a peaceful existence with our world neighbors.
Republicans can’t seem to understand this.
I am no longer fooled, as I said before.
Sincerely,
The American Public.
PS. Obama just said at a rally in Indiana:
“I can take four more weeks of John McCain’s attacks. We can’t take four more years of McCain’s support of George Bush’s policies”.
AMEN!!
@3 “Which is it?”
The polls say, “None of the above”.
http://www.pollster.com/polls/.....ge-mvo.php
3 – You wingnuts are so fucked.
Republicans were on that Annenburg education board with Obama and Ayers.
Annenburg? Republican to the core.
You’re not going to win this election by “all Ayers, all the time”.
But I’m sure you’ll try. You’ve got nothing left.
Guilt by association isn’t working. Especially from a team with characters like G. Gordon Liddy, The Alaskan Secessionist Party, Thomas Muthee, and the Keating 5 in their closets.
Republicans can’t win on issues because conservatism has failed, they can’t win on experience because you can’t make the case that you will run the government better when you hate all government. That just leaves the “scary brown people” argument, which isn’t working anymore.
This
letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal
by Alisa Wilson, Ph.D. Of Beverly
Hills , CA
The Wall Street Journal had an article
titled,
“Where’s
The Outrage?’
Really ? I
can tell you where the outrage is. The outrage is here, in this
middle-aged, well-educated, upper-middle class woman. The outrage
is here, but I have no representation, no voice. The outrage is
here, but no one is listening – for who am I?
I’m not a
billionaire like George Soros that can fund an
entire political movement.
I’m not a
celebrity like Barbra Streisand that can garner
the attention of the press to promote political candidates.
I am not a
film maker like Michael Moore or Al Gore that can deliver
misleading movies to the public.
The outrage
is here, but unlike those with money or power, I don’t know how to
reach those who feel similarly, in order to effect
change.
Why am I outraged? I am outraged that my
country, the United States of
America , is in a state of moral
and ethical decline. There is no right or wrong anymore,
just what’s ‘fair’.
Is it fair
that millions of Americans who overreached and borrowed more than
they could afford are now being bailed out by the government and
lending institutions to stave off foreclosure? Why shouldn’t
these people be made to pay the consequences for their poor
judgment?
When my
husband and I purchased our home, we were careful to purchase only
what we could afford. Believe me, there are much larger,
much nicer homes that I would have loved to have purchased.
But, taking responsibility for my behavior and my life, I went
with the house that we could afford, not the house that we
couldn’t afford. The notion of personal responsibility has all but
died in our country.
I am outraged, that the country that
welcomed my mother as an immigrant from Hitler’s Nazi
Germany and required that she and her family learn
English, now allows itself to be overrun with illegal immigrants,
and worse, caters to those illegal immigrants.
I am outraged
that my hard-earned taxes help support those here
illegally;
That the Los Angeles Public School
District is in such disarray that I felt it incumbent to send
my child to private school; that every time I go to the ATM, I see
“do you want to continue in English or Spanish?”; that every time
I call the bank, the phone company , or similar business, I hear
“press 1 for English or press 2 for Spanish.”
WHY? This is America , our common
language is English and attempts to promote a bi- or multi-lingual
society are sure to fail and to marginalize those who cannot
communicate in English.
I am outraged at our country’s
weakness in the face of new threats on American traditions from
Muslims. Just this week, Tyson’s Food negotiated with
its union to permit Muslims to have Eid-al-Fitr as a holiday
instead of Labor Day. What am I
missing? Yes, there is a large Somali Muslim population working
at the Tyson’s plant in Tennessee
. Tennessee , last I checked, is
still part of the United States If
Muslim’s want to live and work here they should be required to
live and work by our American Laws and not impose their will on
our long history.
In the same
week, Random
House announced that they had indefinitely delayed
the publication of “The Jewel of Medina,” by Sherry
Jones, a book about the life of Mohammed’s wife,
A’isha due to fear of retribution and violence by
Muslims. When did we become a nation ruled by fear of what
other immigrant groups want? It makes me so sad to see large
corporations cave rather than stand proudly on the principles that
built this country.
I am outraged because appeasement has
never worked as a political policy, yet appeasing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is exactly
what we are trying to do. An excellent article, also
published recently in the Wall Street Journal, went through over
20 years of history and why talking with Iran
has been and will continue to be ineffective. Yet talk, with a
madman no less, we continue to do. Have we so lost our moral
compass and its ability to detect evil that we will not go in and
destroy Iran’s nuclear
program? Would we rather wait for another Holocaust for the Jews – one
which they would be unlikely to survive? When does it
end?
As if the battle for good and evil isn’t enough, now
come the Environmentalists who are so
afraid of global warming that they want to
put a bag tax on grocery bags in California; to eliminate Mylar
balloons; to establish something as insidious as the ‘recycle
police’ in San Francisco. I do my
share for the environment – I recycle, I use water wisely, I
installed an energy efficient air conditioning
unit.
But when
and where does the lunacy stop? Ahmadinejad wants to wipe
Israel off the map, the
California economy is being overrun by illegal immigrants, and the
United States
of America no longer knows right
from wrong; good from evil. So what does California
do? Tax grocery bags.
So, America , although I
can tell you where the outrage is, this one middle-aged,
well-educated, upper middle class woman is
powerless to do anything about it. I don’t even feel like my
vote counts because I am so outnumbered by those who disagree with
me.
Alisa
Wilson, Ph.D.
Beverly
Hills , California
Dear Righties,
Real Clear Politics has the electoral college map drawn at 264 for Obama 163 for McCain with 111 toss-ups. I’m pretty sure Obama can pickup the additional 6 votes he needs to win out of the 111.
fivethirtyeight has Obama sitting at 354 electoral college votes.
Today’s polling shows Obama pulling ahead in CO, NM, OH and FL.
