McCain lets Yonkers Councilman blast Obama
The McCain-Palin campaign today turned to Yonkers City Councilman and Republican candidate for the state Senate’s 35th District, John Murtagh, to jab Barack Obama on his connection to one-time Weather Underground radical William Ayers. The campaign issued the following press release:
STATEMENT FROM JOHN M. MURTAGH ON BARACK OBAMA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH WILLIAM AYERS
ARLINGTON, VA—Today, John M. Murtagh made the following statement on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers:
“When I was 9 years-old the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama’s friend William Ayers, firebombed my house. Barack Obama has dismissed concerns about his relationship with Ayers by noting that he was only a child when Ayers was planting bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. But Ayers has never apologized for his crimes, he has reveled in them, expressing regret only for the fact that he didn’t do more.
“While Barack Obama once downplayed his relationship with Ayers, today his campaign took that deceit one step further. Barack Obama now denies he was even aware of his friend’s violent past when, in 1995, Ayers hosted a party launching Obama’s political career. Given Ayers’ celebrity status among the left, it’s difficult to believe. The question remains: what did Obama know, and when did he know it? When did Obama learn the truth about his friend? Barack Obama helped Ayers promote his book in 1997, served on charitable boards with him through 2002, and regularly exchanged emails and phone calls with him through 2005. At what point did Barack Obama discover that his friend was an unrepentant terrorist? And if he is so repulsed by the acts of terror committed by William Ayers, why did the relationship continue? Any honest accounting by Barack Obama will necessarily cast further doubt on his judgment and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.
“Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets—but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.”
In February 1970 John Murtagh’s father was a New York State Supreme Court justice presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at their home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. A few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. In late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
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This piece is laughable.
Not for voters in the battleground states its not!
It this a joke, McCain did not turn to Murtagh? I guess next we will have Obama turning to Cousins for words of wisdom. Murtagh looks foolish coming out with this garbage.
Wrong, “Joke.” And you are a joker, alright. Murtagh wrote an op-ed on this subject months ago in the NY Daily News.
It later appeared in the City Journal, which can be seen on Goggle, and today the story is told in Maggie Gallagher’s opinion column in wwww.nypost.com. It is worth reading for a number of reasons.
“Joke” calls Murtagh’s story garbage. Would it be “garbage” if the Weather Underground tried to blow up your house with you and your family inside? Same goes for that “SilentMajority” poster. No? Didn’t think so.
A word about CNN, which is definitely not pro-Republican. Where the NY Times recently whitewashed Obama’s ties to Ayers, CNN has not. Here’s a quote from a new CNN story:
“The relationship between Ayers and Obama went deeper, ran longer, and was more political than Obama—and his surrogates—have revealed, documents and interviews show.” That is a direct quote from the new CNN report.
As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.” And as he might have said, “Never trust the NY Times.”
I think it’s worth going to http://www.cnn.com to check out their report on Obama and Ayers. Or do it through Google.
And there even is a lot more than that which is still to be told about the Obama-Ayers connections.
Percy Sutton and Khalid al-Mansour are one part of it. It also is worthwhile to remember that Sutton was at one time the lawyer for Malcolm X.
Is the Consultant now investigating Khalid al-Mansour, the Havard connection, the Columbia U. connection, and the Black Panther and Nation of Islam connections?
There WAS an alliance between the Panthers and the Weather Underground, as shown by the bombing of the Murtagh home and the messages left there.
BTW, as recently as Nov. 2006, William Ayers was in Venezuela, hanging around with Fidel Castro’s buddy Hugo Chavez.
Trying to blow up anyone’s house is not a joke, obviously. Attempting to smear Obama by linking him with Ayers is a joke, particularly so coming from a Yonkers politician running for a seat in a state legislature. This is the kind of weak attack that would only play for the Republican base. If it played well with independents at all, it would be coming out of McCain’s mouth, not some unknown like Murtagh.
Actually the fact that Obama is down-playing when he met Ayers, how well he knew Ayers, when he found out about Ayers and the Weather Underground activities, and how big a role Ayers has played in his life does matter. Obama didn’t break any laws by being friends with Ayers-but lets bring the relationship out into the sunlight and let the voters decide.
...and which Presidential candidate is touting his endorsement with Leonore Annenberg, who sat on a school reform board with William Ayers?
Oh wait, it’s John McCain. Never mind…
Well, sunlight is sunlight – bring everything into it.
as a consultant involved for 35 years in local and national
politics I use two gauges..my gut and polling…sarah palin
is a drag on the ticket..confirmed by the washington post
poll as well as others..you know that was my original reaction…she is wearing thin on the swing voters McCain
needs to win…he was pursuaded to choose a “game changer”
his advisors.apparently were insulated from the state of
the economy…and so they chose a person who could
electrify the base rather than a person who could
calm the nation
Jiminy,
Thank you for the CNN & NY Post pieces. Do you know how we got to Palin in this discussion? I thought it was about Obama/Ayers. Yeah, Murtagh is a big piece of it-but the Consultant is bringing back Palin into the discussion. Still thinkin that someone is protesting too much ;o)
Palin is the issue..she is the drag on the ticket
you can look past it if you want..but it won’t
do McCain anygood..you simply are ignoring the obvious
and the polling data..she is a dud..and the majority
that will determine the outcome of this election will
not take the chance that she could be the president
anyone else would have been fine
Quoting John Freehery: “Palin is not the issue of this campaign and shouldn’t be. Everybody knows that John McCain is ready to lead. Is Barack Obama? Let’s get the campaign focused on that question.”
Vice-presidents throughout past annuls have done nothing but pick their noses and attend state funerals. Cheney, unfortunately, was the first exception to that rule. Palin will not interfere with McCain, who has a history of not suffering uninvited advice, or she’ll be ushered out of the oval office and condemned to the Siberia of Washington cocktail parties like every other VP throughout recorded history. Sorry to say this to Palin fans, but it is what it is, and it is far from unusual,
But it begs the question is if Palin feels it is valid to question Obama about his association with Ayers (The two worked on education reforms in Chicago, that much is obvious so why does more need to be said? Ayers is repentant of what he did, his “we should have done more” was in regards to stopping the Vietnam War, not more bombings, anyone who read his book or saw the documentary would know that.) then shouldn’t Palin’s radical associations also be questioned?
Palin regularly addresses and attends the AIP conferences which is a SECESSIONIST organization. It is ANTI-American and is grossly against the US. Yet she wants to bring up a 70’s radical who has not done anything but work for education reform in Illinois yet she blatantly ignores her own Anti American past.
This is sick.
Why don’t you ask the Consultant to point out whats wrong with the guy who worked with Hannity on that anti Obama segment and how radical that guy is…
Pathetic. If this is the best the GOP has got along with all that condescending winking and shout outs from Palin in the debate then they are so far removed from reality it is sick…
Obama’s connection to Ayers and Wright didn’t hurt him in the primaries and it is going to be a loser for McCain. the guy can’t win this election especially with Palin on the ticket. The fact you guys want McCain to employ a losing strategy in response to his horrible poll numbers just confirms that the GOP is done for.
Ayers has done nothing but “work for education reform in Illinois?” One quickly tires of politically minded hacks who prefer thugs to statesmen and unabashedly promote deviant and reckless opinion under the guise of social “progress.” Ayers is nothing more than he’s ever been – a man who believes that he and his ilk can intimidate and impose their dangerous, sophomoric opinions on others at the point of a gun. Reminds me of an old Latin American cartoon portraying two disheveled, bearded, weapon-laden cretins in the hills of their “nation” decrying the fact that fewer and fewer people were showing up for “elections.”
SR your analysis is basically correct…but the seminal
flaw in the McCain strategy dates back to the decision
that enrgizing the base was more important than attracting
more than the base to support him..this was a charlie black
Karl Rove call which even McCain probably bristles against
since he wanted to put his friend Joe Lieberman on the ticket or possibly TOm RIdge..both of whom were vetoed
by rush limbaugh who as recently as two days ago said
if you were a moderate you had no backbone and were just
as bad as a liberal..in other words unless you are a conservative ideologue willing to risk everything for
conservative principles then you are wishy washy..well
rush most people in the nation are not ideologues they
are far from it..the biggest growing party is no party
because people want to choose the best ideas from
wherever they come…so back to the strategy Had MCcain
called his own shots and put either of the above
two on the ticket or a Mitt Romney, when the financial
crisis broke the Republicans would not have had to defend
the notion that sarah palin was unacceptable as a successor
and they could have focused on the economy from the get
go..this was the penultimate error in the McCain
campaign’s choice of a running mate…voters
understand they are taking a chance with Obama..they understand however that if McCain does not survive his
first term they will be taking an even bigger chance
with Palin because she will be under the complete control
of the neocons who are just itching to make her a star
GOP Girl…The Consultant is really boring with his constant attacks on Palin. He is obsesesed with her. And that says more about him than it does about Palin. It’s so bad that the topic could be about the NFL and the Consultant would try to bring Palin into it.
Ed…You’re right about Ayers, and as I mentioned above, he was cavorting around Venezuela with Hugo Chavez as recently as November 2006.
If Ayers was an exception in Obama’s life, it would be different. It could be viewed as an aberration. But that is not the case. Ayers is one part of a distinct pattern of Obama’s numerous ties to radicals. It is a pattern.
Some of the press is getting closer to the bottom line about all this, but they aren’t there yet.
Thank you Jiminy Cricket and GOP girl. I have already had it out with the consultant regarding Palin. He is clearly a misogynist. If McCain put either Romney or Lieberman on the ticket, the GOP would have been blasted as a ticket of two old white men against change (really racially tinged).
And the Dems would have brought out ammo on Leiberman stating his flip flopping against his party, and picking apart Romney’s votes.
I think McCain made a very good choice and a direct hit against the Dems ‘change’ theme. And I think Palin has a good record and good record of relating to the people, not an elitist air of what they feel is best for the people.
That aside, the question of Murtagh’s statements against the Weathermen and Ayers, who directly attacked his family is 100 percent warranted and on target. The Dems are afraid of this because it is too close to the core and cannot be disputed when coming from a VICTIM. Get it. Murtagh and his family were VICTIMS. Akin to a VICTIM’s IMPACT STATEMENT, and tying in AYERS to the Weathermen.
And as said prior in these postings, Ayers continues to collude with radicals from other countries, and Obama has had more ties to him, including funding for his early Community Organization and campaigns.
Let’s also remember his community organizing included forcing banks to make subprime loans to those without credible sources of income and/or high risk loans due to minority or affirmative action pressure.
Shades of Jesse Jackson. (where is he lately by the way?)It’s all in the record, but you have to find it piecemeal because the Times and CNN won’t publish it coherently to make the connections.
