Buddies of mine (see, you can’t say “my friends” right now without it being taken in the wrong way…) Patterico, Confederate Yankee and others are going bonkers – just bonkers – over a pretty plausible set of emerging facts that tie Obama closer and closer to Ayers and Dohrn.
My friends, it’s a pointless argument, a losing argument, and you should stop.
Look below the fold and I’ll explain why.
That’s me in February 1970 at a demonstration called “The Day After”. I helped coordinate a demonstration in Westwood with the members of the RYM II – the group left behind when Ayers and Dohrn split off from the SDS. I was in high school.
We can talk another time about the path that led me from those politics to these politics (which I actually see as being fairly consistent…).
But what’s important is that branding someone as a “crazy 60’s radical” isn’t itself a very powerful political message. Because lots of people were, and lots of people know them and know they were, and we’re all pretty harmless these days (in fact, we were pretty harmless back then, as well).
That’s not to suggest that Ayers is harmless – he may or may not be (there’s a lot of evidence pointing both ways – on one hand, there’s his Chavez speech, on the other I consider “Hyde Park revolutionaries” to be kind of a narcissistic waste of time as a class, having been one myself). But as a branding exercise, it’s pointless, because it’s not going to have a whole lot of impact on people’s perceptions of Obama.
It’s a losing argument for tactical reasons – people have heard about this and largely discounted it, and so raising it isn’t bringing any new perceptions of Obama to the marketplace. And it’s a losing argument for deeper reasons – I don’t believe people in the US vote for ideological reasons – we’re not Europe where deep ideology is central to many political campaigns and to party identity. We vote for people, their policies, and to an extent our votes are determined by events and our perception of people’s likely responses to events.
The standard narrative (I know it’s been challenged, I’m not getting into that here) that every American knows is that in the Great Depression, FDR was elected and did a bunch of stuff that was perceived as Socialist but that saved the country. So help me understand, guys, how by painting Obama as more of a socialist – in a time when everyone is afraid of another Great Depression – buys anything in voter mindshare? It whips the base into a frenzy, but the key 30% in the middle? You’re pushing them the other way – towards the Obama camp.
And I think it’s a line of argument that ought to stop. I usually don’t criticize (I like to think of it as giving advice) the GOP, because I don’t feel involved with them. But in this case, I think I want to take a moment and say “hey guys, stop this”. The real reason is simple; because this isn’t presented as a challenge to any policy prescription Obama is making or has made, it’s a general bust of his identity.
And that’s dangerous.
It’s dangerous because it is such a powerful claim – one that doesn’t diminish Obama’s claims for himself (as the Swiftboat critics did of Kerry) but instead makes while whole political career illegitimate – makes him into a literal Manchurian Candidate. And in doing so, they risk breaking one of my critical rules for this electoral process.
No matter who wins, he’ll be my President.
If the people opposing Obama are true patriots, they know that’s the case. If Obama violates the Constitution in office, there are all kinds of remedies.
And if you want to beat him in November, there are better charges to make.
While I agree that the Ayers stuff isn’t going to defeat Obama, at this point, the GOP doesn’t have that much left to try. It is certainly mobilizing their base, which I suppose they hope will salvage some closer down-ticket races, and it’s probably the genesis of obstructionist tactics intended to thwart Obama’s program once he’s in office. Or maybe, figuring that their base is more likely to own weapons, they’re getting psyched for extralegal means of winning. After all, we can’t have a drug-dealing guy of the street socialist repainting the White House black.
However, you’re probably giving too much credit to the anti-Obama stuff in the first place. Confederate Yankee is relying on Erick Ericson of Red State. This article misunderstands electoral fusion so badly it’s almost incredible. Ericson’s version.
It may be a simple concept, but not to Ericson. With ‘fusion’, which is still the practice in New York, if Obama won the Democratic nomination, and Obama won the New Party nomination, his vote total from these two lines would be totaled in comparison the the Republican nominee as well as any other minor party candidates. (Actually, in Hyde Park the GOP didn’t bother and Obama won unopposed.) Fusion has nothing to do with determining the Democratic nominee. Fusion says that if Obama wins the Democratic primary (on his own) and the New Party primary, then his totals on those lines will be added. So if the general election is Republican 600, Obama as Democrat 500, Obama as New Party 101, then Obama is the winner.
Ericson was probably confused because he couldn’t wait to get to his perfervid ending.
Now, I could see saying this about the 1960s Ayers, but to use it to describe the leftist union organizers at democratic socialists of the New Party is silly. Lapses like this make me suspect the accuracy of their investigation as a whole.
I’m surprised that you would confess, A.L. . . . to ever having that haircut. What were you thinking?!?!?!?
Really? I have the same haircut today!! … actually, not…
A.L.
Politically, the attack is as unfocused and incoherant as the rest of the campaign. The only real weight to this is Obama’s _pattern_ of association with revolutionaries (not just radicals). But McCain had his chance months ago to mount this charge and chose not to. Now he’s doing it out of desperation, and it shows.
He’s already ruled out the really damaging Reverand Wright issue, and that really hurts because the list of names that Obama has shared a gunuinely significant amount of his life with _is_ worrying.
I don’t think the Ayres issue is that big a deal in and of itself, but the pattern it is a part of raises a real question of just what Obama is all about.
I agree; I think that if this had been raised in April or May by Hillary or Edwards, it would have had significant impact on the Obama “brand.” But today, it’s old news to most people, and I don’t seeing it having a significant positive effect for McCain.
A.L.
As an observer from afar I find it unbelievable that the left in the US is so comfortable with Obama’s ongoing pattern of dubious associations.
Ayers is a self confessed, unrepentant, domestic terrorist who regrets he didn’t go further, Wright is the worst kind of racist preacher, whom a true Christian wouldn’t even regard as a genuine churchman, Rezko is a convicted fraud, and Khalidi is a supporter of terrorist who have been attacking the USA for 30 years.
All of these long term associations argue towards Obama having, at the very least, terrible judgement, and at the worst, an agreement with at least a decent modicum of their political views.
He has played the notoriously corrupt Chicago political game, identifies himself as “Afro-American” when he is half white, three eighths Arab, and does so purely for political gain.
That is not the sort of person I would be voting for for any sort of political office, let alone that of President.
Larry, the three-eighths Arab stuff is nonsense, Protocols of the Elders of Kenya drivel. Where is “afar”—Mars? Did they mention Charles Keating out there?
A.L., your sang froid regarding Obama is a little depressing to me, but then I’m inherently more conservative than you, I think. (I would guess in non-economic Libertarian issues we’re pretty much in lockstep, though).
Who Obama is, what he believes, and how he would govern are all questions that are very much in play, and there’s less than a month to go until the election.
I have zero love for McCain, but at least I think I know the parameters within which he would serve. With Obama, we might get anything with regards to guiding principles. (He’s basically held every possible position on the issues I care about, so it really is a crap shoot.) Personal temperament, strength under pressure, ability to make unpopular decisions, all unknowns.
That doesn’t worry you?
On the other hand, I do know how his campaign has operated, and if his Administration follows suit, I’m thinking you’re going to have four years of “D’oh!” coming at you, because you are a classical Liberal. Wealth of Constitutional remedies notwithstanding.
McCain has done a wonderful job over the past of proving himself not fit to be dog catcher. The Ayers thing is the topping on the cake.
Does anyone have any idea what John McCain is talking about anymore. Suspend the campaign, vote/don’t vote for the bailout, bailout home mortgages, bailout mortgages and let the taxpayer pay for it, Obama is tied to the terrorist Ayers, but he doesn’t bring this up at the debate?
This guy wants us to believe that he will be a steady hand at the tiller? Now, to top it off, not only does he stand behind Palin’s skirts, he does the same with his wife.
I used to have a lot of admiration for this guy. He is behaving in a way that makes me think he listens to whatever the last person who got his attention says and then repeats it.
Steve Schmitt will go down as the archetype of a useless campaign strategist. He has buried his candidate.
#6 from Larry at 1:18 am on Oct 11, 2008
Larry, I do not know where you are from, but I will tell you that American politics is not and never has been gentlemen’s game. This election and the candidates are not much different than a lot of campaigns.
“If Obama violates the Constitution in office, there are all kinds of remedies.”
You really are naive. If Obama wins, do you seriously think a Democratic Congress is going to do anything to him? They won’t even investigate Barney Frank or Chris Dodd, even though they were deeply involved in the travesty that led to the present financial crisis. Hell, Jefferson, who was caught with $90,000 of bribe money in his freezer wasn’t disciplined in any way much less thrown out of Congress as he should have been.
If Obama wins, he will be my President, even though he’s a Marxist.
Sadly, the same is not true of the left. They reject anyone who is not liberal, they refuse to discipline their own and there’s no way in hell they would use any “remedies” against Obama no matter what he does. If he wins, he will have free rein to implement every socialist policy his heart desires.
If America survives that (and it’s highly questionable that it will), then the only recourse will be the ballot box, just as it was with the idiot savant Jimmy Carter.
“I used to have a lot of admiration for this guy.”
I have never admired McCain, found his association with Keating to be a strong indicator of a poor moral compass and was thoroughly disgusted by his stances on immigration and McCain-Feingold (with which he is forever joked to his everlasting shame.) I had no intentions of voting for him for President until he selected Sarah Palin. At least, I thought, she would argue vociferously for her viewpoints, most especially on energy policy. God knows the present “policy” (if you want to call it that) is idiotic in the extreme.
Hell would freeze over before I would vote for anyone with Obama’s socialist views, but that seems to be what Americans want. Apparently selling your birthright for a mess of pottage is the in thing to do now.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s “lots of people” didn’t go around trying to blow up other people, public buildings, etc. Ayers did. I trust AL was of a different sort of protester.
bq. Or maybe, figuring that their base is more likely to own weapons, they’re getting psyched for extralegal means of winning.
I’ll just let my eyebrows stay raised for a bit on that one.
I thought I didn’t dream of killing anybody to my left last night, but if AJL wants to argue that I did, well, then that’s probably the case. He knows the black hearts of us Obama skeptics better than we know them ourselves.
I’ve offered my own take on why Ayers matters on prior threads. Be that as it may, I think this issue is a case study of how politics as described in civics textbooks differs from politics as it is practiced. In my opinion, Obama knew he had a potentially fatal liability in his deep and longstanding relationship with Ayers, and it was important to manage if, how, and when the facts came out.
Would Obama have survived the primaries if Clinton had had access to the wealth of information that’s now known to those who pay attention to these things?
Instead, Obama and Axelrod have brought things from “a guy who happens to live in the neighborhood” through to “eh, all that stuff is old news, spun by crazed Republicans”. Here’s the “Yawn, boring” “interview with Charlie Gibson from earlier this week.”:http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/2008/10/charlie-gibson.html Both Obama and the mainstream media are happy to leave it at that.
Bottom line, the economy is what turns out to matter most this time around. A majority of Americans are willing to try moving the economy farther away from laissez-faire and closer to extensive regulation under Obama’s leadership, so that’s what we are going to get. What McCain’s alternative proposals are, I don’t think I could say. Obama’s heart is probably more into statist solutions, and McCain’s heart less, but that’s a guess.
“Obama’s heart is probably more into statist solutions, and McCain’s heart less, but that’s a guess.” McCain’s sponsorship of McCain-Feingold, support for the odious amnesty “solution”, his “leadership” of the 14 Senators who destroyed Bush’s ability to nominate judges and his recent offer to pay off the excess value of homes purchased by people who could not afford them would argue otherwise. The only difference between McCain and a true liberal is his stances on taxes and abortion. And even some liberals would agree with him on those.
JFK would be to the right of McCain were he alive today.
_That’s me in February 1970 at a demonstration called “The Day After”. I helped coordinate a demonstration in Westwood with the members of the RYM II – the group left behind when Ayers and Dohrn split off from the SDS. I was in high school._
Did you then go on to kill people with bombs? Did you get a Get Out of Jail Free card for those you did kill? Do you wish you had done more?
I could go on forever, but you, sir, are no Bill Ayers.
_So help me understand, guys, how by painting Obama as more of a socialist – in a time when everyone is afraid of another Great Depression – buys anything in voter mindshare?_
We’re idiotic enough to believe people learn and adapt and don’t keep ramming their heads into brick walls? You certainly have an unavoidable point that wanting Mommy to come tuck you is way more comforting than having to lay your head down on a rock. I sure wish I was ten again, with a new bike and a new BB gun and time would just freeze.
In the meantime, how do I get a jump on the WPA?
“JFK would be to the right of McCain were he alive today.”
Well, d’uh.
I agree with Armed Liberal that this line of attack has no chance to succeed, because I think “It’s the economy, stupid.”
I don’t think there’s a real question whether conservatives will talk about Barack Obama’s radical friends, whether anyone else is listening or not. They will talk about them. The kind of people the soon to be president likes hate people like them, and truly, deeply, murderously hate America, and have expressed these hatreds frequently, flamboyantly (“God damn America!”), persistently over long periods of time (not just in youthful phases) and with bombs and flag-stomping. That’s red meat.
The real questions are only: should these things be discussed during the election or only after it, and should this “red meat” talk be part of the campaign itself or kept out of it?
Politely keeping Barack Obama’s dirty secrets secret till after he’s elected isn’t a real option. (And yes, these things are still secret to some extent. Barack Obama lies and evades on these topics, and the mainstream media directs attention away from the key points.) Partly because conservatives find this stuff genuinely offensive, and partly because they are desperate as the election goes down the gurgler for them, and partly because the are angry because it seems to them that the economic woes being blamed on the Republican Party ought to be pinned on the Democratic Party.
But as part of the campaign itself, or only outside of it? That’s the only real choice.
I think that John McCain is right about this, as is Armed Liberal, and conservative activists pressing that these political weapons now be used are wrong and in denial.
It’s understandable that they are angry with John McCain, as he does not seem to be fighting all out. But the political battlefield is not what they think it is and want it to be.
Conservatives _want to believe_ in an older, better, simpler time, that only partly ever existed in reality, and whose bones and sinews are still waiting to be stirred under the blotched and flabby skin of present day America.
They think: scratch Paris Hilton, or at least a community with too many Paris Hilton types, if not her personally, and you’ll find Norman Rockwell toughness and American virtue, waiting to be roused if only the right words can be found.
By the standards of this ideal America, Barack Obama’s friends are completely disqualifying in a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. Black skin isn’t. (Colin Powell would have been a shoo-in, especially if he had done a Mitt Romney and suddenly discovered he was pro-life.) But kill-the-pigs flag-stomping America damning hate sure is.
In reality, it isn’t.
The kind of person who provokes vomiting, head-exploding, hysterical rage and hatred just by existing is Sarah Palin, the good mother who loves her babies instead of killing them, and who took on corruption and beat it instead of joining in it, Chicago style.
Not the race hate preacher Jeremiah Wright. Not the terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn. Not the criminal fixer Tony Rezko. Not any of the other friends of Barack Obama.
Conservatives are deeply in denial about that.
They keep waving the evidence of what the friends of Obama are like. But no matter how high they hold up the burned flags, no matter how angrily they shake them, no matter how loudly they shout that this is all true, they will never get an adequate political response, because the country they are appealing to does not exist.
McCain lives off the dubious business his convicted-felon father-in-law set up. I’ll put that up against Obama’s property deal with Rezko. His vice presidential candidate is married to an apparent secessionist, a member of a political party whose founder were murdered in what looks like some sort of arms deal gone wrong. Kind of a glass houses problem here.
Looking at the videos, I’m having a hard time deciding who is into “hating”. Well. actually, I’m not.
If you need any help with that, Andrew, drop by Daily Kos or Democratic Underground. If you don’t find hatred there then your standards are so screwed up that they can’t be fixed.
#19 from Antimedia:
bq. _”If you need any help with that, Andrew, drop by Daily Kos or Democratic Underground. If you don’t find hatred there then your standards are so screwed up that they can’t be fixed.”_
Antimedia, one of Andrew J. Lazarus’s links, in the word “videos” _is_ to the Daily Kos.
A personal note to AL re: Hair
My Father used to say: “Let it gray–but let it stay!”
David Blue: Although I have always found your analysis of events lately to track strongly with my own beliefs, I’ve yet to query you directly, so here goes.
If , as you say, the country the conservatives are appealing to does not exist (a rather generalized statement to be sure, considering the almost pure 50-50 split in the last two Presidential elections) to what do you attribute it’s demise? Or is it your belief that such a country never truly existed in the first place?
While “the Ayers argument” isn’t an election-winner, I think this (link) should be and it could be, if the public, as indicated by Gallup polls, had not decided very simply to respond to bad economic news on a Republican president’s watch by throwing the Republican bums out.
The problem is not any more that John McCain is not saying the right things. He is saying the right things. The problem is not any more that Sarah Palin was badly prepared for her first interviews and her media roll-out was botched. She was, and it was, and it was embarrassing to her fans, including me, but after her satisfactory performance in the vice-presidential debate, she’s over it.
The problem is that in a grave economic crisis, it’s politically fatal to get the blame for it. And Barack Obama, with an overwhelming money advantage and an even more overwhelming supportive media advantage, and his own great gifts as a communicator, has stuck his political opponents with the blame for this crisis.
There is no room to make the Republican case on energy and fighting corruption in Washington. That’s not what the headlines are about, and that’s not what people are thinking about. Sarah Palin could talk all day every day about energy, and in this news climate it would not be reported let alone effective. The same for John McCain and the surge.
When nobody’s willing to listen to the best arguments you have, there is nothing much to be done till they are willing to listen, which might be after the election.
What kind of protester kills people? What kind of man hangs around an entire series of murderers?
This isn’t a winning argument? I guess the entire character issue is dead.
Now I guess the next demo candidate can be a NAMBLA member.
The bakruptcy of the Left is on display with Obama. Each election they run a more and more degenerate candidate.
Just one question, do you think Obama could get a security clearance?
I rest my case.
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”What kind of protester kills people?”_
Someone fit to direct the education of children, presumably so that more of them grow up to think more like him.
Though I would not call Ayers a killer, just a terrorist, a bomber and an enemy of America. A killer could at least teach efficiency. Ayers is not that good an example.
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”What kind of man hangs around an entire series of murderers?”_
One who may subsequently be called “Mister President.”
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”This isn’t a winning argument? I guess the entire character issue is dead.”_
No, it can still be played against people like Sarah Palin.
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”Now I guess the next demo candidate can be a NAMBLA member.”_
It would be a moral step up from Barak Obama, legislative killer of born alive unwanted babies.
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”The bakruptcy of the Left is on display with Obama. Each election they run a more and more degenerate candidate.”_
Never again though. I take some small comfort from the thought that after 2009, no worse man will ever be made President, because there are no worse men.
When you elect a baby-killer as your head of government and head of state; literally, a guy who once needlessly made it his business to ensure that as far as it was within his power, not a single tiny baby should escape death, by no matter how miraculous a chance, after they were marked for extermination, you are no longer descending into moral perdition. You are there. There are no more moral steps downward to take.
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”Just one question, do you think Obama could get a security clearance?”_
Yes. Some remarkably nasty people have gotten security clearances, lately, if they were on the more politically correct side of things.
#24 from ThomasJackson:
bq. _”I rest my case.”_
In vain, alas. The great American public does not care. Nor does the great Australian public.
#22 from virgil xenophon:
bq. _”If , as you say, the country the conservatives are appealing to does not exist (a rather generalized statement to be sure, considering the almost pure 50-50 split in the last two Presidential elections) to what do you attribute it’s demise? Or is it your belief that such a country never truly existed in the first place?”_
Ouch! You were right to call me on this one. Such a sweeping statement deserved a challenge.
I think that solid, clear, embodied ideals of the kind that are necessary to inspire men, women and children to the heroic efforts that the good life requires never entirely exist in the material world, nor are they myths to be debunked. (This by the way, immediately marks me out as a non-Christian, since Christians believe that there was and is only one absolutely necessary hero and ideal, and He was perfectly and entirely fact, without sins, that is without shortcomings.)
In one way, inspiring models are as real as anything can be, in another way they’re totally lame and never stand up to examination.
Hmm. That requires an example. And I’m hijacking this thread. I’ll provide my example in a post.
OK, posted.
So: what I’m trying to say is, the ideal will always be valid, and it will always be part of America, inspiring Americans to behave better than they would otherwise and make America achieve more than it would otherwise, so I was wrong to say unreservedly that this America does not exist; but conservatives are appealing to something that also has only so much material, political mobilizing power at any given time, and for now they are way, way off, too optimistic, in how much weight they can put on the shoulders of this ideal.
Politically, the spirit that says, gosh-darn it, you can’t go to a church like that, and have friends like that, and do things like that and become president! may be an inspiring mouse, but with the demographics we have, and the changed way of life we have and the ways its changed our sense of allowable limits, it’s still just a mouse.
It wasn’t always. There was a time not too long ago when a man like Barack Obama could not have been elected no matter how sweet his voice was or how charming his smile and his children were, but things have changed.
I think the “read and weep” stats I quoted in another thread showing the public think that mainstream media coverage of the candidates in this election is fair shows that. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, which means as far as anyone who thinks they are being fair is concerned, Barack Obama has not stepped over any taboo lines, and anyone who suggests that he has is using racially tinged language, that is, they are revealing themselves as racist and dishonest.
I think this is politically soluble. If societies that were at war with themselves were burning up resources that were given once for all at the foundation and could never be replenished, it would be impossible to explain the career of Caesar Augustus or the Middle and New Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt.
But it’s not going to be easy.
Reality check (again).
Robert Hanssen was a conservative when he wasn’t busy being a spy, as indeed were most of the recent moles. Would you care to elaborate who these nasty politically correct people are?
The level of projection here is enormous.
Kos is calling for the total defeat of the Republican Party. Your guys are setting up a lynch mob. Big difference. (What exactly is Terrorist Obama going to do, anyway? Smuggle a bomb into the White House??)
While it is probable that AL is correct in the overall point of this post, there are a few points with which I disagree strongly.
bq. But what’s important is that branding someone as a “crazy 60’s radical” isn’t itself a very powerful political message. Because lots of people were, and lots of people know them and know they were, and we’re all pretty harmless these days (in fact, we were pretty harmless back then, as well).
I see a number of things I can disagree with in this statement, but perhaps the most alarming is the amount of growing disagreement I have heard in the last five years with the statement “and we’re all pretty harmless these days”. I’m in GenX, and in talking to members of the Silent, GenX and GenY generations, I have often heard the refrain “The Boomers are ruining this country.” This from people who I know are strongly left, right, or center. I also think that what a lot of these people mean by Boomers are the “crazy 60’s radicals,” of all political persuasions, who are now consolidating power; though many have not quite drawn that connection consciously yet. So far Social Security, and to a much lesser extent foreign policy, have been the main coalescing points for this sentiment, but it is growing. That is why I think assuming that “crazy 60s radicals” should be seen as “pretty harmless these days” may be a very dangerous assumption as I believe there is growing sentiment against it.
bq. It’s a losing argument for tactical reasons – people have heard about this and largely discounted it,
I think a lot of people have heard about it, but don’t know how recent and deep it is and so think this is something that happened a long while back and that Obama ‘reformed’ from it. It fundamentally clashes too much with the image Obama is projecting, and is generally sustained by the MSM, so it is ignored due to the evidence in front of their eyes. In this your end result is correct, though it does leave open the possibility that some new, major, piece of information could blow the whole thing back open.
bq. that every American knows is that in the Great Depression, FDR was elected and did a bunch of stuff that was perceived as Socialist but that saved the country.
While more politically active and historically knowledgeable people may know this, I think the average American doesn’t really think ‘Socialist’ in context with FDR unless pressed, and then they are uncomfortable with it. I think most of the more Socialistic New Deal programs are seen more as equivalent to a church soup kitchen, an organization (in this case the government) giving out a helping hand to those who need it which stopped when they didn’t.
bq. No matter who wins, he’ll be my President.
I believe in this. When Clinton was President, I may have disagreed with him and privately thought him a fool, but I was never disrespectful publically. Aside from telling people he always reminded me of the stereotypical used car sales man 🙂
However, I think Conservatives are mad. They are mad and tired of what they perceive as abusive treatment from the other side and they are coming to the stage where they’re “mad and not gonna take it any more”. Most (though not all, by any means) treated Clinton in the respectful manner you advocate no matter how much they may have disagreed with him. Yet, look at how Bush has been treated in circumstances when traditionally unity could be expected in time of war. When it came time for Supreme Court picks, conservatives allowed Ginsberg and Breyer on the court with little real fight (at least in terms of modern times), even after Bork and got repaid with the fights over Alito and Roberts. I think that conservatives feel that they have been played for suckers and in the process have had the rug yanked out from under them and the country pushed in a direction they fundamentally disagree with because of it. Should Obama be elected I predict that he won’t be accepted by his opponents any more than Bush has been, and quite possibly less. Worse, Obama is definitely too far to the left behind his facade to ever be perceived as a uniter.