I think we all know who’s going to win this thing.
In Arabic, ‘al Qaida’ means: “The Base”.
‘Nuff said.
Economic warfare against workers. Cultural fascism. Strident militarism. It’s all collapsing! Who says there isn’t a Great Mother Rabbit Spirit? She is real, and She is mighty in Her justice.
@10
Keep dreaming brother. Live by polls die by polls.
Nov.5 is what matters and Americans are smarter than you think about NOBAMA.
@3 Neither. Do you investigate the background of every person who lives in your neighborhood or that you serve on a committee with? I’ve served on committees with Republicans, but that doesn’t make me a terrorist. You guys are desperate — and out of ammo.
Kinda funny how the righties never mention that when Lehman Brothers went under their debit to asset ratio was 30:1. Or that the SEC should have stepped in when their debit to asset ratio went over 12:1. All the SEC ever did was grant Lehman brothers waivers.
13.
Um, well, I, uh, gee, what do I say to a well thought out argument like that?
I’m speechless.
Moe-ron!
It’s pretty obvious what McSame is going to do from now till Nov. 4.
What Faux Noise is doing.
Ayers, Ayers, Ayers, Ayers, Ayers….
The next debate:
Ayers, Ayers, Ayers, Ayers, Ayers (with a little Wright thrown in).
These wingnuts are so fucked and such frightened little weenies.
@9 Roger Rabbit Quiz
Who got the money from predatory mortgage lending?
[ ] 1. Poor minority homeowners who bought expensive homes which exponentially increased in value, who are now taking out home equity loans to buy cruises and motorhomes.
[ ] 2. Predatory mortgage brokers and lenders.
re 9: Fake outrage at bogus issues is a Republican specialty.
Your point about Somali workers in the Tyson chicken factory would be contradicted by John McCain’s stated belief that Americans such as yourself are physically unable to perform the jobs that poor, brown people can.
C’mon! Be realistic. You are a weak American and you have no business complaining.
@13 HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
‘Nuff said.
It’s hilarious to watch the righties, who don’t even like McCain, clutch for invisible straws as the McCain campaign sinks beneath the waves.
@17 “These wingnuts are so fucked and such frightened little weenies.”
See last sentence of #12.
@21 Roger:
True, and I really like how they have arranged the deck chairs! :)
What does Mrs. Alisa Wilson have against Somalis laboring in meatpacking plants so she can eat cheap steaks? Does she want those jobs for her kids? Is she afraid that if Muslim workers are allowed to pray to their own god in the lunchroom it’ll taint her steak? Or maybe what she’s really afraid of is that white people like her are about to become a minority in America. Tough berries, they’ve always been a minority. I hate to break this to her, but there have been more rabbits than white people in this country since the Pilgrims landed.
You believe in polls what fools you lefties are.
Look at G.W. Bush and kerry’s polls.
Now take your Prozac.
You know, that Palin pick that looked like a game changer, not so much now, huh?
@7 – Ha, I bet you can’t name either of the Republicans that live in Chicago.
@8 – It’s guilt by PARTICIPATION. It’s either a serious lack of judgment or knowingly ignoring the man’s crimes in favor of the politically expedient.
25 – I believe that the American people will turn out to vote in such high numbers for Barack Obama and the Dems that they will completely swamp the Rovian vote suppression and vote fraud machine.
Now guzzle some Jack Daniels.
McCain connected to Ayers:
“On Wednesday morning, John McCain’s campaign released a list of 100 former ambassadors endorsing the GOP presidential nominee.
“Second on the list, though her name is misspelled, is Leonore Annenberg, currently the president and chairman of the Annenberg Foundation and widow of ambassador and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. Ms. Annenberg was herself the “chief of protocol” at the State Department under President Reagan.
“If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because it also graces the name of the Chicago education board where Barack Obama and William Ayers sat in the room six times together.”
—
Which means: nothing. Just like Obama’s connection.
In any case, we are all connected to Kevin Bacon.
@18
Both. Lenders got money, unqualified borrowers got houses, which they used like piggy banks. Everything was fine until housing prices started to slide. Ponzi schemes are great for the first ones in.
@29
Kevin Bacon hired you to distribute $50 million dollars to your friends?
@27:
Discussing Ayers’ rehabilitation as a member in good standing of the education policy-wonk community, former state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson said: “It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier … It’s ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It’s nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It’s so silly.”
McCain claims he can reach across the aisle to get things done; that he’s a “maverick,” beholden to no one and no party. In reality, he is morally stilted, small, embittered puke who is not even man enough to look at this opponent and shake his hand at the end of last night’s debate. He has no honor, no dignity, no decency. Sarah Palin? She is, simply, a whore. She will do and say anything to advance herself. We need serious adults leading this nation at this time. McCain and Palin are sad jokes who have lost their punch lines.
Obama Wins Confidence of Professional Economists
“As the financial crisis pushes the economy back to the top of voters’ concerns, Barack Obama is starting to open up a clear lead over John McCain in the opinion polls. But among those who study economics for a living, Mr Obama’s lead is much more commanding. A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority — at times by overwhelming margins — believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers.” — Quoted from the conservative British news magazine The Economist
27 – I can name Diana Nelson, former Republican State Rep who served on that Annenburg board and said this:
Good word for it: SILLY!
http://www.npr.org/templates/s.....d=95442902
Obama served on that Annenberg board in 1997, 4 years before Ayers made that remark that has the wingnuts panties in a twist.
@27 Since when is it Obama’s responsibility to be the prosecutor, jury, and judge? Wasn’t the justice system supposed to deal with that guy 30 years ago when he committed his crimes? Do you want people who sit on committees to be vigilantes? Be careful of what you wish for, or I may have to ask people I serve on committees with whether they’re Republicans, and carry a noose in my briefcase.*
* ha ha, just kidding! Oxbow Incident humor.