The consultant is well aware of this, but wants to go off on a tangent and make Palin the issue. Connections to extemists and terriorists in our country to the candidate for President, and his experience are more important than the feelings the consultant has for the GOP VP candidate.
hey I am not making palin the issue…the ayers attack
is having no traction whatever…people are only concerned
with the economy and their own financial situation
from my point of view the argument that Obama is “connected”
to a terrorist” is a bit of a stretch..Ayers is involved
in chicago politics..so are a lot of people…Obama
hasn’t condoned what ayers did..should Obama not participate
in school projects funded by a right wing conservative
named annanberg simply because ayres is involved as well
maybe maybe not..but McCain has opened the wrong door
and the state by state polls are proving that his
strategy is not working…the conservative base
had no where to go…they had to vote for mccain
particularly in light of the ayres connection..but
mccain had to get votes from the middle…so far
he has not been able to accomplish that…
murtagh and the state gop spent over 300k on his campaign and have continued to slide down in the polls, there has been zero traction on murtaghs campaign, being down by 30 points you become very desperate..
it is always extremely difficult to unseat an incumbant
state legislator…this year with a presidential makes
it even tougher…I am betting that race will be alot
closer than 30 points
If the consultant has a problem, for good or for bad, it is that he has been so long a consultant that he can’t help himself from constantly advising candidates real and imagined on how to pretty-up deficiencies, bury real and valid queries and accusations from the other side, and get his candidate elected. That he stands a little right of center personally, makes him professionally anathema to candidates from the left, so he advises Republicans. When we want answers from these candidates on things like the Ayers relationship, for instance, or a mysterious absence of info on Obama’s earlier years, beliefs, and associations, consultant’s counterparts on the left are busy doing what the consultant does for his clients – teach them how to obfuscate, duck, and weave, and go on the offensive. It’s a career. When he is not involved professionally with an election, he cannot help but to play cerebral word-golf with the issues. In effect, his listeners and readers get a professional poll-watcher’s view, not a pristine evaluation of the issues at hand. Not necessarily bad in esse, but important to remember in understanding from where he comes.
In his post at 11:43, The Consultant brings to life that old saying, “My mind is made up, so don’t confuse me with any facts.”
For about the fifth time, Obama has a PATTERN of radical associations. Right up till the present. A PATTERN.
For the Consultant to refuse to get that, or look into it, shows again that he can’t see the forest for the trees. Instead, it’s “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah”—and more Sarah.
For someone who claims to be a Republican, the Consultant spends all his time either knocking the McCain ticket or making excuses for Obama. Which makes the Consultant not credible as a Republican.
It also suggests he has another agenda. What that other agenda is, I’m not yet exactly sure of, although I do have a few ideas about that. But I do think he has another agenda —and it may be a personal one for him.
As usual Jiminy posting with massive Partisan spin on everything. Here is what CNN said about Palin’s accusations.
“There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now “palling around,” or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.”
The extent of Obama’s relationship with Ayers came up during the Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year, and Obama explained it by saying, “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood … the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago — when I was 8 years old — somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.”
Obama’s Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools’ Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked.
CNN’s review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN that after meeting Obama through the Annenberg project, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him that same year when then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor. LaBolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.
Michelle Obama brushed off the latest round of attacks in an interview with CNN’s Larry King on Wednesday.
“I don’t know anyone in Chicago who’s heavily involved in education policy who doesn’t know Bill Ayers. But, again, I go back to the point that the American people aren’t asking these questions,” she said.
This is entirely a guilt by association argument. It is pointless. I have met Bill Ayers 3 times. Wow I am a terrorist. I also know the children of the Rosenbergs! OH MY!!!! I hate this land!
Michelle Obama worked for several years at the same law firm where Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dorhn worked. This is the same law firm where Michelle later met Obama.
Dorhn, also a founding member of the Weather Underground, took credit for several of the group’s bombings.
Dohrn was widely criticized for a comment she made about the Charles Manson led Tate-LaBianca murders in a speech during the December 1969 “War Council” meeting organized by the Weathermen and attended by about 400 people in Flint, Michigan. Dorhn said, “Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in their bellies. Wild!”
What Jiminy and the remainder of the perpetually campaigning GOP folks are missing is that The Consultant is bang on with his assessment of McCain.
There are approximately 72 million registered Democrats. Approximately 50 million registered Republicans. Approximately 42 million registered Independents or No Party affiliates.
This means that for any Republican to win a national election they need to secure their Republican voters AND most of the Independent crowd OR swing enough Democrats to make a difference.
The problem for McCain is that even after winning the Primaries he still did not have a strong majority of his own Republican voters which meant he would have had no chance to win. Enter Sarah Palin. Palin was brought in to help deliver the large majority of registered Republicans. The problem is she is so far Right that she does little to bring many Independents and Democrats around.
Thats the issue. Palin only secured the votes McCain should have had to begin with. So now he is still in the hole and with the economy in the tank he is taking a hit.
These “radical association” claims are a bogus smokescren designed to shift focus away from his plummeting poll numbers, away from the inadequate Sarah Palin and her abysmal answers to standards questions, and the failing economy. But whats worse about them is that they are completely hypocritical. Any sound logical person knows it is virtually impossible to be involved in State or national politics without having met with, been connected to, received money from, or even be acquainted with a radical extremist of some type.
McCain and Palin both have their share of radical associations as well as Obama and they have yet to explain how Obama’s are any worse than their own. Obama’s wa a radical in the early 70’s. McCain’s was a radical in the 80’s. Palin’s is a radical in 90’s and still is today.
So whats worse? An unreasonable anti-Vietnam War radical from the 70’s or a 2008 anti-American secessionist organization with ties to Al Qaeda?
I have no personal agenda although i do find it interesting
that whenever a independent point of view is expressed rather than dealing with the ideas the counter is always
that the person expressing the view “has a financial interest”...I was a McCain supporter until he put Palin
on the ticket..period…doesn;t mean I am voting democratic
I just won’t drink the Kool aid
That’s right, Karen. It all goes deeper than they will admit so far—and on several fronts.
As for SR, who claims to be one of Nader’s Raiders, you have to be kidding. Larry King, softball pitcher? Larry King the Marshmallow Man? Come on.
Also SR…I posted a link to the CNN site, and I also posted THE punch line to CNN’s story. Which is: “The relationship between Ayers and Obama went deeper, ran longer, and was more political than Obama—and his surrogates—have revealed, documents and interviews show.”
Obama has been trying to hide that, and more.
As for the Consultant, he has been so busy criticizing Palin and making excuses for Obama that he didn’t get the urge to comment about the fact that the Dems are now playing the race card big-time. James Carville and David Gergen did it just recently.
Also, in an October 7 story in the NY Observer, Dem pols Bill Perkins, Gregory Meeks, Ed Towns, Yvette Clark, and Jesse Jackson, Jr. did the same thing. http://www.observer.com.
Consultant….I didn’t suggest you had a financial motive or interest. But you just did.
Jiminy,
Do you have any credibility yourself?
I never claimed to be one of Nader’s Raiders. In fact all I did was mention that I MIGHT vote for Nader because of the failure of the GOP and Obama offering nothing really better. You have continuously morphed that comment to suit your desire to duck my points.
And you never posted a link to that CNN story. that was a link to CNN.com. Lots of stories on their and I red all the ones about Obama/Ayers and never found that quote you pasted.
The Alaskan Independence Party threatened George W. Bush that they would make good on a plan to secede from the U.S. if he did not allow a re-vote on their status just recently.
The AIP also supports the Tennessee Independence party which also seeks secession.
The AIP also supports verbally and financially a Chechen Seperatist regime that would create serious Militant Islamic unrest in that region. Worse, those same Chechens do have the verbal and financial support of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Why is Governor Palin pallin around with these CURRENT radical terrorists?
look lets face it..if the best any campaign in the closing weeks can do is to attempt to accuse a major party candidate
for president for having a casual relationship with a person
who 40 years ago committed a crime then the campaign is
out of gas
SR…Either you didn’t really read the story or you are being disingenuous. The article can be found on CNN’s site or by using the search terms “CNN” + Obama + Ayers on Google. The story was published October 7. The graph I quoted is the 10th of the story.
I merely used “poetic license” when I called you one of Nader’s Raiders. You had stated you wanted to vote for Nader.
McCain has now awakened. He has just named Barney Frank and Chris Dodd as two of the main factors in the financial crisis. He said it’s all a matter of record and that he will name other Dems, too —those who resisted all efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
SR…I believe it is her husband TOdd who has the
relationship with the secessionist movement..
many alaskans do not view themselves and do not want
to be part of the mainland..thats why they went
to live in an ice box…and of course sarah has nothing
to distance herself from that element..has she..and
Obama hasn’t even begun to use that ..
Looks like the MCcain strategy really isn’t working
to well doesn’t it. what was that about charlie black?
National Gallup Tracking Obama 52, McCain 41 Obama +11
National Rasmussen Tracking Obama 50, McCain 45 Obama +5
National Hotline/FD Tracking Obama 47, McCain 41 Obama +6
National Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Obama 48, McCain 44 Obama +4
Virginia PPP (D) Obama 51, McCain 43 Obama +8
Battleground Tracking Obama 48, McCain 45 Obama +3
Pennsylvania Obama 54, McCain 40 Obama +14
“Let’s face it” yourself, Consultant. There is much more than a “casual” relationship between Ayers and Obama. Even the liberal CNN has acknowledged that. And all of it goes even deeper than has come out so far.
Does it not bother you that Ayers has refused to be interviewed? And does it also not bother you that Obama has been hiding data on his own Harvard and Columbia years, including financial data?
WHY is Obama doing that? Do you think there is a reason he is doing that? Of course there is. But you aren’t even curious about it. You’d rather trash Sarah Palin.
Jiminy,
Sorry I read about 8 articles on CNN discussing the topic and this one was not there. It took some doing to find it but I got it. I am interesting that you left out an important quote from it though…
“A CNN review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.”
As to Frank and Dodd. There is no excuse for their ignorance and both should be finished in Congress however, the situation in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a result of their actions. Those institutions were designed to work with individuals with weaker credit scores or possibly lower incomes. NOWHERE DID GOVERNMENT TELL Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to understate risk and give absurd mortgages to sub rime borrowers. They had people making less than 50k per year getting approved for 700k mortgages!!! That is criminal and the Government did not ask them to do that!
Plus since you love to play the Partisan game why not take a look at The Commodity Futures Deregulation Act of 2000. Oh wow a Republican piece of legislation gets into law and prohibits regulation on Credit Default Swaps which allowed Wall Street to run wild. A Credit Default Swap is basically insurance but because the Republicans protected it it was not treated as such. This caused the amount of CDS’s out there to exceed the actual value of crappy mortgages they had granted. This is whats causing such a problem here. People paid premiums for these CDS’s but the institutions that gambled are now broke and cannot pay off.
So McCain can lie all he wants about what the S-190 bill would have done in 2006 (it was far too late to fix anything then) and cry that the Dems blocked him it was the Republicans who were prohibiting the kind of oversight that was needed to regulate what was really causing a big problem!
Consultant,
Todd Palin was a member from 1995-2002 and was an officer as well. Sarah herself has been involved with the group for years although she herself was not a member. She did address the group in 2006 and in 2008. The group also strongly endorses her and considers her one of their most prominent members.
In her speech to the group this year Palin encourages the group to “keep up the good work.” Well since the groups number one objective is Alaskan secession what good work is she encouraging???
The current President of the group has laid down some whopper comments too.
If McCain does somehow magically resurge in the polls I am sure this connection will come up as would McCain’s connect to the Contras in South America on top of the Keating 5.
To expand the current President of the AIP believes that the Federal Government assassinated Joe Vogler because he was going to address NATO about recognizing Alaska as an Independent Nation.
SR-
Actually, Vogler was supposed to speak at the UN in 1993 concerning the independence of Alaska, and that appearance was sponsored/arranged by the country of Iran.
You can’t make this stuff up.