StargazerA5
David: You end by saying “it’s not going to be easy” to solve the dilemma conservatives find themselves in, but I would ask: for what exact reasons? What are the exact currents that comprise the stream against which conservatives must swim, and what are the tributaries that feed this stream? Is it not through the efforts of people like Obama and his minions in the academy, the MSM and Hollywood that the conditions have been created through a some forty year process of re-wiring the hard drive of the American public such that, as if by osmosis, the neural pathways have been conditioned to be receptive to only one set of assumptions? And does this not include the concept of “white guilt” that leads many whites to follow Obama in hopes of expiating their “sins?” All, all of this, combining with Obama’s natural gifts as an orator to create the perfect storm of conditions which allows for the transcendence of a cult of personality that is almost impervious to facts?
And, in response, what sort of alternate paradigm would you construct to alter the “pictures in their heads” (to use a term first coined by the late V.O. Key) that Obamites have?
Stargazer A5: I was going to reply to AL along similar lines as yours but I see you’ve beaten me to the punch–eveb though I’m from the war years generation(1939-1945) that preceded the boomers–in fact when we were in our twenties we were often lumped in with the boomers in the public mind.
AJL wrote in #18 —
bq. McCain lives off the dubious business his convicted-felon father-in-law set up. I’ll put that up against Obama’s property deal with Rezko. His vice presidential candidate is married to an apparent secessionist, a member of a political party whose founder were murdered in what looks like some sort of arms deal gone wrong. Kind of a glass houses problem here.
This as a follow-up to #1 and a response to #13. Glass houses problem? There’s a better name; it’s tu quoque. Not so effective in discovering the truth–whereever that path might lead. But tu quoque is a standard courtroom tactic, where the objectives are to (1) Divert attention from what can’t be challenged, and (2) Discredit the opposition.
In that, AJL is employing the script that Axelrod’s campaign and much of the mainstream media has been following for months, to great effect. And, as David Blue showed, to the approval of the American public.
I’d advise readers to follow AJL’s link to page 3 of the “New Republic article on Cindy McCain.”:http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0fd7470d-a41f-4d9e-9328-fd079b476a0a&p=3 (I thought it was an informative backgrouder, sharp knives aside: McCain as Michael Corleone’s daughter’s husband). I also benefitted from browsing the first five or so comments. They provide perspectives that TNR’s editors and AJL somehow missed. For instance, the “that” in “I’ll put that up against Obama’s property deal with Rezko” refers to events that transpired before Cindy’s birth.
Finally, per (1) and (2) above, let’s put the Corleone-in-law narrative against the entire Obama-Rezko relationship and Ayers and Dohrn and “Wright”:http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080316_obama.htm and Pfleger and “the Black Muslims”:http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080901_chicago.htm and Mayor Daley’s “Combine” and “Alinsky.”:http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/bobamasunlikelypoliticaledu.html
AJL’s okay with that, and so is a majority of the American people, at least to the extent that these relationships have been exposed and explained outside of blogs.
Incidentally, I’ll bet that after the Inauguration, the media will begin to wake up and follow the leads unearthed by Stanley Kurtz et al. A string of embarrassing stories will follow, as journalists prove to themselves and others that they aren’t in the tank. Like Bill Clinton, Obama will come to feel deep anger about the way he’s persecuted, and the unfairness of the bias against him. Any takers?
#23 David Blue
bq. There is no room to make the Republican case on energy and fighting corruption in Washington.
The Republicans had 8 years to make their case for energy and corruption in Washington, David. And what did America get? A break with Kyoto, a war for oil, spiking energy prices, no comprehensive energy policy, Jack Abramoff, Ted Stevens, Alberto Gonzalez and a 2-page list of government corruption and abuse.
You seem to be under the quaint impression that this can all be wiped away to begin at page 1 during the campaign.
One of the points you also want to ignore is that, while perhaps the economic crises has finally focused America and the media’s attention on things that actually matter, this should always be the case as there are in every election issues far more important than the silly one you and others here keep on flogging.
This type of campaigning itself and the attitudes that it brings to selecting leaders has gotten us in to this very situation you blame for not allowing Republicans to employ it ONCE AGAIN for the current election.
This is a breathtakingly cynical, partisan, destructive and misguided approach that speaks to a mindset happy to make others suffer for the implementation of their own beliefs. Sounds a lot like dangerous religious zealotry to me (and your continual referral to your anti-choice views suggest it applies to you).
#28 from Andrew J. Lazarus:
bq. _”Would you care to elaborate who these nasty politically correct people are?”_
Here’s one: (link) (link).
That’s what I mean.
#28 from Andrew J. Lazarus:
bq. _”(What exactly is Terrorist Obama going to do, anyway? Smuggle a bomb into the White House??)”_
Mess up the careers of people who tell the truth and are doing good work. Set up official language rules that systematically falsely interpret what’s going on. Set up artificial barriers saying A can’t talk to B. Explicitly or tacitly encourage breaches of discipline, politicizing the CIA and other organizations as much as possible and not punishing those who are speaking out of turn and being blatantly political, as long as they please the President. Can ongoing operations and blame his predecessor(s) for their failure. Apologize to enemies for crimes imputed to his predecessor(s), momentarily making himself look good at the cost of making America look bad and be on the hook in moral terms and perhaps for reparations permanently, on the basis of things conservatives will not agree are true, thus lastingly inflaming domestic bitterness. Sign treaties that undermine American sovereignty. Leave allies in the lurch, making it harder to recruit local allies in future…
Mind you, I would do that last one too, because there are areas where I don’t look for allies. And George W. Bush encouraged disrespect for law by not calling people on politicization in the CIA, publication of official secrets and so on. I’m not saying every abuse would be a first. I’m just pointing out that the American President has endless ways to screw things up in wartime. He doesn’t need to smuggle a bomb into the White House.
Following #34: As far as domestic policy, I expect that Obama will follow Bush’s lead in translating pleasant and politically-correct fantasies into policy initiatives (*). The shared notions are based on the (scientifically) discredited Blank Slate theory and its corrollary, “equal opportunities always lead to equal outcomes.”
Of course, to the extent he thinks about such things, McCain seems inclined to agree with these ideas. But he lacks the fervor of Bush and the lifelong committment of Obama, and would be modestly preferable on those grounds.
—
(*) I misspoke. Obama has nothing in common with that goose-stepping archconservative ultrarightwing fiend W. Nothing!
#33 from Vista:
bq. _”The Republicans had 8 years to make their case for energy and corruption in Washington, David. And what did America get?”_
I yield to few in my contempt for the late, unlamented bicameral Republican federal legislative majority, and high on the list of reasons I like Sarah Palin is her energy and effectiveness in taking on a corrupt Republican establishment in Alaska. I think she’d be an ideal complement to John McCain, an admirably mean old man who knows where the bodies are buried, and with his guidance I’d like her to take Walking Tall (2004) to Washington.
Sheriff Stan Watkins: [after Chris wins the election, he pulls up to address the police force] Sheriff.
Chris Vaughn: Watkins.
Sheriff Stan Watkins: You won the election. Congratulations. But we do have a tradition of professional courtesy up here. And I can personally vouch for each and every one of these men. They’re good deputies.
Chris Vaughn: You’re all fired.
Sarah Palin would rip into political corruption. That’s what she does. Barack Obama is a creature of political corruption. He’d further it. That’s what he does. I prefer her.
Re: #30 from virgil xenophon…
I don’t know. I only know that these are immensely important questions.
AJL-
bq. Looking at the videos, I’m having a hard time deciding who is into “hating”. Well. actually, I’m not.
_takes a look around this thread:_
bq. _”Now I guess the next demo candidate can be a NAMBLA member.”_
bq. It would be a moral step up from Barak Obama, legislative killer of born alive unwanted babies.
bq. _”The bakruptcy of the Left is on display with Obama. Each election they run a more and more degenerate candidate.”_
bq. Never again though. I take some small comfort from the thought that after 2009, no worse man will ever be made President, because there are no worse men.
bq. When you elect a baby-killer as your head of government and head of state; literally, a guy who once needlessly made it his business to ensure that as far as it was within his power, not a single tiny baby should escape death, by no matter how miraculous a chance, after they were marked for extermination, you are no longer descending into moral perdition. You are there. There are no more moral steps downward to take.
Yeah, I’m not having a hard time deciding who’s into “hating” either, AJL. Nor am I having a hard time telling who’s the “kind of person who provokes vomiting, head-exploding, hysterical rage and hatred”, and who’s not.
And no, it ain’t Sarah Palin.
bq. Sarah Palin would rip into political corruption. That’s what she does. Barack Obama is a creature of political corruption. He’d further it. That’s what he does. I prefer her.
Obama is running against McCain, David. And McCain is 4 more years of the same thing that you profess to dislike about the last 8.
Nevertheless, I cannot let your misperception about Palin go unchallenged.
“Palin Accepted $25,000 in Gifts, Alaska Records Show:”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092503988.html?nav=hcmodule
bq. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has accepted gifts valued at $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests in the state, a review of state records shows.
bq. The 41 gifts Palin accepted during her 20 months as governor include honorific tributes, expensive artwork and free travel for a family member. They also include more than $2,500 in personal items from Calista, a large Alaska native corporation with a variety of pending state regulatory and budgetary issues, and a gold-nugget pin valued at $1,200 from the city of Nome, which lobbies on municipal, local and capital budget matters, documents show.
“Trooper-Gate Report Finds Palin Abused Power in Firing Monegan:”:http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/troopergate_report_finds_palin.php
bq. The just-released Trooper-Gate report finds that Sarah Palin abused her power in the firing of Walt Monegan, by violating an Alaska law holding that “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”
I could go on, but you are just as capable of doing something that you don’t seem to have done prior to making your sweeping assertions: find plenty of evidence supporting the idea that she is no more immune to corruption than John “Keating Five” McCain.
Has the media turned their attention to McCain’s connections to Abramoff yet, BTW? Perhaps that should be looked into a bit further in the next few weeks.
The latest Ayers “revelation” is that three years after Bernadine Dohrn joined a large Chicago law firm, Michelle Obama began employment at the exact same firm. Now, if I were Stanley Kurtz, I’d point out that the two women could have hatched any number nefarious plots—it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Of course, it’s also possible that since the firm has over 500 lawyers and who knows how many support personnel, that they never met. But you could hardly get yahoos to the polls that way.
Whether Obama would feel such anger is not clear. What is clear is that during the Clinton years the Mainstream Conservative Media were featuring lurid fantasies about the Clintons’ involvement in the murder [sic] of Vince Foster, and the current Republican candidate who has such high standards for Bristol Palin was telling a vicious homophobic “joke” about Chelsea Clinton.
BTW, Sarah Palin as anti-corruption Joan of Arc is yesterday’s story. Today we know otherwise.
There’s one additional point I’d like to make about the source of the false information that people like David Blue and many others above thread are happy to propagate about Obama.
You’re presidential candidates have been lying to you through their teeth for months now.
Not only are they lying about Obama, his record and his positions, but also about their own records.
You’d think this would piss some people off, being taken for such mindless rubes who will believe any utterance that issues forth from the mouths of these towering figures of Honor and Integrity.
What is truly amazing is how even reasonably intelligent people who have access to information that provides contradictory evidence to many of their claims will dismiss it on the basis of distrust for the media or an inherent hatred for Obama.
What is also amazing is how late many people are in coming to the realization that this political model, built by Karl Rove et al., is a house of cards that has fallen. McCain/Palin being the most prominent examples of this.
If there is anything good to come out of our current mess, than the withering death of this approach to government is it.
Vista, the “they lie, we tell the truth” line is kinda dull to me. If I wanted to spend the time, I could build a fairly massive list of material misrepresentations by both sides.
And I’d find each side’s advocates far more credible if they would acknowledge that; wearing partisan blinders marks you as someone whose vision is severely limited – and hence your arguments as less interesting.
A.L.
I think that people supporting a Chicago machine politician for president complaining about “abuse of power” by Sarah Palin must have had their sense of irony extracted at an early age.
bq. You’re presidential candidates have been lying to you through their teeth for months now.
…
If there is anything good to come out of our current mess, than the withering death of this approach to government is it.
You know, this kind of thing makes me really glad we keep you around here. It’s so cute. Like believing in rainbow-horned unicorns that only do what’s right. Good luck with all that dream implementation you’re so jazzed about. Be sure to blame the other guys if it doesn’t work out.
#42, and re my #44: Sorry, fighting snark with snark is not what we aim for. Too easy. Apologies.
AL-
bq. Vista, the “they lie, we tell the truth” line is kinda dull to me. If I wanted to spend the time, I could build a fairly massive list of material misrepresentations by both sides.
Actually, AL, I’ll be happy to call your bluff on that. Go ahead and put together your list – please do make sure it includes the stuff your “buddies” Patterico and Confederate Yankee have been saying about Obama – and we’ll see which campaign has been more guilty of misrepresentation this cycle. Because I’m pretty sure this is one year when the “a pox on both your houses” stance doesn’t really reflect the underlying truth of what’s been going on.
#42 from Armed Liberal:
bq. _”Vista, the “they lie, we tell the truth” line is kinda dull to me. If I wanted to spend the time, I could build a fairly massive list of material misrepresentations by both sides.”_
Oh yeah. No conservative in big politics can say that, because the mainstream media will misquote them and use them in partisan attacks, the way they did to Karl Rove when he said both sides were playing too mean, and the mainstream media boys misrepresented him as saying Republicans were going over the line. But we can, so we should. Both sides now are taking unfair shots, constantly.
#42 from Armed Liberal:
bq. _”And I’d find each side’s advocates far more credible if they would acknowledge that; wearing partisan blinders marks you as someone whose vision is severely limited – and hence your arguments as less interesting.”_
A.L. I like the _idea_ of being above partisanship and bias, but I’m handcuffed because one side is doing stuff I consider beyond the moral pale.
The only way to be serenely balanced between both sides whatever they get into is to have no moral standard, so that you can always move to a point equidistant between the sides, no matter what the moral or practical implications of that center point are.
If you have a moral bottom line at all, it is possible that one side will start doing stuff that is off the charts, and there’s your even bipartisanship gone.
Now, I don’t like being angry, and I’m aware that tunnel vision can be a weakness – but for pity’s sake – literally for pity’s sake – a man must take a clear view, and hold to some moral convictions that don’t change with the ebb and flow of fashion.
I have striven over many years to educate myself morally. And one of the things I’ve done for that is to study the stories of righteous gentiles of the Holocaust. And the biggest thing I learned from them is that when the whole world around you says these human beings are not really human, it’s OK to kill them and forbidden to prevent it you say NO!, and you try to make that stick, you can’t waver and start shading away your commitment, or you’re lost.
I won’t be revising my view on that.
What is tiresome, Armed Liberal, is this notion of false equivalence where it is proposed that all lies are alike and that they therefore cancel each other out.
This is both intellectually lazy and demonstrably false.
I second Chris’s call for your list.
#45 NM
I appreciate the apology. You can go one better by attempting to address the issues raised.
Here’s the topic. For weeks, McCain, Palin and their spokesman have been insinuating connections between Obama and Ayers that don’t exist (“Palling around”, e.g.). In response, many of their remaining supporters have come to believe that Obama is a Muslim terrorist who will destroy America to further his own personal interests, that he is an unpatriotic liar and foreigner who does not share their values.
Now McCain is walking back from this portrayal after seeing the kind of anger and hatred he and his running mate have elicited.
If I were someone who came to these false, dangerous (to the extent of being investigated by the Secret Service) conclusions about Obama from this exposure, I would be very, very, very upset that I was manipulated in that manner for political purposes.
Wouldn’t you? And does David Blue feel any remorse for his inflammatory rhetoric about Obama? Where did he get this info from?
Do you really think we should elect a president who is willing to use such tactics in a public forum, to attempt to turn Americans against one another in such a hateful manner in a time when we most desperately need to come together?
1. An Electoral College victory north of 350-188
2. An excellent chance of a 60 seat Super Majority in the Senate
3. An excellent chance of controlling 60% of the House
4. An excellent chance of controlling a large majority of both Statehouses and state legislatures.
5. A President with the ability, like Reagan, to speak over the heads of Congress directly to the people.
This translates into one of the most prolific first 100 days in the nation’s history.
Before I start screaming that the sky is falling, there are things that seem to mitigate against the worst of the fears that are being expressed by people concerning an inevitable Obama Presidency.
1. No one, especially the Left, will be entirely satisfied by what an Obama administration will provide for them.
2. The thing that stands out to me most about Obama is his ambition. I also feel that ambition always trumps ideology, and despite his record, which on a gut level, I feel, was the child of that ambition, Obama will seek power to dominate the political landscape, which will be packaged as crossing the aisle. He will neuter his opponents by co-opting them, not pitting them against one another.
3. From what I have seen of his campaign, he is firm, strict, disciplined and organized in service of his ambition. I do not expect that to be changed. We may be witnessing the rise of the greatest *Politician* since Roosevelt. No one can argue that he has been a volcano on the plain of American politics over the past 18 or so months.
4. I see his method of rule to be that of the Big City Irish model. I am Irish and very familiar with it. Practical, corrupt, efficient and effective, for a while. This system is a carrot and stick system, though most people only see the carrots. you do not go up against the machine or you are cut off from it. Shunned, in a biblical sense. Left to you own devices, bereft of contact with the hand that feeds you.
5. When I look at Obama, he reminds me of my father who was born in 1907. Stern, organized with an unbreakable will. He also reminds me what a Chinese philosophy professor of mine (he was of all things, a Plato scholar)said when I asked him about Mao, “We have had many stern emperors”.
I think, in a lot of ways, the country will benefit from Obama’s style and this model, for a time. This may be because I tend to be optimistic and have learned to accept that which is fait accopli and begin immediately, not to live with it, but to deal with it. And, also, I feel that the Republican Party needs time in the wilderness as the electorate is pretty clearly telling us.
The milk has been spilt. No sense crying over it.
I’m telling the truth. I’ve hunted up the quotes and chapter and verse on Obama the baby-killer before and posted it in a thread when challenged, and I don’t propose to keep doing the same hack-work over and over.
Also, unfortunately it’s irrelevant, because like the Ayers argument, this isn’t an election winner. Both arguments ought to be winners, in my opinion. Neither of them is, and neither is about to be whatever we say.
#49 from TOC:
bq. _The milk has been spilt. No sense crying over it.”_
_Some_ milk has been spilt, because of early voting. A great deal will not have been spilt till election day.
_After_ that day, there will be a great deal of time for conservatives to weep and ponder. _Until_ then, serious conservatives should be fighting for all they’re worth.
Again I recommend the excellent example of Sarah Palin.
“Patterico responds to this post.”:http://www.patterico.com/2008/10/11/a-response-to-armed-liberal-on-ayers/
To expand a little on his comments: the full measure of Ayers’ and Dohrn’s guilt will never be measured. Ayers has been very careful about recounting his involvement in some of their less amusing activities – such as the bungled arson that could have killed a federal judge, his wife, and child.
Something to keep in mind about Ayers and his “comrades” is that they remained at large for years, not because they were smarter than your average Ten Most Wanted, but because they were plugged into a big network of sympathy and money.
The people who helped them, no one was ever punished for doing so, were not fellow terrorists. They were rich liberals who saw no problem with what they were doing, and still don’t. This is the larger problem.
Vista:
I’ll borrow from a post I wrote recently.
Never mind the old stuff about how Obama claimed an aide filled out a questionnaire with extreme views, but his handwriting showed up on the form; how he said he wouldn’t run for president in 2008; how he traces his very existence to the generosity of the Kennedy family, etc.
Obama ran a dishonest ad tying John McCain to Rush Limbaugh on the issue of immigration reform — and distorting Limbaugh’s quotes beyond all recognition in the process. In June, Obama claimed McCain was “fueled” by money from lobbyists and PACs, when that actually accounted for only 1.7% of McCain’s money.
On his own record, Obama flat-out lied about taking public financing — and he lied about why he didn’t do it, blaming it all on McCain when it was his own decision. Obama misstated the reason that he voted against a bill that would have required doctors to give medical attention to babies born alive after a botched abortion. Obama took money from oil companies and claimed he didn’t.
Obama inflated his role in the creation of the stimulus package. And Obama was deceptive about McCain’s regulatory record. On Ayers, CNN has said that “the relationship between Obama and Ayers went much deeper, ran much longer, and was much more political than Obama said.†And Jake Tapper said Obama’s camp pulled a quote badly out of context to suggest a Congressman had claimed McCain had blown up a bailout deal, when the Congressman was arguing that he might have saved it.
Just to take a few examples.
And yes, McCain’s camp has lied as well.
Re: #46 from Chris – OK, here’s one item of many for the list. Obama’s been saying that pro-lifers have been lying about his record, when he’s the one that’s been lying and accusing his honest critics unjustly. He’s been debunked over and over, in many places and in copious detail, and he never admits the truth. (link)
Another one is the document with his handwriting on it supporting a gun ban. No link for this, because I’ve posted it before and I’m bored doing the same link searches over and over, because people like you never admit the obvious truth, and apparently try to win by demanding tedious, redundant proof of points that are never conceded no matter how clear they are. So: Obama says that isn’t his writing. He’s lying. I’ve challenged Armed Liberal on this, and never gotten a reply, because there is nothing for him to say. It’s as clear-cut as the mysterious stranger who did the killings OJ Simpson was acquitted of: there was no such person.
Gun voters, like pro-life voters, are single-minded. If Barack Obama was to be believed when he makes his seemingly pro-gun noises, they’d be saying so. They don’t trust him, because he’s proven untrustworthy.
That’s two items, which is enough for “lies”. The list could be extended indefinitely, because both sides are frequently playing fast and loose with the truth. Both sides.
Allow me to agree that I’d like to see A.L. give us details of how both campaigns are somehow equally mendacious. Sure, the Obama camp has made some exaggerations. The McCain campaign seems to be unique, however, in its willingness to spew totally false statements repeatedly. Defunding the troops. Thanks, but no thanks. Tax increases down to $42K income. And talk radio with the leaders of the right-wing blogosphere are still rooting around in fantasies that Obama is Muslim, that Obama is Arab [see also #6 supra], that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake. Daily Kos doesn’t have any equivalent.
I’m sure you’d like something from the McCain campaign itself. That, too, can be arranged. From today’s NY Times:
Leaving aside how Acorn is being transformed into the role the World Jewish Conspiracy, getting wrong which side the Federal Government was on is neither a minor nor an inadvertent error.
The McCain campaign (and the Republican Party) are reduced to relying on voters who are hateful, angry, ignorant, and easily deceived. The Obama campaign is not.
“Allow me to agree that I’d like to see A.L. give us details of how both campaigns are somehow equally mendacious.”
I just gave several.
“And talk radio with the leaders of the right-wing blogosphere are still rooting around in fantasies that Obama is Muslim, that Obama is Arab [see also #6 supra], that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake. Daily Kos doesn’t have any equivalent.”
Except for fantasies that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s grandson. And I was rather disgusted to see applause from lefty commenters on countless sites.
And McCain himself yesterday set straight a woman who claimed Obama is an Arab.
“Tax increases down to $42K income.”
Obama once voted for a tax increase that would have increased taxes (though not by much) on single taxpayers making $42,000 a year. That’s just a fact. Look it up.
“The McCain campaign (and the Republican Party) are reduced to relying on voters who are hateful, angry, ignorant, and easily deceived. The Obama campaign is not.”
Indeed. I hear Democrats’ sh[vowel removed]t doesn’t stink, as well.
Sorry, let me complete this thought I left incomplete:
And I was rather disgusted to see applause from lefty commenters on countless sites when Sarah Palin’s e-mail was hacked.
The McCain campaign is now itself boasting that McCain blew up the bailout because of its (alleged) benefits to ACORN. Doesn’t make sense to me, but it looks like Jake Tapper and Patterico owe Obama an apology on that one. Incidentally, Obama has a new TV ad that he kicked off his State Senate campaign in a Ramada Inn (I stayed there once, and it’s a dreadful hotel). Either this is a new chance to show Obama is lying or, more likely, the Kurtz description of Ayers anointing Obama in his living room/weapons lab is bogus.
Does it seem to anyone else that
ACORN:2008 USA election::Jews:1932 German election?