3. Why do mainstream republicans associate with folks who:
use domestic terrorism to bomb abortion clinics?
support bombing the free press like Ann Coulter?
send arms to ‘terrorists’ like Ollie North?
advocating killing government employees like G Gordon Liddy?
support Nazis like Pat Buchanan?
refuse to extradite Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles living in Miami?
@32
Talk about grasping at straws… I can hear the editorial meeting at NPR “Shit! Find us any Republican for cover! Now!”
Unfortunately, her cover is blown, “…us in the Chicago school reform movement…”
She might be a Republican, but she is (or was) neck deep in the Chicago political scene. $50 million buys a lot of friends.
Yesterday Palin started her speech by mentioning something she had “read that morning in the New York Times” (boos from the audience) something or other.
Now, I don’t believe for one minute that Sarah Palin regularly reads the New York Times. But if she did, I wonder if she’s going to reference this editorial in today’s speaches?
I guess not.
Kirk91 @ 38: Specifically, G. Gordon Liddy advised his listeners that when Federal law enforcement agents come for them, they should make sure they use “head shots”, because the agents would presumably be wearing body armor. Liddy seems to think the only good federal agent is a dead one. (I actually heard that broadcast).
Bush’s Devastating Legacy
The Economist, a conservative British news-and-commentary magazine that has generally championed Current Occupant and his party, has published a damning summing-up of the Bush presidency:
“The Bush administration has been defined by two things — ruthless partisanship and an iron commitment to presidential power. …
“The Bush administration … treated Congress with something approaching contempt. Mr Bush liked to think of himself as a CEO at the head of a government machine rather than as a politician in a town of politicians. …
“This my-way-or-the-highway partisanship destroyed Mr Bush’s ability to push through entitlement reforms. Why should the Democrats take the risk of helping to change the system when Mr Bush was likely to take all the credit for success? It also destroyed his ability to win enough Democratic support for … immigration reform. On September 29th Mr Bush saw his rescue package torn apart by two groups of people who have been enraged by his political style — left-wing Democrats (who regard him as the spawn of Satan) and right-wing market fundamentalists. He also saw Congress relishing the chance to humble the imperial presidency. …
“Mr Bush also paid the price for the defining cause of his presidency, the invasion of Iraq, an initiative which destroyed the bipartisan unity created by September 11th, 2001. …
“Mr Bush devoted much of his energy as president to forging a lasting Republican majority. But … [f]ar from creating a hegemonic party, Mr Bush leaves the Republicans in the worst state they have been in for decades; riven by divisions, confused about their identity and facing Armageddon at the ballot box.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Ayers was a co-founder of the Weathermen.
“Here is the “resume” of an American terrorist:
7 October 1969 – Bombing of Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago, apparently as a “kickoff” for the “Days of Rage” riots in the city October 8-11, 1969. The Weathermen later claimed credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”
8-11 October 1969 – The “Days of Rage” riots occur in Chicago in which 287 Weatherman members from throughout the country were arrested and a large amount of property damage was done.
6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO stated in their book “Prairie Fire” that they had did the explosion.
27-31 December 1969 – Weathermen hold a “War Council” meeting in Flint, MI, where they finalize their plans to submerge into an underground status from which they plan to commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO).
13 February 1970 – Bombing of several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department .
16 February 1970 – Bombing of Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen.
6 March 1970 – Bombing in the 13th Police District of the Detroit, Michigan. 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, during that period, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.
6 March 1970 – “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members die . The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails TO INFILICT MAXIMUM CASUALTIES UPON DETONATION.
30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO “bomb factory” on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO “weapons cache” in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.
10 May 1970 – Bombing of The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C..
21 May 1970 – The WUO under Bernardine Dohrn’s (Ayers’ current wife) name releases its “Declaration of a State of War” communique.
6 June 1970 – The WUO sends a letter claiming credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice; however, no explosion actually took place. Months later, workmen in this building located an unexploded device which had apparently been dormant for some time.
9 June 1970 – Bombing of The New York City Police Headquarters.
27 July 1970 – Bombing of The Presidio army base in San Francisco. [NYT, 7/27/70]
12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, break out and escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.
8 October 1970 – Bombing of Marin County courthouse. [NYT, 8/10/70]
10 October 1970 – Bombing of Queens traffic-court building . [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]
14 October 1970 – Bombing of The Harvard Center for International Affairs [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]
1 March 1971 – Bombing of The United States Capitol . “ [NYT, 3/2/71]
April, 1971 – abandoned WUO “bomb factory” discovered in San Francisco, California.
29 August, 1971 – Bombing of the Office of California Prisons . [LAT, 8/29/71]
17 September 1971 – Bombing of The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY [NYT, 9/18/71]
15 October 1971 – Bombing of William Bundy’s office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]
19 May 1972 – Bombing of The Pentagon . [NYT, 5/19/72]
18 May 1973 – Bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York
28 September 1973 – Bombing of ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy . [NYT, 9/28/73]
6 March 1974 – Bombing of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco
31 May 1974 – Bombing of The Office of the California Attorney General.
17 June 1974 – Bombing of Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters .
11 September 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation).
29 January 1975 – Bombing of the State Department in (AP. “State Department Rattled by Blast,” The Daily Times-News, January 29 1975, p.1)
16 June 1975 – Bombing of Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York .
September, 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation .
October 20, 1981 – Brinks robbery in which several members of the Weather Underground stole over $1 million from a Brinks armored car near Nyack, New York. The robbers murdered 2 police officers and 1 Brinks guard. Several others were wounded.
1981 “Guilty as hell*. Free as a bird. America is a great country,” Ayers said when interviewed by David Horowitz.