SR you apparently do your homework…these are important
considerations in selecting what may be the future president
of the United States…its something that the MCcain campaign should have paid attention to
SR
You have got to be kidding me-I did as Jiminy suggested and it popped right up. I checked today-same thing. So I am going to help you with the web address:
First part: (http://)
Second part: (www.cnn)
Third part: (.com/)
Fourth part: (2008/POLITICS/)
Fifth part: (10/07/)
Sixth part: (obama.ayers/)
Last part: (index.html)
Now put them all together without the parentheses and you can read or watch the 6 minute clip. Hope this helps.
SR
I hope I didn’t insult you-I was hoping with the address broken up it would get on much faster-but it didn’t.
McCain’s error is that he has too MANY consultants. He, once he got the nomination, (true too of Gov. Paterson) should have gone directly to the people, bypassing all the “smart guys” who have, if the truth be known, gotten us all into the mess we are in now and told it to the public like it is, exactly how HE sees it. He’d alienate everyone except the voters who have proven to listen to and appreciate frankness. Didn’t anyone learn anything from the methodology of Ronald Reagan, the man they all like to eulogize, but effectively disregard?
SR is spinning as much as the Consultant. I posted THE punch line of that CNN article. No one says there was anything illegal or “inappropriate” going on. That wasn’t the point of the “punch line” statement, was it? No, it wasn’t. The point was that Obama has been hiding a lot about his relationship with Ayers. That point still stands.
I posted this following info a couple of weeks ago but will do it again. It isn’t about Ayers.
Steven Holmes of the NY Times wrote a truly prophetic article about Fannie Mae on Sept. 30, 1999.
You can find the article with the search terms “Fannie Mae” + Holmes + NY Times Sept. 30 1999. The article is called “Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending.”
Another can be found by the search terms “Fannie Mae” + NY Times + Labaton + Sept. 11 2003. That reporter was Stephen Labaton, and the article is called “New Agency Proposed To Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.”
It was the Bush administration which wanted that oversight. The Dems hollered very loudly against it.
Someone also might want to check out Stanley Kurtz’s informative Oct. 7 article about ACORN in the National Review. That one can be found very quickly by the search terms “Stanley Kurtz” + planting seeds of disaster.
Or go to http://www.nationalreview.com. Scroll down to the article, posted Oct. 7, titled “Planting Seeds Of Disaster.”
And the beat goes on…The Consultant continues to trash his own supposed party’s ticket. But he has nothing at all to say about Obama except to make excuses for him.
no one is spinning anything.while we fiddle rome is burning
the dow was down again..this is a rolling market crash
there is no credit…GM is going out of business…banks
are not lending to borrowers including themselves…
we are witnessing the utlimate outcome of alan greenspans
policies of easy credit and de regulation..no one is
watching the industry..now we face the possibility of
a complete meltdown and government ownership of the
banking system..all because we bought into what George
HW bush called voo doo economis…supply side arthur
laffer bs…that you can lower taxes and increase
revenues…it doesnt work..ronald reagan created
deficts and he didn’t have two wars..george bush
has not only an enormous deficit but now he has
to increase government spending to prop up the financial
system…Milton friedman got it wrong..totally de regulated
markets allows the greedy to cause the system to implode
alan greenspans easy credit made it possible for people
to only consider how much a month they had to pay
not how much risk they were taking with an asset THAT
MIGHT GO DOWN….I really feel badly for all who have
their money in the market…I don’t never had never will
my uncle who was worth 50 million in 1972 dollars told
me the market is a sucker game….but investment advisors
kept hawking their wares telling 60 year olds they
would live for 20 more years and would lose purchasing
power if they didnt “fully invest”...sorry but they
were wrong and now all of us are going to pay
Jiminy,
The punch line is meaningless when you understand how you and the McCain camp are trying to deliver it.
Obama did downplay his association with Ayers and who would expect him not to? It’s the same as the McCain camp downplaying Palin’s involvement with the AIP. It looks bad. But the reality is that even Fox News (The 24 hour GOP campaign machine) couldn’t find anything radical in what Obama and Ayers were actually doing together in a room with many other folks including Republicans.
So when you point out that Obama and Ayers association is a bit more than he lets on it still doesn’t change the fact that no apparent radicalism came as a result of that.
Worse there was very sound reason for Obama to be involved with Ayers because of his work on Education reform. Ayers past doesn’t diminish the work he has done for education in Illinois. Ayers was never even convicted which doesn’t mean you have to like him or his actions are any less deplorable but it doesn’t mean you have to walk away from someone if good can come out of it. Ayers was a perpetual anti-Vietnam protester and he took his actions too far. He never killed anyone and has not been active since 1974.
If you cannot link Obama and Ayers to any radical behavior what difference does it make???
Again Palin is associated with an active anti-American organization. McCain has ties to a radical and violent extremist organization too for which his name was on the organizations letterhead for many years and he helped them acquire arms.
So answer me this, what is worse? Obama works with a 30+ year retired radical who has been on the radar of America for decades, on education reforms that benefited some schools in his state. Or another candidate who actively supported and aided an extremist organization in purchasing weapons to carry out terrorist activities? Or a VP candidate who as ecently as March of this year was giving a friendly address to an openly Anti-American organization that openly supports and Al Qaeda funded extremist group.
Spin all you want but Obama’s associations are no more alarming than the GOP’s. In fact McCain and Palin’s are worse in my opinion because of what those organizations were actively doing while they were associated.
And what about the infamous ACORN that Obama worked to start?
Oh, by the way SR, no, the weathermen did not kill anyone, but it was not for the lack of trying. Murtagh’s entire family was home when they firebombed it. But, yeah, you’re right, equate this with the Republicans.
And Mr. Consultant, you claim that Obama’s connections to these associations are nonstarter items, I don’t think so. It goes to the heart of the American homes are hearth.
Now we’ll see if someone investigates the “Anneburg Grant” to follow that money trail. Bet that’s going to be some bedtime story.
From today’s NY Post: CLEVELAND – Two Ohio voters, including Domino’s pizza worker Christopher Barkley , claimed yesterday that they were hounded by the community-activist group ACORN to register to vote several times, even though they made it clear they’d already signed up.
Barkley estimated he’d registered to vote “10 to 15” times after canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama, relentlessly pursued him and others.
Claims such as his have sparked election officials to probe ACORN.
“I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register,” Barkley said. “They’d ask me if I was registered. I’d say yes, and they’d ask me to do it [register] again.
“Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it,” he said.
Barkley is one of at least three people who have been subpoenaed by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections as part of a wider inquiry into possible voter fraud by ACORN. The group seeks to register low-income voters, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic.
“You can tell them you’re registered as many times as you want – they do not care,” said Lateala Goins, 21, who was subpoenaed.
“They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home, it does not matter,” she told The Post.
She added that she never put down an address on any of the registration forms, just her name.
A third subpoenaed voter, Freddie Johnson, 19, filled out registration cards 72 times over 18 months, officials said.
“It feeds the public perception that there could be [fraud], and that makes the pillars fall down,” said local Board of Elections President Jeff Hastings.
Registering under a fake name is illegal. But officials usually catch multiple registrations and toss them.
The major risk of fraud growing out of mass canvassing involves the possibility of ineligible voters filing absentee ballots, and thus avoiding checks at polling places, said Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross.
The subpoenas come as Republicans have ramped up criticism of ACORN. Officials in Nevada raided ACORN’s Las Vegas office Tuesday, accusing the group of signing people up multiple times – in some cases under phony names, like those of Dallas Cowboys.
Seems like the majority, individuals and electoral, at least as of today, like Obama. Even Republicans are thinking of nationalizing banks. The candidates are in a dither. Welcome, folks to Sweden West. The socialized hospitals will still keep us alive, but for what? Our greed and nonchalance, our trusted uber- leaders in politics and industry who are basically ill-educated prevaricating narcissists and have little idea how it is they have brought us to this place, have, in combination, created chaos. Our next generation of enlightened entrepreneurs with no lingering loyalties to this nation, will use the coming semi- socialist system to get their free MBAs and PhDs and they will move on to friendlier climes and, if they can find it, a tax system less onerous than the one we will here soon create.
Oh, yeah, here’s a little info on Obama’s big assistance with the Annenberg grant.
As did Jiminy, just plug in Annenberg grant+Obama.
Alexander Russo’s inside scoop on education news.
Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education covers education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge. (For archives prior to January 2007, please click here.)
« Cool Features On The New USA Today Education Page | Main | USDE’s Kerri Briggs Moves Up—Again »
Obama and The Annenberg Challenge—Is EdWeek Reaching?
There’s lots of interesting stuff in David Hoff’s EdWeek profile of Barack Obama and his education background (Obama’s Annenberg Stint Informs White House Bid), but the Obama-Annnenberg connection seems like a reach.
UPDATED SEE BELOW
First and foremost is the notion that Obama “led” the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in any meaningful way. “As a private citizen, he led Chicago’s portion of the Annenberg Challenge school reform initiative financed by the late philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg—an experience that shaped Mr. Obama’s perspective on the critical importance of principals and teachers.”
If he did, it’s news to me and a lot of folks in Chicago. I wrote a long report about the CAC in 2001 (From Frontline Leader to Rearguard Action PDF) that failed to unearth Obama’s name as anyone of any influence—and never came across his name in an education context in the following six years during which I wrote a book about school reform in Chicago. Obama gets barely a mention in the Chicago Catalyst magazine, which goes back further and deeper than I do.
I don’t mind Hoff and EdWeek delving into Obama’s education history, and he’s clear in other places that Obama’s involvement in education is thin, but the Annenberg angle seems like a reach and I’m surprised none of the folks Hoff talked to told him so.
UPDATE: A couple of folks have pointed out that the claims about Obama’s involvement in the Annenberg Challenge are from Obama’s book and staff as much as from the article, and that they are not new. I’m also told that there is a somewhat parallel dispute about how much Obama actually led the way as a community organizer working on asbestos issues in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens housing project.
Posted by Alexander Russo on March 7, 2007 4:50 PM | Permalink
Tomjo,
McCain’s Contras DID kill people. But nice dodge…
And Obama did not work for ACORN, not to start it, and never worked for it. He did REPRESENT them in a lawsuit but that was it. Also ACORN has acknowledged the voter fraud problem and this is not a secret. Obama has nothing to do with it. And just registering the same person over and over is not fraud. You can only register once. Doing it multiple times doesn’t mean you can vote multiple times. What those people were doing was getting paid per registration so they were asking folks to fill one out so they could get paid. It didn’t matter if you were registered or not they still got paid. This goes to the heart of the problem. By paying for soliciting registrations you were open to fraud so folks could get paid.
But the Obama association to ACORN has been debunked. He never worked for them other than as a lawyer in 95’.
And Jiminy’s article he talked about before specifically contradicts the article you posted where it claims the board asked Obama to chair it and that Ayers was not involved.
Zyskander or whatever,
You have no idea what you are talking about.
“These folks, those folks, the other folks;..” Is SR Bill Clinton? If so, go grow the economy.
Lets see how the Republicans and John McCain REALLY feel about William Ayers…
On Wednesday morning, John McCain’s campaign released a list of 100 former ambassadors endorsing the GOP presidential nominee.
Second on the list, though her name is misspelled, is Leonore Annenberg, currently the president and chairman of the Annenberg Foundation and widow of ambassador and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. Ms. Annenberg was herself the “chief of protocol” at the State Department under President Reagan.