JTFR, Kos personally called for the maximum sentence for the criminal hacking of Palin’s email.
The McCain campaign has claimed, falsely, that Obama would have raised taxes on everyone earning $42,000 and they have done so repeatedly. You can look it up.
bq. I’ve hunted up the quotes and chapter and verse on Obama the baby-killer…
Do we really need to hear anything else from the innocuously named “David Blue” to place him squarely in the category of being this site’s equivalent of the angry sidewalk mob screaming at their political opponents in self-righteous fury and animosity?
David, you do your argument no justice nor your side no benefit from being Exhibit A for the prosecution.
And to those on the right who permit these comments to go unchallenged, you are guilty of complicity. I will take David’s comments to indicate your own views until such time as you disavow them.
Maybe you’re right AL.
Portraying Obama as a dangerous opponent of the First amendment is more of a winner and just as accurate.
I haven’t said my opinions represent anyone but me. They are not owned by anyone else unless they specifically endorse them, one by one.
What I called Obama is simply because (a) it’s justifiable on the facts, and (b) I’m indifferent to demands for courtesies to Obama on this issue. He hasn’t earned them, he’s simply lying, he has been for a long time, and it’s not a big deal that requires delicacy.
It’s like calling someone a tax-raiser, when (a) they have in fact been a tax-raiser, and (b) they’ve been denying it, dancing all around the park, and accusing those who point to the simple facts of lying. Simply underlining that which the candidate falsely denies is appropriate in a case like this.
Oh yes, and he has indeed been palling around with terrorists.
Again, he’s not entitled to elaborate courtesies and circumlocutions which would only serve his desire to obscure the reality of what he’s done and damn his critics for pointing to it.
#61 from Rich Horton:
bq. _”Maybe you’re right AL.”_
bq. _”Portraying Obama as a dangerous opponent of the First amendment is more of a winner and just as accurate.”_
Are you referring to this? (link)
Unfortunately, academic anti-free-speech coercion, terrorists exercising the ultimate “heckler’s veto” and the kind of behavior Barone notes form a pattern, one that too many people are comfortable with now to make opposing it a winning election issue. Which is where we came in.
Vista, what’s your problem with people noting that Obama is one of the very few legislators who’d vote against a bill stating that, if an infant should happen to survive an abortion, you can’t drop him or her in the nearest dumpster? It’s true, after all, and puts him WAY outside the mainstream on the subject of abortion.
He also manages to be at the outer fringe of anti-gun sentiment. Something you’d think would be more troubling to an Armed Liberal.
I don’t think the guy IS a terrorist, for all that he’s more comfortable around Ayers than I’d be. But on at least a couple of social issues, he’s several sigma out. And it’s perfectly legitimate to point that out.
“The McCain campaign is now itself boasting that McCain blew up the bailout because of its (alleged) benefits to ACORN. Doesn’t make sense to me, but it looks like Jake Tapper and Patterico owe Obama an apology on that one. ”
Read the link. He blew up a version that was unlikely to pass on the floor, and the Congressman’s point was that in so doing, he helped ensure that a better bill was put out on the floor, that had a better chance of passing.
It didn’t pass the first time, but that doesn’t change the point the Congressman was making, or excuse the way it was distorted by the Obama people.
If you read the link, you’ll see Tapper and I owe no apology. You don’t seem to understand what Obama’s distortion was.
David Blue-
bq. I haven’t said my opinions represent anyone but me. They are not owned by anyone else unless they specifically endorse them, one by one.
Except that’s not how this game is played, and you know it… or at least, if you don’t, you should be doing a better job of telling Patterico upstream that the actions and opinions of “lefty commenters on countless sites” are not owned by anyone else unless they specifically endorse them, one by one.
bq. What I called Obama is simply because (a) it’s justifiable on the facts, and (b) I’m indifferent to demands for courtesy to Omama on this issue. He hasn’t earned them, he’s simply lying, he has been for a long time, and it’s not a big deal that requires delicacy.
David, you link to a news article that is, at the very least, open to interpretation – there’s a fairly complex laundry list of what Obama voted for, and when, and what language it contained, and it doesn’t even begin to fully settle why he voted for what he voted for. Certainly, as we’ve seen time and time again, bills contain all kind of high points and low points, and it’s frequently going to be the case that _any_ politician will vote against bills that contain good and worthwhile points, and vote for bills that contain bad and damaging aspects, just as part of the legislative process.
But at the end of the day, even if you take fairly unforgiving position on what Obama did and why he did it as far as those bills are concerned, I don’t think that justifies you saying that “a NAMBLA member” “would be a moral step up” from Barack Obama, and that “no worse man will ever be made President, because there are no worse men.”
Seriously. Think about that language for a moment. And tell me the right wing wouldn’t use that kind of language, written by a front-page poster on, say, Obsidian Wings, to utterly and eternally condemn the site as being irrevocably controlled by crazed moonbats.
And, although I hope to get time later to address Patterico’s points in more detail, I think we can legitimately say that, regardless of how inaccurate Obama is or isn’t, his missteps are relatively run of the mill political stuff. And the guy’s supporters certainly hasn’t been angels, but it seems as if the worst we’re talking about are somebody’s email account getting hacked and (swiftly debunked, largely bygone) rumors about who the parent of Trig Palin really is.
On the other hand, we’ve got a McCain campaign that walks a very fine line between condemning using Ayers, Wright, etc. as campaign issues, and encouraging those issues under the table by having McCain introduced by people who play up the “Barack Hussein Obama” card, and cuts massive, misleading web ads about Obama and Ayers. It’s pretty clear that many of McCain’s supporters, meanwhile, really do think of Obama as an Arab terrorist, or a closet radical, or a crazed race warrior (as “whiskey” recently called Obama on these boards), or, again, as David Blue calls him in this very thread, the worst human being alive.
I’d say the left compares very, very favorably to the right, given those circumstances.
AJL, you have a habit–perhaps good, perhaps bad–of parsing the meaning of the links you supply. The normal, inquisitive reader won’t have the same takeaway understanding that you offer.
Case in point is the link to Politico.com in comment #58, which you characterize as the McCain campaign’s insensate boasting that McCain blew up the Wall St. bailout on account of alleged benefits to ACORN.
Here is “the entire text of Ben Smith’s Obama-slanted post”:http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Davis_McCain_blew_up_bailout.html (arguably fair use, as I’m using it to make a point in the debate here):
The Democrats in Congress used the bailout bill to slip benefits to ACORN. “Quick Google–“:http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/26/the-democratic-acorn-bailout/
bq. One of the sticking points, as Senator Lindsey Graham explained later, was… a poison pill that would push 20% of all profits from the bailout into the Housing Trust Fund — a boondoggle that Democrats in Congress has used to fund political-action groups like ACORN and the National Council of La Raza
How many tens of millions of dollars need be included in the legislation before benefits cease to be “alleged”? By the way, Dodd et al’s definition of “profits” was a twisted one, phrased so that yet more lucre would flow to ACORN’s trough. You can Google that one yourself.
So McCain was one of the sane Congresspeople who balked at rewarding some of the villians of the mortgage meltdown. Do you think the “package” he helped “blow up” was “Paulson’s Rescue Plan”? Or might “the package” conceivably refer to “the package of the Paulson plan as amended at the last minute to divert taxpayer funds to reward ACORN and other cronies”? I’d imagine that even Ben Smith might reluctantly concede that the latter was the McCain campaign’s meaning. If asked. Which he won’t be.
I won’t mourn McCain’s loss for a host of reasons, but good on him for being on the side of the right in this case.
[minor edit]
“Except that’s not how this game is played, and you know it… or at least, if you don’t, you should be doing a better job of telling Patterico upstream that the actions and opinions of “lefty commenters on countless sites” are not owned by anyone else unless they specifically endorse them, one by one.”
You guys are all running around patting yourselves on the back because a guy took a videocamera to a McCain/Palin rally and lo and behold some of the people in the selectively edited video are idiots. Well, guess what? It’s not just one side that has idiots.
But people like Andrew J. Lazarus honestly seem to think so. He’s the guy who says: “The McCain campaign (and the Republican Party) are reduced to relying on voters who are hateful, angry, ignorant, and easily deceived. The Obama campaign is not.”
Ridiculous.
Patterico doesn’t need my assistance, and I’m not telling him anything “upstream”.
I am observing the lack of reaction he got when he dumped a great pile of facts and links on the table that answered demands for support for the claim that Armed Liberal and I made that both sides have been distorting the truth, not just one side. The reaction was simply to pile on more accusations. From when Patterico posted his links to when Andrew J. Lazarus resumed his offensive, there wasn’t even time for Patterico’s links to load on my machine, let alone read and consider them properly; and it doesn’t seem Andrew J. Lazarus read his own links carefully enough.
You guys are just piling empty attacks on, demanding tedious research in reply, ignoring it, not acknowledging and engaging with the evidence when it’s provided, but just keeping on keeping on regardless.
I’ve taken the liberty of bold-facing the relevant passage. So which is it? You’re arguing on a combination of what McCain said then and the completely opposite statement he makes now. On the new story, the Obama claim that McCain came into town and blew up a deal, the claim that Patterico says Obama made backed up with a distorted quote debunked by Jake Tapper, is absolutely true. The issue, here, is not whether McCain was astute to wreck the deal because of the money going to the Housing Trust Fund (and from there, possibly to ACORN, should they be awarded a relevant grant), but whether Obama was correct in saying that McCain had done so. We now all seem to be in agreement that the answer is Yes. Now, it may be that the original version would have gone down to an even more severe defeat than the McCain-approved version, but that is not a point at issue here.
As to this side being controlled by crazy people, leaving aside for a moment whether I am one, I don’t control this site, nothing like it. Patterico, who’s a good example of a sensible rightie, knows that, and would judge accordingly regardless of whether I was left or right wing, and regardless of whether the site was left wing, right wing, or as it is, moderate.
Back to the craziness or lack of it, before I set aside the drudgery of responding to personal attacks and focus back on the topic of Armed Liberal’s thread.
bq. _”I don’t think that justifies you saying that “a NAMBLA member” “would be a moral step up” from Barack Obama…”_
At worst I am no crazier there than the Supreme Court, which decided that rape of a child, no matter how savagely aggravated – and that is going far beyond what anyone who was simply a NAMBLA member would be guilty of – was less bad than causing the child’s death.
I don’t like the fact that Barack Obama went way out of his way to ensure the needless deaths of infants born alive despite being aborted. He could not have picked more innocent, more helpless, more distressed or more disadvantaged people to pick on. And I think he should wear the opprobrium for that.
And now let’s return to the Ayers argument, shall we?
I think one of the great advantages Barack Obama gets from having a swift and deep river of mainstream media bias going his way is that McCain has to pick an isolated attack, such as the Ayers argument, and push it like a pin to get through.
The attack by itself is not all that effective. Neither are half a dozen or so other, equally correct attacks he could make. Each one, alone, is just a lapse of judgment, though one that’s surprising and does fit the man Barack Obama represents himself to be.
In combination they could be a winning attack, because they add up to a pattern, not a lapse. They challenge the cool, measured, moderate image we see on television, and threaten to replace it with a different image that includes more facts and adds up in a disquieting way.
But there’s no way known John McCain is going to get that much information through the mainstream media’s filter. It’s not a matter of his campaigning lapses. The river is running too fast against him.
“And talk radio with the leaders of the right-wing blogosphere are still rooting around in fantasies that Obama is Muslim, that Obama is Arab [see also #6 supra], that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake. Daily Kos doesn’t have any equivalent.”
This is the most ridiculous statement I have ever read. Immediately after Sarah Palin was announced, the left began a whisper campaign claiming that Trig was not her son but her daughter’s. They have also claimed that Sarah’s daughter’s baby (once it was revealed that Trig couldn’t be hers because she was pregnant) was the product of a relationship with her own father. They have repeatedly pushed the claim that Sarah Palin, when Mayor of Wasilla, forced rape victims to pay for their rape kits. Supposed “journalists” from the Boston Globe have pushed this story even after it has been repeatedly debunked.
For eight years now the Democrats (and I use that word deliberately, because the leaders of the Democrat party have blogged on Daily Kos and attended his convention knowing full well what kind of outrageous hatred is routinely displayed there) have promoted the most disgusting disrespect of a sitting President ever in the history of our country. (And there are some really outrageous examples dating back to our founding.) Bush has been burned in effigy. He has been called Hitler. Democrats, on the floors of Congress, have compared our troops to Stalin’s minions, Hitler’s storm troopers and Pol Pots murderers. And NOT ONE of you high and mighty defenders of all things liberal has ever denounced any of that.
Now you want to complain because your guy is being treated roughly? Please! Don’t make me laugh. You created this atmosphere. Now you have to live with it.
If you want things to change, get your party to throw William Jefferson out of the house. Compel Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to testify in public about the present financial crisis and their part in it. Tell John Murtha to retire and apologize to the Marines that he defamed. Tell Nancy Pelosi to allow open debate on the issues instead of bending the rules to ram through her personal preferences.
Until then, it’s all out war. You started it in 2000. You have the power to stop it.
_At worst I am no crazier there than the Supreme Court…_
I’d just like to note, in passing, that the argument following this is cogent. You may not agree with it, but it is logical.
I’m not sure I share Mr. Blue’s confidence that things can’t get worse. I think they are bound to do so.
Yet I do believe in a happy ending following that crisis to come. I’ve spoken already of the great army of good men and women who have sacrificed so much for the liberty of strangers, and who stand waiting to assume leadership roles here at home in coming days. I believe in them — they are both liberals and conservatives, but they are better people than the average American. They have both greater tolerance and greater shared morality. I think a better America will be based on what they have been, and done, and can become.
I’d also like to note for Mr. Blue that the Harris Poll has shown an important, consistent result about Americans. Asked “Who is your favorite movie star?” every year for 13 years, they have always named John Wayne in the top ten. Eight times he has been one, two, or three. His last movie was made in 1976, almost two decades before the poll began.
By the same token, Louis L’amour — whose work I was citing recently as emblematic of this America’s moral code — has never gone out of print. Indeed, every one of his books remains in print. More than two hundred of them.
The old America is still out there, and stronger than commonly understood. This moment in politics is passing, as are all things; on the other side of it lays, as Tom Brokaw rightly pointed out, the failure of public pensions, Social Security, and the other socialist entitlements. Do what you will with the next couple of years, if fate gives them to you, you will not find a socialist future for America. That crisis will unmake faith in government in a huge and lasting way, and rightly so.
Faith is never rightly placed in a bureaucracy. It ought only be placed in the best of men, and the best of gods.
Quoth Vista:
“You can go one better by attempting to address the issues raised.”
I’ll stick with the claim made, that the practice of politicians telling lies will suffer a withering death due to some magical transformation to take place at a date certain.
If you really meant what you said, all I can say is:
Balderdash.
The rape kit story appears to be true. The issue probably requires original research by some WoC author to get to the bottom of it, but it is clear that the defenses contain (like Ericson on fusion) obvious factual errors that make them very dubious as refutations. For example, stating that there are records that the city of Wasilla never billed a rape victim is not germane: the hospital would be doing the billing (if any). Quoting the police chief as saying he tried to bill victims’ insurance policies begs the question of what was done for uninsured victims. The failure of the debunkers to ask that speaks volumes. (I think it’s quite likely that this was just an attempt to save $15K a year from the Wasilla budget by making private insurers and state Medicaid pay, that looks politically embarrassing in the rear-view mirror.)
I will concede that the Trig Palin maternity issue was disgraceful. Shall we compare column inches? Even today I became aware that a front-page author at National Review Online is now spreading the rumor that Ayers ghost-wrote Obama’s autobiographies!? The charge is being made essentially without evidence. Anyone care to defend it?
Thanks for that, Grim. I did find it reassuring.
These models and ideas count. I don’t mock them.
I remember reading of an American woman who was allowed to sit in jury duty wearing her Star Fleet uniform. Ridiculous? I don’t think so, and neither did the judge. The woman said she was expressing her commitment to be as fair and rational as possible, like a Star Fleet officer. I wouldn’t want to live in that universe, where private property seems to have been abolished and civilians do more or less nothing, with the tightly managed military taking care of every problem. But to that juror, the incorruptible and fair-minded image of the Star fleet was a call to be the best she she could be, and she was screwing up her determination to the utmost to be like that.
Pity the nation that’s been bombarded for decades with heroes and ideals that are obvious lies and inspire widespread cynicism. I mean pity Russia. It’s natural endowments match America. If extent of lands, mineral resources and so on where all there is to national prosperity, Russia might even be more successful than America. But heroes that make people want to be better than they are are a greater treasure, and that is where America, with freedom of speech, has won out, and Russia, where widespread censorship allowed uninspiring official lies to monopolize the public imagination, lost out.
I don’t think it is trivial who Barack Obama’s friends are, who inspires him, what sermons raised hairs on the backs of his arms and made him want his daughters to be educated to think like that. I think this stuff will all count more, in the long run, in unexpected crises, than anything written on official position papers now.
Fortunately, I think – no, I don’t just think, now I’ve got the data! – I know a _lot_ of Americans will be responding to better models.
Off topic – looking at the picture, Armed Liberal, a lot of things have changed since those days, but not your walk. Did you do the dead fish gun carry back then too? 😛
Armed Liberal said:
bq. Vista, the “they lie, we tell the truth” line is kinda dull to me. If I wanted to spend the time, I could build a fairly massive list of material misrepresentations by both sides.
bq. Actually, AL, I’ll be happy to call your bluff on that. Go ahead and put together your list
bq. I second Chris’s call for your list.
bq. Allow me to agree that I’d like to see A.L. give us details of how both campaigns are somehow equally mendacious.
Patterico:
bq. I just gave several.
You seem to be missing a point in your rush to speak for Armed Liberal, Patrick.
There is a difference in hearing Armed Liberal substantiate his claims and you stepping in to do so.
It comes down to understanding what he considers to be the equivalent lies from Obama to the bile that has been coming out of the McCain/Palin campaign.
I am quite uninterested in hearing what you (or worse, David Blue) have to say about this, to be honest. One only needs glance up the thread at the voluminous obfuscations of David Blue to see this, while your contribution has been fairly well refuted by Andrew Lazarus.
So, back to you, Armed Liberal.
Andrew, the rape kit story would be meaningful if Wasilla was unique among cities in the Alaska or the US – even partially so. Everything I’ve read, including regulations for the states involved, suggest that there are multiple states that _today_ attempt to bill the health insurance of rape victims.
So let’s stipulate that the issue isn’t only what Wasillia did while Palin was in power (i.e. what policies she supported or initiated) but how different those were and are from the policy norms elsewhere.
Because if you’re accusing her of doing what’s done – for example – “in the State of Virginia today.”:http://www.cicf.state.va.us/pdf/PERK_Policy_and_Guidelines%20_%2005_23_2008.pdf (pdf), then there’s not a lot of beef in this charge, is there?
A.L.
If the Ayers argument is no good, given that McCain has to pick just one attack, the obvious question is: OK, what’s better?
I think the ACORN attack is better (link).
In fairness to Patterico, I made no attempt to refute any of his specific charges against Obama except the last. There now seems to be agreement that when McCain suspended his campaign and rushed to Washington, he blew up the then-pending deal, ostensibly over ACORN. As far as I can tell, Patterico is claiming that Obama left out that McCain viewed that deal as a political impossibility and, at the time the ad ran, was working on a new one, that became the first bill to reach the House (and lose). I don’t view acknowledging that as a responsibility of Obama’s; his charge that McCain blew up the first deal is true. If McCain wants to say it was to get a better deal, he can buy his own ad.
I wanted to write this comment because certain of Patterico’s charges are true. For some reason, we expect all our politicians to be disingenuous about their ambition for higher office, and Obama played right along with that game when he was first in the Senate. Obama’s statements on campaign financing are also sometimes dishonest. Frankly, I think we’ve come to expect puffery, exaggeration, quibbling, and even dishonesty on some campaign topics. But the sense that Obama and McCain are “balanced” is somewhat reminiscent of hearing Communists balance their hideous system with comparison to Jim Crow or the despoliation of the American Indians. In some cases, degree is a meaningful distinction, and I think we’re seeing that in the current campaign.
A.L., are you the volunteer to get to the bottom of this? That said, the policy you link to does not seem to say what you think it does.
So, right off the bat we know that in Virginia uninsured victims or victims who for some reason do not wish to deal with their private insurance will have the State pay. Moreover,
That most certainly does not sound like the Wasilla practice, at least, not that its defenders have been able to document. USA Today has a statement from a legislative staffer who says the opposite.
It’s true that Palin wrote that “The entire notion of making a victim of a crime pay for anything is crazy. I do not believe, nor have I ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test.”, but if you read carefully you will notice she does not deny that, crazy idea or not, hospital billing of victims happened under her administration. As I say, I think the intention was not that the victim would pay herself, but that she would get insurance or Medicaid to pay (in both cases, sparing the Wasilla budget for, say, a new sports complex). I find this more likely than the alternative left-blog explanation that Palin opposed paying for rape kits because they contain emergency contraception medicine.
“The rape kit story appears to be true.”
This is precisely the problem I have with the liars on the left. There is not one scintilla of evidence that Sarah Palin ever charged any rape victim for the rape kit, yet the scurrilous charge continues to be thrown about as if it’s true. Here’s what passes for “proof” in the Media Matters article to which you linked.
“Combing through Wasilla’s budgetary documents, which are posted online, Alperin-Sheriff showed that Palin had clearly signed off on a fiscal-year budget that reduced by three-quarters the amount of money the town set aside annually for rape-kit costs and that the rape-kit reduction was spelled out before the fiscal-year 2000 budget was approved by Mayor Sarah Palin on April 26, 1999.”
A budget reduction for rape-kit costs tells you absolutely nothing about whether or not victims were charged for rape kits. This is a typical scurrilous Democrat claim that budget cuts equal abuse. (And most of the time a Democrat’s “budget cut” is a reduction in the amount it’s being increased). A budget cut could just as easily come about by analyzing past years’ performance and deciding that not as much money had been spent and therefore not as much money needed to be budgeted.
If you want to argue that the budget reduction was insensitive, then you have a valid argument. Obviously it’s not nearly as powerful as “Sarah Palin charged victims for rape kits”, so the Democrats, as is their standard MO, choose to hurl the scurrilous charge knowing full well the emotional impact it will have on women.
The fact is Wasilla had five rapes during Palin’s tenure as Mayor, only one of which occurred before the Alaskan law was passed. I haven’t seen one single person who has 1) identified and interviewed the victim or 2) questioned the hospital. Furthermore, the legislature, during its discussion of the issue, both in committee meetings and on the floor, never once mentioned Wasilla as an example of where the practice took place but did mention three other Alaskan cities.
Once again, the claim “Palin charged victims for rape kits” is a scurrilous attack based on assumption and innuendo. Is it any wonder that some on the right might decide to use the same weapons that the left has used for decades, to defeat a liberal candidate?
You complain that the charge that Ayers ghost wrote Obama’s autobiographies is being made “essentially without evidence”. So what? The left does this as a matter of course. Welcome to reciprocity. (And for the record, I’ve read the ghost-writing arguments and find them unconvincing.)
I guarantee you that you’re going to have a lot more to complain about in the future. You’ve been “fighting” this way for a long, long time. Conservatives are now catching up. And you still have the mainstream lying media on your side.
Antimedia,
It’s even worse than that, as your statement implies some actual pottage will be delivered. My take is that our birthrights are going/gone, and all we have in exchange are empty words.
Maybe so, but he’d so much further to the right of Obama that the two couldn’t even see each other.
Quoth Vista:
bq. I am quite uninterested in hearing what you (or worse, David Blue) have to say about this, to be honest.
What a drag for you that you can’t communicate with only the people you choose to on this blog. That’s a terrible state of affairs.
Hey! I have a fresh idea — how about you and AL trade real email addresses and carry on a conversation undisturbed by those you dismiss, then post an entry about the results. Top billing for Vista at WoC. I think that’d be good, really I do.
The great thing about my suggestion is that Marc Danziger has already posted several emails that work for him! He’s not anonymous or anything. So the whole “I don’t correspond with anonymous people” reasoning doesn’t apply. Right?
Nortius, really, I think you are spending far too much time focused on the personal issues and not enough on the political ones.
I was one of 3 posters requesting that AL provide some evidence to back up his claims. I have yet to note his reply to this; he seems rather to be content with letting others do his talking for him.
If so, then one can only conclude that he shared David Blue and Patterico’s views at this point.