September 11, 2001 “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers is quoted in a New York Times article. “
@37
It’s Obama’s responsibility to throw him under the bus with Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright, et al. Not proclaim, “he’s just a guy in my neighborhood.”
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
Delbert,
There was no crime. He is just a guy in Obama’s neighborhood.
Get over it!!
Poor Silly Delbert. If Ayers is such a bad guy, why isn’t he in jail?
Nothing, NOTHING in Obama’s public record even hints of any advocacy of terrorism or out of the mainstream ideas.
But everyone who was in the same room as Ayers is guilty of “poor judgement”.
Silly wingnut hysteria…
@46 Ayers got off due to prosecutorial misconduct. Otherwise, he’d still be in jail.
“Nothing, NOTHING in Obama’s public record even hints of any advocacy of terrorism or out of the mainstream ideas.”
How about membership in the Democratic Socialists Of America or the New Party?
http://politicallydrunk.blogsp.....a-was.html
Looks like they didn’t scrub the evidence away quite well enough.
Never mind, forget I said anything. To a batch of communists like y’all, socialists look mainstream.
48 – If that means you’re not coming back, thanks for the good news.
47 – Talk about grasping at straws..
You guys are so fucked.
@46 Ayers got off due to prosecutorial misconduct. Otherwise, he’d still be in jail.
I’ve seen no evidence that Ayers spent any time in jail.
By the way, there’s a war on terra going on. So why hasn’t your beloved Shrubya declared Ayers a enemy combatant?
Oh I’ve heard another guilt by association thing about a fella named Khalidi? He has a funny last name. Is he in Gitmo?
It’s beginning to look a lot like late October, 2006 again. The main difference is that we’ve gotten so used to the Republican sex scandals, they hardly make it to the mainstream news these days. Otherwise, Republican screw-ups are daily news.
Just one of the things which have cost Republicans this election is their failure to accept responsibility for their actions, and their bald-faced denials that anything was wrong:
Example 1: Three (four?) days after Katrina, the American people were dumbfounded when Bush arrived in Louisianna, patted the FEMA director on the back, and said that the government had “just learned” about the situation at the Superdome, and was taking steps to correct it. News anchors, and the American public, were dumbfounded to hear that the President just learned about something that had been reported non-stop for several days.
Example 2: In 2006, Rumsfield continued to insist that the Iraqi insurgency was just the feeble last actions by a few “dead enders”, and that the Iraqi people were overjoyed by the American presence there – despite growing U.S. casualty counts and reports that no westerners dared to travel in Iraq except in armored convoys to secure bases.
Example 3: Just three weeks ago, Bush and McCain both proclaimed that the U.S. economy was “fundamentally sound”, despite the cracks in the ice which were apparant to all. shortly thereafter, the ice cracked, we all fell into the freezing water, and they were forced to conceed that there might be a problem.
@48
You just invoked Eric’s Rule:
Bye!
By the way, since McCain seems to have a secret plan on how to catch Osama Bin Laden, don’t you think he has a responsiblity to share it with our current President? Or does he want to save it so he can get all the credit? If so, then how patriotic is that – let Bin Laden continue to organize terrorist activities for four months so he can take the credit for the capture?
Of course, McCain has no idea how to get Osama Bin Laden. His assertions that “he knows how to do it” are on the same par as Nixon’s 1968 “Secret Plan to End the Vietnam War”.
Here is an excellent article on the validity of polls.
http://www.slate.com/id/89619/
@54 So it sucks to be you, huh?
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/.....htwing.php
Yeah, I can see why.
I see reading comprehension is not one of your strong points.
Besides goat sex, do you have a strong point?
I haven’t seen you write anything on this blog that a goat couldn’t duplicate.
Is it your age? Your bitterness over reaching that point where viagra is needed? Been kicked in the head one too many times by a goat? A lifetime of underachieving?
Oh well, I should be nice to my elders. Let you mindlessly ramble about your youth. Let you drool all over yourself.
Have fun steve. It’s probably all you got left in life.
Dems “will completely swamp the Rovian vote suppression and vote fraud machine.”
Dems will swamp ACORN? Are you insane?
ACORN = Obama. Obama = ACORN. ACORN is the happy face of community organizing that is so much closer to Christ (and Obama) than to Pontius Pilate (and Governor Palin.)
Too bad that Christ-like ACORN keeps getting into so much trouble that it smells like a Chicago sewer.
Maybe Christ-like Obama has some explaining to do. As Dr. Sowell says, ACORN and Ayers and Pfleger and Wright aren’t/weren’t mere associates of Obama. They were allies of Obama, buddies so close that they could have staggered together out of a Chicago leather bar.
And speaking of Chicago, that’s where vote-fraud machines run like well-oiled machines. Why, even the community of corpses is so well organized that it votes reliably Democrat(ick).
Worked for JFK. Will work even better for homeboy BO.
(And please note, you libtard retards, that the link is to your sewage, the Washington Compost Post. Not to our sewage at Faux Noise.)
Marvin @ 54: Well, this would explain why the 2004 electin varied from polling numbers:
Source: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Isn’t that special. The Jayson Blair Times accusing McCain of taking the down-low low road. That would be the JB Times that ran a smear so vacuous and vile that the National Enquirer refused to touch it … the smear several months ago, page 1, which tried to tie McCain a little too closely to a pretty lobbyist.
The Times (New York) and the Times (LA) and the Times (Seattle) and Time and Newsweek are in-the-tank Democrat trash. Screw ’em and flush ’em.
Karl Rove’s election machine works on a much broader scale than Chicago’s ever did, even during the heyday of the Daly machine.