If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because it also graces the name of the Chicago education board where Barack Obama and William Ayers sat in the room six times together.
In recent days, the McCain-Palin ticket (and particularly Palin) has faulted Obama for having served on that board with Ayers, who was a founding member of the radical 60’s Weather Underground group when Obama was in grade school.
Since then, however, Ayers has been rehabilitated in Chicago society, carving out a niche in education circles. As a former Republican representative in Illinois told NPR on Monday, smearing Obama for his board association with Ayers is “nonsensical.”
“It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier … It’s ridiculous,” Republican Rep. Diana Nelson said. “There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It’s nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It’s so silly.”
Separate calls to the Pennsylvania and California offices of the Annenberg Foundation were not immediately returned Wednesday morning.
OOOPPPSSSSS.
Zykie,
So I guess voting for legislation that would have taught children how to deal with CHILD MOLESTATION is WRONG?!?
And besides Obama had nothing, again, NOTHING to do with that bill. The McCain ad LIED. Obama voted for it. Thats it. Go research some facts would ya?
Oh and Obama worked for ACORN once as a lawyer. Not multiple times as you stated. This is a proven fact that even Right wing media has accepted. He had no other position with them but nice try. Do you just listen to campaign ads for your facts?
Here’s a shocking fact. Both McCain and Obama lie frequently in their ads.
Please stop spinning, SR. I now think you are a Dem plant pretending to favor Nader. 99 percent of your posts are anti-Mcain. Regardless, Obama was and is very tight with ACORN. The Obama campaign even has given $800,000 to one of the very corrupt Acorn “shell” operations. Zyskander is correct about that.
How about an eerie experience? Go to Google and put in the words “Farrahkhan” + Obama + endorse. There is a very revealing 45-second video there.
Louis Farrakhan, of the nation of Islam, also is based in Chicago and is close to both that hater Rev. Jeremiah Wright and that crazed Fr. Pfleger. In this brief clip Farrakhan endorses Obama and even calls him “The Messiah.” And the “flock” loves it.
Once more, as with Ayers, the problem is that there is a distinct and indisputable pattern of radicals in Obama’s corner of the world —or Chicago.
Typo…I put an extra “h” in “Farrakhan.” This is the correct spelling.
I am spinning??? Are you kidding me? You are the one hiding behind the GOP machines rhetoric and laying out hypocritical smears against Obama when REPUBLICANS are calling it nonsense.
How, pray tell, can Obama be responsible for Farrakhan endorsing him??? McCain SOUGHT the endorsement of Rev. Falwell and his right wing organizations whom he denounced only a few short years earlier. Did Obama seek Farakhan’s endorsement?
And my entire argument in response to your claim that “Obama has an alarming pattern of radical associates” is bogus in consideration of the radical associations of the GOP. If Obama’s ties are alarming then so are McCain and Palin’s.
I wonder why Obama doesn’t feel the need to be forthcoming with information about Annenberg Challenge.
” As a freshman congressman in the early 1980s, John McCain did not disclose his connections to a controversial group that was implicated in a secretive plot to supply arms to Nicaraguan militia groups during the Iran-Contra affair.
McCain did not list his service on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom on mandatory congressional disclosure forms asking about positions he held outside government.
McCain’s aides said he wasn’t required to report the affiliation.
...
A review of the personal financial disclosure forms McCain filed after his election to the U.S. House in 1982 show that he did not list the group in the section of his 1982, 1983 and 1984 reports in which he was required to disclose all positions he held outside of government.
The instructions on the form require filers to report “the identity of all positions held on or before the date of the filing during the current calendar year as an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee, or consultant of any corporation, firm, partnership, or other business enterprise, any nonprofit organization, any labor organization, or any educational or other institution.”
Maybe he is just following John McCain’s lead of withholding possible damaging information.
Or perhaps none of this means anything and these folks are all just pandering for votes. I would have granted Palin’s association with the AIP as pandering for votes if she had not tried to appoint members of the AIP to Alaskan Official positions.
Perhaps Obama’s association with Ayers is damaging but alas even McCain endorsing Republicans are admitting they worked with Ayers and never considered anything was wrong with it.
And since you are such a fan of Google please search “The Commodity Futures Deregulation Act of 2000” and tell me how this housing crisis is ENTIRELY the Dems fault and Obama is wrong when he says that Republican deregulation caused it.
Right. Republicans are all for loaning money to debtors, often minorities, who have proven incapable (if not unwilling) of making the payments on those loans. This has always been a major plank in every Republican platform – hand out money to screwballs. The fact is, Republicans have always been soundly criticized for the direct opposite. Only those few pusillanimous vacillators who vote with liberals would even consider such lunacy. Republicans have always favored welfare programs and various hand-outs with the cogent understanding that the money will never come back. They kissed it goodbye and made sure government would not desperately need it ever to be returned because they knew that it wouldn’t. Morons in the banking system slid down the slippery slope of believing the Democrats’ inane philosophy of the noble savage, thinking that perhaps the terminally dopey are not dopey at all, but rather just economically challenged.
For all those who think their precious Dems or Reps are innocent of the mess:
The Wall Street Journal editorial page deserves a special commendation for hammering these two outposts of corporate socialism, not that the page’s many warnings over the years helped avert disaster. Mae and Mac—especially Mae—were just too nurtured by the Washington establishment for any mere pressman to dislodge them from the government’s teat. In 1997, the New York Times’ Richard W. Stevenson pinpointed Fannie Mae’s strength when he wrote of the firm’s “influential network that extends from the highest reaches of the Clinton Administration to the ranks of conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill.”
The bipartisan network provided the essential cover Fannie Mae needed to run its scam, which the news pages of the Washington Post ably described this week as:
[T]he nearest thing to a license to print money. The companies borrowed money at below-market interest rates based on the perception that the government guaranteed repayment, and then they used the money to buy mortgages that paid market interest rates.
In 1997, the New York Times’ Richard W. Stevenson pinpointed Fannie Mae’s strength when he wrote of the firm’s “influential network that extends from the highest reaches of the Clinton Administration to the ranks of conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill.”
The bipartisan network provided the essential cover Fannie Mae needed to run its scam, which the news pages of the Washington Post ably described this week as:
[T]he nearest thing to a license to print money. The companies borrowed money at below-market interest rates based on the perception that the government guaranteed repayment, and then they used the money to buy mortgages that paid market interest rates.
But Fannie Mae is nothing if not ecumenical. According to the Associated Press, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have spent $170 million on lobbying in the past decade. “Fannie Mae’s 51-member lobbying stable” includes “former Reps. Tom Downey, D-N.Y., and Ray McGrath, R-N.Y.; Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic political strategist and former congressional aide; and Donald Fierce, a longtime GOP operative. Freddie Mac’s list of 91 lobbyists includes former Reps. Vin Weber, R-Minn., and Susan Molinari, R-N.Y.” The AP notes the Fannie Mae ties enjoyed by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., who helped in McCain’s veep search. According to Politico, McCain economic adviser Aquiles Suarez worked as Fannie Mae’s director of government and industry relations, and McCain finance co-chairman Frederic V. Malek spent time on the Freddie Mac board.
A totally brilliant and prescient Washingtonian article from 2002 by Ross Guberman harvests a bunch of politicos who benefited from and supported Fannie Mae. Arne Christenson, a former Newt Gingrich aide, was senior vice president for regulatory policy. Tom Donilon was Fannie Mae’s executive vice president for law and policy and secretary to the board of directors until 2005. He worked in the Clinton State Department and as part of the 1992 Clinton-Gore transition. William Maloni worked for Rep. William S. Moorhead, D-Penn., the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and the Federal Reserve before joining Fannie Mae, where he worked in government relations for more than 20 years.* Of Fannie Mae’s board of directors, Guberman writes that it is “political by design.”
The company’s charter gives the President the right to appoint five of the board’s 18 members. The idea was to ensure that Fannie fulfilled its public mission. Today the five appointees, considered big winners in the capital’s game of spoils, promote the interests of Fannie’s shareholders. Recent directors include Ann McLaughlin Korologos, Ronald Reagan’s Labor secretary; Ken Duberstein, Reagan’s chief of staff; Bill Daley, former Commerce Secretary and Gore spokesman during the 2000 election controversy; and Jack Quinn, counsel to Bill Clinton and lawyer to pardoned fugitive Mark Rich. [Emphasis added.]
The bipartisan Fannie Mae gang appears to have broken few, if any, laws. Their crime was to have practiced—without any thought of the consequences—”access capitalism,” which Michael Lewis defined in the New Republic as “a neat solution for people who don’t have a whole lot to sell besides their access, but who don’t want to appear to be selling their access.”
Blah blah blah…. Google Fannie Mae + debacle.
You can say that again! And you did.
you guys may not like david brooks but today he explains
why the conservative movement is dead in the water…
they have made it clear that not only do they not
like the coastal establishment elites..they don’t
like and have pushed away the educated class..
even bankers…unlike reagan and ford who won the northeast
and the west coast ..these new conservatives actually
condescend to anyone other than joe sixpack..its a formula
for a realignment in the electorate
Ed Rollins no shrinking violet himself made a very good
point..at the end of this campaign Mccain needs to keep
his dignity in order that the Republicans don’t lose
10 senate seats and 25 house seats..there is not a politcal
analyst out there of any import Gergan, Rollins, etc
that thinks that using the ayers issue is the way to
go…it will hurt the rest of the ticket on all levels
and it does not address the fundamental issue of a failing
economy…only the base is excited by the prospect of
making that argument..and the base is not large enough
to win…and not large enough to carry the 10 seats in
the senate
the MCcain bailout plan proposed and designed by douglas
holtz eiken is another disaster…it is not a business
plan it is a welfare plan..it requires the government to
pay face value for mortgages in default when those same
mortgages are selling well below face value…it wastes
taxpayer dollars in an attempt to prop up the housing
industry and bails out banks holding those mortgages
by fully repaying them …which neither penalizes the
banks nor nor the borrowers…..what kind of economics
is that
It may be too late, but what would be wrong with the banks accepting interest-only payments from strapped homeowners until this whole thing clears up? When the real estate rebounds (it is inevitable, is it not?) and the economy is again healthy, they can go back to collecting principal and interest amortized. It keeps people in their houses for the time being and guarantees the banks a just return on their loaned money. This is similar to a plan they had years ago with Latin American loans. And consultant, speaking of “the educated class,” didn’t Brooks quote Bill Buckley as saying that he’d prefer to be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston telephone book than the faculty of Harvard? He also once pointed out that the Theology faculty at Yale were predominantly atheists. I think he accurately foresaw the lunacy on the horizon and the developing sclerosis of elite intellectual systems.
This coming from the party that wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare because it destroys freedom. Welfare for the poor is wrong but welfare for the rich is a Conservative value.
Oh and to point out how ridiculous the Obama smear campaign is just type in at Google any Primary candidate with the term + Radical ties after it and see what you get.
Clinton, Edwards, Romney, Huckabee all have radical ties based of whatever assumptions and all would be attacked as such.