And to reiterate something I’ve said before: It is not my policy to carry on a private correspondence with people I “meet” on blogs or over the internet. This is an issue deserving of a public forum, like it or not.
Patterico-
bq. You guys are all running around patting yourselves on the back because a guy took a videocamera to a McCain/Palin rally and lo and behold some of the people in the selectively edited video are idiots. Well, guess what? It’s not just one side that has idiots.
bq. But people like Andrew J. Lazarus honestly seem to think so. He’s the guy who says: “The McCain campaign (and the Republican Party) are reduced to relying on voters who are hateful, angry, ignorant, and easily deceived. The Obama campaign is not.”
The whole freaking point of what I wrote – below what you quoted – is that hateful voters are _not_ only found a selected video. You can find them on this site, on this very thread. And I seem to be the only one that has a problem with the fact that David Blue is calling Obama, quite literally, the worst human being alive, and nobody else on this thread says boo about it.
So, yeah, Patterico, while I’m not claiming Obama’s supporters are perfect, they seem to be a damn sight better than some of McCain’s guys this time around – and you haven’t proven otherwise.
“That’s me in February 1970 at a demonstration called “The Day After”. I helped coordinate a demonstration in Westwood with the members of the RYM II – the group left behind when Ayers and Dohrn split off from the SDS. I was in high school.”
That’s acceptable. “Declaring war” on your own country, then setting off bombs at The Pentagon and robbing armored cars and killing policemen isn’t acceptable.
And, associating with people who do/did that sort of thing is also unacceptable.
To me anyway.
You know, Antimedia, it would be nice if you linked to wherever you get your “statistics”. AFAICT, Connecticut Yankee, and he didn’t link where he got his. I believe they are wrong.
I’ll do better. What appears to be the City of Wasilla’s own website shows approximately 84 sexual assaults during Palin’s tenure as mayor. (My figure is slightly too high, because the data are for full years and the mayoral term probably isn’t.)
I believe your number comes from the FBI statistic for forcible rape. First, the only source I can find has no data at all for Wasilla for Palin’s years of 1996-1999, but it does show only one forcible rape in 2000 and 2 in each of 2001 and 2002.
If you think about it—you didn’t—a rape kit is also useful for investigating sexual assault other than forcible rape (date rape, statutory rape) and forcible oral copulation. (I can’t tell if non-vaginal sexual assault is in the FBI definition of forcible rape or not; states seem to vary.)
Typo: my last comment, forcible oral copulation should be inside the parentheses. Actually it should be half inside: I can’t determine if such a crime in Wasilla would have shown up in the FBI statistics or not.
Omnibus response to David Blue-
bq. I am observing the lack of reaction he got when he dumped a great pile of facts and links on the table that answered demands for support for the claim that Armed Liberal and I made that both sides have been distorting the truth, not just one side. The reaction was simply to pile on more accusations. From when Patterico posted his links to when Andrew J. Lazarus resumed his offensive, there wasn’t even time for Patterico’s links to load on my machine, let alone read and consider them properly; and it doesn’t seem Andrew J. Lazarus read his own links carefully enough.
Actually, as the guy who kicked off the request from Armed Liberal for his supposed list, I’m just waiting for a _complete_ list to be created, ideally from AL himself. Patterico put together a list that focuses entirely on Obama, and while I have some problems with it – the “handwriting” issue is far from clear cut, changing his mind on running for President was just him changing his mind, not lying, etc. – there’s at least some stuff in there that’re likely clear misrepresentations by Obama. But the point was never that Obama was a saint, but rather that McCain’s been worse this election cycle, and that the standard “everybody does it” line isn’t really fair this time around. So until we see what Armed Liberal does or doesn’t consider a lie by the McCain side, we’ve got nothing to compare.
bq. As to this side being controlled by crazy people, leaving aside for a moment whether I am one, I don’t control this site, nothing like it. Patterico, who’s a good example of a sensible rightie, knows that, and would judge accordingly regardless of whether I was left or right wing, and regardless of whether the site was left wing, right wing, or as it is, moderate.
You post on this site – not just on comments, but on the front page. You, and your political views, have been given free access to this site as a soap box. Even if that’s not the same thing as endorsing those views, this site – and the guys like Armed Liberal who run it – are at least implicitly saying they don’t find your views so objectionable that you deserve to have your access taken away. Which makes them at least somewhat complicit.
At least, that’s the conservative standard I’ve seen applied over and over again, especially with regard to prominent Democrats posting stuff on Kos, most recently argued by Antimedia in #75.
bq. Back to the craziness or lack of it, before I set aside the drudgery of responding to personal attacks and focus back on the topic of Armed Liberal’s thread.
But that’s just it, David – this is not a personal attack, and this is not off topic. The question, based on the Ayers argument, is whether one side has gone substantively farther than the other this cycle. And you saying Obama is the worst human being possible is a completely valid data point in that discussion.
And towards that end, I’ll skip your completely bizarre non sequitur on the Supreme Court. (No, Grim, it wasn’t cogent or logical, especially with regard to the point being addressed.)
bq. I don’t like the fact that Barack Obama went way out of his way to ensure the needless deaths of infants born alive despite being aborted. He could not have picked more innocent, more helpless, more distressed or more disadvantaged people to pick on. And I think he should wear the opprobrium for that.
That’s a skewed perspective on what Obama did, although it’s not surprising coming from someone who’s very pro-life. It still, however, doesn’t excuse calling him the worst human being alive.
#90 from Chris:
bq. “The whole freaking point of what I wrote – below what you quoted – is that hateful voters are _not_ only found a selected video. You can find them on this site, on this very thread. And I seem to be the only one that has a problem with the fact that David Blue is calling Obama, quite literally, the worst human being alive, and nobody else on this thread says boo about it.”
(sigh) Personal attacks flow so swift and steady from you guys that nobody should assume from the fact that a target does not reply to a particular attack that he concedes its correctness. That has to be a rule online anyway, otherwise everybody would be agreeing to everything that was said about them or put in their mouths while they were logged off or when they were about to.
Also, it’s not necessary for every conservative explicitly to repudiate everything that said by every other conservative, or else be deemed by reasonable people to be in agreement with it. That rule, convenient to liberals no doubt but obviously silly, would prevent conservatives from doing anything with their time but constantly repudiate each other – and still they wouldn’t be able to keep up.
On Barack Obama’s badness, you are taking both more and less from what I said than the context reasonably suggests. Obviously I’m comparing him with every other guy who might plausibly become president, now and for all time. And, I’m putting him in a category: there is no worse kind of man in the relevant population than this. So to be clear, I’m not just saying he’s the worst man in the world _now_, I’m saying he’s the _worst kind_ of man who might plausibly become president _ever_. That is, for all time. Others may be _equally_ bad, but in this population there is no next step down, no lower box. Literally, nobody will be _worse_.
I’ve given my argument why that’s so. Following along with the Supreme Court in _Kennedy_ Barack Obama comes off worse than a typical NAMBLA guy. Cold-bloodedly, he’s victimized targets who were as innocent, defenseless, distressed and defenseless as possible.
*Barack Obama opposed a rule that if victims of abortion managed to be born alive, you mustn’t just put them on a shelf or in the trash and wait for them to die of deliberate neglect – which is what was happening.*
*That’s _awful_.* That’s seriously not how a decent human being behaves.
He was picking on babies fer Pete’s sake – and making sure that not one would escape being killed. *Literally, there’s no worse kind of man than that.* That’s way outside normal – as far down as you can go.
I think he should wear the bad name for having done that. It’s not the kind of thing that good, or minimally decent, or bad but not too bad people are known for. It’s _extremely abnormal_ morally bad behavior.
This is not an especially harsh moral test that I just invented. It’s an old one. History does not say nice things about guys who were zealously offing infants – or arranging for it to be done, as Barack Obama did. If you want to be admired as a killer, generally you have to pick on someone your own size, and nought year olds who’ve never been kissed and never will be because by your agency they are being done to death don’t cut it as worthy enemies.
And if you think that a future president should be described that way, as being as bad as he could be, with nobody worse, ever, that could follow him… the problem is with how he acted, not with me.
Sorry: I meant to say, Barack Obama’s targets were
_innocent,_
_distressed,_
_defenseless and_
_disadvantaged._
David,
Forget what I said about you above. I do want to hear more about your views.
That last post in #95 is a comedy gem…really, keep up the laughs! They’re great! I’m enjoying reading them.
Quoth Mr Blue:
He was picking on babies fer Pete’s sake – and making sure that not one would escape being killed.
Oh, now, how impractical of you: don’t you realize it’s just like horseshoes, Mr Blue? As long as it’s close enough to being successfully aborted, any accidental viability is immaterial. If you actually put the -creature- {exo-uterine tissue collection oddly shaped like, and having some functions not unlike, a baby} in an intensive care / incubation setting — or, quel horreur, spanked it on the butt and made it draw breath and cry, well, like a baby — and thereby proved the -organism- {big ol’ lump o’ cells with eyes that look like the -mother’s- patient’s} viable outside the womb, you might make everyone who wanted to “not punish”:http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/348569.aspx the -mother- patient feel bad, or like they might have some moral burden or something, possibly upsetting the patient, a woman in a delicate state, having been pregnant until a few moments before. Can’t do that, it’s just not fair. It’s downright insensitive.
Independent of the viability dicta in Roe. Independent of the possibility of the “state ha[ving any] compelling interest” also as worded in Roe. The state has a compelling interest in preventing murder. The state has no compelling interest in preventing the kind of thing you’re talking about. Ergo the kind of thing you’re talking about can’t be murder. The syllogism is airtight, as long as you don’t think too hard about it. Only religious nuts think about it that hard.
Plus, once the unwanted tissue is dead, if the right people in robes think the right way, there’s no person that has standing for any court challenge.
It’s like a twofer. And the discrepancy between the handling of such cases and the way women who put their newborns in dumpsters are charged with crimes — well, be serious, Mr Blue, they can’t possibly be analogous cases.
Barack would never agree they were. So they can’t be.
[Slight edits]
Vista (#97), you write like a sick individual. Hopefully you’re just saying that from the joy of the controversy, and not because you really do think that way.
Please consider: the entire premise of abortion-on-demand is that no woman should have to bear a child she doesn’t want to. Now, when a baby actually survives the actual abortion process, the desideratum that she not remain pregnant against her will is already accomplished! What possible justification, other than sheer bloody-mindedness is there to insist that the surviving child must nevertheless be put to death? The woman is no longer pregnant; the fetus us no longer uninvitedly being a parasite. What else is left here?
#89 Vista:
My thought of your writing or co-writing at least a single entry here to provide more visibility for your views was genuine, though the tone was not my most cordial. Your having to put up with low-value-to-you comments on your posts is a direct consequence of your position here as a commenter like any other. Entry / top post authors have complete power to delete posts in their thread for any reason: topicality, quality, or phase of the moon.
The forum is shaped by its entry authors. If you’d care to try shaping it, even once, more to your liking, you’d need to change your correspondence policy, perhaps deciding it’s worth your while to create a disposable email acct. to provide some insulation.
But feel free to not step up.
I would also support Vista having his post. Posts here are not restricted to a particular group of people. Invitations are common, and agreeing or not agreeing with the viewpoint expressed in the post has nothing to do with it. Winds of Change is an intersection, not a soap box.
Uh, I didn’t quite finish that previous post. … subject to standard rules about your email address.
SHorter #98: Memo to doctors and authorities: Once you’ve decided you’re conducting an abortion, under no circumstances are you to call the result a live birth. It would be mean to all the suffering, concerned adults present to do that.
Well, the topic is confusing. Partly because we’ve gone so far off the reservation, morally, that there’s no standard, traditional vocabulary for it.
My point here (tying in with Kirk Parker) is that the people who wave Roe around as some sort of victory or high water mark don’t seem to care about the viability test present in Roe! Once they’ve decided to abort the invading tissue, that’s what it is. if it has a brain or a beating heart, or opens its eyes, or breathes, so what? You’re creeping them out even talking about it. Unperson is unperson. I don’t want the karmic whiplash, duuuude.
I know we’re OT here but I still want to draw a parallel that really bugs me.
There are laws being drafted in various places here in the US, CA being one such place, to make it OK to hit terminal patients with a bolus of (say) barbiturates, maybe putting them in a coma, maybe just followed by a steady narco drip, then let them die of malnutrition / dehydration. Takes days or weeks. I wonder why not just make the initial barbiturate dose larger, let them OD, going from nice warm fuzzy feeling to nothing at all in a matter of minutes. What’s the difference? — the latter might even be more of a kindness to the patient.
The difference is that the latter would give the attending providers more of a feeling of agency in the death, and they don’t want that. They want to pretend God did it. Or, at any rate, anyone but they. I think that’s horses***. If this guy needs to die, pull the fscking trigger already. Warmly and fuzzily, of course.
So far I’ve only found statistics for Wasilla for two relevant years; 2000 & 2001. The former year had one rape, the latter two. According to my wife, who has worked (as an RNA) in the insurance business for almost 20 years, the typical cost of a rape kit would be in the range of $250 to $300 per victim. The writer who makes the claim puts the cost at $300 to $1200.
According to this writer, Jacob Alperin-Sheriff, (linked above through Media Matters) a line item in the budget was reduced from $4000 to $1000. The line item was for “Contractual Services/General-medical testing, road maintenance, equipment rental, airport snow removal.”
He links to the Wasilla City Police statistics page and claims that “there were probably five sexual assaults” during the year 2000. The page clearly states “Sexual Assaults (includes all associated sex crimes)”. Only one of the (10) sexual assaults in that year was a rape, and there is zero evidence that the city did not pay for the rape kit. Alperin-Sheriff also points out that during a six month period in 2000, only $152 dollars was spent from that line item. He takes that as “proof” that Palin was not paying for rape kits. Furthermore, he falsely implies that Palin launched a “whisper campaign” against the former mayor (whom she defeated in the election) claiming that he was a Jew. His evidence for that? The fact that some people in town thought he was a Jew because his last name was Stein.
The St. Petersburg Times “Polifacts” page claims that Wasilla had such a policy, but they provide absolutely no evidence to back up that assertion. The much-quoted Police Chief Fannon stated, “In the past we’ve charged the cost of exams to the victims’ insurance company when possible,†he told the newspaper. “I just don’t want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer.†He estimated the new law would cost his department $5,000 to $14,000 per year.” But he is either being grossly misquoted or his seriously mistaken. The line item was never more than $4000, and the full amount was never spent.
Polifacts found no evidence that Palin was aware of the policy, no evidence that she had ever commented on the policy – either negatively or positively, no victim advocates who were aware of anyone ever having been charged, no one other than the Police Chief who was aware there was even a controversy about it.
The most logical conclusion is that it was an internal police matter that never came up in budget or council meetings and neither Palin nor the city council was aware of the “policy”, if in fact such a policy existed.
Nortius Maximus, I fully understand you, including your justified black humor.
Thanks for the detail, Antimedia.
“At least, that’s the conservative standard I’ve seen applied over and over again, especially with regard to prominent Democrats posting stuff on Kos, most recently argued by Antimedia in #75.”
It’s a valid argument. What get’s posted at Kos is so completely vile that no politician should willingly associate themselves with such filth. Those who do care the stench of that association.
As for Obama’s association with Ayers, it’s interesting to note that, at a 2006 academic conference convened by “progressive” scholars (don’t you love how the liberals have labeled everyone else regressive by default?) concerning the field of education (Ayers’ chosen field), Ayers was sent a letter by the group specifically asking him not to attend because they didn’t want the conference tainted by his reputation.
Apparently even “progressive” scholars have better judgment than Obama.
The point is, there are certain types of people whose views and behavior are so odious that one ought to have the good sense not to associate with them. And if one does associate with them, right-thinking people are perfectly justified, ipso facto, in believing that they must then hold the same views or at a minimum find nothing wrong with them.
If someone “hangs out” at Daily Kos, it is perfectly justifiable to assume they hold the same views. If John McCain posted routinely on a John Birch Society blog, then one could conclude that he held the same views and vote accordingly. The same is true for those Democrats who “hang out” at Daily Kos, blithely posting there and claiming they have no knowledge of the level of depravity that is routinely displayed there.
Because of Obama’s long and close association with Ayers, I conclude the Obama is a Marxist, just like Ayers, or that he, at a minimum, has no objection to the state controlling healthcare and banking and commerce and every other aspect of our lives. And unless you are so ignorant that you have no understanding of the Constitution, you don’t vote for a Marxist. And yes, I’m saying that a large percentage of our population is ignorant (as in unlearned).
You may not like that charge, but I could care less. If you believe in a large government controlling large swaths of the daily life of its citizens then you clearly haven’t read and comprehended the Constitution or understood why America was founded. You’re either a fool, a socialist or a Marxist.
Re: #95: I, too, would think that Barak Obama was a bad man if I thought that he “was picking on babies fer Pete’s sake – and making sure that not one would escape being killed.” But since I
“prefer to stick to the facts,”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-abortion-obama_20aug20,0,1470841.story I don’t.
#110: Did you read all the way down to the bottom, there?
bq. On the other hand: Supporters of abortion rights say Obama was right to oppose the 2003 bill, even though it had the same wording as the federal measure. The wording could have had a different effect at the state level, they say, by undermining Illinois’ legal precedents on abortion.
Right, because IL precedents are more important than, for instance, overall nationwide improvements in medical technology that might widen the viability window. Can’t have that. And whenever convenient, any US Supreme Court decision reference to “the state” must be interpreted to mean “The State of Illinois.”
#94: _(No, Grim, it wasn’t cogent or logical, especially with regard to the point being addressed.)_
Here is the logical form as I understand the argument:
Proposition one: ‘Murdering a child is worse than raping a child, Per SCOTUS.’
Proposition two: ‘Refusing care to an infant that survives abortion is the murder of a child.’
Conclusion: ‘Therefore, refusing care to infants that survive abortion is worse than raping a child.’
Now, that is a fully cogent argument in _modus ponens_.
If P, then Q. (‘If this is the murder of a child, then it is worse than rape.’)
P. (‘This is the murder of a child.’)
Therefore, Q. (‘Therefore, it is worse than rape.’)
A logical argument can still be wrong, of course. All that a cogent form means is that, _if_ the propositions are true, the truth of the conclusion is guaranteed by logic.
In order for this argument to be _true_, then, the propositions have to be true. That is why I said that one might disagree with it (because one might disagree about the truth of the propositions, in several different ways), but that it was cogent.
David Blue-
bq. (sigh) Personal attacks flow so swift and steady from you guys that nobody should assume from the fact that a target does not reply to a particular attack that he concedes its correctness.
And I repeat, this is not a personal attack – this is using your own words as an example of a McCain supporter to talk about the behavior of supporters on both sides.
bq. Also, it’s not necessary for every conservative explicitly to repudiate everything that said by every other conservative, or else be deemed by reasonable people to be in agreement with it. That rule, convenient to liberals no doubt but obviously silly, would prevent conservatives from doing anything with their time but constantly repudiate each other – and still they wouldn’t be able to keep up.
I actually agree with this to a large extent. As such, I highly suggest you argue its validity with Antimedia, who seems to feel differently, at least when the argument’s applied to liberals.
bq. On Barack Obama’s badness, you are taking both more and less from what I said than the context reasonably suggests. Obviously I’m comparing him with every other guy who might plausibly become president, now and for all time. And, I’m putting him in a category: there is no worse kind of man in the relevant population than this. So to be clear, I’m not just saying he’s the worst man in the world now, I’m saying he’s the worst kind of man who might plausibly become president ever. That is, for all time. Others may be equally bad, but in this population there is no next step down, no lower box. Literally, nobody will be worse.
Well, no, it’s not obvious that you’re only comparing him to guys that might plausibly become president – you said:
bq. I take some small comfort from the thought that after 2009, no worse man will ever be made President, *because there are no worse men.*
That is to say, you’re comparing Obama’s badness to every other man everywhere, now or in the future, and not qualifying the statement by saying “there are no worse men who might plausibly become president.” And even assuming we take your interpretation at face value, you’re essentially saying that it’s impossible for a Hitler-type demagogue to ever become President, which history suggests is not the case.
bq. I’ve given my argument why that’s so. Following along with the Supreme Court in Kennedy Barack Obama comes off worse than a typical NAMBLA guy. Cold-bloodedly, he’s victimized targets who were as innocent, defenseless, distressed and defenseless as possible.
bq. Barack Obama opposed a rule that if victims of abortion managed to be born alive, you mustn’t just put them on a shelf or in the trash and wait for them to die of deliberate neglect – which is what was happening.
And that’s an incorrect argument to make on many levels, even if we accept at face value the moral argument that an embryo or partially developed fetus is a person. (Which many, many people do not – although I’m sure you think they’re – we’re – monsters too.)
First, it’s fairly clear that the “virtually identical” description of the bills in question by Gateway Pundit that you linked to is incorrect – according to the NY Sun article on the issue Patterico linked to, there was at least some reason to believe the bill Obama voted down would have undermined Illinois abortion rights. Even if all the language in the bill was identical, the same laws can have different effects, depending on the legal jurisdiction and different laws on the books.
Second, even if a fetus has been born alive, that’s no guarantee of viability – and as Nortius Maximus has just spent a great deal of venom reminding us, viability is a key part of Roe. (Incidentally, NM? Your credibility on lecturing others about their “tone” and the importance of civil discussion? Falling like a stone, as of late…) There’s a valid argument to be made that the medical personnel on hand should make the decision of how much effort should be expended, rather than having it be required by government in all cases, no matter how hopeless.
Lastly, even if we accept all your other arguments at face value, it’s hard to see how Obama’s moral culpability is as bad as those who’ve actually failed to care for “born alive” infants – he didn’t pass a law saying they _couldn’t_ be cared for, he vetoed a law saying they _had_ to be cared for. Even if you consider that criminal neglect, it’s criminal neglect once removed from the actual doctors.
bq. And if you think that a future president should be described that way, as being as bad as he could be, with nobody worse, ever, that could follow him… the problem is with how he acted, not with me.
On the contrary, it’s exactly your judgement that lead us to this “worst man possible” situation. And I don’t begrudge you your opinion or morals – it’s a free country – but they are exemplary of the extremes to which McCain’s supporters have gone, while Obama’s supporters have largely not, as far as I can tell.
Grim-
bq. Now, that is a fully cogent argument in modus ponens.
Again, no, it’s not because:
A) Purely as a matter David Blue didn’t use modus ponens format – he didn’t provide the conclusion, and failed to put the propositions in a format which communicated that they _were_ propositions that’d lead to a conclusion.
B) Even if we come to the conclusion that “it is worse that rape” (which is ludicrous in and of itself, as I’ll get to in part C) that’s still not the same thing as concluding “There is no worse man (than Obama)”, which is what we were discussing.
C) It’s impossible to come to the conclusion that “it is worse than rape” because _Obama didn’t kill anybody_. Even if you accept David’s morals as to what’s human and what’s not, Obama himself vetoed a bill demanding care for “born alive” infants – he didn’t fail to provide care himself, and he didn’t prevent others from providing care.
That said, I admit that the argument makes marginally more sense when viewed as modus ponens – although it’s still not cogent, for the reasons I list above.
“As such, I highly suggest you argue its validity with Antimedia, who seems to feel differently, at least when the argument’s applied to liberals.”
That’s a lie, and you know it. I specifically addressed the issue of Democrat leaders who post articles at Kos knowing full well what a sewer of human refuse it is. I have never asked anyone here to defend the actions of those Democrat leaders. I’ve simply made the point that if you lie down with pigs you cannot avoid getting some on you. That is the same point that applies to Obama’s association with Ayers.
I made it quite clear in my argument that association with odious people taints you. I never once said it taints every liberal. Why you chose to misrepresent what I said is for you to answer.
Chris:
I thought you did a good job of explaining why you disagreed with the propositions in #113. In particular, I agree with this statement: “…it’s hard to see how Obama’s moral culpability is as bad as those who’ve actually failed to care for “born alive” infants.” I think that’s right: guilt can be divided without being lessened, but saying “You may let this child die” is not the same thing as saying “You will let this child die,” or actually being the one who lets the child die.
That said, I merely wanted to locate David Blue’s argument as being a reasonable one, in the literal sense of the term “reasonable.” He and I have several standing philosophical disagreements (particularly on the question of Islam), but I like and respect the man. I enjoy talking with him, and there’s often much to be gained by considering his point of view even if you don’t agree with it.
The fact that you may wildly disagree with a conclusion doesn’t make it irrational, I hope we agree. St. Thomas Aquinas’ _Summa Theologica_ ends up coming to a conclusion that masturbation is worse than rape, at least when viewed as a sexual matter (rape may also be viewed as an act of violence).
