jerseyhoya wrote:I hope we can get a little lower. Otherwise we aren't going to win.

Camp Holdout wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I hope we can get a little lower. Otherwise we aren't going to win.

you arent going to win anyway... so why not go down with some class?

but honestly, what is lower that trying to spread a rumor that barack obama is bff's with terrorists?

jerseyhoya wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I hope we can get a little lower. Otherwise we aren't going to win.

you arent going to win anyway... so why not go down with some class?

but honestly, what is lower that trying to spread a rumor that barack obama is bff's with terrorists?

First, we might well still win. There's a month left yet. Plenty of time to turn this around.

And there are some legitimate connections there with Obama and Ayers. I don't think it really matters, and they sound worse than they actually are, but that's politics.

Camp Holdout wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

pacino wrote:

'Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,' Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.
Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

I hate her so much. How can one get away with this crap?

Facts that may trouble Obama supporters:

Obama's political coming-out party in the mid-1990s was hosted by Ayers and his terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn.

Ayers and Obama both took part in panel discussions that were organized by Michelle Obama.

The goodbye party for prominent Israel basher and Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi was attended by Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn.

Khalidi himself hosted a fundraiser for Obama's first Congressional campaign.

Obama and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund for three years, and continued to do so even after Ayers was quoted in the New York Times fondly recalling his days as a bomber, and despairing that he hadn't "done more."

The funds Obama and Ayers helped control at the Woods Foundation funneled thousands of dollars into both Khalidi's organization and the now-infamous Trinity United Church of Christ.

http://townhall.com/Columnists/GuyBenson/2...yers_fact_sheet

OMG barack obama is a terrorist!!!?!!?!?!?!

this game of political limbo by the republicans is comical (how low can you guys go? these current depths are impressive.)

Camp Holdout wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I hope we can get a little lower. Otherwise we aren't going to win.

you arent going to win anyway... so why not go down with some class?

but honestly, what is lower that trying to spread a rumor that barack obama is bff's with terrorists?

First, we might well still win. There's a month left yet. Plenty of time to turn this around.

And there are some legitimate connections there with Obama and Ayers. I don't think it really matters, and they sound worse than they actually are, but that's politics.

but you and i both know (and the mccain campaign knows) that all of these "strong connections" have been debunked a long time ago. but sure, i get that it's politics.

i thought the word "terrorist" was sort of off limits... guess not. we'll see what happens... but this ayers "attack" if you can even call it that, is certainly the low point so far.

it's not even really worth responding to at any length by obama, and hopefully he won't.

pacino wrote:I'm not. There is hardly a connection. Knowing someone doesn't mean anything. We could pick apart a lot of people's 'connections'.

Anyway, this is nothing and I'm going to stop talking about it as it only seeks to validate the crap she said.

pacino wrote:Anyway, this is nothing and I'm going to stop talking about it as it only seeks to validate the crap she said.

TenuredVulture wrote:How hard do you think it will be to dig up someone who has some association with McCain (a major donor, someone who hosted a $#@! party for him, etc) who has a questionable past?

TenuredVulture wrote:How hard do you think it will be to dig up someone who has some association with McCain (a major donor, someone who hosted a $#@! party for him, etc) who has a questionable past?

gr wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:How hard do you think it will be to dig up someone who has some association with McCain (a major donor, someone who hosted a $#@! party for him, etc) who has a questionable past?

probably not that hard. but, he's not the one running on "a new kind of politics" or whatever. with mccain, i think people know they're getting a semi-erratic leader whose interested deeply in a couple issues and not so muchon a bunch of others.

but, if obama was saying "hey, i'm a liberal with fairly traditional liberal policy ideas, with a twist here and there, and that's what we need," then that's the end of it. i don't think he's a terrorist or even a radical or anything, i just think his whole "change" appeal is pretty phoney-baloney. he's a party-line voter with an impressive academic background who started his career through social justice avenues. just say it already.

TomatoPie wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:How hard do you think it will be to dig up someone who has some association with McCain (a major donor, someone who hosted a $#@! party for him, etc) who has a questionable past?

Impossible, I'd say.

Else it would be trumpeted in the media.

John McCain has been hammering rival Barack Obama for being little more than a vapid "celebrity" and "elitist." But The Nation has obtained a photo revealing just how star-struck a straight-talking maverick can become when offered the chance to celebrate his birthday aboard a yacht filled with celebrities--even if one of those celebrity types turns out to be an A-list con man.