Like I said earlier I have met William Ayers 3 times and knew one of the sons of the Rosenbergs very well. Does this mean I am a Domestic Terrorist? Also when working for a Dutchess County business 5 years ago I spent a lot of time working on contracts and dealings with a convicted sex offender and I didn’t know for quite a while. I guess I am scum…
ED 1…reformation of mortgages by the lending institutions
are being done as we speak..at this point in time they
would much rather come to some agreement with the borrowers
to pay back the loan on different terms then foreclose
and wind up with the real estate..that is totally different
than the McCain proposal to buy up all the mortgages at
the face values…remember when mortgage repayments are renogiated the value of the cash stream over time makes
the face value GO DOWN if it departs from the original
terms…
as to your question about the “elite” i am not referring
to liberal chardonay drinkers from Harvard or Berkley
remember Reagan got a wide range of support including
in new york new jersey and california from professionals
lawyers, bankers, doctors, accountants ..the conservative
movement today particularly sarah palin and her followers
thumb their noses at these people…1. partly because
they don’t have the education and are envious
2. partly because they don’t have the income and
are envious
3. mostly because non college educated people believe
that “common sense” solutions trump education based
solutions..maybe for fixing a tire but not for fixing
a global economy…
FINALLY I JUST LEARNED WHY THE MCCAIN HEALTH CARE
PLAN SUCKS…FOR ME AND PROBABLY FOR YOU ED1
The real problem with McCain’s idea is that, without the economic incentive provided by the exclusion, more employers might stop offering coverage. And even employers who want to continue could find it difficult because younger workers would be likely to use their credit to buy stripped-down, cheaper coverage on their own. That would leave employers covering only older and sicker workers, which could quickly swell premiums to unaffordable levels. That concern prompted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable to criticize McCain’s plan in an eye-opening New York Times article on Tuesday.
McCain’s camp insists that his proposal would not undermine employer-based coverage. But few experts agree. Several studies have projected that his plan would move about 20 million people from employer-based coverage to the individual insurance market. And in that market, older or sicker consumers face much higher costs than the healthy—if they can buy coverage at all.
Ed1,
Interest only mortgage payments aren’t really a major solution especially since many borrowers are already on Interest Only Mortgages for fixed periods. Some took mortgages that saw them make payments for as long as 10 years without building any equity. Plus with the rapid deflation of homes many borrowers have 0 to negative equity which is pointless. Unless they have the capital to stay in the homes for a long period there is no use. What some banks probably should do is drop interest entirely and seek to recoup the principle for now.
Unfortunately what the government is doing is trying to stop deflation of home prices even though thats what the market wants. Thats why they NEED to buy up mortgages for face value as oppossed to market value or renegotiating because they are hoping that it will artificially keep your home value high. Unfortunately the massive inventory of homes on the market right now are not helping so they really need to sell them to stabilize things and with no lending thats hard.
Really they should just bulldoze…
Hmm. “Palin and her followers thumb their noses at…*educated people.” Is there more “education available at Lehigh or Drexel, or Swarthmore, for that matter, than at the University of Idaho? Perhaps you’ve been reading labels on potato bags at the Food Emporium and equate Idaho with spuds rather than Shakespeare. Talk about elitism! This is exactly what Buckley was talking about and it is also exactly why middle America mistrusts the snobbery and pseudo-sophistication of the eastern establishment.
Also a note on Northeastern Elitism and healthcare.
I don’t understand the GOP’s strategy of attacking the North East. It makes no sense. 40% of the Nations population lives here and if you add Florida and California you get to over 60%.
but worse why is this Northeastern Elitism demonized as a Democrat problem? What about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? Both are Yale graduates. Heck Bush is CT born and raised. It’s such a hypocritical joke. Most individuals in government are highly educated and have insane ties to the Ivy League regardless of party affiliation.
This is just another lame attempt by the GOP to shore up it’s mid western base which does not represent the majority of the nation.
On healthcare Consultant is pretty accurate according to industry experts. McCain’s plan will see millions of people dropped from employer plans because he will remove your tax exemption status. Employers could pass the tax on or just drop you entirely and let you find your own insurance.
For a younger guy like me who doesn’t go to the doc often thats fine. I’ll just take a raise and then either buy a skeleton package or not get coverage at all. because I am single McCain is going to give me a 2500 tax credit which means I am responsible for doing it. problem is according to my last statement I paid more than $2500 for health insurance this year for a pretty lousy package. Oh well I guess the raise shall make up for that. Well, for me yes, but not for everyone. Older and sicker people pay an awful lot more than I do and their raise won’t cover it.
Whats even worse about this plan is it takes away the group benefits. Meaning when an employer insures all his employees at once it spreads the risk out and they can get better rates. On your own you are going to get slammed with higher rates because of bigger risk. Obama’s plan is very similar to mcCain’s in the fundamentals except he subsidizes it with Federal money to help people get under coverage immediately. understand that Obama does not offer Universal healthcare. Millions will still not be covered under him and nothing really changes in the system.
Obama’s plan sucks because he is going to subsidize the uninsured with tax dollars to get those uninsured covered initially and hopefully this will provide a catalyst to get these folks paying premiums. It sucks because it means you and your employer still pay but your taxes will certainly have to be higher unless he can make good on massive cuts. (Unlikely).
The bare fundamentals are the same as McCain’s as it will try to promote competition in the market to drive prices down. Problem is with 60-100 billion dollars of Fed money flowing into the system for possibly several years inflation will have to happen. And since he leaves the market private their still is little regulation to control costs.
Both plans suck.
Tidbits:
Both Obama and McCain are lying about taxes too. Tax revenues are about 17-18% GDP right now yet our spending is expected to be around 22% and possibly grow to 24%. neither candidate can cut taxes without first cutting massive spending AND reduce debt. In fact if McCain egts his way the deficit will spike even higher because he can’t pay for all the tax cuts he wants. They cannot even pay for the bush cuts now. Obama has the same problem but he is trying to offset it by raising taxes on the wealthy and closing loopholes. It’s still unlikely enough and doubtful he could get the votes to close many tax breaks off.
...
According to the Electoral College if the election was held today Obama has a 99% chance of winning with McCain having less than 1%. this is because Obama’s polling has him only 6 Evotes away from 270. Obama would need to win only 1 swing state of 8 that isn’t Nevada. Nevada only has 5. He could win Nevada and no others but split NA votes to hit 270 and carry it.
its not about where you went to school ed1 its about
whether you went to school and learned that you need
more than your gut instincts to deal with important issues
read david brooks this morning in the times..this
has nothing to do with snobbery its has to do with
middle america believing that simplistic anwers are
always better because that is all they can fathom
and here is david brooks’ point”
Driven by a need to engage elite opinion, conservatives tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines. They disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the idea of a cultivated mind.
Ronald Reagan was no intellectual, but he had an earnest faith in ideas and he spent decades working through them. He was rooted in the Midwest, but he also loved Hollywood. And for a time, it seemed the Republican Party would be a broad coalition — small-town values with coastal reach.
In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.
But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.
Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.
What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.
Some good comments by Ed. But the Consultant continues to put his Birkenstock into his elitist mouth. I don’t know this—but I suspect he may be planning to jump the fence ala Janet DiFiore and Mike Spano.
The so-called Republican consultant may be leaning toward changing teams. I’m not saying he IS —but all his posts for at least the last month have torn into his own party and Sarah Palin while he constantly excuses Obama and ignores the many problems that come along with Obama. Obama’s complete lack of credentials is just one of those.
Whatever his motives are, the Consultant must be looking forward to a socialist government led by the likes of Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Maxine Waters, for example.
If he thinks Andy Spano’s big tax & spend “nannies” are bad, he ain’t seen nothing yet.
Google—“Farrakhan” + Obama + Messiah + YouTube.
Watch Louie Farrakhan call Obama “The Messiah” as the crowd swoons. Obama has a PATTERN of radical associations.
And I repeat my belief that SR, who seems to be in overdrive now, is not actually a Nader supporter at all. His posts are 99 percent anti-McCain. I think SR more likely is a left-wing Dem pretending to be something he isn’t. And he admits he’s met Ayers a few times. Betcha it wasn’t on the golf course.
But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that McCain still has time to turn it around, and that his attention on Ayers is very appropriate, although he should have started on it by late August. McCain needs to include the rest of the radicals to demonstrate that clear Obama pattern.
He also needs to keep talking about the economy. But there are those who seem to think McCain can’t address more than one issue at once. That is a ridiculous notion.
Almost as ridiculous as a “president Obama” would be.
SR – For the record, Bush was raised in Texas, not Connecticut. He attended grammar school and high school in Midland, Tex. Cheney never graduated from Yale, and attended only briefly.
McCain could do it..if he would shed the counsel of
the rovian consultants…but at this point I think
he is dependent on them..he needs to get mike murphy
back in the fold
The Consultant has moved so far left of center in his thinking that he would make even Republicans like George Bush Sr. blush. He lately hands down his convoluted opinion from the high hill of an elevated green at St. Andrews while asking his caddy to read the green and then telling him his opinion of the slope is wrong because he never studied law at NYU.
Jiminy,
you are a case study in political spin and dodging. yu have never answered how Farrakhan’s endorsement of Obama translates to a “radical association.” Especially in consideration of McCain’s endorsement by Falwell’s radicals which McCain specifically stated he would not turn down.
An endorsement has nothing to do with anything other than a person pledging public support for. Should John Degnan turn down the Republican and Conservative endorsements because he is on the Democrat line? Can barrack Obama stop Farrakhan from endorsing him? Why should he?
I attack McCain to point out the hypocrisy that has plagued this campaign like many others and it has flowed onto this board as well. It’s always “Do as i say, not as I do.” To me McCain has no right to question Obamas ties to Ayers when he has not come clean on his own radical associations. “he who is without sin shall cast the first stone.” Hows that for Christian values…
My bias aginst McCain is apparent too because of the mistrust I have for a candidate i worked so hard for in 2000. Yes I was a campaign worker for John McCain. I believed his promises of reform and fighting the corruption in Washington. And after the GOP destroyed him personally in the campaigns because he was a Maverick he has become a reformed Maverick. The guy reneged on tons of campaign promises in the late 90’s early 2000’s because the GOP had marginalized him. he couldn’t get anything done and could not persuade a single vote because the GOP abandoned him. instead of staying true to his morals he sold out and played the game. he has reversed his positions on many key issues and worse, he supported george bush policies even after he criticized them and swore not to. How can he claim to be a Maverick when he voted for Bush policies over 90% of the time. Policies that made government bigger, protected fraud and corruption, and drove national debt to insane records without any rationalization of fiscal responsibility? McCain is a shell of the man he once was. The selection of Sarah Palin just proves how much the GOP owns him and how much of his integrity he is willing to sell to just become the President.
And to your claiming I am a Democrat plant is typical. You can’t respond to the logic so therefore I must be a plant, a trick, or perhaps even barrack Obama himself. I mean, reason and logic are the tools of the Devil right? I mean I only have been on this board for several months now not only talking ill of Obama on many positions but also showing loudly my support for Greg Ball. As well as my support for Ralph Nader, who incidentally is more Conservative than both Obama and McCain when put to the test of traditional Conservative values. Why do you think Nader did better in 2004 with Republicans than Dems and is polling higher among Republicans now?
Even sillier is your unstated assumption that my party affiliation or who I support somehow demeans the points I make. It doesn’t matter who any of us support if the arguments are supported and logical.