Daly ran a city, but Rove has been intent on creating a “Permanant Republican Majority” in the U.S., regardless of how the voters believe. His tactics are too well documented by now to dismiss. Some of his tactics:
1. Voter supression – target likely Democratic voters, and get them un-registered (illegal caging, challenges without notice to the voter), or simply don’t count their ballots (provisional ballot rejection) without informing the voter. Intimidate voters in minority precincts with overwhelming police presence. Use deceptive mailers or phone calls to send voters to the wrong locations or tell them that the voting date had been changed. Falsly inform registered voters that their registration had been challenged, and if they dared to vote they would be charged with voter fraud, a felony, and forced to hire an attorney to defend themselves against the charge. Disrupt “get out the vote” drives by hiring telemarketing firms to flood the Democratic headquarters telephones with calls at the same time people would be calling for information on polling locations or to get a ride to the polls. In locations where the Republicans are in charge of allocating election resources, re-allocate them so that Democrats have to wait in hours-long lines at the polls, but Republicans have not wait at all.
2. Under the pretense of making vote counting more accurate, substitute paper ballots with electronic machines with no paper backup or other method of auditing the results or making a real re-count. Contract with reliably Republican firms to provide the machines. Have someone reliable who has access to the codes to the machines do a little re-programming so that a vote for a Democratic candidate will sometimes appear as a vote for the Republican candidate – just often enough to change the results.
3. Try to make Democrats or organizations friendly to them the targets of voting fraud investigations shortly before the election, so that complaints of voter fraud by Republicans during the election will be dismissed as “everybody does it”, or “with so many charges back and forth, who’s to know who’s right”. Mainstream news media feels compelled to repeat both sides in an attempt to be fair, so no analysis is ever made of the truth of the charges. Without oversight by the Justice Dept. (the traditional enforcer of election laws since the Voting Rights Act), the allegations are left to fly away, like dust in the wind.
4. Dirty Tricks against his own candidate: Karl Rove made a science out of faking outrageous attacks against his own candidates which served to make the opposition look bad.
5. Death by a Thousand Cuts of Rumor: Rove also pushed the limits of circulating false rumors, usually attributed to information available to “those in the know”, but “supressed by the media”. In an Alabama Supreme Court Race, he organized a campaign among Republican law students to go home and tell their family and friends that “everyone knows the justice is a pedophile”, but he was supposedly protected from prosecution and exposure by this powerful position on the court. Of course, the rumor was completely false.
There’s lots more, too much to post here.
I should have mentioned that among Rove’s tactics is to dismiss the source without ever addressing the allegations themselves. If the source is inherently unreliable, then that might be a valid tactic. But Rove uses this tactic ESPECIALLY if the source is reliable, and the allegations are true.
According to Rovian logic, if the source (journalist, columnists, network, newspaper, magazine) has ever published a piece which is anything but completely enthusiasticaly supportive of the Republican candidate, it is biased and therefore shouldn’t even be discussed. The truth is irrelevant. The mere fact that the piece might be considered negative is proof of bias in and of itself.
No wonder Sarah Palin couldn’t discuss a single newspaper or magazine which she had read recently. Under that world view, everything is “biased” against Republicans, and therefore need not be considered at all.
@56 You ever get a handle on the 1-4-5 chord progression? You know, for a, heh, studio musician, you don’t seem to know much about music. No surprise. Like Cynical, the life you present here is a lie.
That aside, I can understand your resentment over my posting links to news stories about Republican sex freaks. To judge by your usual overreaction to such posts, it must hit you pretty darned close to home. That’s why I figure you to be one of those Republican goatfuckers yourself.
Indeed, it must truly suck to be you. Sadly, come November, your pathetic troll existence will take a sorry turn for the worse.
The “Daly machine” ?! Say what? Vaguely remember a John Charles Daly who ran a quiz show, but am pretty sure he wasn’t commanding corpses to rise up and vote for Kennedy.
I was discussing the infamous and famous machine of someone named Richard Daley, pere, who indeed ran a city. Richard Daley, fils, runs it now, and is probably using ACORN to organize communities of stinking corpses to vote early & often for Obama.
As for Rove, you’ve got a tense problem: Rove “has been intent” on creating a Republican majority. No, he was intent on creating a majority until 2006 happened and he bacame a minority. Send him some affirmative-action set-asides pronto.
And as for your nonsense about exit polling being an “exact science,” it’s nonsense. Even John Kerry very quickly discerned that John Kerry was a loser who lost. Get over it.
@61 “No wonder Sarah Palin couldn’t discuss a single newspaper or magazine which she had read recently”
Oh, she reads, alright.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/09.....was-in-it/
It looks like Pudz is back to his sockpuppetry. After the thrashing he received yesterday, I can’t say that I blame him. Stupid goatfucker.
All that diarrhoea drivel about vote suppression, and not a word about the continuing suppression of military votes by motivated Democrat machines. Democrats whacked military ballots in Florida, 2000, and they’re trying to whack ’em in Washington State, 2008.
And have you already forgotten how and why Florida became famous for something besides Anita Bryant sunshine? Florida made disfranchisement famous because your MSM called the state for Gore in 2000, before giving conservative western Florida a chance to finish voting. Discouraged conservatives in the panhandle, and conservatives farther to the west, gave up and stayed home.
Too bad that you got thrashed at your own stupid game. Get used to it.
On behalf of the Goat Anti-Defamation Society, Steve, I’ve gotta ask you to stop defaming us goats. We’re starting to ‘take it’ personally.
And since we’ve concluded that you really like to ‘give it’ to goats, that’s a serious conflict of interest.
Back off, wipe off, and zip up.
@67 “Billy Whiskers spews:”
Hey, Pudz, welcome back! Care for some more links? I’ve got several hundred of them to share.
Debbie @ 63: Yea, I didn’t check the spelling on the former mayor of Chicago. Big deal. I’ve got better things to do.
And I noticed that you blithly dismissed exit polling without bothering to address the substance of the issue. I wouldn’t want you to hurt your head with an analysis of anything – you know – factual. Funny how the margin of error in the exit polling was so consistently close EXCEPT for this election, and then almost exclusivly in Republican-controlled areas.