The photograph substantiates reports that in late August, 2006, McCain celebrated his 70th birthday aboard a yacht, the Celine Ashley, rented by A-list con man Raffaello Follieri and his then-movie star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. In the current edition of Vanity Fair, Michael Schnayerson reported that Follieri rented the Celine Ashley for the month of August 2006. Montenegro's leading daily
newspaper, Vijesti, earlier reported that during McCain's visit in 2006 he celebrated with birthday cocktails and sweets aboard the Celine Ashley yacht. In the photograph, taken in Montenegro at the end of August, McCain is shown boarding the yacht ramp towards the smiling Follieri and Hathaway. Just ahead of McCain and shaking hands with Follieri appears to be Rick Davis--McCain's top aide and now co-manager of his campaign, who accompanied him on the trip and advised the government of Montenegro. A few months after McCain's yacht party, Follieri strengthened his ties to McCain's orbit by retaining Rick Davis's well-connected Washington lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, and offering Davis both an investment deal and help in securing the Catholic vote for McCain's presidential bid.

Follieri, who posed as Vatican chief financial officer in order to win friends and investments, pleaded guilty Wednesday in a Manhattan district court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. As part of the plea, Follieri admitted to misappropriating at least $2.4 million of investor money and redirecting it to foreign personal bank accounts that were disguised as business accounts.

At the time he met McCain, Follieri was adept at collecting friends in powerful places and using those connections to attract investments in projects which later turned out to be bogus. His ties to Bill Clinton and his entourage have been well-documented; the charismatic Follieri, whom Vanity Fair has likened to an ambitious nineteenth-century protagonist from a Balzac novel, ingratiated himself to President Clinton and aides by posing as a mega-donor to the Clinton Global Initiative. He also formed an investment partnership with California business mogul and Clinton donor Ron Burkle to develop surplus real estate properties owned by the Catholic Church, which Follieri claimed to represent. Burkle later sued Follieri for $1.3 million in misappropriated funds.

Yet Follieri's ties to McCain's orbit have been largely overlooked by the media. Follieri first met McCain when the Arizona Senator visited Montenegro from August 29-31 as part of a Congressional delegation that included Republican senators Lindsay Graham, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss, Mel Martinez and John Sununu. [We'll have more on what else McCain was doing in Montenegro in a forthcoming article in the print edition of The Nation.]

What, exactly, was McCain doing aboard Follieri's yacht? Or put another way, was this McCain's 70th birthday wish--to spend an evening floating on the Adriatic with one of Hollywood's top actresses and her smooth-talking Italian beau?

Charles Humphrey Keating Jr. (born December 4, 1923 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is a retired American lawyer, politician, and banker - best known for his criminal involvement at the center of the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s. As a result of his actions he is a convicted felon having been found guilty of fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy. His manipulation of five US senators (to whom he had made substantial financial contributions) to argue for preferential treatment from regulators led to those politicians being dubbed the Keating Five in reference to him.

McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981, and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators. Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates. In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.

TenuredVulture wrote:

Laexile wrote:

pacino wrote:what a load of bullcrap

Hypothesis confirmed. Thank you. I don't think anyone could have said it better.

Tolerance is respecting other people's points of view regardless of whether you agree with them or think there's any basis for that belief. Tolerance isn't allowing someone to harm another individual because that's their belief. There are, of course, conflicts between personal beliefs and societal norms. In such cases society needs to make those judgements. Respecting a polygamist’s belief that plural marriage is acceptable and allowing plural marriage may be considered two different things.

But some points of view are dumb. Tolerance does not require suspending judgment, or lapsing into so mush headed relativism.

Tolerance isn't general, it's specific.

Laexile wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Laexile wrote:

pacino wrote:what a load of bullcrap

Hypothesis confirmed. Thank you. I don't think anyone could have said it better.

Tolerance is respecting other people's points of view regardless of whether you agree with them or think there's any basis for that belief. Tolerance isn't allowing someone to harm another individual because that's their belief. There are, of course, conflicts between personal beliefs and societal norms. In such cases society needs to make those judgements. Respecting a polygamist’s belief that plural marriage is acceptable and allowing plural marriage may be considered two different things.

But some points of view are dumb. Tolerance does not require suspending judgment, or lapsing into so mush headed relativism.

Tolerance isn't general, it's specific.

It really shouldn't be. Some points of view are dumb and judgement of the point of view shouldn't be suspended. It's one thing to not tolerate someone pushing the teaching of intelligent design, it's another to have scorn and disdain on someone for believing in it. If you want tolerance on your points of view, shouldn't you provide the same in return? Why should someone's private beliefs exclude them from anything? Have we gone so far into the 1984 world that we're invoking the thought police?