I agree Obama has some unsavory associations. My argument is that ALL OF THEM DO. So while you run around trying to bring up endorsements as a “pattern of radical associations” and keep trumpeting the same GOP rhetoric that has failed all the while accusing me and Consultant of spinning is laughable. You are purposely either remaining ignorant of your own candidate or you simply are ignoring it because politics to you is a team sport and the home team HAS TO WIN no matter what the cost.
it is that lvel of rationalization and hypocrisy that has led the two parties to pull the rug out from under American voters. While Dems and Reps fight over bogus issues like this Ayers thing or a stupid social issue like Abortion, they are all working bipartisan behind closed doors to establish foreign, economic, and military policies that only entrench their own power sources and benefit the minority friends while blocking out real reforms.
This bailout is a prime example of that. both Republicans and Democrats were complicit in the manipulation of laws and deregulation of lending standards that allowed their big lobbyist friends to abuse the American financial sector and basically ruin the lives of millions of people for their own personal gain. yet here you sit trying to pin it all on Barrack Obama because John mcCain is such a saint.
Give me a break. Look in the mirror sometime and let me know what you see.
Quoting Consultant: “You need more than your gut instincts to deal with important issues.”
Quoting Consultant: “I use two gauges…my gut and polling.”
Ed,
Bush’s family is entrenched in CT and the Northeast. He was born here and educated at Yale, the same as John Kerry. Princeton, Harvard, Brown all boast excellent stables of politicians and big businessmen from both sides of the aisle.
If Northeastern Elitism is the source of Americas problems than why has the GOP so willingly been engaged in the Northeast for so long?
For instance:
“Amongst the influential teachers from his days in New Haven was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, whom Cheney repeatedly credited with having helped to shape his hard-line approach to foreign policy.”
Wait a minute… I thought Yale was bad bad bad…
Rumsfeld = Princeton
Bush Sr. = born in Mass, attended Yale
Wolfowitz = Cornell and university of Chicago
Powell = borin in NY, Goerge Washington
O’Neill = Cal State
Ashcroft = Yale and Univ of Chicago
etc, etc, etc.
A huge chunk of some of the biggest policy makers in the current Bush Administration all come from highly educated coastal and Ivy League schools.
Ed,
I am not going speak absolutely but I believe Consultant was referring to his prediction of the election when he said that.
Sorry forgot Condi Rice who went to Stanford. Apparently the GOP seems perfectly pleased with the level of satisfaction from Ivy League educations. I wonder why they attack it?
Because, to me at least, almost everyone you name (along with hordes of nameless others) has become a demagogue and a disappointment. And I don’t consider Neocons Republicans. They have an agenda all their own and are stupider and more dangerous even than ultra liberals.
Well that I strongly agree with.
And if the consultant was “referring to his prediction of the election,” his words and his logic point to the interpretation that he thinks the election is “not an important issue.” The logic is wanting. So be it.
And Brown has given us dance aficionados, philanthropists, fiction-writers and poets moreso than politcians, which I happen to think a good thing. By the way, the fact that John-John went there and wasn’t selected at Harvard, points to the interesting notion that he curiously did not inherit his family’s intellectual acumen. Perhaps he was better off, except for his nonchalant approach to aviation.
look behind the words…when you are in a business you
use metrics and gut based on experienced..polling is
the metric..gut is my experience….when you simply
rely on your instincts you are lacking the one other
important element…the metric,which is based on
a mathmatical equation which extrapolates from a
random sample of the universe you want to draw a conclusion about…David Brooks’ point about what happened to the
republican party is quite relevant..and the choice
of sarah palin makes it apparent that McCain and or
his advisors bought into the theory..problem is
that so far they ended up pushing away more voters
then they attracted
You discuss briefly the metric, mathematical equations and extrapolations. This stilted vocabulary perhaps explains why John John took the bar three or four times and why he never got his instrument rating.
SR….You are again saying that Ayers is not relevant, and you also call him a “bogus issue.” You further compare him to whomever McCain might have met here or there. McCain is the exact opposite of everything Obama stands for. And Ayers and Obama actually worked together.
Ayers is very relevant. He is part of that Obama pattern. It includes Farrakhan, Wright, Pfleger and others.
I believe this all goes back a long time—back to Obama’s Harvard days and even before that. I suspect Khalid al-Mansour is a key figure in this chain, as is Ayers.
Not that it matters, but I was hoping Romney would win the nomination on the Republican side. I was not a McCain fan. But when I look at the alternative, which is Obama and all his unsavory connections that add up to socialism -
at best- then to me McCain is by far the best choice.Ayers is sitll the same guy he used to be, in terms of philosophy. He is a radical revolutionary. The record on that is crystal clear. You also might consider the Weather Underground’s original alliance with the Black Panthers and other segments of the “Black Liberation Movement.”
If that sounds somewhat familiar, and I’m sure it does, it’s because Jeremiah Wright today preaches “Black Liberation” positions from his pulpit.
Here is one small passage from a Weather Underground “manifesto” in 1969—that they were “a white fighting force to be allied with the Black Liberation movement” (and others)...to accomplish “the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism.”
In looking at Ayers and others in Obama’s sphere today, I suspect that while the calendar and methods have changed over time, the philosophical goals remain essentially the same. I believe the circumstantial information available to date strongly supports that assessment.
nope just demonstrating that gut alone is not enough
and that is the defining difference between conservatives
who thumb their noses at those who have more education
as elitist…its a defense mechanism on a grand scale
Ed….Do you think the Consultant should go to YouTube and hear The Kinks’ “Well-Respected Man” from ‘66? :)
Long time MCCain Republican supporters are now speaking
up and distancing themselves from him because of the tone
his campaign is now engaged in….suggesting arab influence
suggesting he is a terrorist and suggesting his middle name
diqualifies him…they should be talking about his lack
of accomplishments..about being in the senate for only
a couple of years and of being in the illinois state
senate only three years ago….instead they are creating
a lynch mob mentality…it wont work and it is a net
minus for the campaign
Cricket – You really got me now (so much so that) I don’t know what I’m doin’ – yeah! I think his next selection from the Kinks might be ‘Waterloo Sunset.’ He has no money in the market, so he thinks that he is Obama proof. More like 151 proof, perhaps. Fat Al for Speaker of the House!
The reality is Willie Horton spoke to middle America (and justifiably so) better than graphs and charts and pussyfooting. Now all Mac needs is a picture of Obama with his ears sticking out, in a large Army helmet, emblazoned with a Columbia Lions sticker.
Though there is no draft, one still has a legal obligation to sign-up in case of an enormous national emergency. We might all be interested to know who and how many of our “patriotic” political big mouths ever did so.
The chanting of “Kill him” in reference to Obama at McCain/Palin rallies is very disturbing. In fact lately McCain has even had to backtrack today and defend Obama when some visitors to his so called town halls were calling him a radical Muslim terrorist. McCain defended him. Worse they were interviewing these people at these rallies and some of them didn’t even know how many states there are. Yeah thats the Main Street middle America the GOP should be targeting. This party is starting to prove me wrong when I think they are not quite as corrupt and out of touch than the Democrats.
Both full of Special interests money
Both full of radical associations
Both are identical on the really important issues.
Both promise change
Both voted for the pork laden bailout
Both support Corporate Welfare
both support big government spending
Both support increased government surveillance of Citizens.
Both will HAVE to raise taxes
Both support dangerous Nuclear power
Both support more drilling and Coal burning
Both support slowing of alternative energy development
Both support un-winnable wars in the Middle East
Both support the World Bank
Both support the World trade Organization
Both support the World Health Organization
etc etc etc
once again my instincts prove correct..McCain himself
made it clear last night that calling Obama an “arab”
or a “terrorist” or being disrepectful is not acceptable
Even McCain knows some of his supporters were getting
out of hand….and McCain also recognizes that if the
undercard is going to do well he needs to bring
his campaign back to the central issues…the economy
not Obama’s character
Oregon Rasmussen Obama 54, McCain 43 Obama +11
National Zogby Tracking Obama 48, McCain 44 Obama +4
National Newsweek Obama 52, McCain 41 Obama +11
Ohio InAdv/PollPosi Obama 49, McCain 44 Obama +5
Zogby has it the closest nationally..but the Ohio
numbers are outside the margin of error
no republican has ever won the white house without
Ohio
The general public has no, repeat NO confidence in each or any of them on the economy. ZILCH. They have little confidence in Economics PhDs, top business executives, bank CEOs, never mind two politicians who manage to make the situation even more confusing. Businessmen generally think McCain is preferable because he is more of a known factor, which, of course, is true. The general public, who, in numbers, will elect the next president, will vote from their already set pre-conceived notions. McCain’s only chance at this point, is to hammer on the shakiness of the unknown, shrouded Obama. One of the most telling areas of hypocrisy on Obama’s part is that he speaks constantly about helping the “middle class.” and rarely mentions the poor or underclasses, his real…
Consultant….You truly are amazing. You keep talkng like there only can be one issue. YES, for about the 50th time, the economy is the prime issue. No doubt about that.
But also YES….William Ayers and his Weather Underground wife Bernardine Dohrn are important too. And the McCain campaign should be able to address that subject—along with the economy, national security and foreign policy.
BTW…Tony Rezko, Obama’s patron who has been convicted of fraud, seems to be trying to cut a deal with the Feds. He likely will be singing soon. If he does, it will rock Illinois Democrats all the way to the state house. How much it might impact Obama is not yet known.
Here is a paraphrase from the “Rev.” Jeremiah Wright several months ago—after Obama smelled the coffee and finally cut him off, at least publicly.
At the time, Wright said that Obama is a politician who will say anything to get elected.
You might also remember that it was ABC moderator George Stephanopolous and then Hillary Clinton who brought up the Ayers connection in a debate before the Pa. primary.
The so-called mainstream media chose to look the other way after that. That is called “bias.”
Ayers hasn’t changed a bit, philosophy-wise. He is still every bit the radical Marxist he was years ago. He’s not making bombs any more, but his political thought patterns and those of Dohrn are the same now as they were then.
Ayers put Obama in a key role in that Chicago Annenberg Challenge program. Why? Does it suggest Ayers knew he and Obama shared the same ideas about radical education?
If it doesn’t, it should.
we all know that ayers is a bad guy and that obama should
have walked on his rev long time ago..however the general
public is beyond that…they only want to know what
is in it for them now that their retirement plans are
up in smoke, their jobs may be lost, and their
future is looking bleak..of course this may not be the
case in six months..but right now Obama is on the
shore throwing the only life jacket to drowning voters
and they are taking it….regardless of any of the
collateral issues..they all don’t matter ..they
would have ..but they don’t..Obama wins in a walk
with over 320 electoral votes
Jiminy we seem to be talking about different things
you are talking about what you believe should be influencing
voter opinion..I am talking about what is in fact influencing voter opinion…what should be vs what is
thats what will determine the outcome of this years
election….the issues that would have made a difference
are not resonating because circumstances have so radically
been altered…fear has now trumped any other legitimate
concern..it doesn’t happen very often…Franklin Roosevelt
had the same issues..and he of course changed the way
this nation does business in terms of government
intervention..that will I suspect happen again this
time around ..and may last for a decade until the
pendulum swings back to individual entrepenurial spirit
but until then we can expect and the majority of voters
are going to vote for their government to save their
collective asses from their bad decisions: decisions
to invest in the ever climbing stock market…cramerica
always a bull market somewhere NOT…decisions to
buy 3 times as much house as they could afford or need
and I am not talking subprime minorities I am talking
middle class and upper middle class homeowners…
decisions not to save a dime…decisions to borrow
on the credit lines extended to them by willing banks
did you get caught in the ponzi scheme Jiminy..
just want to know…because the people that are going
to vote for Barack Hussein Obama would not have considered
it for a moment had we not lost 2 trillion dollars in
wealth in the last 30 days..and Jiminy you can rationalize
this all you want..but you can’t change it. I for one
feel badly for those whose judgment sucked..but it had
to come to this…and there were some of us that knew
it …acted upon it..and now although we care about
our fellow americans we know that the government is
the only way to right the ship…however undesireable that
may be…I still will get my social security check to
pay the golf dues with…
No, Consultant…I did not get caught in this Ponzi scheme. And I agree with many of your points about irresponsible American consumers.