Of course, at the time of the election the pollsters couldn’t explain the disparity, and it took some time for the statisticians to determine that it wasn’t a problem with the polls, but a problem with the election itself. Initially the polling firms thought that perhaps the Republican voters had intentionally been giving false responses to their questions, a theory which was published in the days following the election. It wasn’t until the statisticians did some real number-crunching that the real pattern emerged. By itself, a discrepency is just that – a discrepency. But the acts of the Ohio state officials showed a pattern of engaging in illegal as well as merely unethical conduct to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004.
I think one of the first priorities of the Justice Dept. in 2001 will be to de-politicize it, especially in the sections which deal with official corruption and election law violations. Then, the justice department should be tasked to carefully investigate allegations of vote fraud going back as far as the statute of limitations allows, and to proceed with prosecutions.
No one, Democrat or Republican, should be allowed to get away with stealing an election. Nothing makes my blood boil more than that. My fore-fathers fought and spilt their blood to preserve that right, not party croney – of either party – is going to take away my right, or to diminish my vote by illegal conduct.
Well, having told the ugly truth about the Times and the Times and the Times and Time, etc, et al., I have noticed a curious paradox …
Ann Coulter wrote a good book about bad media. She took the New York Times apart, flubbing only a few of her lexus-nexus searches. She shredded the “news”paper of record so gleefully that even a partisan puke (you) could appreciate her skill and could understand that she had made a slam-dunk case.
But in that good book (Slander) and in several bad books since, Coulter has a curious habit of habitually relying on one source when she wants to make a drop-dead argument: that source is The New York Times.
rhp666: Look. I read the arguments way back when, Rolling Stone and Harper’s, some Kennedy whelp and Rangel or Conyers … (like you, I have better things to do than to ferret out which whelp or which corrupt congressperson it was) … and it was all finally like reading swamp gas. No there there except a few stray molecules of stink.
For analysis, I let John Fund do it for me. He’s been right so far, particularly about Diebold, Sequoia, and other leftist hallucinations.
This Washington State Republican Rep, Richard Curtis, was pulled over while wearing a dress after having stiffed his male prostitute for a grand back at a Spokane Valley motel.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com.....p?ID=12164
This has been another edition of “Puddy’s Heroes”.
Debbie @ 66: Funny how you try to talk about supression of military votes, and blame it on the Democrats. All the Democrats said was that mail-in ballots had to conform to Florida law, which was that they had to be postmarked by the election date. Obviously, they didn’t want a bunch of people to start voting AFTER the election, and after they found out how close the vote was. It was Karl Rove who claimed that they were trying to do it to supress the military vote. In fact some ballots from the military were affected, in that they weren’t post-marked at all. But also affected were some from nursing homes which suddenly appeared without postmarks, all filled out in the same pen and with the same apparant hand-writing, and all voting Republican.
But Republicans only seem to care if the military is disenfranchised if they vote Republican. If they vote Democratic, they don’t mind so much. In Ohio in 2004, an illegal caging operation by Blackwell (I think I got his name right) sent postcards to registered voters in Democratic precincts, with instruction to the post office to not forward them but return them to the sender if the addressee didn’t reside there or had a forwarding order on file. (“Do not forward – return to sender”). Any such returned postcards were immediatley stricken from the voter registration lists, without any further attempt to inform the voters that their registration was challenged.
Now I’ve managed mailing lists (for charity) before, and I can tell you we get lots of returns from the postal service which are simply errors on their part. I keep my own name and address on every list I manage so I can keep track of when I receive the mailing, and whether it is returned. I’ve often seen a mailing to my own address returned with suspicious stamps (“Unable to Forward”, “Not at this Address”, etc.). So I know it’s hardly a fallable system, and striking a registration merely based upon a returned postcard is ludicrous.
In the case of an absentee ballot, it’s even worse, because the voter never knows that his vote wasn’t counted. It simply gets tossed into a “rejection bin” as a ballot received from an unregistered voter. (Not in every jurisdiction, but this is how it worked in Ohio in 2004).
Included among those voters stricken from the polls were several thousand soldiers currently serving overseas. They all had notices in their post office to forward mail to their APO. But their postcards were instead returned as being “unable to forward”, and they were stricken from the roles.
But since they were from Democratic districts, and quite a few of them were minorities, you didn’t hear a peep of outrage from the Republican Party about those military voters being “disenfranchised”. Of course not. It was the Republican Party that disenfranchised them.
@59:
You mean the smear where McCain’s fellow republicans complained about him being too cozy with a lobbyist?
Just because McCain’s entire campaign is run by lobbyists for the banking industry and big oil – we should cut him a break becaue he is old and a POW. We should not pay attention to Rick Davis (lobbyist) who got a cool 2 miilon from Freddie Mac or Phil Gramm, the leading cheerleader for deregulation of the banking industry, or Nancy Fiorina who got one of the biggest golden parachutes for being an incompetent CEO at HP. Nah, that is just the tip of the totally corrupt McCain iceberg.
Now that the Rove proteges are running McCain’s sordid campaign, McCain is busy lying about his own ads. He claimed he “had the facts” on Obama supporting sex -edcuation for kindergarteners. Only problem was, he was lying through his teeth. The ad was a lie and the bill was to help young kids identify sexual predators – guess McCain wants to protect sexual predators. He also lied about Obamas tax plan and lied about Sarah Pailin the the bridge to nowhere.
This whole campaign by McCain is a bunch of bigger and bigger lies – he should be ashamed of the low level that he has descended to.
Pudless @ 71: Why as Diebold taken their name off their voting machines? They had to change the name of their whole division.