The argument is a model of logic, even though I don’t actually agree with it at all.
ASIDE: I think he goes wrong, if you’re interested, in his assertion that an act of sex must have all three qualities pleasing to God to be moral; I think that if a sex act has any of the three qualities pleasing to God, it should be at least a little pleasant to God, and therefore moral. That one change, which makes sense to me, completely overturns the moral structure.
Of course, it does so in a way that pleases my own sense of what ought to be right, and disagrees with the Old Testament’s. Whether that is an act of humanity or arrogance is difficult to assess honestly: no living man, located in his own time, has the same perspective as God would have, and therefore should be wary of assuming he is righter than his predecessors (or descendants). So, rather than saying, “St. Aquinas was wrong,” I’ll say, “I don’t agree, and here’s why; but you have to admit his piece is a model of logic.”
#113 from Chris:
bq. _”Well, no, it’s not obvious that you’re only comparing him to guys that might plausibly become president – you said:”_
bq. I take some small comfort from the thought that after 2009, no worse man will ever be made President, because there are no worse men.
bq. _”That is to say, you’re comparing Obama’s badness to every other man everywhere, now or in the future, and not qualifying the statement by saying “there are no worse men who might plausibly become president.” And even assuming we take your interpretation at face value, you’re essentially saying that it’s impossible for a Hitler-type demagogue to ever become President, which history suggests is not the case.”_
I won’t parse “is” or anything like that. Is this clear enough for you?
–
Maybe you disagree that killers who prey on children are the worst a man can be, but there’s a lot of people who would agree with me that that’s a sensible statement.
Barack Obama qualifies as a killer who preyed specifically on infants.
Barack Obama is the worst kind of man.
–
There won’t be a worse man than Barack Obama who’s president of the United States of America one day, because no man is worse than a child-killer.
The alternatives are bumping along the bottom (unlikely) and better presidents after Barack Obama (likely).
We should take some comfort in the thought that it’s almost gotta be up from here, and certainly not down.
Andrew – so on one hand, we have a written state policy that clearly sets out a) the possibility that some victims are billed; b) cases in which victims are billed – and on the other, testimony from a bunch of journalists and legislative analysts – who have what? interests in making claims – that certain policies were in force. No documented policies, no victims who have come forward and stated they were billed (which kinda amazes me if it were the case – you?).
The feminist columnist at the rightie news site Slate “seems to agree.”:http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/09/26/debunk-a-bunk.aspx
Sorry, I just don’t see the evidence on both sides as being of equal value.
And for fun, let’s set up a project to look at the policies of the other 49 states. I’ll wager we’ll find more than one (other than VA) that includes the possibility that a victim’s insurance may be billed.
A.L.
Sorry, Vista. This month, I’m not your trained monkey. But if you’re interested in the issue, rather than just tossing out ways for me to waste my time, let me make a suggestion.
Post a list of McCain’s lies. We’ll look at them as a group, and see what we think of them. Think of it as crowdsourcing.
At the same time, we can take Patterico’s list, and invite others to review them.
Over to you, Vista.
A.L.
Chris says:
bq. (Incidentally, NM? Your credibility on lecturing others about their “tone” and the importance of civil discussion? Falling like a stone, as of late…)
Thanks for the feedback, Chris.
Thanks also for the implicit compliment: that you think I’d manage to find your comment buried in parentheses in a larger post directed to someone else. May we both always be so fortunate.
I have passions, and sometimes indignations; I have failures, some of which you’ve nailed me for, squarely. I made no promise those wouldn’t show here from time to time.
Apart from Marshal activities, I have been mostly silent for a long time, and several contributors have tried to bug me about that; in the past few days I’ve spoken boldly and broadly. This is because I am pessimistic and upset — near despair. And I get pugnacious when I feel that way. Not that you asked.
I think not even my most florid contribution in the past week can compare to even the rolling average of the comments found in, say, either DU (Left) or Little Green Footballs (Right). I do not claim that that’s a particularly high standard.
WoC is, in at least one of the site founders’ opinion, a polemical site. The root of the word “polemic” is a martial one. I lapse into it. Other times I (hope I) rise above.
My tone is not consistent? “Sue me; I’m not mechanical.”
Heat is not inherently incivility.
I let some posters say overblown things? Woah, alert the fricking media! (Sorry. 🙂 See? Smiley? Are we OK there? )
I maintain that my civility-requests have historically been mostly confined to matters of direct personal attack and my “spidey sense” that they might be coming. Biased? Sure, whatever. There’s a recurrent problem with people taking attacks on groups as personal and so forth — we’ve been all over that puzzle many times and I still don’t see a way to satisfy all participants here.
I know some quality posters who have abandoned WoC because it’s not what it was n years ago. I regret both the abandonment and the shift, but I don’t know how to fix either one. Ever wonder why Cicero doesn’t post here any more?
So: Maybe, Chris, you’d be content with me putting my badge and figurative sixgun on the Mayor’s desk, rassling in the muck full-stop, and no longer arrogantly (as I am sure you imagine me to be) lecturing others about tone? Just be my wild opinionated a-hole self all the time? Get AL to change my Marshal passwords and not tell me what they are, then just have at?
That’d be attractive if I really enjoyed polemics. But I’m not sure they’re good for me.
Other worthies on the Marshal roster have stepped up, or ambled back into the bar, of late, and I thank them for that. It means I have the option of walking away without worrying overmuch that the job will go undone.
You want a nonpolemical discussion / exploration occasionally involving issues of argumentation, problem-solving and cognition, try my personal website. I might be tending it more regularly in future. Look around. It’ll probably bore you.
I’m not going to ask for a show of hands about my role or my tone here. But I probably do have better things to do. Thanks for reminding me, indirectly, to get a life. Perhaps I shall. It’d give me more time to correspond with absent friends like Cicero.
Who, by the way, is voting for Barack. As is AL, odd as it might seem after all the predictions to the contrary.
Lastly, Chris: I actually have found you more civil than the Chris who used to post here. I’ve never accused you of being inconsistent (or an impostor) for all that. 🙂
N
PS: Anyone who feels like emailing me an “attaboy” — take it as read; I think I know who you are. But thanks just the same.
Chris, David Blue and I have bumped heads on the issue of abortion before as well; he’s somewhat focused on it (as an absolutist opponent). I don’t doubt that he’s deeply sincere in his beliefs, and while I sincerely disagree with him and am more than happy to fight him over policy issues, I respect his views (see my post on gay marriage for “an explanation of why”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/004291.php I can both disagree and respect in cases like this.
That he believes Barack is evil for his abortion views is consistent with his pre-existing beliefs, and I don’t think it maps to the kind of generalized disdain that the left shows for Palin.
A.L.
Antimedia-
bq. That’s a lie, and you know it. I specifically addressed the issue of Democrat leaders who post articles at Kos knowing full well what a sewer of human refuse it is. I have never asked anyone here to defend the actions of those Democrat leaders. I’ve simply made the point that if you lie down with pigs you cannot avoid getting some on you. That is the same point that applies to Obama’s association with Ayers.
In fact, I did not lie. I specifically said in post #94:
bq. You post on this site – not just on comments, but on the front page. You, and your political views, have been given free access to this site as a soap box. Even if that’s not the same thing as endorsing those views, this site – and the guys like Armed Liberal who run it – are at least implicitly saying they don’t find your views so objectionable that you deserve to have your access taken away. Which makes them at least somewhat complicit.
bq. At least, that’s the conservative standard I’ve seen applied over and over again, especially with regard to prominent Democrats posting stuff on Kos, most recently argued by Antimedia in #75.
In post #109, you agreed, quoting the last paragraph above and saying:
bq. It’s a valid argument. What get’s posted at Kos is so completely vile that no politician should willingly associate themselves with such filth. Those who do care the stench of that association.
Now, there are plenty of people out there – not people whose opinions you respect, I’m sure, but people none the less – who’d find some of what’s on this board just as objectionable as what you find on Kos. According to your own logic, Armed Liberal and others who also write primary posts for this site are therefore likewise stained by association.
David Blue disagreed, saying that his opinions are his own, and they don’t necessarily reflect Armed Liberal’s views, just because they’re on the same site. I tend to lean more towards David Blue’s side on this, but I still believe the argument is primarily between the two of you, since conservatives, in my experience, tend to get far more hung up on casual associations than liberals do – and certainly in this election cycle that’s been the case.
bq. I made it quite clear in my argument that association with odious people taints you. I never once said it taints every liberal. Why you chose to misrepresent what I said is for you to answer.
And I never said it taints every conservative – just those that post here, according to your logic.
Chris, you must be a pretzel maker. The twists and turns of your “logic” are fascinating.
How you can compare this blog with the filth that goes on daily on Kos is beyond imagination. You appear to me to be a moral relativist, so I doubt there’s much point in continuing a discussion. In a world where there are no absolutes, there are no answers.
Chris:
Thanks for staying reasonable with Antimedia.
Humans generalize, distort, delete, chunk-up, chunk-down, and use figures of speech as if they were real things. Heuristics, like associations and someone-must-deserve-blame and so on, are all terribly flawed at their worst. People make up stories about motivations, causes, and abstractions like “the problem is…”.
But sometimes lives get saved with these flawed tools.
It’s almost evidence of a benign deity that we’ve managed to not all die, given how flawed all this stuff is.
When I’m not utterly despondent, I sometimes wish I could throw a block party dedicated to the things that are right about this civilization, doored with a few bouncers with big grins, and do an invite list that might surprise the recipients. I’d have to respect Vista by not even offering, of course :).
This medium is insufficient. Thanks for trying anyway.
AL-
bq. That he believes Barack is evil for his abortion views is consistent with his pre-existing beliefs, and I don’t think it maps to the kind of generalized disdain that the left shows for Palin.
Well, no, it doesn’t map to the kind of generalized distain that the left shows for Palin – they think she’s a joke, they think she’s deeply unqualified, and they have a real problem with her demagoging certain issues – but they _don’t_ think she’s evil in the same way that DB does Obama.
_And that’s exactly my point_. David considers Obama evil because of abortion, whiskey earlier considered Obama evil because of race issues, many others on this thread consider Obama evil because of the Ayers thing, and there are those who consider Obama evil because they think he’s an Arab terrorist. And the depth of their distaste for Obama is similar in all those cases, even if the underlying reasons are different.
I respect people’s rights to have those beliefs, even if I consider them mistaken, just as you do. But those beliefs have taken them, this election cycle, to an emotional place where liberals _just aren’t at_ right now: no matter how wrong you find rumors and gossip about Sarah Palin’s children, it’s an entirely different thing from calling her the worst human being who’ll ever be (vice) president.
And that disparity between left and right this time around has what I’ve been arguing for the past hundred-odd posts.
If it makes you feel better AL, we can turn this from a value judgement on Republicans to a conversation about politics, and note that where many conservatives are right now with Obama, many liberals have been in the past with Bush, and the depth of that hatred is probably a net negative for any party that’s trying to court truly independent voters who’re more interested in solving problems than making moral condemnations.
But that in turn raises the question of whether political parties should – or even can – tell their bases to ignore or downplay deeply felt moral convictions for the sake of political victory. And that’s not a conversation I feel like getting into right now.
NM-
bq. Thanks for staying reasonable with Antimedia.
Er, I think you’re assuming polite behavior on my point, whereas my primary goal has been to sow doctrinal discord amongst the conservative ranks. 😉
Kidding. Somewhat.
That said, if you truly did get some enjoyment or peace of mind from me not savagely attacking everything that’s in my path (at least, from your relative perspective), then I’m glad to hear it. The economy alone has made this a pretty miserable month – I can only imagine how much worse I’d feel if a candidate I didn’t like was doing well, on top of the personal crap we all have to deal with.
That said, I think I’ll do my best to find some peace of mind outside this thread by ceasing to post on it. I hope the rest of you find the same – yes, even AL, David Blue, and Antimedia. Good night, folks.
No this happened because the White Citizens Councils, the Klan, and other assorted figures, didn’t want blACK kids to go to a integrated school or institution of any kind; they bombed schools (you could ask our Secretary of State about that) and churches; much like Michael Moore’s beloved
Iraqi insurgents; on which Cody Evans and Medea Benjamin agree about.
Look, Mr. Danziger, by giving Obama a pass, you basically give
all those trends you said you were opposed to in the Democratic Party, a pass. You want an
explicitly anti-military,ethnically
polarizing, culturallyinsensitive (to us ‘bitter clingers’)
,economically illiterate
faction to take hold; then say so.
You want the party of AjL, TOC, and David Blue, to prevail, fine.
Does the fact, that he seems to winning with fraudulent ACorn registration, and ‘incomplete’ campaign contribution lists, not concern you. I’m fine with that; But don’t be surprised that everything you’ve railed against on this forum for six years comes
to pass. for you have become the very blue dog Democrat you have despised.
McCain has the clear record of reform; on say many issues that he almost failed to get nominated. Palin, in her relatively brief time; has shown signs of upending whole political machines, even those of her own party. Obama, by contrast, what has he done, in terms of community organizing, in the state legislature, in the US Senate. There’s a reason, that the leading ‘malefactors of wealth’ likeCountrywide, Fannie & Freddie, Lehman, all contributed to him in large incriments and reform was not the reason.
Of Biden, it could be said that to take note of his malapropisms,his bouts with plagiarism; in unfair. What of his policies. From his support of restrictions on executive power; from the War Powers Act to his own creation; FISA, which hamstrung our own efforts, pre and post Sept. 11th.
His opposition to any oil exploration; see his vote against the Alaska pipeline. His overreaching in legal affairs; like the well intentioned VAWA. His condescending approach to confirmation issues like Bork, Thomas, Roberts. Even his seemingly maverick stands like his crafting the AUMF; he will walk away from. He supported the Gramm/Riley financial reform and the bankruptcy reform bill. His plan for partition in Iraq, would most likely have led to the blood scarred landscapes of 1947 India; 1990s Kosovo, most of the last century in Northern Ireland.
Chris, what I find frustrating is that it’s not about issues, it’s about persona (and party). Obama legitimately holds his views on abortion. David can legitimately oppose him over them, and get to (although I think it’s odd and somewhat foolish) invest that issue opposition which may be over a narrow moral issue into a wider moral condemnation. Note that I think that broadening is a bad idea. I think that if someone holds relatively mainstream ideas I can disagree deeply and passionately with them, and even feel that their position is immoral without extending that moral criticism to every fiber of their bring.
But it’s interesting. From every account I can find, Palin actually governs more as a conservative libertarian (which would make sense, given Alaska’s politics) than as a Christian values warrior. And so to me, I give her credit for holding values and being willing to make her governing agenda about something somewhat different.
Which makes the current demonization of her fairly ridiculous.
A.L.
Narcisco, you’re misreading what I wrote (and you’re not alone).
I didn’t take any personal position on Obama’s associations. For there record, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of my view of it: Obama comes from an upbringing that makes these leftist/radical views close to the norm. He shows what ought to have been an amazing lack of political judgment in not disassociating himself from Wright, Ayers, etc. a long time before he seriously ran for President, because in a traditional election cycle that stuff would have been brought up early in the primaries, branded him, and marked him as damaged goods. I’m more than a little puzzled as to why that didn’t happen now.
There are a lot of other things about Obama that creep me out. His First Amendment issues. The simple fact that he won’t release his birth certificate and end the nonsense.
In terms of my choice, early in the primaries, Obama campaigned as a pragmatist centrist – which wasn’t well-supported by his voting record, but which set out the core ‘values’ of his campaign. You’re recall that the Netroots really disliked him – for exactly that reason.
But the point of my post isn’t to rehash this in my own mind, but to point out that the lines of argument being taken up by the anti-Obama folks are a) not likely to succeed (i.e. tip voters’ preferences); b) are likely to be damaging to our political structure.
They aren’t likely to be successful because the average voter doesn’t have the perception of Ayers and the Weathermen that someone like Patterico does – they simply see them as a slightly more radical version of me, and I’m perceived as harmless. That’s in part because of a framing error – because the people bringing it up aren’t making the point that this guy holds deeply radical views today and is trying to do things about them – that would have been a better argument than the “he bombed stuff back in the 70’s”.
And even if they aren’t successful, they are dangerous because they support the narrative that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate, which intrinsically delegitimizes everything he would do in office.
A.L.
A default assumption that Armed Liberal and myself, blogging at the same site, must be in agreement, may be reasonable but must be rebuttable. Guessing in every case that we agree, you would often be right (for example on what to do about school shootings) but you would sometimes be very wrong. We are not of one mind on abortion.
What isn’t enough to show that we agree is enough to show that we don’t regard each other’s opinions as putting each other beyond the pale. The disagreements we have aren’t so great that we regard each other as unacceptable. We each think the other is wrong.
To demand that people separate themselves from people whose views (they claim) make those who hold them unacceptable is reasonable. If Barack Obama claims that racist views make you unacceptable, and Jeremiah Wright professes racist views, then it’s reasonable to demand that Barack Obama separate himself from Jeremiah Wright, because otherwise his actions are inconsistent with his professed beliefs.
But to demand that people separate themselves from people they merely claim to think are wrong, even about important moral issues, is unreasonable. There’s no inconsistency in my saying that I think Armed Liberal is wrong but not unacceptable and acting accordingly, or in his saying he thinks my views are wrong but don’t make me unacceptable and his acting accordingly.
The problem conservatives have with some liberals, including Barack Obama, is that they, the liberals, profess very harsh and stringent standards about what makes you unacceptable, but when it comes to right wingers who violate the alleged standards, the liberals do shun and repudiate them, but when it comes to left wingers who violate the alleged standards, the liberals do not spurn and repudiate them except tactically, under pressure.
“There are a lot of other things about Obama that creep me out. His First Amendment issues. The simple fact that he won’t release his birth certificate and end the nonsense.”
The fact that, if he got his way, you’d bet the “Formerly Armed Liberal” ought to figure in that list. 😉
These issues are hard to deal with calmly, because what we are talking about is who among us should be spurned, shunned, damned, driven from our presence, locked away, dehumanized and killed. These are violently emotional issues.
With abortion, there’s no getting away from the harsh underlying character of the disagreement. ‘X’s are being dehumanized, locked out of society and never welcomed among us, and killed in droves. ‘A’s among us think that ‘X’s really are not human, so OK. ‘B’s among us think that ‘X’s really are human, so this is very much not OK.
With issues of who should be sprurned, shunned, demonized and driven from our presence in general, I think that this is a bad way to settle political disputes. I would prefer less of it.
#127 from narciso:
bq. _”You want the party of AjL, TOC, and David Blue, to prevail, fine.”_
I would not predict a long future for “the party of AjL, TOC, and David Blue”.
This thread has degenerated into a schoolyard name calling contest.
Has not.
I wanted to sleep on my response to Antimedia, because I thought that except for his tone, we were no longer so far apart on the facts.
I’ve decided that it was campaign hyperbole to say that Sarah Palin wanted rape victims to pay for their own evidence kits. That was not her motivation. She just didn’t want the City of Wasilla to pay for rape evidence kits, and managed, in a remarkably maladroit way, to ignore the questions of (1) is it reasonable to expect rape victims with insurance to make the necessary financial arrangements and (2) who would pay in the case of uninsured victims. This isn’t a story about emergency contraception or warped anti-feminism; it’s a story about budget cutting. I’m sure Palin does think it’s a crazy idea for victims to pay for their own evidence kits, and it’s just some sort of unfortunate coincidence that this “crazy” event might ensue after her budget cuts. (I do not agree with Antimedia that this was some budget question internal to the Wasilla Police; Mayor Palin and the City Council do the budget, not the cops.)
My conclusion that Palin just didn’t think about the implications of cutting one small item in the budget is, I think, borne out by the lameness of the defense offered. I think Antimedia and I are now in agreement that the number of rape kits required would be between the number of forcible rapes reported to the FBI (one or two per year) and the total number of sexual assaults, which averaged about 14/year. So Connecticut Yankee’s “What rapes?” statistical argument is simply bogus. The Palin campaign also trotted out the distracting red herring that “the current mayor of Wasilla says there is no record of a victim being charged for a rape kit.” (That’s from a Palin defense, BTW, the Slate URL notwithstanding.) Of course such a charge would most likely be in the hospital records, not in the city financial records that the mayor could access.
I also note that while it may be that Wasilla’s policy was in line with some other jurisdictions, it was nothing like the Virginia policy A.L. proferred for comparison. See my #85.
They keep saying: it’s not the crime but the coverup. And it’s still true. But rather than admit to unintended consequences—I can see a good argument that rape kits are not the business of the Wasilla City Hall, and the 2000 Alaska law puts the financial onus on the State—the Palin crew confected nonsense.
The cogent question here is just who would Obama have in his government knowing his past and present associations? Well lets look at the people in his campaign. Seems reasonable right? Has the media done even a cursory examination of Obama’s staff? Of course not.
How about Marilyn Katz? Top Obama fundraiser and advisor and known in Chicago in the 60s for putting nail in the street to stop police cars etc.
The point of this is the pattern of the people Obama associates with. What kind of people will be in his government? Astonishing that nobody is talking about that.
#127 from narciso:
“You want the party of AjL, TOC, and David Blue, to prevail, fine.”
I have to admit, I found this post really amusing.
But this reply had me on the floor laughing.
#133 from David Blue at 6:12 pm on Oct 12, 2008
I would not predict a long future for “the party of AjL, TOC, and David Blue”.
Let me give you a clue. I have been around a long time and I will predict that the world will not come to an end, no matter who is elected. This is not the most important election of all time. Every election I have ever witnessed was dubbed that, by one side, the other, or both but quite frankly, I am still here.
We will go through hard economic times. we will be under threat form out enemies, no I might add greater than the threat I live under throughout my childhood, a very real threat of nuclear annihilation.
I mentioned this story months ago. I was in 10th or 11th Grade at Hialeah High in Miami when the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded. The school was then segregated and all the talk was that having integration would cause the end of the world. Cuban Refugee Students were appearing for the first time in numbers. I had just moved from New York and my experience with going to school with blacks and Puerto Ricans was different than what was feared by a large percentage of people in Miami at that time.
but back to the CMC, I remember sitting in class waiting for the clock in the front of the room to strike eleven, not to ned the second or third period, mind you, but to know whether or not the Russians would turn back. Hundreds of thousands of troops had passed through Miami. The northern periperal road for about 2 miles and been line with military vehicles, including tanks, half tracks etc. Military planes were flying in and out at what seemed to be 10 a minute. The city was the closest to the missle bases and we felt the full impact of the immediacy of nuclear war.
11 o’clock passed, the Russians turned back. As historic as that was, it pales in comparison to the fact that I was in school. *They didn’t even give us the day off for the end of the world.*
So, when I see the sort of over the top fear mongering that is going on in this thread and through the body politic in general, I wonder what has happened to us.
If Obama wins, fine. He is the President.
If MCain wins, fine. He is the President.
If the world ends, who cares. Can it be any worse than listening to the fear mongering nonsense in this thread.
I will say one other thing. I got a really good taste of what McCain and Palin have been selling recently, during my time in the south in the early and mid ’60s. I think William Buckley, as quoted by his son summed it up, saying,
“I have spent the whole of my life trying to keep the Right away from the crazies.”
I haven’t said anything about it previously, but if you haven’t seen the outcome of people in fear, as the country is now, driven to attacking other groups as scapegoats, trust me, it is not very pretty.
The whole thing needs to be toned down.
Well, it’s nice to know that liberals consider their lies “campaign hyperbole”. Can we count on them to consider conservative’s lies “campaign hyperbole” as well?
The fact remains that the “Palin refused to pay for rape kits” claim hurt the campaign with women voters, the liberals knew that would be its impact and, despite all their claims of caring about women, they launched the attack deliberately because they wanted to hurt Palin. In fact the attacks on Palin have been incredibly vicious despite the fact, as AL points out, that she governs as a budget-cutting, government-reforming moderate.
I disagree with AJL who writes “I do not agree with Antimedia that this was some budget question internal to the Wasilla Police; Mayor Palin and the City Council do the budget, not the cops”.
There is zero evidence that Palin or the city council ever discussed rape kits prior to the Alaskan legislature’s attempt to address the issue (or even afterwards). The budget line item (Contractual Services/General-medical testing, road maintenance, equipment rental, airport snow removal) does not use the term “rape kits”, so AJL’s curious argument that she didn’t really want to make victims pay for rape kits, she wanted to make someone else (insurance) pay for them, is a charge based upon zero evidence.