But they should all try to remember that a government big enough to give people everything they want is also big enough to take it all away.
Let the buyer beware.
In whatever form it takes, socialism will fail. Its track record is miserable everywhere it’s been implemented.
I’m very aware the economy is Issue Number One.
But I have been trying to say that people also can be shown how unwise it would be to vote for Obama if they learn all that is possible to learn (at this point) about his complete lack of experience and some of his very unsavory connections and their radical political philosophies.
Beware of ultra-liberal Chicago Democrats bearing gifts.
I have no doubt you are correct…I am looking at it
from an analysts point of view not an advocates
point of view..and as a “true” conservative I understand
all of what you are saying and don’t disagree for a moment
unfortunately for McCain and our fellow americans they
havent a clue as to what they are in for and how much
it will cost them..but the more salient point at this
juncture is they probably don’t care.as long as
they get theirs: see below
Oregon Rasmusse Obama 54, McCain 43 Obama +11
National Gallup Obama 51, McCain 42 Obama +9
National Rasmussen Obama 52, McCain 45 Obama +7
National Reuters/ Obama 48, McCain 44 Obama +4
National Hotline/FD Obama 50, McCain 40 Obama +10
National Newsweek Obama 52, McCain 41 Obama +11
Iowa SurveyUSA Obama 54, McCain 41 Obama +13
Florida Research 2000 Obama 49, McCain 44 Obama +5
North Carolina WSOC-TV Obama 46, McCain 48 McCain +2
Ohio Ohio Newspaper Poll Obama 46, McCain 48 McCain +2
I can’t see any good news in these lates numbers can you?
No, I also see no good news. But as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
But McCain is not delivering his messages (plural) well. His messages need to be communicated much better, and clearly. But if he flops around in the final debate, then he’s essentially done.
Obama is doing what he did vs. Hillary. He’s just trying to run out the clock.
he is now on the defensive thanks to sarah and his advisors
asking her to “whip up” into a frenzi…the unwashed..
even John is appalled and I have it from the inside on
this…McCain is no racist..he is not a hater..he wants
to win but not at any cost…McCain is truly a westerner
as was my dad..from AZ in fact Barry Morris Goldwaters
dad gave my dad credit to open three mens stores in
1918 or so…so we are quite familiar with live and let
live..and McCain for my money would have been true
to his western roots in crossing over the aisle to
fix social security,,,solve the banking crisis..
fix health care etc…with McCain you would have had
a check on the pelosis and franks of this world…
that was always the lynchpin argument for his election
they never made that case.they got sidetracked by
their pollsters and by rovian politics..He should
have done it his way..not their way…win lose or draw
Today, McCain was likened to none other than George Wallace. The accuser is John Lewis, a long-time Dem congressman from Georgia who was active in the civil rights movement.
Talk about inflammatory and vicious. McCain hit back hard, as well he should have. And Camp Obama moved to distance itself from Lewis’ remarks.
This isn’t over yet. The Dems can erase their own lead and self-destruct as they have often done. Comments like those of Lewis can help push that self-destruct button.
Palin today made some very strong remarks about Obama not opposing partial-birth abortion. That is a solid issue.
Obama hasn’t won anything. He’s ahead by default. There is still time for things to change, despite the current polls. When people really, really look at Obama, they may not like what they see at all. Time will tell.
Jiminy…I know you want the paradigm to change..it won’t
the strategic error was for mccain to assume that the
base was enough to elect him…its not…he needs
independents ie non party voters and he needs guys
like me.who are eastern and western establishment
republicans…so what did he do ..he picked f’n
annie oakly for his running mate….can you bake
a pie….NO neither can I
Ryan was one of McCain’s best buddies a few months ago at the Saddleback Forum. From an LA Times blog on the event…
“McCain is on stage now. Warren begins by asking him to name the three wisest people in his life.
His answers: Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, Rep. John Lewis (a Georgia congressman and civil rights advocate) and Meg Whitman (the former eBay chief executive who is a close McCain adviser).”
This is what negative campaigning gets you, one of the wisest people in your life compares you to George Wallace.
Schadenfreude, anyone?
Where was Babba Wawa? I’d like to know his favorite color and what kind of tree he would be if he were made of wood.
McCain needs some Viagra to stiffen him up… He is flopping all over the place. This negative move is already the next move to blow up in his face. Chants of “KILL HIM” and “TERRORIST” have forced him to not only apologize but the MSM is broadcasting those scenes into millions of peoples homes (You know those who actually have a home now).
Now his own people are turning against him. Republicans are asking him to stop with the Ayers association because they worked with Ayers too and IT WAS A MCCAIN AMBASSADOR THAT APPOINTED AYERS!
Also Jiminy keeps lying. He posted a link to an article before that specifically stated that Ayers had nothing to do with the selection of Obama on the committee. Yet he keeps saying thats exactly what happened.
This is McCain’s game. He can’t win on the issues. He now can’t win a negative campaign. If the polls do start to slip for Obama just watch and see AIP, Iran Contras, Jerry Falwell, Neo-Nazis, etc… They are all there just like Falwell, Ayers, and ACORN for Obama.
I find it extremely unlikely that McCain can make a big enough stink to sway voters any one way. The Ayers/Wright stuff has been out there for a year. No one cares. It didn’t work for Hillary. the only people it resonates with are those who already are voting for him.
Electoral College is giving McCain a 1% chance of winning. SOLID! McCains best strategy is to just wait and hope that when folks get in that booth that some good ol fashioned racism takes over and they just can’t bring themselves to vote for a black man. Thats going to be his only chance really.
No matter what anyone’s perspective, the person who long ago didn’t see the major and basic differences between a McCain and an Obama shouldn’t be granted suffrage to begin with. They’re too stupid to be believed.
And – that McCain bumbles on instead of directly attacking Obama for what his IS – as a classic politically, culturally, intellectually isolated left- wing ideologue – boggles the mind.
1. I agree with Ed.
2. To Walt…Since when is pointing out the truth about Obama, as the McCain campaign has done lately, being “negative?” If the truth is too “negative” for some dopey voters, read Ed’s comments again. It is Lewis, along with a slew of other Dems, who are playing the race card. Obama himself also has done that—and you know he has. I’d say doing that is really being negative.
3. SR…Is McCain to blame because a couple of bozos shout out from the crowd? I say no. And for all anyone knows, they could even have been Democratic party operatives.
I don’t lie, SR. There has been a considerable attempt to stonewall and hide the full extent of the Ayers-Obama relationship. Why that is so should be obvious.
Reporter Stanley Kurtz of the National Review has done excellent work on all this. He’s still on it. But you or anyone could check out “Founding Brothers” + Kurtz through Google to see a report he did on Sept. 24. He has since done others.
Walter Annenberg was born in 1908. He was an elderly man and was not microscopically examining the grant requests personally by the mid-1990s.
But more to the point, the Anneberg Challenge was well-intentioned. But it failed in Chicago. And it’s how those many millions were directed and spent that is the issue relating to Obama and the radical Marxist William Ayers.
Or do you leave in a dreamland where large sums of well-intentioned grant money are not ever mis-directed, not even when someone like Ayers has his fingers in the pie?
Jiminy,
You keep perpetuating a falsehood that Ayers appointed Obama to the Annenberg board. The reporting has been that Ayers had nothing to do with that decision.
Leonore Annenberg is the executor who appointed Ayers to the board initially. She is ranked as McCains #2 Ambassador.
Clearly the executors had no problem appointing Ayers to the board to begin with. They also appointed various Republicans and Democrats to that very board. Obama worked with many people, not just Ayers. The articles you link to express this but you mislead.
Obama served and worked with hundreds of individuals in those projects. Ayers himself has been praised for his work in Chicago by many including Republicans and Conservatives. Just because Kurtz continues to call him a “radical” does not make it so. Kurtz couldn’t even find anything wrong with what Obama and the Ayers organizations were doing.
In late May 2008, Michael Kinsley, a longtime critic of Ayers, argued in Time that Obama’s relationship with Ayers should not be a campaign issue: “If Obama’s relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others — including Republicans and conservatives — who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children’s issues…Ayers and Dohrn are despicable, and yet making an issue of Obama’s relationship with them is absurd.”
I am not even voting for Obama but this is just pathetic. It is clearly motivated by this inherent fear in an openly far Right Wing position that somehow Obama is going to be insanely radical and try and give the country over to every black person.
if Obama wanted to he could foster up tons of evidence about McCain and Palin’s radical associations. mcCain cries that his years of experience are a credential yet he has radical ties too. Clearly his experience has done nothing for his judgment.
McCain has failed to distinguish himself from Obama and he is not reaching anyone now. the sheer fact that even the media in his corner can’t find anything wrong with Obama/Ayers and needs to just assign guilt by association just shows how desperate they are.
As to the success of the program, who cares? You are making an issue out of the association. Problem is there is nothing wrong or even radical about what they were doing. Thousands of people were involved in that program throughout Chicago. Don’t tell me you need to backtrack and act like the program not being a big influence is now an example of how radical Obama is.
I also laugh that Kurtz started his inquisition of Obama with a cry of conspiracy that something radical was going on and then when he read the documents and couldn’t find anything to substantiate his claim he backtracked to a position that “Oh, well, his judgment is flawed” I am paraphrasing of course.
I also laugh that he is a reporter for the National Review and the Weekly Standard. two of the most far right wing media outlets to ever exist. To cite them as bipartisan is like saying The Nation is a fair and balanced publication…
The Jesse Jacksons of our world, the Al Sharptons, aspiring young politicians looking for an angle, and all sorts of supposedly reconstructed felons and reprobates who “find religion” all seem to find their way to the door of aged and/or naive billionaires who are trying to make up to God or their families or their consciences for the many indiscretions and larcenies they have earlier committed and try, while stumbling toward oblivion to leave something supposedly altruistic and “positive” for the NY Times obit section to print on that final day. By the way, anyone have any memory of Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers” from, oh 40 years ago wherein he tells the story of Leonard Bernstein and his 5th Avenue dilettantes entertaining the thugs and maggots from the Black Panther Party?
Not to be left out the KKK has publicly endorsed John McCain. big shock there.
Also friends of John McCain is Robert Byrd, probably the last Segregationist left and a Democrat not to mention an overt racist.
How about David Ifshin? Another 60’s radical John McCain boasts was a friend.
“We worked together in an organization dedicated to promoting human rights in the country where he and I had once come for different reasons. I came to admire him for his generosity, his passion for his ideals, for the largeness of his heart, and I realized he had not been my enemy, but my countryman . . . my countryman …and later my friend. His friendship honored me. We disagreed over much. Our politics were often opposed, and we argued those disagreements. But we worked together for our shared ideals.”