@70
Ann Coulter is an idiot. She took nothing “apart” because she, like you, doesn’t have the brains or the facts to do it. Anyone who cites that “pathetic screamer” Ann coulter as any kind of credible source needs to go back to basics and remember what a real fact is. coulter is an exagerator and excuser of the republican debacle. She is irrelevant and pathetic. Her great free market has collapsed on itself thanks to the lack of regulation – that she opposed. ooops. So much for her less than lucid arguments
Did you notice how Diebold hysteria vanished in 2006? Did you notice that c. no Republicans whined and whimpered that mean Democrats (the same green meanies who run the elections in most jurisdictions where voters claimed they were robbed and cheated) had cheated Republicans out of the control of Congress?
Maybe ‘Crats suddenly matured. Maybe they finally grew up enough to understand that, yes, machines are not fool proof, since there are so many Democrat fools trying to run them. (Those were Democrats, after all, who installed and certified the software on voting machines in almost every big-city precinct.)
Yes, Diebold has an issue with laying one operating system (think it’s called CE) on top of XP, so that a desultory flick of a finger across an on-screen ballot can be interpreted by the XP OS shell as a click-and-drag.
But every voting technology ever used has a rate of failure. Why, back in the good old days when Democrats made their workers vote in saloons, and gave them ballots helpfully pre-printed with only-for-Democrat X’s, some Democrat drunks were so drunk they wiped their Democrat asses with their Democrat ballots and disfranchised themselves.
They’re trying to divest the vote-machine division because it’s a drag on profit. It’s that simple.
When I referred to Democrat hallucinations, I should have typed “Democrat hallucinogens.” Democrats mainline this stuff, start seeing things that aren’t there, and then MoveOn when reality intrudes. (Note discussion of 2006.)
Being Democrat means never having to say you were wrong or that you are sorry.
Pudless @ 71:
Thank you for giving an example of the points I was making about Rovian tactics @ 60 #3 (creating false charges and counter-charges to create a smoke screen in advance to conceal illegal conduct), and @ 61 (dismissing allegations out-of-hand based on perceived “bias” of the source, without addressing the facts themselves).
Although I will have to admit that I’m not inclined to consider any argument from Ann Coulter, or to waste my time reading her materials. But I think I’m on solid ground there, because the accuracy of the claims I’ve heard from her so far are so lacking in merit it seems a waste of time sorting through all that manure hoping to find the speck of wheat germ therein.
Yeah, I read Doonesbury too, sometimes, since our open-minded P-I moved Mallard Fillmore from the classifieds to the morgue.
Pigs put on lipstick and fly: Andrea Mitchell reported about two months ago that millions of Obama dollars are bundles from helpful fat-cat lobbyists. Maybe including Joe Biden’s lobbyist son.
And what’s with Obama taking illegal contributions from foreign donors? Thought Hsu and Trie and Riady had made that sort of thing difficult, even for greedy liberals.
What are you going to do, rhp666, when you don’t have Karl Rove to kick around any more?
I mean, he was your cash-machine catalyst for lo, those many years, and now he’s gone (or he’s gone to Fox, which is the same thing.) Without Rove and Cheney, you Democrats will have no reason to live since you’ll have nobody to hate.
Oh, wait. Hate is what Democrats do best. You’ll always be able to confect a new cash-cow villain.
@80 translation: Trudeau, who wouldn’t be funny even if he were Republican, is running a riff right now about the lobbyists on McCain’s trash-talk express.
Speaking of trash, why does the Blethen Times put Doonesbury on its op-ed page, instead of in classifieds or obits, where it belongs?
Assisted suicide for Berkely Brethed: Opus has finally croaked, praise God. Unlike Doonesbury, Bloom County used to be very funny. But that was very long ago.
“Did you notice that the Democratic hysteria vanished in 2006?”
Thre factors in play in 2006 which weren’t in play in 2004.
(1) After 2004, a lot of the jurisdictions got rid of the suspect machines, going back to the old ballots or to machines which required a paper audit trail. Currently there are warehouses full of the useless machines for which there is no market (there was an article on the subject in the papers a month or two ago).
(2) Democratic teams were on hand in districts where vote manipulation was suspected, ready to proceed with challenges, if needed. Such close scrutiny in advance tends to discourage illegal misconduct.
(3) Vote tampering works in close elections, but seldom in elections with wide swings. The 2006 election margins of victory for Democrats made it far less likely that a vote manipulation would have been successful or undetected.
@81 “Hate is what Democrats do best”
It follows then, that love must be what Republicans do best. Heck, this Republican was so full of love that he ended up in the slammer on 45 counts of sexual abuse of a minor.
http://www.times-news.com/loca.....00823.html
This has been another edition of “Puddy’s Heroes”.
Hey, eight years ago if you told me that a modern President would have been elected under the electoral college, despite not having a plurality of the vote, I would have laughed at you. “That would never happen today” I would have said. “If it did, the Constitution would be amended shortly thereafter”.
I was wrong.
If you had told me eight years ago that either major party would engage in illegal or unethical conduct in the modern era to throw the U.S. Presidential election, I would have laughed at you. “That’s a tale about a third-world country, not the U.S.” I would have said.
I was, much to my dismay, wrong about that also.
I didn’t want to believe that in modern America, the major players in either political party would hold our basic values of democracy in so low regard that they would throw an election for partison political advantage and personal economic gain. But I was wrong. And that’s a source of my deep and abiding anger at what has happened to the U.S. under the control of the modern-day Republican Party.
” … striking a registration merely based upon a returned postcard is ludicrous …”
Happened to me, right here in the one-party Soviet of King County.
Some serious meat on the bones of @69. Sources & citations, please … As with Dave, you sometimes make this HA thing worthwhile. @69 is apparently one of those rare worthwhile times, but please tell us where you got your information.
Puddy @ 81: What will I do when I don’t have Karl Rove to kick around anymore?
Well, you know what happened after Nixon said that, don’t you?