Since the following year the line item was increased to $4000 (the same as it was two years previous), it’s logical to assume that there was some discussion about the line item that resulted in the restoration of the previously budgeted amount, but there’s is zero evidence that the discussion was about rape kits. As any reasonable person can see, it could easily have been about road maintenance, equipment rental or snow removal rather than medical testing.
The sad fact is, some liberals don’t care about the lies. They only care that the claims are effective. You have only to read Kos to know that is true. Even somewhat reasonable liberals like AJL are hesitant to drop the claim, even when given all the evidence. To his credit, AL has no problem seeing the vacuity of the claim.
AL, I haven’t followed the claims about Obama’s birth certificate although I was peripherally aware of them and thought they were silly. This video, however, gives me pause. (I became aware of it yesterday through Memorandum.) While it’s posted on a conservative site, the gentleman who filed the lawsuit is a lifelong Democrat. I don’t know anything about him or whether his claims are valid.
Recall that in 2004, Bush, when asked, released all his military records, but Kerry, when asked, did so reluctantly and then only to media outlets that were clearly in the tank for Kerry and who refused to reveal them to the public meaning that they were never vetted.
Now comes the claim that Obama is not a natural born citizen of the US. Once again, the Republican candidate, McCain, when asked, immediately released all his records. (Some liberals have made the ridiculous claim that even though McCain’s parents were American citizens, because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone he is not a natural born citizen, as required by the Constitution.)
Obama, OTOH, is fighting in court not to release his. The obvious question is why? What does he have to hide?
I expect that in office Barack Obama will use a lot of academics.
He needs respectable radicals. Respectable to get confirmed and be effective. Radicals because radicals make him feel authentic, and because his real policies are likely to be more radical than his ostensible policies. He’ll need people whose selection will be his real policy, more than anything written down; who will understand his tacit intentions; and who will carry out his real intention with a will to further them, not with a desire to sabotage them in favor of the official or cover agenda.
This is not new. Henry Kissinger reported a radical difference between life in Richard Nixon’s administration and Gerry Ford’s. In Gerald Ford’s White House, the business of each meeting was exactly what it was supposed to be. In the Nixon White House, it never was.
Mark@137 hits on a point almost _everyone_ always fails to consider in _every_ Presidential election–the “true believers” that will accompany any President into office to staff Federal agencies at all levels. Their potential for doing great long-term harm is underlined by the fact that a great many of these people will be hold-overs for several successive Administrations capable of influencing/thwarting/delaying policy initiatives of future Presidents.
And this fact does not apply equally to both parties. It is a historical fact that Democrat Presidents have been far more ruthless in pruning GOP holdovers from the bowels of the Federal bureaucracy, while Republican ones, foolishly concerned with continuity of operations, seem to be naively
unaware of the great damage these partisan holdovers are capable of doing to Republi- cation initiatives, be it via selective leaks, delay, in- terpretative “spin” on data inputs used for decision-making–or outright oppositional infighting/guerrilla warfare. Examples of this are legion within the State Dept. and the CIA, but they in fact may be found in any agency from the Dept of Energy to Homeland Security (God how I hate that nomenclature) and often serve to distort/modify policies of Republican Administrations almost beyond recognition in all too many cases–the lax security practices in the AEC under Hazel O’leary in the Clinton Administration come to mind. The effects of these lapses/attitudes carried over far into the Bush administration, and their after-effects are still being felt today.
The economic situation calls for a tax cut, and McCain has more creds as a tax cutter than Obama, so the troubles should help McCain.
Unless the voting is ideological or stylistic. Or all based on the thrill running up your leg.
But if it’s based on patriotism and character, then Obama has:
Ayers, the bomber
Rezko, the crook
Wright, the anti-American
“Frank”, the commie mentor
his Dad, the Muslim/commie
ACORN, the fraudsters
The New Party, socialists
His wife, not proud of America
Together it’s a pretty good list.
I am glad I didn’t waste a lot of time putting together a list of Obama falsehoods, because clearly, none of his supporters is interested in responding to them.
I listed over a dozen. AJL responded to ONE in such a way that showed he didn’t even understand what my link said. Then Vista took that one inadequate response as evidence that AJL had refuted everything. The intellectual honesty is stunning.
As to the one AJL responded to: you don’t refute it by showing McCain helped blow up the first deal. That’s a given. Here’s what the Congressman said:
“Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican in my view would have been for, which means it wouldnt have probably passed the House.”
I.e. the Congressman said McCain SAVED THE DEAL AS A WHOLE BY BLOWING UP THE FIRST VERSION, WHICH WOULD NOT HAVE PASSED.
Obama pretended like this praise was criticism. It was a flat lie.
Obama is a disaster.
Ayers, as a real life terrorist when nuclear armed terrorists are an inevitable fact that will destroy several major Western cities, is a GREAT means of destroying the worst man to every assume the Presidency.
I could have lived with Kerry, Gore, or Hillary. They would not have destroyed America the way that Obama, filled with Racial Hatred towards whites in every pore, and anti-American hatred of the nation, will.
It will be one man, one vote, one time. Obama will open the doors to instant citizenship for 40-50 million Mexicans, and make Whites a permanent minority in their own country. One that, moreover, it is legal to discriminate against.
The Constitution is as lasting and forever as the World Trade Center. It does not take that much to pull it down. Frankly, AL simply worships Obama as his own personal God for redemption. Of what I’m not certain, but there it is.
However, the best argument against Obama is the Jessie Helms “Hands” ad — Obama hates Whites, always had, always will, and will discriminate against them and enforce AA vigorously. In a deep depression, Whites will be the first fired and last hired, so Mexicans (the largest recipients) and then Blacks can have scarce jobs.
The argument against Obama is that as the typical Black Nationalist/Separatist-Racist, he will make Whites suffer in a recession while protecting and advancing other races and ethnic groups.
To the point that Ayers cements Obama as the Farrakhan-creature that he is, this is good stuff. One that should and MUST be used. To make the price of racial hatred and discrimination clear. Otherwise we are in for a VERY nasty period where Whites, as the discriminated against minority, turn to their own racialist groups. Their own Farrakhans, Sharptons, and Obamas.
In Britain, the only refuge for people who are White, and wish to remain the majority in their own native nation, and retain their traditions, is the British National Party. Obama as President will create that very condition here. Thus the visible anger at McCain rallies where he has already thrown in the towel.
#145 from whiskey at 11:28 pm on Oct 12, 2008
I will be kind. You should be writing comic books. You are a regular Stan Lee. If there is one thing that infuriates me is someone who is preaching to me that I ought to be afraid.
The end of your screed is, quite frankly, beneath contempt. Please don’t identify yourself as a conservative or Republican, the party has enough problems already.
“Social Justice” is like “justice” only twice as good because it’s “social.”
Many of us were once dumb enough to believe that, but Obama and Ayers collaborated in a scheme to advance that notion in our education system in the fairly recent past. That may not “resonate” with voters, but it should. And it’s only due to the acute laziness of many to the right of Ayers that it doesn’t. Evil is an easier story to tell than stupidity.
Patterico, you continue to misconstrue Obama’s ad and my argument. At the time McCain denied that he blew up any deal. Therefore, by his and your own current narrative, McCain was lying. Not Obama. Whether his fellow Republican was pleased or displeased with this blow-up is not relevant. Obama was pointing out accurately that McCain’s claims at the time were false and using a GOP congressman as evidence. The fact the Congressman approved of what McCain did—irrelevant. The fact that the deal McCain blew up would have lost in the House—irrelevant. (As I recall, the ad ran before the first bill was presented to the House, and the House GOP defeated that version anyway, so I can’t imagine what McCain is supposed to have “saved”. At the time the ad ran, to the dubious extent McCain saved anything, it was still in the future.) It is also hard to understand why the House Republican leadership, which was in on all the discussion, was, pre-McCain extravaganza, going to go along with such an allegedly terrible bill. Can you explain that? You might also note that I agree with you on some of Obama’s other statements; I merely suggest that they pale in comparison to the McCain/Palin howlers, up to and including their misinterpretation of the Alaska Legislature’s Troopergate report.
Birth certificate. IANAL. However, on reading Berg’s filing, he is not just requesting Obama’s Birth Certificate. He’s requesting a huge document dump in discovery, including all DNC documents relating to “vetting” Obama. I can well understand why both Obama and the DNC are loathe to do that just now, when, in their view, the case should be dismissed before the discovery process on standing issues. Anyway, what happens when Obama brings into the courtroom the same piece of paper he has already posted on his web site, a certified birth certificate from the State of Hawaii? Surely the burden of proof is to show that the certificate is in error or forged, and not the other way around. As far as I can tell—there’s a limit to how much paranoid raving I can read at one time—Obama was supposedly born in Mombasa because his pregnant mother was refused boarding on an airplane. I am not aware of even one tiny piece of documentation, such as a passenger manifest, a Kenyan or British Colonial birth certificate to legitimate this version of events. It appears to be an urban legend created entire out of wishful thinking.
whiskey. You haven’t been in London recently, have you? Your buddies at the British National Party, those are the neo-Nazis, right? Or should I say, the neo-Nazis, far right? Pity about apartheid; there really isn’t any place left for your kind now.
bq. A default assumption that Armed Liberal and myself, blogging at the same site, must be in agreement, may be reasonable but must be rebuttable.
See, I told you David Blue’s comments should be paid attention to.
Here he is getting exactly to the nub of the argument that Obama and his supporters, on this site and elsewhere, have been making about the Ayers linkage.
Please take one moment from your anti-choice Obama The Baby Killer Crusade to think a little bit about this, David.
Whiskey don’t add, you’re not helping. I don’t know the context of Davis’s remarks, but the cut to ACORN does seem to be payback. Regardless of the effectiveness of the Ayers charges, which go to Obama’s credibility and to his record; the fact that one insists on going with Obama is quite
distressing if one believes
themselves to be a JFK/LBJ Democrat.
Yes Obama will hire academics like Samantha Powers, who have all but recommended that Iraq be partitioned; and the Palestinians be ‘protected’ from Israel by a peacekeeping force. Joseph Stiglitz, who went from a flak for
Fannie Mae and CEA to one for Chavez, and the creator of the “3
trillion dollar war” meme. Probably
he’ll bring in Walt and/or Mearsheimer, whose conclusions could have been written at the Saudi Foreign Ministry and faxed to the states. Austin Goolsbee has had to retract his views so many times, he probably won’t make into the inner circle. No one in this crew can be considered reliable.
Patterico:
bq. I am glad I didn’t waste a lot of time putting together a list of Obama falsehoods
That much is clear from your post, Patrick. But to reiterate a point that you might have gleaned had you been paying attention to the thread, rather than playing the role of Avenging Hero riding in on his white horse, is that we are after a list of Obama’s bona fide LIES, not “falsehoods”.
Andrew’s accurate refutation of your list was that none could be reasonably placed in the category of lie.
(A serious commenter might also make some effort in advance of this to define what it is that they mean by “lie”. Laying this basic groundwork is essential for proving an argument, as you might be aware from your experiences outside of the blogosphere.)
So, I would suggest that if you are serious about making a substantive contribution to this thread subtopic, which is to address the issue of magnitude and scale between McCains and Obama’s lies, that you spend a little more time coming to a basic understanding of the issue before engaging the CAPS LOCK key and unloading your anger and impatience on us all.
The last thing we need here is another hothead who thinks they can shout down the opposition. The last think we need anywhere at the moment, come to think of it.
Andrew, I’m curious. I’ve looked – in some unlikely places as well as the logical ones, and other than the budget change you cite, which is too general to really pin on this one issue, I can’t find any contemporaneous document or news report that suggests that Palin came to office and changed this policy. If you’ve got such a cite, I’d love to see it. There is one somewhat breathless blogger 2nd hand account, but having looked at the balance of that blogger’s work, you’ll forgive me if I discount it.
So help me understand how you get to “I’ve decided that it was campaign hyperbole to say that Sarah Palin wanted rape victims to pay for their own evidence kits. That was not her motivation. She just didn’t want the City of Wasilla to pay for rape evidence kits, and managed, in a remarkably maladroit way, to ignore the questions of (1) is it reasonable to expect rape victims with insurance to make the necessary financial arrangements and (2) who would pay in the case of uninsured victims.”
So it’d be a great contribution to the discussion if you could link to some hard data on this.
A.L.
Vista, we’re getting Clintonian here, don’t you think? My call was simple; let the McCain folks put up a list of Obama representations, ads, or claims that they claim aren’t true. Let the Obama folks do the same thing. Let’s create a list, with links to the source, and go dig in – as Andrew appears to have done on one claim – and set out what we see as facts.
How does that suit you?
A.L.
Actually this thread has only one proper topic, the one supplied by Armed Liberal in his post on the Ayers argument.
The rest has been distractions and responses to distractions.
A.L., I’ll start my own research. I guess you have already read (and discounted) Boehlert and HuffPo, the latter link presumably being the breathless 2nd-hand account. Breathless or not, what I take away from the second link is that (1) under the previous police chief whom Palin fired, as was her right as mayor, the city paid for evidence kits under a budget line item for “costs for medical blood tests for intoxicated drivers & medical exam/evidence collection for sexual assaults”; (2) the line item description changed over time, but still included “medical testing, road maintenance, equipment rental, airport snow removal” at the time Palin reduced the amount from $4000 to $1000, with the possibility that this amount was now almost all for items other than rape kits; and (3) Palin’s hand-picked police chief was outspoken in his belief that the City of Wasilla should not pay for evidence kits and opposed the new [2000] state law, and he stated (first link above), “In the past, we’ve charged the cost of the exams to the victim’s insurance company when possible”. I have no idea what he did when that was not possible. I find it curious that no one has been able to say who paid, if not the victim. (I suppose the hospital may have decided to eat the bill itself.) You would think that this would have been the first line of defense, and not an attempt to undercount the number of sexual assaults.
AJL —
I appreciate the tone of most of your comments. Your take on the Wasilla rape kit controversy (#136 para 2) was reasonable and helpful.
On content, I think about half of your links indicate pretty much what you say they indicate, while others add up to much less. They are just Talking Points for one side, and always tilting in the same direction. This isn’t a high-enough signal-to-noise ratio for me to continue checking them out as a rule, unless for some reason I’m really interested in the subject at hand. Others’ mileage obviously varies. I say this instead of backtracking to rebut or re-rebut comments in the double-digits; the party’s moved on.
Nortius Maximus —
An attaboy from this corner for the efforts you put in as a Marshal. Including the emphasis on civility. Acknowledging, as you yourself have, that you sometimes fall short when wearing your hat-without-a-badge and participating as a commenter. I prefer this site’s policies, even if imperfectly applied, to the operations of many other high-comment-volume sites.
Chris —
When I stroll into this bar, it’s with a Marshal’s hat too, although I don’t put it on too often. And I occasionally have posted on the front page. So your beyond-the-pale and guilt-by-association challenges apply to me.
In response: I’m glad to be associated with this site, specifically with Joe Katman, Armed Liberal, David Blue, and most of the other posters, present and past. Since David Blue is your bete noir, I’ll point out that “I’m on record as reluctantly pro-choice,”:http://www.patterico.com/2006/02/15/ that is to say, on the pro-choice side of that Great Divide. David Blue thinks I am wrong on the most important of issues; I think he’s wrong on one of many important issues. As he pointed out in #130, he remains willing to talk. I remain willing to talk.
You, Chris, have voted for “condemn and disassociate,” on the basis of David Blue’s application of the logic of his beliefs to Barack Obama’s record on this matter. Before you confirm that stance, you might browse the comments threads of that linked 2006 Patterico series on abortion. You might find difficult-to-dismiss arguments raised by those with very different beliefs than your own. More pointedly, you should: if abortion were that straightforward a question, most informed, reasonable people would have come to the same general conclusions. They (we) haven’t.
AL;
Let’s define “lie” first as an “intentionally false statement”.
To agree that someone has lied, it must be reasonably presumed, but not proven, that the person has, or is likely to have, knowledge or information contradictory to their stated position.
Any comments on this?
157: Since your last line was not directly addressed to AL exclusively:
Yes, I have comments. The definition you propose has merit as a base of operations, given at minimum the following caveats:
1) It seems to presume that the person is and feels themselves to be able to speak completely frankly. I think, in consequence, that by this definition a lot of people who are successful or leader-types lie, a lot.
2) There’s an old observation that the difference between a successful entrepreneur and a con man is that sometimes the entrepreneur manages to keep his promises. Leaders and such often seem to engage in willing stuff into being. Hollywood dealmakers are almost an icon for that. Tell the talent the studio is onboard, then tell the director the money’s in the bag, then tell the financiers you’ve got a bankable star and director all ready to go. That sort of thing happens in politics. Are they lying? I’d say yes, but that doesn’t stop it from happening a _lot_.
3) It also presumes the immateriality of a lot of standard stuff that people usually do: that epistemological arrogance doesn’t come into play. This is not always a valid presumption. Is epistemological arrogance the same thing as lying? I think it is very close to being lying to oneself; but it’s also bias. Depends on how good you are at, and how much you value, rational self-criticism. But people seem to eat it up when they want a leader. Certainty, FTW!
4) In order to be heard, simplifications and pitches take the place of total accuracy. As a friend of mine says on a t-shirt he designed, “Brevity sucks.”
5) Lastly, it presumes that the true state of affairs regarding what the speaker knows, and what the speaker speaks of, can be known accurately enough to make the determination.
I know… “you didn’t ask me.” 🙂
[Slight edit]
David Thompson writes —
bq. As a presidential candidate, Obama’s involvement with Ayers and Dohrn is obviously a matter of concern and attempts to downplay the issue have been largely disingenuous… But it seems inadequate to limit that concern to Obama. Ayers – now a “distinguished professor of education†(with tenure) – has flourished in a particular environment, one which not only excuses his past extremism and lack of contrition, but which actively enables his ongoing extremism and his urge to indoctrinate. The journey from terrorist to tenure has, it seems, been achieved with only a change of method rather than a change of core ideology… In ideological terms, Ayers is scarcely less incoherent and extreme than he was when urging students to kill their parents. That he finds academia so congenial, and so obliging, probably tells us something.
“Link.”:http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2008/10/a-commonplace-e.html
PS: Unpacking “epistemological arrogance”: it is fancy way of saying “the kind of self- and group-delusion in which people are convinced they know more than they do.” Var.: “epistemic arrogance.”
Sean Hannity gave a man now named Andy Martin (he’s had to change it a few times) carte blanche to hurl accusations of terrorist at Barack Obama. Hannity claimed that he interviews lots of people he doesn’t agree with, but Martin’s appearance wasn’t so much an interview as giving Mr. Martin a platform to outline his “facts” about Obama, Islam, Ayres, and terrorism.
Who is Mr. Martin? A diagnosed paranoid anti-Semitic nut case.
Perhaps in the interests of symmetry and balance A.L. can find for us the equivalent from the Obama campaign, and how often he has appeared with Rachel Maddow.
There is indeed a double-standard at work, but it does not inure to Obama’s benefit.
AJL, for once I can oblige. I rarely read Michelle Malkin, but she had “Crush the Obamedia narrative: Look who’s ‘gripped by insane rage'”:http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/crush-the-obamedia-narrative-look-whos-gripped-by-insane-rage/ up yesterday. I don’t vouch for the accuracy of its items, but some are likely as described. I’m sure that assiduous righty bloggers have dozens more posts to go head-to-head against the dozens of lefty blog posts one could also dredge up. If the exercise had any point.
All these crazed people oozing out of the woodwork “surely must mean”:http://www.learn-great-magic-tricks.com/misdirection.html that the Obama/Ayers connections that Stanley Kurtz, Steve Diamond, Tom Maguire, and others have written about are trivial.
AMac, I didn’t see you palm that coin. Do it some more so I can’t see it again. I love magic almost as much as I love buying on margin! 🙂
“Vista, we’re getting Clintonian here, don’t you think? My call was simple; let the McCain folks put up a list of Obama representations, ads, or claims that they claim aren’t true. Let the Obama folks do the same thing. Let’s create a list, with links to the source, and go dig in – as Andrew appears to have done on one claim – and set out what we see as facts.”
Again, I set out 12+ falsehoods by the Obama camp. I am aware of a good 3-4 by the McCain camp; maybe Obama partisans have more . . . let’s see the list.
Y’all are too lazy to even try.
Try starting with Obama’s stunning lies about immigration and his flat lies about what Rush Limbaugh said. Is there a single person here willing to defend that? Anyone? Anyone?
Didn’t think so.
_”I have no idea what he did when that was not possible. I find it curious that no one has been able to say who paid, if not the victim.”_
That’s right, you have no idea. And I find it curious that, assuming he DID make the rape victims pay, that not one of them was pissed off enough about it to come forward today.
What we’ve got is evidence that it was _possible_ rape victims were made to pay for these kits, but precisely zero evidence that any actually were. That’s awfully thin gruel. The universe of outrages it’s _possible_ Obama committed, (Let alone was tangentially associated with!) but for which there is no evidence, is simply enormous.
I propose we don’t explore that universe, for any candidate. Too easy to get lost.
Nort,
Thanks, it was an open invitation to further this issue by setting up some ground rules. This is critical to get any further along in this discussion.
Let me reply to your points then.
1) I’m not really clear what you’re saying here.
2) If I understand you correctly, I do not think this category of statement should be regarded as a lie for the purposes of this discussion. Are you talking about promises or plans that may or may not be implemented, once a politician takes office? The simple reason why this should be excluded, in my view, is because we cannot know outcomes in advance, and it is a useless and diversionary exercise to attempt to do so.
For example, at the last debate, McCain unveiled a plan to have the government buy up mortgages. The plan was, the very next day, changed significantly after it was given further scrutiny. I don’t think this is a lie but an impulsive and ill-thought out comment.
3) If we confine the discussion to political issues rather than spiritual/religious ones, I don’t see this being a problem, unless I’m missing something.
4) This is a valid issue to consider but I don’t think it impedes in the ability to examine the factual components of any political comment, however hyperbolic or overly simplified it may be.
5) I agree that this is a key issue, which is why I am proposing that part of the discussion should be about the likelihood of foreknowledge before concluding that a statement is a lie.
I would also propose that lies can be categorized on the basis of their subject: A) Regarding your own record, B) Regarding your opponents record, C) Everything else.
You can see that some of the issues above are not so problematic when considered in a particular category. For example, the idea of foreknowledge can and should be presumed for category A and somewhat for B, but for C it is much harder.
Let me finish by saying that I don’t think any productive conversation about lies and this campaign can occur without agreeing to these or similar definitions, and as such I have no interest in doing so unless we come to one.
Patterico-
bq. Again, I set out 12+ falsehoods by the Obama camp. I am aware of a good 3-4 by the McCain camp; maybe Obama partisans have more . . . let’s see the list.
bq. Y’all are too lazy to even try.
Actually, Patterico, I originally asked Armed Liberal for the list because I wanted to see what _he_ considered a lie – not to get it “crowdsourced”, because I have an excellent idea what this particular crowd considers a lie. And not to get said list from you because, after seeing you throw around the kind of crap you have about Obama and Ayers, I have an excellent idea of what you consider a lie too.
But Armed Liberal’s too seemingly above the fray to take a stand on whether your rants about Obama and Ayers count as “lies” or not, Patterico, or talk about whether poor, defenseless Rush Limbaugh getting taken out of context is in the same league (or galaxy) as Sarah Palin’s delusional take on whether she was innocent or guilty in Troopergate.
So I’m guess I’m out of luck, Patterico, and I’ll just leave you to your gloating about how much better you are than those darned liberals. And much good may those warm fuzzies do you when Obama kicks McCain’s ass all over the country in three weeks.
AMac-
bq. You, Chris, have voted for “condemn and disassociate,” on the basis of David Blue’s application of the logic of his beliefs to Barack Obama’s record on this matter.
Actually, AMac, I didn’t. From post #122:
bq. _David Blue disagreed, saying that his opinions are his own, and they don’t necessarily reflect Armed Liberal’s views, just because they’re on the same site. *I tend to lean more towards David Blue’s side on this*…_
bq. Before you confirm that stance, you might browse the comments threads of that linked 2006 Patterico series on abortion. You might find difficult-to-dismiss arguments raised by those with very different beliefs than your own. More pointedly, you should: if abortion were that straightforward a question, most informed, reasonable people would have come to the same general conclusions. They (we) haven’t.
Wow, really, AMac? You mean there people out there who have actual _reasoned positions_ on abortion? That comes to a complete shock to me, for you see, even though I live in freakin’ Texas and have more than a few friends who are conservative evangelical Christians, it never occurred to me to find out whether they were capable of actual _thought_ on the issue – as an elitist liberal, I was under the impression unthinking opposition to abortion rights was just what crazed Jesus freaks did!