Not to mention John Keating and William Ayers is tied to McCain supporters.
I repeat. He who is without sin cast the first stone. John has no rocks.
McCain has acknowledged that, as a freshman congressman in the early 1980s, he served on the board of the US Council for World Freedom, which helped the Contras.
The council was founded by retired general John Singlaub as the US branch of the World Anti-Communist League, an ultra-conservative body that billed itself as a supporter of “pro-Democratic resistance movements fighting communist totalitarianism” but was accused of harbouring right-wing extremists, racists and anti-Semites.
The group used death squads in Nicaragua. Nice friends.
For some of the older members you may also recall that Dukaksis’s association with David Ifshin was also very damaging when compiled with the whole Horton thing.
Reading all these blog entries is very educational ! Most poeple do not know the information you make available in your postings. Even local govt officials do not seem as informed as some here. If you are local people, you should try running for office in Westchester.
It damn sure is an issue. I was on the fence, but no longer. No Obama. Not now. Not ever.
get real..you can say not now not ever as much as you
want..McCain has a huge problem..he now has the conservative
base mad as hell over his new economic proposals which
inlcude bailing out the banks by buying mortgages at face
value not market value..he is taking moderate postions
not because he wants to but because his internal polling
shows him losing white voters in battleground states
based on the tanking economy..so you say no not
ever..but the drowning middle class in mid america
likes Obama and as of now its a blowout
Ed made additional good comments at 1:24. I also think it was Norman Mailer, Bernstein and the like who pushed to get career criminal and killer Jack Abbott out of prison because he wrote a book they liked from behind bars.
And sure enough—six weeks after he was released, Abbott killed someone in Manhattan. This was in 1981. But the NY Times loved Abbott’s book, anyway.
Any number of the left wing are also currently trying to free that cop-killer from Pennsylvania.
As for SR…In your post last night at 8:57, you, yourself played the race card in the last paragraph. By doing so, you demonstrated where you are coming from—along with a large number of leftist Democrats.
And you continue to try and muddy the waters about Obama and William Ayers. You are trying to cloud the issue. And please don’t forget Ayers’ wife Bernardine Dohrn. She was as bad as him. Check out her link to the Brinks robbery in Nyack in ‘81. Three people—a guard and two cops—were killed, but Dohrn refused to cooperate with the grand jury and did some time in jail for her lack of cooperation.
It also should not be a surprise to learn that last night none other than Fidel Castro hopped on that “race card” bandwagon. Uncel Fidel himself dealt it on behalf of Obama. Castro’s despicable comments are on the AP wire.
The Far Left sticks together, no matter where they are. And they all want Obama to win.
Jiminy,
Your entire position is based on self imposed hypocrisy which undermines your and McCain’s entire argument. Your willingness to accept that and completely ignore the obvious flaws in the strategy you want McCain to pursue. It makes no sense.
He is falling in the polls because people don’t believe him or even in him. His radical associations undermine his ability to make a difference when pointing out William Ayers. It only works with people like you who are already in the tank for him.
And your jump to the race card is laughable. That comment was made from an e-mail I received from Bob McCarthy’s blog in which he was trying to spin the unfavorable poll numbers for McCain as no big deal because, as he figures, lots of white people will openly support Obama but will not vote for him once they get in the booth. The right wing is bringing that up not me. I haven’t played the race card once in this election but your boy Stan Kurtz has.
Obama’s relationship with Ayers is no more radical than McCain’s tied to Singlaub, Ifshin, or Palin’s connection to Vogler and the AIP. They don’t mean much because those types of connections have become synonymous with politicians in general now a days.
People like you keep trying to denigrte those associations while playing a partisan game. In other words it’s ok for McCain to have those associations because he is Republican/Conservative/White or whatever. But for Obama it is wrong.
My whole argument is exactly what it is. Both candidates have radical associations and that is alarming. I refuse to focus on one specific candidate though to support another.
McCain is a loser. He can’t even get support from his own base. And now he has to rely on hypocrisy to win this election.
So keep drinking the Kool Aid. The GOP is just as bad as the picture you paint for Obama and refuse to admit to.
I don’t know what you people are complaining about. You trash the most liberal-leaning Republican candidate in memory, but insist upon blatant socialism.
SmartPorpoise….Despite SR’s attempts to make everyone go behind the looking glass, SR is really nothing more than a new version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?”
But on the bright side, the Dallas Plowboys lost today, and so did the Washington Deadskins, so all is OK in most of the world tonight.
I think I’ll play some Buddy Holly songs for old times’ sake. I suspect Ed might concur with that notion. But the Consultant may be listening to the Kinks doing “Well- Respected Man” and “Sunny Afternoon.”
Democrats won despite Favre throwing three crookedly. Republicans get their chance tomorrow night. Hard to believe Flyer fans booed the hockey mom from Alaska. Goes to show you the Broad Street crowd who can afford the usurious price of admission, has over the years devolved from rugged patriots to draft-dodging pseudo intellectuals. If the Russian Army team came in to Philly these days, they’d serve them tea and crumpets at center- ice and eschew the good, time-tested old- fashioned body-check.
As much as I wanted to come back to the GOP this year they gave me no choice. Palin and McCain’s attacks of the Northeast are ridiculous and she deserved to be booed. She has no clue what this country is about and certainly does not represent the majority.
Well, Palin got nailed for ethics violations and abuse of power in Alaska today. Lets watch Jiminy spin this into how this means nothing and that Obama’s shopping at IKEA in 1999 means he hates the American economy.
william krystal writing in the new york times this morning
although he is the editor of the weekly standard and
a leading neocon….said about McCain “FIRE THE CAMPAIGN”
it is an indictment of the way they have been operating
all of them..in another article key MCain advisors both
present and past are blasting his eratic behavio, his
almost daily proposals of how to rescue the economy
many of which are certainly not conservative …
the singular problem with that campaign was kicked off
with the Palin choice..she is now viewed unfavorably
by almost 60% of voters
Even Karl Rove, the orchestrator of McCain’s destruction in 2000, opened up and said McCain’s strategy is a loser and too erratic.
In an infamous example of where they come from, Philly Eagles’ fans even booed Santa Claus some years ago.
No arguing with Bill Kristol’s analysis of the McCain campaign. He’s been flopping around like John Kerry did.
SR…Obama shopped at IKEA? OMG. And it’s also claimed he uses a Marx Manufacturers’ Hangover Trust credit card.
McCain has now closed the gap noticeably in Rasumussen and Gallup and remains close in Reuters/C-Span/Zogby.
It’s not over yet.
Jiminy must have missed this bit from Rasmussen, from today’s tracking poll…
“Still, the data continues to suggest a very stable race with Obama as the clear frontrunner. This is the eighteenth straight day that Obama’s support has stayed in the narrow range from 50% to 52% while McCain has been at 44% or 45%.
Obama is viewed favorably by 56% of voters, McCain by 51%. For McCain, that figure in unchanged since yesterday and represents his lowest favorability rating since Obama clinched the Democratic Presidential Nomination in early June.”
the zogby poll is inherently unreliable..all the other
polls point to an obama blowout…of course there
are 3 weeks left and McCain could take Krystals advice
and to shake up the race he could:
1/ Dump Palin and piss off the conservaties but
energizes the people he needs to win by putting
an economic expert on the ticket
2. announce that he is NOT going to cut taxes any
further and will cut spending to deal with the deficit
3. announce that social security will be made stable
by a combination of means testing and an increase
in the retirement age over time
4. announce he will only serve one term
With just over three weeks until Election Day, the two presidential nominees appear to be on opposite trajectories, with Sen. Barack Obama gaining momentum and Sen. John McCain stalled or losing ground on a range of issues and personal traits, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Overall, Obama is leading 53 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, and for the first time in the general-election campaign, voters gave the Democrat a clear edge on tax policy and providing strong leadership.
McCain has made little headway in his attempts to convince voters that Obama is too “risky” or too “liberal.” Rather, recent strategic shifts may have hurt the Republican nominee, who now has higher negative ratings than his rival and is seen as mostly attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues that voters care about. Even McCain’s supporters are now less enthusiastic about his candidacy, returning to levels not seen since before the Republican National Convention.
WHEN YOUR NEGATIVES START GOING UP..ITS BIG TROUBLE
MCCAIN IS CAUGHT IN A CROSSFIRE..HE IS GETTING IT
FROM HIS CONSERVATIVE BASE FOR PROPOSING A FINANCIAL
SOLUTION THAT RELIES ON GOVERNEMENT AND HE IS GETTING
IT FROM INDEPENDENTS AND SWING VOTERS WHO NOW BELIEVE
THAT OBAMA WILL LOWER THEIR TAXES MORE THAN MCCAIN
SEE BELOW:
On taxes, an issue that often benefits Republicans and that McCain has worked aggressively to highlight, Obama holds a significant lead for the first time as voters gave the Democrat an 11-point edge on whom they trust to handle tax policy
Nearly as many said they think McCain would raise their federal taxes as said so of Obama, an apparent repudiation of Republican efforts to portray Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal and one that follows an intense advertising barrage by Obama asserting that McCain would tax health-care benefits.
Nor has there been evident progress for the GOP campaign to label Obama as an extreme liberal: Fifty-five percent of voters see the Democrat as “about right” ideologically, and although 37 percent see him as “too liberal,” that is about the same as it was in June. By contrast, the percentage seeing McCain as “too conservative” is up to 42 percent, higher than it was four months ago.
Race (Click to Sort) Poll Results Spread
Missouri SurveyUSA Obama 51, McCain 43 Obama +8
National Gallup Tracking Obama 52, McCain 43.5 Obama +8.5
National Rasmussen Tracking Obama 50, McCain 45 Obama +5
National Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking Obama 48, McCain 44 Obama +4
National Hotline/FD Tracking Obama 48, McCain 42 Obama +6
National ABC News/Wash Post Obama 53, McCain 43 Obama +10
Pennsylvania Morning Call Tracking Obama 51, McCain 38 Obama +13
National GW/Battleground Tracking Obama 51, McCain 43 Obama +8
North Dakota Forum Poll/MSUM McCain 43, Obama 45 Obama +2
Ohio Marist Obama 49, McCain 45 Obama +4
Pennsylvania Marist Obama 53, McCain 41 Obama +
NORTH DAKOTA?
Obama + 5 in Ohio and +3 in Florida.
eugene robinson writes as follows:
It’s pathetic to hear right-wing talk radio blowhards try to associate Barack Obama with “radical” or “socialist” views when a Republican administration is tossing aside “Atlas Shrugged” and speed-reading “Das Kapital.”
The Federal Reserve even announced Monday that it will make unlimited quantities of dollars available for currency swaps with the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, as these institutions scramble to keep major commercial banks from failing—and potentially taking U.S. banks with them. None of Bush’s Cabinet members could be heard sniffing about the effete irrelevance of “Old Europe.”
This attitude adjustment is necessary, mind you. The question isn’t whether some kind of drastic, frankly socialistic measures are needed to save the American economy, but which ones—buying up toxic mortgage-based investments (as the White House said it would do), buying up the troubled mortgages themselves (as John McCain wants to do), or pouring money into selected banks and taking part ownership (as the White House now says it will do). Sitting back and letting the dire situation correct itself is not an option, because the market’s phoenix-like solution begins with self-immolation.
SOUND FAMILIAR?