jerseyhoya wrote:If you get 50 points, you get appointed vote fixing captain of your precinct, which comes with a $500 bonus. The whole thing is sponsored by Diebold.

VoxOrion wrote:I think in places like NJ you're seeing more of a "vote the bums out" thing than any support for any specific platforms.

dajafi wrote:And a not-so-minor point: McCain actively helped Keating wreck the S&L system. Obama sat with Ayers on a philanthropic board, and even this was a quarter-century after Ayers' pseudo-revolutionary incompetence.

I'm trying not to get worked up over any of this. But every time either of them mention Ayers or Wright, all I hear is "we have no answers to the country's problems."

jerseyhoya wrote:

phdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:House Race Hotline's Spotlight today:

Some Politics Is Local
With most nat'l polls shifting to Dems, and a heavy focus fixing on the economy, Dems are once again likely to score big gains in the fall. But a look at two states shows that Nov. may not bring us a carbon copy of '06.
-- In '06, Dems rode a toxic enviro to big gains in unexpected places. This year, that same scenario is playing out in normally GOP-friendly FL, where five GOPers (four of whom have never faced difficult re-election races) face tough fights. In a normal year, Reps. Lincoln (R-21) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25) would not be in dogfights. But new polls confirm that's the case this year.
-- But in NJ, GOPers are mystifyingly doing well. It's too easy for them to get carried away in NJ, which always seems to have polling showing GOPers tantalizingly close to victory in the final weeks. But things are looking up this cycle, as new polling shows GOPers on top in both GOP-held open seats. That situation seemed unimaginable just weeks ago.
-- In '06, Dems picked up 30 seats mostly because every competitive race tilted their way. This cycle, if GOPers are to hold on to more vulnerable seats, local factors (like, for example, an unpopular NJ state legislature) will have to play a role. That didn't happen in '06.

Don't $#@! with me.

Don't get too confident. There's still time for another GOP pedophile scandal like in 2006.

I was being sarcastic, and if you've been reading along I'm anything but confident. I would, however, like if two of the seats we're able to hold unexpectedly were the two that I've been working on all year.

jerseyhoya wrote:House Race Hotline's Spotlight today:

Some Politics Is Local
With most nat'l polls shifting to Dems, and a heavy focus fixing on the economy, Dems are once again likely to score big gains in the fall. But a look at two states shows that Nov. may not bring us a carbon copy of '06.
-- In '06, Dems rode a toxic enviro to big gains in unexpected places. This year, that same scenario is playing out in normally GOP-friendly FL, where five GOPers (four of whom have never faced difficult re-election races) face tough fights. In a normal year, Reps. Lincoln (R-21) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25) would not be in dogfights. But new polls confirm that's the case this year.
-- But in NJ, GOPers are mystifyingly doing well. It's too easy for them to get carried away in NJ, which always seems to have polling showing GOPers tantalizingly close to victory in the final weeks. But things are looking up this cycle, as new polling shows GOPers on top in both GOP-held open seats. That situation seemed unimaginable just weeks ago.
-- In '06, Dems picked up 30 seats mostly because every competitive race tilted their way. This cycle, if GOPers are to hold on to more vulnerable seats, local factors (like, for example, an unpopular NJ state legislature) will have to play a role. That didn't happen in '06.

Don't $#@! with me.

phdave wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Obama is not a terrorist, nor even sympathetic to them, as far as I can tell.

But his political ambition has been such that he's frequently indiscriminate in the associations made so long as those associations advance his career.

The concern is about Obama's judgment, and whether it has a moral component.

Mountainphan wrote:Does this mean Obama is a terrorist sympathizer? I don't think so at all.

What it does call into question is Obama's judgement and character to surround himself with the likes of Ayers, Wright et al. when it was political expedient to do so (and then throw them overboard when they became a liability).

I see that you two both got the talking points. I hope you get a lot of points for repeating them here, although this is not really a featured blog.

Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain's policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the United States and we need you to tell others why.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

What do you do with these points? Exchange them for tax cuts?

Mountainphan wrote:

dajafi wrote:And a not-so-minor point: McCain actively helped Keating wreck the S&L system. Obama sat with Ayers on a philanthropic board, and even this was a quarter-century after Ayers' pseudo-revolutionary incompetence.