Rove and his ilk are like vampires. You keep putting the stakes in them, but they seem to keep coming back to life. Not to mention that Rove’s been training Republican operatives for the past twenty years in his tactics. I don’t think we’ll be free of his strategies until they get defeated EVERY TIME the Republicans attempt to use them. So there’s still lots of work to do.
No, not it’s not hate that motivates me. It’s anger at what they’ve done to my country. If a thief breaks into my house and steals my stuff, I’d be angry too. Am I supposed to be any less angry if they steal an election, the federal treasury, and the economic future of my children and grandchildren?????
Hell, yes, I’m angry. And I don’t trust them any further than I can throw them, and for good reason. But I don’t hate them. I still have the capacity to forgive, not by by my own merits but because of my faith. But I’ll admit to needing to engage in a lot of prayer to continue to have that capacity to forgive.
But the 2004 margin of “victory” for Gregoire made manipulation look likely. Yes, I know, Judge Earring ruled for you. Yes, I’ve mostly gotten used to it. But … was 2004 the election cycle in which King County installed its dandy HAVA Diebolds? Let’s connect the dots ………………………..
Regarding your paranoia about thrown elections, your continuing concern about Ken Blackwell puts you in almost the same “camp” camp as Alex Jones and the Truthers. There has never been a pristine election except, perhaps, in Goose Egg, Wyoming, population 6.
But your boy in 2004 lost more-or-less as announced on election night. Your boy understood, apparently, that 2004 was not 1960. Bush won.
2000 was troubling for some of us with long memories of 19th Century “minority” presidents and of the electoral quagmire of 1876. Said myself that Bush taking office with a 500,000 vote deficit — despite the 7-2 Supreme Court victory and despite the (ahem) New York Times consortium determining that Bush flat-out won Florida — would give the Democrat MSM a go to crucify Bush upside down.
Pudless @ 86.
My source was the same link I posted in # 58. It’s a long article.
Except for my comments I posted which referred to my own personal experience.
If your registration was deleted without proper notice and an opportunity for you to defend your registration, then either the proceedures or the specific application in your case was wrong. I don’t claim to be an expert on King County proceedures, I’m just coming up to speed on Snohomish County ones (where I live).
How can you go from a compelling simulation of lucidity, @ 69, to the Rabid Rancid Rove Raving @ 87?
You used to be such a nice boy. Turn back before it’s too late.
“I don’t claim to be an expert on King County proceedures …”
Dean Logan died for your sins. And Cheryl Huff? With a belated approximation of clean voter rolls (only 300,000+ corpses and felons disfranchised) maybe she’ll be able to run a clean election.
No, not all the dead deadbeats were in King County. The 300K is, I believe, from Sam Reed’s statewide purge.
I understand this is a left-wing blog. Using left-wingnut sources aren’t going to convince anyone except the choir.
Do you have any real links to back up this story?
I knew it was only time until you talked bout what you know best.
If it wasn’t for goat sex you wouldn’t have anything to say.
Keep talking about goats old man. Anything that gets you excited.
You must have the wrong steve. Steve is an old man, he couldn’t “give it” to a goat no matter how much he wanted.
But he does take it real well. He even speaks goat.
How do you feel about all the cases against acorn? You know acorn is a left-wing organization.
http://ap.google.com/article/A.....gD93LPR783
@80: Too bad individual contributions from people in various businesses mean nothing, since Obama takes no PAC money and will not do anything with 527’s.
Unlike Mr. “reformer” John McCain who broke his own campaign pledge and rules to take a loan against public financing for his campaign and then, once he had the loan and was doing better, decided against public financing. McCain also has refused to repudiate the 527 loophole he deliberately left in the law. Some reformer…
Obama has a record number of small contributions from everyday people – so of course they will add up if counted that way.
Bottom line: McCain and his campaign are run by lobbyists and his tax cuts for the rich will help only the rich, while the middle class will have to pay for the budget deficits.
Marvin @ 95:
I told you before, I’m against election fraud regardless of which party is involved, or which party benefited.
The local case involving ACORN wasn’t due to ACORN’s fault in any way – a few individuals sought to steal from ACORN by submitting false voter registrations, rather than doing the work to get them the right way. ACORN cooperated in that investigation.
No one knows any details about the Los Vegas case. I’m keeping an open mind because in the final weeks before this election, it would not be unkown for Repubican officials to want to make a public charge which would (a) make the Democrats look bad, and (b) provide a smoke-screen for their own conduct, either in Los Vegas or elswhere. Despite it being called a “raid”, it was simply the execution of a search warrant, the purpose of which is unknown. But in the meantime a “raid”, or even an announcement of “charges”, especially occuring shortly before an election, are not evidence in themsleves of any wrongdoing.
If it is later determined that illegal activity was committed for the purpose of influences an election, I hope that they prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Until then, I’ll wait and see.
Marvin @ 92. Check out the footnotes in the article I linked. They provide their own substantiation. Some of the sources for the article, referenced therein, have polled for both Democratic and Republican candidates and organizations.
I realize that Rolling Stone isn’t exactly treated like a scholarly journal. But sometimes they get it right. You need to read critically and test the underlying sources and logic.
By the way, I know a fellow in Snohomish County who was convicted of a felony but has never been de-registred. I advised him not to vote until he gets the re-instatement of his civil rights confirmed, as the next election will certainly be watched closely.
But I have to wonder – is the reason his name was never purged from the voting rolls because he reliably votes Republican in every election?
Wow, hey people keep looking toward government and man to guide you, take care of you and take God out of the equation. Laugh at Him, mock Him do as you wish, it is your choice. We will ALL see who is in control in the end. I don’t think it will be man. Man is doing a pretty bang up job up to this point. Dontcha think? Hows the bailout working for ya? Also for those going to bash religion now, remember being atheist is still a belief.