What a revelation to me to find out otherwise!
Although, oddly enough, AMac, even though I have talked with more than a few pro-life evangelicals about this issue, none of them ever called Obama worse than a NAMBLA member, or the worst human being ever, or anything close to that.
One might almost say that such opinions – which aren’t really about abortion as such so much as they’re about how much hate you’re prepared to direct at people who support abortion rights – are well outside the range of mainstream or even reasonable opinions on the subject, and deserve to be noted as such.
But if it’s easier for you to lump it all together as just part of people’s disagreement on abortion, that’s your call, of course.
Running for office is not about telling a lie as opposed to telling the truth. It has to do with creating a favorable or negative impression out of what most perceive to be the reality of a situation.
Truth comes into the issue when a candidate’s version of reality is so far from what the electorate believes, that the electorate feels that the candidate is taking he or she as for a fool.
For example, McCain’s suspending his campaign or staying in Washington until the bailout was finished. Was McCain telling a lie? I wouldn’t say so. Did he push my ability to suspend disbelief. Yes.
I don’t think the lie versus the truth changes many peoples minds. I think the “Does this guy think I am an idiot?” most certainly does.
I also think their is a basic algebra that most people keep in their heads:
Politician = Bullshitter
We get offended when they pile it on to thick.
Chris I’m not above the fray, I’m just someone who has a life and isn’t interested is spending all of it doing original research to settle bets on this site.
For the record, it’s clear that Obama has lied about Ayers. His original statement was, I believe, “he lives in the neighborhood and our kids go to school together” which is false on one point, that their kids go to school together, and misleading on another in that they had dealings going back into Obama’s career on boards, etc.
Now I serve on a variety of boards with a variety of people, and I’m very close to some of them, and much less so with others. We have no way of knowing where matters lie with Obama and Ayers.
But I’m very comfy standing on the side of the group that wished Obama had been far more honest in his responses to this.
How’s that for an opener?
A.L.
Chris #168 —
You wrote in #94 (emphasis added)
bq. You [David Blue] post on this site – not just on comments, but on the front page. You, and your political views, have been given free access to this site as a soap box. Even if that’s not the same thing as endorsing those views, this site – and the guys like Armed Liberal who run it – are at least implicitly saying they don’t find your views so objectionable that you deserve to have your access taken away. Which makes them at least somewhat complicit.
You moderated your accusation of me and others in the following paragraph:
bq. At least, that’s the conservative standard I’ve seen applied over and over again, especially with regard to prominent Democrats posting stuff on Kos, most recently argued by Antimedia in #75.
Re-reading the thread, I find Vista’s earlier comment (#60; emphasis added) —
bq. Do we really need to hear anything else from the innocuously named “David Blue” to place him squarely in the category of being this site’s equivalent of the angry sidewalk mob screaming at their political opponents in self-righteous fury and animosity? …And to those on the right who permit these comments to go unchallenged, you are guilty of complicity. I will take David’s comments to indicate your own views until such time as you disavow them.
In my remarks directed to you in #156, I conflated your remarks on my “complicity” (as far as the ‘crimes’ of David Blue) with those of Vista.
I apologize for that mistake; you clearly aren’t responsible for anyone’s remarks but your own. (And without the mis-perceived reiteration, I wouldn’t have responded to that point.)
It’s heartening to know that you have considered a wide variety of views on abortion; that adds some heft to your remarks.
#166 Vista: Comments on your comments:
bq. 1) I’m not really clear what you’re saying here.
I’m speaking of things such as white lies, diplomacy, “framing” terminology, shading the truth, telling only part of the story, soft-pedaling, and saying something that the audience might be prone to interpret in a way that is beneficial. All the way out to Newspeak and Duckspeak.
bq. 2) … Are you talking about promises or plans that may or may not be implemented, once a politician takes office? The simple reason why this should be excluded, in my view, is because we cannot know outcomes in advance, and it is a useless and diversionary exercise to attempt to do so.
Let me unpack my Hollywood example. The stereotypical agent doesn’t say “I know Star X will get on board for this project!” while he’s dealmaking. In order to make his presentation more compelling, he says “Star X is onboard”. This proceeds until either the deal happens or the deal falls through. The statement “Star X is onboard” is used as magical thinking. In the example I give it is a lie at the time the dealmaker uses it as leverage before Star X actually is onboard. He probably tells himself “it’s just an extreme white lie.” But it’s a little more of a lie than epistemic arrogance is — so see #3 below.
bq. 3) If we confine the discussion to political issues rather than spiritual/religious ones, I don’t see this being a problem, unless I’m missing something.
Epistemology is an effete sounding term for a tough practical matter: Do I know what I think I know?
This case is not metaphysics. It’s about self-bluffing. Ever see someone(s) bullshitting themselves and others about expertise? OK, here’s a concrete example: Look at the current financial crisis, and look at for instance Barney Frank. Or lots of financial experts who are criticized by Taleb, the Black Swan guy.
bq. [Windy sidebar: If for instance (per Taleb) they claim that bell-curve or bimodal distributions govern the way a market works, and it turns out it’s more like a power-law distribution with built-in 1/f likelihood of a meltdown, and they proceed to build their financial models that say everything is just fine, just because they and everybody they know think it’s bell curve for no sound reason, just because of (say) a severe limitation in their willingness to examine their presuppositions or ignorance or because they think everything is bell curve because they weren’t a very bright observer but they aced Statistics — that’s an example of epistemic arrogance. If they hire people to tell them “this is risky” and decide not to listen to them because they’re missing out on profits that other companies are making, that’s epistemic arrogance if it turns out the advisors are right — unless the advisors themselves are just lucky.]
If you are arrogant epistemically, it’s not airy-fairy religious stuff, it’s stuff that can do you serious harm if what you bluff about isn’t so.
Effectively #3 is appeal-to-authority-of-self: surely I know what I’m talking about, ’cause I feel so sure! When self is not really an authority, it’s self-deception at least. See also #2.
Both #2 and #3 are effectively cases of bluffing. In #3 the subject is bluffing himself — deceiving himself — and/or engaging in magical thinking to influence others. It might still count as a falsehood worth distinguishing.
bq. 4) This is a valid issue to consider but I don’t think it impedes in the ability to examine the factual components of any political comment, however hyperbolic or overly simplified it may be.
I think it feeds into #1 and #3. Full understanding of complex issues is hard to express. If the goal is to motivate masses, pithy wins over accurate. Or such is the history of the human race, mostly.
bq. 5) I agree that this is a key issue, which is why I am proposing that part of the discussion should be about the likelihood of foreknowledge before concluding that a statement is a lie.
Cool.
Off to my day job. Thanks for the prompt and punctilious response.
Oops, addendum to comment to Vista: In #5 you might not be taking adequate note of assessing the likelihood of accurate _post_knowledge, which I think I mentioned as also part of the needed assesment.
AMac-
bq. I apologize for that mistake; you clearly aren’t responsible for anyone’s remarks but your own. (And without the mis-perceived reiteration, I wouldn’t have responded to that point.)
Apology understood and accepted.
bq. It’s heartening to know that you have considered a wide variety of views on abortion; that adds some heft to your remarks.
Actually, what pissed me off is the assumption that I _wouldn’t_ have considered a wide variety of views to abortion, which would be bad enough on its own, but was especially frustrating after posts #113 and #114, where I specifically tried to make arguments that took DB’s pro-life starting points into account.
But, as NM pointed out above, we shouldn’t assume that everybody reads every comment. Thank you for your cordial and reasonable follow-up.
AL-
bq. Chris I’m not above the fray, I’m just someone who has a life and isn’t interested is spending all of it doing original research to settle bets on this site.
Fair enough. Next time you make the claim that both sides are equally bad, and you could prove it if you wanted to, as you did in #46, I’ll take such remarks with the understanding that no, you really _don’t_ want to.
bq. For the record, it’s clear that Obama has lied about Ayers. His original statement was, I believe, “he lives in the neighborhood and our kids go to school together” which is false on one point, that their kids go to school together, and misleading on another in that they had dealings going back into Obama’s career on boards, etc.
Interestingly, I can’t find any such original quote on Google, and I’d be very interested to see it in its original context. (Lots of people reference the “he lives in the neighborhood” thing, but I can’t find where it originates, and nobody else seems to have the “our kids go to school together” quote. I’d also be quite interested to see if it’s an actually misleading answer, or if Obama was answering a question in the context of people already having pointed out their history on the Annenberg board.)
bq. Now I serve on a variety of boards with a variety of people, and I’m very close to some of them, and much less so with others. We have no way of knowing where matters lie with Obama and Ayers.
The problem with saying “we have no way of knowing” puts accusations that they actually had eight board meetings rather than six on the same footing as accusations that Obama is a closet Marxist, as we’ve clearly seen from threads here over the past week. And although Patterico and others are pushing very, very hard, there’s far more innuendo than hard facts on the former point, and virtually no reason to suspect the latter.
bq. But I’m very comfy standing on the side of the group that wished Obama had been far more honest in his responses to this. How’s that for an opener?
That’s fine, AL; it’s good to know – or rather, good to be reminded – that you’re once more on the side of the National Review, Michelle Malkin, etc. And the truth standards you’re willing to use on this issue certainly help in interpreting just about everything else you say.
Armed Liberal said:
bq. For the record, it’s clear that Obama has lied about Ayers.
This seems like a good place to begin.
Does anyone care to document the claims made in Armed Libaral’s post about this Category A potential lie?
bq. His original statement was, I believe, “he lives in the neighborhood and our kids go to school together” which is false on one point, that their kids go to school together…
When did Obama make such a statement, and what was it exactly.
bq. and misleading on another in that they had dealings going back into Obama’s career on boards, etc.
I’m not sure this can be categorized as a lie.
Yes, and what was the context of this alleged remark?
Chris –
It took me 30 seconds…
“David Axelrod said it”:http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/Ax_on_Ayers.html – specifically:
“Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school,” he said. “They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”
Now on this post at the Politico site, there’s a later update:
“UPDATE: There’s been a bit of confusion about Axelrod’s line on the kids, who — as the Guardian’s Daniel Nasaw noted — aren’t the same age. Obama’s kids went go the the University of Chicago Lab Schools, where Ayers kids, who are much older, had gone. However, Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection.”
Since Axelrod is Obama’s longtime adviser and his chief strategist, so it’s fair to assume that is word is authoritative.
No, “no way of knowing” means no way of knowing – did he and Ayers build a strategy for his political career as an extension of Ayers’ revolutionary politics (fantasy, as I see it), did Ayers and he help each other advance their respective political causes (possible, but completely unproven), or did they know each other barely well enough to ask each other to pick up bagels before the board meetings (possible, but completely unproven). That’s why I spent some blog real estate a while ago suggesting that Obama would do well to clear this up and to put his early radicalism into context.
See, Chris, it’s simple – when the NR folks are correct, I say so – regardless of their political affiliation – and when the Nation people are correct, I say so – regardless of their political affiliation. Truth doesn’t follow neat partisan lines, and the belief that it does is one of the most dangerous fantasies that one can have.
A.L.
bq. Since Axelrod is Obama’s longtime adviser and his chief strategist, so it’s fair to assume that is word is authoritative.
Nope, sorry, this does not qualify as a lie by Obama. If you want to expand the terms to include campaign spokespersons as well, that’s fine, but we’re arguing about the candidates character and truthfullness, not his surrogates.
Of course if you want to go down that route, we have pretty much anything that Rick Davis says to mine…I really don’t think anyone wants to go there, do you AL?
Interesting, though, that you mistakenly thought Obama had said it…isn’t it interesting the way in which misinformation becomes rooted in the mind?
Vista, I think it’s gamesmanship pure and simple to suggest that only words out of Obama’s mouth, recorded on video (ideally by more than one camera, so ensure the no editing has taken place), with notarized statements from the camera operators and two witnesses count.
Sure, if Rick Davis is speaking for the McCain campaign and he lies, it counts.
But – again – note that you’re really not about trying to establish some reasonable common understanding of facts, but really about proving that “they drool, we rule”. If that’s the kind of political dialog you’re interested in, rock on.
A.L.
bq. Vista, I think it’s gamesmanship pure and simple…
Well, A.L., I am trying to set out the terms for a reasonable debate on this issue. Instead, you choose to ignore this effort and proceed directly into the kind of woolly argument that this is intended to prevent.
bq. …to suggest that only words out of Obama’s mouth, recorded on video (ideally by more than one camera, so ensure the no editing has taken place), with notarized statements from the camera operators and two witnesses count.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll see this is nothing more than hyperbole. NM and myself have actually come pretty close to agreeing on a reasonable set of criteria, none of which goes as far as you are suggesting. (Is this a lie? My comments above, which you should reasonably be judged to have read, strongly refute this.)
bq. Sure, if Rick Davis is speaking for the McCain campaign and he lies, it counts.
Yeah, sure, you have to say this now, after first thinking that Obama made the statement you want to attribute to him but only then finding out it was from Axelrod.
But I am not interested, nor do I think it is productive, to attempt to plumb the commentary from campaign affiliates. This will require clarifying (or presuming) their affiliations to the campaign, and/or trying to establish whether their knowledge is complete enough to be able to make conclusions about lying. For example, a statement by Axelrod about a biographical detail from Obama’s life, however important it may be, does not seem to fall under the lie category unless it can be concluded that he has complete, detailed knowledge on the history of the subject, which I highly doubt. At least to the degree that his words can be taken literally and at face value without discounting the very real probability that his knowledge is incomplete.
bq. But – again – note that you’re really not about trying to establish some reasonable common understanding of facts, but really about proving that “they drool, we rule”. If that’s the kind of political dialog you’re interested in, rock on.
It is at this point where the reasonable person will throw up their hands into the air and sigh loudly.
And invite participation of serious commenters who want to spend at least a few minutes thinking about something before they hit “post”…
I don’t have time here to go long — I’m still at work.
But there are a few things I want to light up: Is the goal of this approach / discussion…
* to minimize error,
* to identify false (consciously or not) speech,
* to find someone to blame,
* to clearly outline patterns of false (consciously or not) speech that result in problems even though no single element can be identified as a conscious malicious lie,
* to influence people including politicians and those who quote them to be more careful in their speech, or
* to hold people responsible for counterfactuals?
Or is the goal to only use the word “lie” for a straightforward malicious falsehood?
See my earlier comments in discussion with Vista, and TOC’s comments as well. When the falsehood, conscious or otherwise — that is to say, when the bullshit — gets high enough, is speaking boldly by labeling the pile “lying” justified by my #4?
[Edited for typos]
bq. It took me 30 seconds…
Probably because you knew the quote to search for, which is not the quote you listed above.
bq. David Axelrod said it – specifically:
bq. “Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school,” he said. “They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”
bq. Now on this post at the Politico site, there’s a later update:
bq. “UPDATE: There’s been a bit of confusion about Axelrod’s line on the kids, who — as the Guardian’s Daniel Nasaw noted — aren’t the same age. Obama’s kids went go the the University of Chicago Lab Schools, where Ayers kids, who are much older, had gone. However, Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection.”
bq. Since Axelrod is Obama’s longtime adviser and his chief strategist, so it’s fair to assume that is word is authoritative.
Or, y’know, not, since a chief strategest is not the same as an official campaign spokesman, and, more importantly, Axelrod shows his unfamiliarity with the situation by, y’know, _getting the kids’ ages wrong_, something Obama – or other people who’re intimately familiar with Obama’s personal history – certainly wouldn’t have done.
It’s also not at all clear that this was an official “this is the only way Obama and Ayers are connected” statement, as opposed to “as far as I’m aware, this is how they know each other statement.” To consider what Axelrod said an outright lie about their relationship, as opposed to an off-the-cuff misstatement, says a lot about your political bias, AL… but that ties in to the later point of your post.
bq. _The problem with saying “we have no way of knowing” puts accusations that they actually had eight board meetings rather than six on the same footing as accusations that Obama is a closet Marxist, as we’ve clearly seen from threads here over the past week. And although Patterico and others are pushing very, very hard, there’s far more innuendo than hard facts on the former point, and virtually no reason to suspect the latter._
bq. No, “no way of knowing” means no way of knowing – did he and Ayers build a strategy for his political career as an extension of Ayers’ revolutionary politics (fantasy, as I see it), did Ayers and he help each other advance their respective political causes (possible, but completely unproven), or did they know each other barely well enough to ask each other to pick up bagels before the board meetings (possible, but completely unproven). That’s why I spent some blog real estate a while ago suggesting that Obama would do well to clear this up and to put his early radicalism into context.
But that’s exactly my point – you’ve just bracketed the things about the Obama/Ayers relationship we have “no way of knowing” as spanning a spectrum from completely harmless to substantive to outright paranoid. And all of those things have and will be discussed on this thread as a result. (Much of it in the context of Obama’s “early radicalism”, an attack you subtly snuck in there that, as far as I’ve been able to tell, has no basis in fact.)
There’s a universe of potential things we have “no way of knowing” – is Obama a Martian? Is he Superman? Is he gay? We have “no way of knowing”, so we can talk about any of it, because it’s all “possible, but completely unproven”, right?
No, the whole reason we’re talking about this is because it’s an attack that plays into many conservatives’ preexisting view of Obama as a radical, and because they think it’s an attack that’ll hurt him in the general election. And if you were half the unbiased moderate you claim to be, your response on this would be “I have no reason to think that’s true, and until I’m brought something more substantive than ‘a pretty plausible set of emerging facts’, I’m not going to engage it further.” (Incidentally, how can “facts” be “pretty plausible”? They’re either facts, or they’re not.)
bq. _…it’s good to know – or rather, good to be reminded – that you’re once more on the side of the National Review, Michelle Malkin, etc. And the truth standards you’re willing to use on this issue certainly help in interpreting just about everything else you say._
bq. See, Chris, it’s simple – when the NR folks are correct, I say so – regardless of their political affiliation – and when the Nation people are correct, I say so – regardless of their political affiliation. Truth doesn’t follow neat partisan lines, and the belief that it does is one of the most dangerous fantasies that one can have.
Except you _don’t_ do that, AL. Palin’s lying her ass off about the outcome of Troopergate, but you haven’t said word one about it, nor do I expect you to. McCain’s campaign has been playing games for a week now about whether it’s pushing the Ayers story or not, but you haven’t said word one about it, nor will you. Meanwhile, even though you yourself describe ideas about Ayers being a sleeper agent as “fantasy”, the guys at the Corner don’t think so… and you haven’t said word one about that.
There are people who’re politically unbiased, and act that way. There are people who _say_ they’re politically unbiased, and don’t act that way. The former class of people get to lecture on the nature of truth and the danger of political bias, but you’re not one of those people, AL.
Moving on from the claim by AL for “Obama” lying about his association with Ayers, why not now consider Chris’ point about Governor Palin’s documented comment on the Troopergate report.
In a conversation with reporters after the release of the report, Palin herself claimed that “Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there”, in direct contradiction to the conclusion of the report.
“Link to quote.”:http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/12/palin-ive-been-cleared-of-any-hint-of-unethical-activity/
Lie or no lie?
Here’s another from Palin to consider:
bq. …Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin [claimed] that Obama tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States to score political points.
bq. “During a Friday fund-raiser in Madeira, Ohio, Palin said Obama tried to influence the negotiations “in a way that would set back America’s cause there, while advancing his campaign here.”
bq. Obama “never, ever discouraged us not to sign the agreement,” Zebari said. “I think this was misrepresented, and I have clarified this case in a number of interviews back in the United States recently.”
bq. The statement by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari refutes a recent published report and a statement by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that Obama tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States to score political points.
“Link”:http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/12/obama-did-not-ask-to-delay-security-agreement-iraqi-fm-says/
The issue is: Did Sarah Palin know what Obama had said during the meeting, or what had transpired? Does she or the McCain campaign have access to this information? If so, then she seems to have knowingly mis-represented the proceedings. But did she do so in a manner that is considered acceptable political spinning?
If not, then did she invent it for the purpose of political attack?
_”The issue is: Did Sarah Palin know what Obama had said during the meeting, or what had transpired? Does she or the McCain campaign have access to this information? If so, then she seems to have knowingly mis-represented the proceedings.”_
Does anyone aside from Obama and the people in the room have definitive knowledge? Iraq’s ambassador to the US alleged that Obama asked for the agreement to be delayed, and the source is the “Washington Times”:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/obama-sought-to-sway-iraqis-on-bush-deal/ (not necessarily a reliable source, according to the Washington Times. Talk about being in the tank for a candidate).
It seems to me that you are assuming your own conclusions by assuming Obama is telling the truth. The larger question is what exactly was Obama doing in that meeting if he wasnt attempting to influence the Iraqis? Fact finding? Certainly possible, although Obama had been deeply uninteresting in speaking with either the generals in Iraq or the Iraqis themselves heretofor. And why would Samir Sumaidaie lie about the conversation he observed the Iraqi foreign minister engaged in?
Whats certain is Palin can hardly be called a liar for bringing up a hotly contested issue. I for one feel it very likely that Obama urged the Iraqis to put the deal off in an attempt to get a deal more to his liking once elected. Whether he considered the implications of the US presence in Iraq at years end when the UN mandate expires is an excellent question.
Um, she was cleared legally. She may have committed an administrative violation, which is a personnel matter and will be decided by the personnel board in Alaska, but the investigator himself said that she broke no laws in removing the guy from office.
I haven’t seen her quotes on the matter (been busy as heck) but if they contradict that, then she’s not telling the truth. Feel free to share.
A.L.
Palin was guilty of no sufficiently bowing to the entrenched bureaucracy. This is a great fight for her if she handles it right.
All she needs to do is come out and say she had direct, personal knowledge of a dirty, abusive cop and she wasn’t going to allow the good ol boy network of red tape give her the run-around on getting a badge and gun out of his hands. Let the voters decide if she was wrong to bend some rules to get things done.
Its a great showcase piece for the McCain/Palin philosophy- do you want the entrenched, no-accountability, jobs for life that the liberals like Obama champion, or do you want leaders that are willing to take on the bureaucracies and cut the red tape for the good of the public? That’s how i’d frame it.
bq. She may have committed an administrative violation, which is a personnel matter and will be decided by the personnel board in Alaska, but the investigator himself said that she broke no laws in removing the guy from office.
bq. I haven’t seen her quotes on the matter (been busy as heck) but if they contradict that, then she’s not telling the truth. Feel free to share.
The link labeled “Link to quote” gets you to 2 of her quotes on the issue…
To reiterate:
“Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there”
“…if you read the read the report you will see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member,”
From the same source:
bq. “Palin had the authority to fire Monegan, but the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower concluded that she abused her power as Alaska’s governor, and violated state ethics law by trying to get Wooten fired from the state police.”
So, the ethical claim is a lie.
Can we agree on that?
It sure sounds like one; I’ll be slightly cautious and say that the administrative agency that makes these decisions hasn’t ruled yet (and a sidebar about what a political circus their decision will be), but once they do then yeah, she’s been found to have violated state ethical standards and claiming otherwise is a lie.
The problem here is that she’s in essence making a plea of ‘not guilty’ and we don’t get to judge her (right, OJ?) until the process has run its course.
Do we have a category for ‘pending’??
A.L.
Mark,
The Washington Times article does not use a named source, nor provide a direct quote, unlike the one I provided above from Zebari. Making it more credible.
Now, if you want to say that Palin took this unsourced rumor as fact and is now going around claiming that it happened, then it is not perhaps technically a lie, since she believes the source. I don’t recall her qualifying her comments with “…as reported in the Washington Times” though, so she may have been implying deeper knowledge of the situation than she had.
So, based on the criteria for defining a lie, I’d say this doesn’t quite qualify.
Sarah Palin was not cleared legally, because no body with the power to convict her of anything spoke. Rather, this was one man’s report published – and that’s all. It was the work of a kangaroo court that announced a negative result a month before it began investigating.
Read Beldar (link) for the details.
It would be equally deceptive or confusing to say that a tribunal cleared her or didn’t clear her. The situation is an absurdity and a mess. Which is was supposed to be, since an “October surprise” was on the menu from the beginning.
What Sarah Palin said was politically convenient for herself. But not a good, concise explanation of what’s happening. At this point, there is no accurate bumper sticker “guilty or innocent” statement to be made. So to that extent, she’s being intentionally misleading in her own favor.
I can’t blame her much for coming out with the bumper sticker version – _I’m cleared!_ – given the way this smear has been set up, and what she _knows_ the mainstream media is likely to do with anything but an atomically simple story from her. Anything multi-parted, nuanced or long is going to be selectively edited, Dowdified, misquoted and distorted into an admission of profound guilt and unfitness for any office.