I'm trying not to get worked up over any of this. But every time either of them mention Ayers or Wright, all I hear is "we have no answers to the country's problems."

With all due respect, McCain did not actively help Keating wreck the S&L system. If you want to blame one of the Keating 5, DeConcini is the guy.

And Obama's relationship is a lot more than simply sitting on a philanthropic board with Ayers as pointed out in the CNN piece and elsewhere. This relationship is fair game, especially since Obama makes no apologies for hitching the wagon to his political career to his kind on radical.

And judging by Ayers' recent rhetoric and views, he's still every bit the radical as he was in the 60s and 70s, so his radicalism is anything but "in the past".

uncle milt wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

uncle milt wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Housh, don't watch. What could be said by either party that would sway you? You have enough info. Anything cool that comes out of it can easily be youtubed. Spend time doing something more valuable than watching these guys.

i'm going to quizzo.

where do you do quizzo?

some bar in alexandria, va.

Mountainphan wrote:Since I brought up the Ayers' connection weeks ago, does that mean that the McCain campaign got their talking points from me? Dude, where's my tax cut?

For those Democrats who are too young to have a proper appreciation of their party's history, which likely includes most of Senator Obama's supporters, we direct your attention to a memorable moment in DNC history that shows how the current nominee really is connected to the party's past as much as its future.

It was forty years ago today that Barack Obama friend and political ally, and unrepentant terrorists, William Ayers was arrested while protesting the DNC proceedings. William Ayers set no bombs that day, but he was only working his way up from petty criminal to domestic terrorist. And of course this was long before Barack Obama and he struck up the friendship that would lead Ayers to launch Obama's political career at his house.

Still, the McCain campaign would take this opportunity to remind voters that those responsible for the violence in 1968 have since been incorporated into the party they once protested, and have been revered even by the likes of Barack Obama, and this despite the failure, in the case of Ayers, to ever apologize for the violence he committed against the American people.

MountainPhan wrote:A question for clarification followed by a response...

1) Is the McCain team running the Ayers TV ad or one of the 527s?
2) Regardless, the response from the Obama supporters would only be effective if the issue was that Obama is being portrayed as basically an adjunct member of the Weathermen. That's not the case, at least by anyone I've heard or read.

The only issue I've heard in connection with Ayers, and I believe it's legit btw, is Obama's lack of judgement in closely associating himself with an unrepentent scumbag like Ayers and his significant other. Combined with his long-term, close associations/friendships with Wright, Rezko et al., his judgement proves to be highly suspect. For someone who has based his rather thin qualifications for President on having great (some might say superhuman) judgement, this is a big-time problem for Obama and he has noone to blame but himself.

phdave wrote:

Mountainphan wrote:Since I brought up the Ayers' connection weeks ago, does that mean that the McCain campaign got their talking points from me? Dude, where's my tax cut?

Yes you brought it up weeks ago. You brought it up in response to dajafi's post about the McCain talking points about Ayers.

For those Democrats who are too young to have a proper appreciation of their party's history, which likely includes most of Senator Obama's supporters, we direct your attention to a memorable moment in DNC history that shows how the current nominee really is connected to the party's past as much as its future.

It was forty years ago today that Barack Obama friend and political ally, and unrepentant terrorists, William Ayers was arrested while protesting the DNC proceedings. William Ayers set no bombs that day, but he was only working his way up from petty criminal to domestic terrorist. And of course this was long before Barack Obama and he struck up the friendship that would lead Ayers to launch Obama's political career at his house.

Still, the McCain campaign would take this opportunity to remind voters that those responsible for the violence in 1968 have since been incorporated into the party they once protested, and have been revered even by the likes of Barack Obama, and this despite the failure, in the case of Ayers, to ever apologize for the violence he committed against the American people.

Here is your post:

MountainPhan wrote:A question for clarification followed by a response...

1) Is the McCain team running the Ayers TV ad or one of the 527s?
2) Regardless, the response from the Obama supporters would only be effective if the issue was that Obama is being portrayed as basically an adjunct member of the Weathermen. That's not the case, at least by anyone I've heard or read.