#190 from Armed Liberal:
bq. _”Do we have a category for ‘pending’??”_
One that would retain the correct nuance when filtered through mainstream media guys getting thrills up their legs from the nearness of the One, and churning with hatred and contempt at some bumpkin from a state far from New York daring to run for high office?
No.
There is only “I’m innocent!” or Dowdification fodder.
In a sufficiently intense environment of word-snatching, bias and manipulation of the record, you literally cannot tell the truth, because anything you say that can be seized on will be written down and sealed officially as the truth, despite what you meant or said. You can only go along with being railroaded, or not go along with it. And the mainstream media has been trying to railroad Sarah Palin from the get-go.
By the way, I think it’s right to fight the way Sarah is, and not to complain about this. There is no “poor me!” in politics for blood. There are only the pressures of the moment, and precedents, which must be remembered and used to the utmost extent when it’s payback time.
The way the pro-Obama coalition is handling this election is no misunderstanding, and it’s well beyond “coming together” after the election to put it right. There’s been eight long years of Bush Derangement Syndrome, and now this shark school frenzy of sexualized Palin hate. And, it’s worked, and it is working. The White House is being won this way. So these are the new rules, and there have to be fully proportionate consequences.
Tom Maguire at “Just One Minute”:http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/10/the-times-ha-sp.html has a somewhat different version of an early Obama on Ayers quote, via the NYT:
bq. At the debate, he [Obama] described Mr. Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,†but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.â€
And on “Obama and Zebari”:http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/10/reading-incompr.html
bq. As the Wash Times made clear (and I had explained at tedious length last September) there were *two* relevant contacts between Obama and Zebari – a June phone call while Zebari was in the States and the Baghdad meeting in July. Today’s Wash Times is not exactly impenetrable on this point…
As far as Palin lying about Troopergate, better first decide whether Beldar’s metanarrative (#192) or the talkingpointsmemo one has more veracity (based on track records, I’d go with Beldar).
bq. It sure sounds like one; I’ll be slightly cautious and say that the administrative agency that makes these decisions hasn’t ruled yet (and a sidebar about what a political circus their decision will be), but once they do then yeah, she’s been found to have violated state ethical standards and claiming otherwise is a lie.
bq. The problem here is that she’s in essence making a plea of ‘not guilty’ and we don’t get to judge her (right, OJ?) until the process has run its course.
I’d just like to take a moment to compare and contrast Armed Liberal’s response to the Ayers accusations and the Palin ethics problem.
W/r/t Ayers, AL seems to be completely up to speed. He knows which blogs – written by his friends – are saying what, he seems familiar with the history of who said what and when, and, even though he admits it’s all “completely unproven,” he’s still willing to say it’s all “a pretty plausible set of emerging facts that tie Obama closer and closer to Ayers and Dohrn”.
On the other hand, w/r/t Palin, he’s been utterly silent until people pointed him – repeatedly – to direct evidence that she lied, in public, about what the report said. He didn’t seem familiar with what had transpired, even though it’s been written about in several lefty and mainstream blogs, and he’s repeatedly fallen back into carefully qualified, lawyerly language about when Palin can and can’t be considered guilty, even though the immediate issue is whether what Palin is saying about the report is at all reconcilable with the actual _contents_ of the report.
But Armed Liberal definitely isn’t biased for or against one side or another, no sir! When one side is right and the other side is wrong, he’ll say so… eventually.
You know, when Sarah Palin’s lie stops being “pending” and becomes an actual lie.
Whenever that will be.
Throwing in my two cents worth here I’d suggest that everyone read (or re-read, as the case may be) the PDF on the “Commission’s” report. The ethics law cited that Palin is supposed to have violated is so vague and over-broad that it would be rejected out of hand in the Federal courts for those reasons–which is why one can be sure this deal will never, ever, no how, no way, unh-unh, make it to the front steps of _any_ court-house, let alone inside.
Furthermore, a reading of the law leaves the distinct impression that it was written to take into account _financial_ interests *ONLY* and NOT personal/legal/administrative relationships among legally constituted administrative officers in the executive command branch. (I would _love_ to read the legislative history behind the purpose of said ethics law.)
Amac #156 says:
bq. I’ll point out that I’m on record as reluctantly pro-choice, that is to say, on the pro-choice side of that Great Divide.
And in case it wasn’t clear, I’m also reluctantly pro-choice; but I think that fetus viability, if valid (as declared by the Supremes), is a “living criterion”, so to speak, and should trump any state precedents about what is or isn’t OK to abort. Obama didn’t, and I think that is a bad thing.
In the long run, that as what some SF writers have called “creche” technology matures, fewer and fewer abortions will be ones the state has no compelling interest regarding. And I think that might be a good thing.
bq. The problem here is that she’s in essence making a plea of ‘not guilty’ and we don’t get to judge her (right, OJ?) until the process has run its course.
I don’t this this interpretation applies…she is making specific reference to “the report”, not the broader, potentially pending case for her ethical lapse.
Again from Patterico, here (link) is what Sarah Palin is up against in mainstream media filtering. The transcript of her remarks is not what she said, and the difference misrepresents her as an idiot.
In a media environment like this, your only options are to cooperate with being railroaded or not cooperate.
It’s right that she’s chosen the path of resistance.
Nevertheless, in other circumstances it world be wrong for her to say what she said. The aim of the report was _not_ to exonerate her, rather it was to smear her, in contradiction to the facts in the report itself.
Its almost like Obama is the one running for _president._
David, I nominate you and Patterico for the Comic Relief award on this thread.
This time, Patterico seems to be upset because the LA Times reproduced what he is claiming to be (but provides no justification for; the link does not take you directly to the source) an inaccurate transcript of an interview between Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity.
1) The transcript was provided by Fox. But Patterico writes a letter to the Times, alleging …
bq. Had reporter Peter Nicholas bothered to watch the segment,
…he WOULD have caught these discrepancies.
Did he also write to Fox?
2) The alleged inaccuracies seem trivial, and can easily be chalked up to difficulties in understanding clearly what was said. This is certainly very common.
3) The allegation that the reporter “dismissed” Palin’s claims because of these supposed inacurracies is ludicrous, since they do not substantially alter the factual content of her comments (i.e., the factual inaccuracies…lies…in her comments).
If anything, this is an embarrassingly naked display of partisan blindness and misdirected righteous fury…which explains, of course, why David Blue seems to be so taken by it.
Keep it up, guys!
Look, the zebari issue, is not only dead, it’s “undead”:http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2008/10/taheri-revisite.html … living but without a single grain of life:
bq. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama did not urge Iraqi officials to delay a decision on a security agreement with the United States, Iraq’s foreign minister told CNN on Sunday.
bq. The statement by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari refutes a recent published report and a statement by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that Obama tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States to score political points.
bq. Obama “never, ever discouraged us not to sign the agreement,” “Zebari said”:http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/12/obama-did-not-ask-to-delay-security-agreement-iraqi-fm-says/. “I think this was misrepresented, and I have clarified this case in a number of interviews back in the United States recently.”
So you now have two choices, either Palin lied or she basically started talking about things in which she has absolutely no knowledge. Neither conclusion veers far from my understanding of Palin.
Alchemist, would you like me to format these paragraphs correctly and remove these follow-up comments?
Format, sure. Sorry, just got my coffee (new rule: no posting before coffee). Other than being snarky, I don’t see the follow-ups as being inaccurate.
Vista #201 —
Fox News used half of the Palin quote that the LA Times mangled in a story of their own, “After Tame Debate, McCain Camp Renews Criticism of Obama’s Personal Ties.”:http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/08/tame-debate-mccain-camp-renews-criticism-obamas-personal-ties/# —
bq. Sarah Palin, in interviews with FOX News, said Obama’s relationship with Ayers raises legitimate questions.
bq. “We need to question his judgment and not only those atrocious activities that Bill Ayers was involved in, but the questions need to be asked, I believe — When did Barack Obama know of his activities? We’ve heard so many conflicting stories,” she said in an interview with FOX News’ Sean Hannity.
While that’s a 3-for-3 match with what Patterico claimed, I don’t think the LA Times should issue a correction. Disagreeing with Fox isn’t just good business, it’s the ethical thing to do.
Chris, you’re making me giggle. Let me retort: The Ayers stuff has been in the media for months. The Palin responses to the report have been in the media for – days. While I do spend far too much time online reading this stuff, the sad reality is that I’m usually a week or so behind.
I know, I know, I’m failing in my obligations as a blogger not to be obsessively reading every byte of new data that comes along in real time. And that makes me sad, really.
But here’s a thought as a sidebar. It’s an old sales tool; when someone says “yes” shut up. I’ve endorsed Obama; it’s damn unlikely that I’m going to morph into Oliver Willis and spend all my blog time basing McCain and telling lies about the world.
So deal with it.
A.L.
A straight question to whoever’s still hanging around in this thread: how do you feel about this election?
“A lie from McCain?”:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0810/13/sitroom.02.html
bq. BASH: Now, whether or not, since I know you’ve heard this during your rallies, since you have been talking about Ayers — and your running mate has, also — we’ve heard people in the crowd screaming things like “Terrorist!,” “Traitor!,” when you talked about Senator Obama — and worse.
bq. MCCAIN: I’ve heard the same thing.
bq. BASH: When you hear that do you (INAUDIBLE).
bq. MCCAIN: I’ve heard the same thing at…
bq. MCCAIN: I’ve heard the same thing, unfortunately, at Senator Obama’s rallies being said about me. There’s always a fridge element that’s in politics in America. The overwhelming majority of the people that come to my rallies are good and decent and patriotic Americans. And if they’re worried about this country’s future, that’s correct.
Really?
Whats the lie?
_There’s always a fridge element that’s in politics in America._
This element has always left me cold.
Mark B., I am guessing the lie here is that McCain has never heard himself called a terrorist or traitor at Obama rallies. Not saying he hasn’t, just that that is the perceived lie.
You find me an Obama rally without an ‘investigate 9/11’ sign in the crowd and i’ll buy you lunch. Being implicated in killing 3000 Americans takes traitor to a whole new level.
Just for kicks, this took me 2 minutes to dig up:
“truther 1”:http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dobama%2Brally%2B9%252F11%26js%3D1%26ei%3Dutf-8%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501%26xargs%3D0%26pstart%3D1%26b%3D21%26ni%3D20&w=800&h=536&imgurl=www.jonesreport.com%2Fimages%2F230207_obama_911sign.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jonesreport.com%2Farticles%2F230207_obama_911sign.html&size=360.8kB&name=230207_obama_911sign.jpg&p=obama+rally+9%2F11&type=JPG&oid=590220984412402c&no=21&tt=70&sigr=11t6brimo&sigi=11jvs2v6n&sigb=13o4c42h5
“truther 2”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilymills/2262559309/
“truther 3”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/allisonjennings/2263070072/
“truther 4”:http://www.jonesreport.com/images/230207_obama_point.jpg
“this”:http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dobama%2Brally%2Bmccain%2Bsign%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501%26ei%3Dutf-8%26js%3D1%26x%3Dwrt&w=500&h=375&imgurl=static.flickr.com%2F3123%2F2550465140_a0927edcdb.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fjerkytourniquet%2F2550465140%2F&size=105.2kB&name=Anti+McCain+sign&p=obama+rally+mccain+sign&type=JPG&oid=72db824b621a60a4&fusr=jerkytourniquet&tit=Anti+McCain+sign&hurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fjerkytourniquet%2F&no=2&tt=9&sigr=11o6g64vv&sigi=11goijold&sigb=137lr32f9&sigh=11d688f5k
Here’s a lie, and about Ayers, too. The semi-official right-wing investigator on Ayers writes today
That leaves the impression of two guys, Obama and Ayers, in neighboring offices, running the whole show, doesn’t it? Total BS. Ayers didn’t even hold an executive position with the CAC school program, nor did he sit on its governing board after the first year, when he was an ex officio member. The governing board was full of Republicans and Chicago businessmen. (The CAC program was, at the time, seen as a partnership of business and the failed public school system.) There is no sense of “jointly led” that can make Kurtz’s statement accurate.
A Google search shows that Kurtz’s “jointly led” is now metastasizing through the right-wing propaganda machine.
I share a certain bewilderment with Chris. This is the sort of lie that leaves A.L. with the impression that the Obama/Ayers relationship is much deeper than previously acknowledged. The true version just doesn’t have enough salience to improve McCain’s electoral prospects. But it’s just made up crap. For some reason, whatever comes out of Kurtz’s mouth or Palin’s mouth (or, for many right-wingers, anti-Semitic lunatic Andy Martin’s mouth) is granted a presumption of validity until proven otherwise. Liberal sources? Not so much.
Andrew, Kurtz reviewed all the notes from the Challenge (despite Obama allies attempting to stop him and then Obama campaigns attempt to silence him). His “findings”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html do not reflect what you are claiming:
_”The CAC’s basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda_
…
_”The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC’s first year. He also served on the board’s governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative._
_The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its “operational role” at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC’s own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board’s reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers’s formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.”_
Mark B., do you really think calls to investigate 9/11 are the equivalent of calling McCain a terrorist or traitor, or calls for him to killed? One is quite personal and is driven by hatred towards a particular person. There’s another crucial difference: Obama is not doing anything to promote calls for an investigation of 9/11, while McCain’s campaign _is_ saying that McCain pals around with terrorists and _is_ responsible for helping to spread a particular view of him. Obama is doing nothing to spread the particular view of 9/11 that these people espouse. Those aren’t anti-McCain views and they are not connected in any way to his candidacy or his campaign or any of the tactics employed by either.
I do believe that it is silly to say McCain is lying here. It’s just obvious campaign spin, trying to promote the idea that both sides are doing it in order to deflect responsibility.
Mark B;
Please re-read McCain’s comment. Your reply addresses a completely different point.
The question is whether McCain has, actually, heard people at Obama rally’s yell “Traitor” or “Terrorist” when McCain’s name comes up.
I’ve never heard of this, have you? And I am strongly doubting McCain has, either.
Making this a potential lie. And a silly one at that, but nevertheless…perhaps he just can’t help himself anymore.
bq. The Virginia Beach Fire Marshal’s office estimated the size of the crowd to be 12,000. A McCain campaign spokeswoman claimed the crowd size was 25,000, but the Convention Center’s capacity is only 16,000.
“Is the entire campaign composed of pathological liars?”:http://www.wvec.com/news/topstories/stories/wvec_top_101308_mccain_rally.10ac0eb1e.html
bq. I’ve heard … at … being said about me.
1) I’m betting G_Tarhune will say that McCain is far too busy to have ever attended any of Obama’s rallies. So this is damning. As is any loose, figurative speech — by a Repug. 🙂
We must always examine politicians’ speech and crucify them if what they say is not literally true? OK, counterexample:
Obama’s “I don’t want them punished with a baby” [emphasis his] — as a counterexample — simply willfully excludes the possibility of adoption. Did Obama really not know his daughters could give up any such baby for adoption, and thus not be punished by “a baby”? Maybe so. Perhaps it’s unthinkable to him. It’s not classy enough. No daughter of his, etc.
Perhaps what he really meant is that he doesn’t want his daughters punished with nine months of the mortification, pain and risk of pregnancy followed by the pain and risk of giving birth followed by the inconvenience, shame and sorrow of giving up the child to a stranger.
But that’s not what he said, now, is it? So that’s a lie, right?
2) Or perhaps G_Tarhune has another take on this. I’ll stop for now.
_”Mark B., do you really think calls to investigate 9/11 are the equivalent of calling McCain a terrorist or traitor, or calls for him to killed?”_
mark, my point is it took me 30 seconds to find those signs at Obama rallies. Obviously there is no audio equivalent, but is it really a stretch of the imagination that these extremist groups like Code Pink that have for years been holding and showing up at rallies with the worst kind of charges of war crimes and conspiracy against republicans are screaming the same things at Obama rallies?
I think it defies credulity to believe the hard core professional protestors that seem to show up _everywhere_, be they anti-war, pro-abortion, anti-immigration reform, or truther arent present at Obama rallies saying the nasty things they always say. And certainly including McCain. Do you really want me to spend time tracking down a sign that reads McCain is a Traitor? How hard could that possibly be?
I think the problem is that the hardcore left has been screaming Traitor and War Criminal at max volume for so long, most of us just drown it out. But, come on, its out there. And it dwarfs the kind of nonsense the pundits are getting their panties in a bunch about at McCain rallies.
bq. Making this a potential lie. And a silly one at that, but nevertheless…perhaps he just can’t help himself anymore.
Of course he can’t. He’s a politician playing the game at the Presidential level. Anyone not at least a AA-game bullshitter does not get put on the field.
_”The question is whether McCain has, actually, heard people at Obama rally’s yell “Traitor” or “Terrorist” when McCain’s name comes up.”_
_”I’ve never heard of this, have you? And I am strongly doubting McCain has, either.”_
Ah. I’ve never heard Obama called a traitor at a rally. Have you? If not, you’re the liar.
Oh, direct, personal evidence isnt the threshold here?
Do you really think McCain hasnt been called a traitor at an Obama rally? Have you seen a Code Pink demonstration before? I’d say its almost certain McCain has at least seen a sign calling him a traitor, war criminal, profiteer, anythign you can think of. So i think the idea that _de facto_ McCain is a traitor because YOU cant prove he heard something is, well, dumb.
Nortius M,
No, I will not say that. Senator McCain may have come to this knowledge that he is claiming indirectly, of course.
I am doubting that he did, however.
Mark B,
However likely or probable you judge this to be, unless it actually happened, McCain lied about it.
Folks, the talk here is getting looser and looser.
Mark B was in such a hurry he left in obvious misspeech: traitor for liar.
220 posts, too.
I’m gonna do some chores and when I come back I’m closing the thread. Last licks? Smoke ’em if you got ’em, but try to bring it home some, won’t ya? Though this thread stopped being about why the “Ayers Argument” is a nonwinner a loooooong time ago.
–Marshal Nortius “Big Tuna” Maximus
PS to TOC: I really appreciated your reminiscence about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Thanks. No kidding.
Suppose I said that I heard Obama called a “N-gg-r” at a McCain rally? Suppose Obama said this?
Would it be a lie if I didn’t personally hear it or have credible evidence that it did? I’d be willing to put money on this utterance occurring frequently at such events…
But that doesn’t make the claim true. A claim of this nature, made by McCain to refute the idea that his supporters are uniquely rabid in their hatred of the opposition, requires proof. Otherwise, it is hearsay or conjecture, and should be presented as such:
“I’m certain they call me a “traitor” at Obama rallies…”
Not
“I’ve heard the same thing”….three times.
G_Tarhune, set me straight here, is your definition for a lie “that which _you_ don’t personally know to be a fact?”. Because thats what its sounding like from here.
Mark B., I really think you are ignoring the crucial distinction here. Obama’s campaign is not encouraging Code Pink and others to depict McCain in a certain way. These groups would shout their slogans with or without Obama’s candidacy and, for that matter, with or without McCain’s. They exist completely independently of any election or any candidate.
On the other hand, the McCain supporters who are denouncing Obama as a terrorist and a traitor (some few of whom are asking for his death) are encouraged by McCain’s campaign to view Obama in a particular way. This is a very specific single-person-targeted attack. It’s mean, it’s vicious and it’s low. McCain is clearly ashamed of them and yet he can’t serve his own interest and at the same time try to cool (that fridge element again) their ardor. (He seems a very troubled and conflicted man these days.) To try to equate the two groups is fine. But to try to equate the relationship between them and the two candidates is disingenuous, to say the least. I do believe that McCain’s campaign is responsible for spreading an irrational fear and hatred of Obama and, should something happen, will bear some moral responsibility for “it.”
_”Suppose I said that I heard Obama called a “N-gg-r” at a McCain rally? Suppose Obama said this?”_
Bad analogy. Only works if Republican activists had a long, stories, _constant_ history of that kind of talk.
Democratic Activists do. What McCain is claiming isn’t remotely out of character for Democratic Activists. Extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. The claim that democratic activists would call McCain a traitor is hardly extraordinary. In fact the claim that they _havent_ ever done that or that McCain cant possibly have heard that is FAR more extraordinary, given the recent history of leftist activism. Which is easily documented with rudimentary searches.
_”Obama’s campaign is not encouraging Code Pink and others to depict McCain in a certain way.”_
mark, you’re taking the same unfounded leap the pundits are. McCain has decried that kind of talk, refused to use the Rev Wright contraversy.
I could use the same logic to say that Obama’s anti-war plank is encouraging anti-war protestors in their rhetoric. A candidate is not responsible if extremists happen to find elements of their campaign reinforcing or welcome.
Mark B, how many other people did what Ayers did? That is, how many other people made presentations at meetings chaired by Obama? How many other people sat on the board and on the committees? The answer is in double digits.
“Jointly led” implies a completely false exclusion here for the obvious purpose of intensifying and exaggerating the connection between Obama and Ayers. Kurtz is (maliciously) attributing to Ayers alone work that was done by a group of people, sometimes including Ayers.
[Can someone close my bold tag in the obvious place after BS?]
[ Done — M.F. ]
_”Mark B, how many other people did what Ayers did? _”
Found that CAC and charter its tenents? None.
Mark B.
_A candidate is not responsible if extremists happen to find elements of their campaign reinforcing or welcome._
I completely agree. I think the exception here, however, is that Palin and others within the McCain campaign are both raising and playing on fears & hatred by connecting Obama to terrorism (& sometimes emphasizing his middle name to sharpen the point). I believe that in so doing they are acting outside acceptable norms and are deliberately fostering hatred in an attempt to win votes.
McCain may decry such activity, as you say (& I have heard him denounce it), for McCain is an honorable man; yet Palin continues to fan the flames.
Mark B, your last comment is garbled, looks like you meant “founded CAC” and chartered its “??”. Can you clarify what you mean?
#225: I think McCain has tried to cool the ardor of his wackier supporters, sincerely and publicly, and tell them that he respects his opponent as an honorable man.
Googling McCain decent man disagreements boo .
I found “this”:http://tinyurl.com/4y4qfj high up from Boston.com.
Folks, I’ve intimated that this thread is getting thin. Care to actually post some more substance more nearly on-topic? I give you until I finish this load of laundry, and then I’m closing the thread.
Thanks to all who contributed,
Nort
[Edits]
_”I think the exception here, however, is that Palin and others within the McCain campaign are both raising and playing on fears & hatred by connecting Obama to terrorism”_
I disagree. Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist. The MSM refuses to involve itself in any kind of exploration of the subject. How else can McCain/Palin make this an issue? Are we to dumb down the term terrorist in favor of a man who planned to bomb an ROTC dance just in case the lowest common denominator equates Obama with Osama? Do you have a more appropriate term McCain can use to describe Bill Ayers and his history, and why this she be of concern to voters?
Mark B., In #233 you are doing the very thing I find so appalling that Palin is doing. It is absurd to link Obama to terrorism because Obama (along with hundreds of respectable others) volunteered his time to work on education issues with (among hundreds of others) a guy who was once (but has not been for over 30 years) a part of the Weather underground long before Obama met him. Obama has denounced Ayers weather activities. He took no part in them. He has never endorsed or excuse or supported them. This is a crazy standard that we would never apply to anyone else. It’s far too low to continue to comment on. This is Oakland. There is no there there.
And btw, the MSM has not refused to involve itself in this. Mostly the MSM have come to a different conclusion than you want them to come to. McCain/Palin don’t need to make this an issue. They can do the honorable thing and drop it. It makes them look pathetic to most people, I’d wager, and is one of the reasons, among others, that they continue to lose ground in the polls. The viciousness shows through and it’s not particularly attractive or appealing. I, for one, although I would never vote for him, used to respect McCain. Not that he would care, but he’s losing that respect from me as long as he continues to allow Palin to pursue this pathetic line of attack.
Nortius,
_think McCain has tried to cool the ardor of his wackier supporters_
I agree. My point was, however, that as he does so, his running mate re-heats it.
Here’s to fresh laundry.
mark
Mark,
Sarah Palin is a semi-supporter of a party that wants to SECEDE from the United States!!
SECESSION!!
Her husband was IN that party – the Alaska Independence Party – and she gives these loving taped speeches TO that party, that they play at their convention!
Also – if you want to talk about associations – you have to go no further than Gordon Liddy – who McCain SOUGHT OUT for an endorsement, as well, as Hagee.
OK, this thread has officially -jumped the shark- burned out. I’m pulling the plug. Too much heat, not enough light, good night.