The only issue I've heard in connection with Ayers, and I believe it's legit btw, is Obama's lack of judgement in closely associating himself with an unrepentent scumbag like Ayers and his significant other. Combined with his long-term, close associations/friendships with Wright, Rezko et al., his judgement proves to be highly suspect. For someone who has based his rather thin qualifications for President on having great (some might say superhuman) judgement, this is a big-time problem for Obama and he has noone to blame but himself.

So, sorry I guess you only get points for repeating talking points, not providing them. And if you are a billionaire, you already got plenty of tax cuts over the past 7 1/2 years.

Mountainphan wrote:Is this what happens when you have no substantive response to my (or other's) post - simply accuse them of repeating talking points? This lame attempt at a smear ought to be beneath you, but apparently it is not.

phdave wrote:

Mountainphan wrote:Is this what happens when you have no substantive response to my (or other's) post - simply accuse them of repeating talking points? This lame attempt at a smear ought to be beneath you, but apparently it is not.

Sorry, I didn't realize that you and TP independently discovered the relationship between Obama and Ayers on your own.

And does pointing out the remarkable similarity between posts on an internet board and campaign information really count as a smear? Isn't that a little dramatic? I didn't say anything about you personally, like you associate with terrorists or anything really bad like that.

jeff2sf wrote:

phdave wrote:

Mountainphan wrote:Is this what happens when you have no substantive response to my (or other's) post - simply accuse them of repeating talking points? This lame attempt at a smear ought to be beneath you, but apparently it is not.

Sorry, I didn't realize that you and TP independently discovered the relationship between Obama and Ayers on your own.

And does pointing out the remarkable similarity between posts on an internet board and campaign information really count as a smear? Isn't that a little dramatic? I didn't say anything about you personally, like you associate with terrorists or anything really bad like that.

Seriously, phdave, stop with the gotcha message board posts. They really weren't as missed as you think. You don't think tons of Obama supporters parrot lines from Obama's website? There's not really even any problem with it. If Obama has a position on an issue, and I support him, and I want to make an argument supporting Obama, there's a better than even chance that I'm going to make one that has a fair amount of similarities to what Obama wrote.

In other words, if I support Obama's position on merit pay, I'm not going to say that the reason I support merit pay for teachers is because I like kittens, kittens are young cats and my teachers name was CATherine just so that no one accuses me of having an argument remarkably similar to Obama's.

Now of course, I could give less than 2 craps about this Ayers thing or judgment or whatever, but you essentially ignored the issue on judgment so that you could demonstrate, once again, that you know google better than anyone in the history of the world.

phdave wrote:

Mountainphan wrote:Is this what happens when you have no substantive response to my (or other's) post - simply accuse them of repeating talking points? This lame attempt at a smear ought to be beneath you, but apparently it is not.

Sorry, I didn't realize that you and TP independently discovered the relationship between Obama and Ayers on your own.

phdave wrote:And does pointing out the remarkable similarity between posts on an internet board and campaign information really count as a smear? Isn't that a little dramatic? I didn't say anything about you personally, like you associate with terrorists or anything really bad like that.

Mountainphan wrote:With McCain and Keating, McCain owned up to his lapse in judgement a long time ago. Some blame McCain-Feingold on McCain's "regret" over his connection to Keating (even though his connection was found to be overstated to a large degree). Also, the Keating Five affair was thoroughly covered by the press and only now is Obama's connection to Bill Ayers getting some serious scrutiny.

Mountainphan wrote:And if I associated with terrorists, I would expect to be called out on it and asked to explain, especially if I was running for Pres.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Sometimes 3 a.m. moments occur at 10:52 in the morning.

It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.

Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father's expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy's greatest admirals. That morning, preparing for his sixth bombing run over North Vietnam, the graying pilot's dreams of combat glory were beginning to seem within his reach.

Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain's aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain's stubby A-4, the Navy's "Tinkertoy Bomber," into the fire.

McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs "cooked off," blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren't serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny "came through without a scratch."

The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier's 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.

These are the moments that test men's mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain's. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then "gallantly took command of a firefighting team" that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.

McCain displayed little of Hope's valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who "stayed to help the pilots fight the fire," McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the "ready room," where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room's closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."

The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. "Johnny" Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as "some welcome R&R."