[Arctic_Menace]

Just...wow...


America is full of fucking children...And I don't mean the little kind...

[Psudo]

And there's 67,000 hits on Google for McCain baby eater. There are radicals on both sides. The existence of radicals doesn't prove that his opposition is primarily radical, or whatever other point you're making.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

It is irrational to take that distancing and interpret it as a continuation of the same.

While you argue your point very well, I'm sticking to my guns on this one. John McCain is a lot different than George W. Bush--granted. But he does identify with the same party--and presumably then, the same idological foundation--as George W. Bush. Also, though John McCain may distinguish himself as someone who's been known to buck the party line, Sarah Palin is actually quite similar to George Bush. Highly ideological, highly religious, folksy, "Amerocentric" (extremely limited experience outside the US). Also, the apparatus that supports the Republican power structure--the advisors, the handlers, the appointees, etc-- remains the same to perpetuate the same old, same old.

In the final analysis, it may seem unjust to punish John McCain for the sins of his predecessor, but that's politics. After a disastrous eight years that's seen war, domestic upheaval and economic turmoil, the Republicans need to go stand in the corner and rethink their message, in my opinion.

Of course, the Republicans could still well win the election, in which case the above paragraph would not apply.

[Scape]

Psudo wrote:

And there's 67,000 hits on Google for McCain baby eater. There are radicals on both sides. The existence of radicals doesn't prove that his opposition is primarily radical, or whatever other point you're making.

Amazon.com Files Obama Mask As A Terrorist Costume

Quote:

OMG when submitting this review, here are the Amazon Tag Suggestions they provided for me: "Tag Suggestions (click to add): obama, barack, liar, socialist, costume, dignity, terrorist, creep, marxist"

Equating McCain as a baby eater may be distasteful and even in season during the high water mark of the political season but do you really think there is a baby eater McCain doll listed on Amazon or that they will offer up the tag that comes anywhere on par to calling Obama a socialist Marxist Terrorist? Do you see the rallies that have 100,000+ going to see Obama calling McCain a baby eater by the hundreds?

Sorry your trying to pick out a few bad seeds and expecting that to stick as what all Obama supporters are like and not using any standard at all to McCain supporters who ARE lining up by the hundreds and screaming racial epithetes and calling Obama anti-American and why not when Palin is outright doing so herself?

Who is more anti-American: John McCain or Barack Obama?

Quote:

Bachmann is just an idiot. She wouldn’t know Edmund Burke from Billie Burke — she played the good witch in the Wizard of Oz — and she obviously has no idea that, in her rejection of the two bedrock American principles of separation of church and state and freedom of thought, she is the one who is as anti-American as they come.

But friends, all is not darkness. Bachmann’s appearance caused a national uproar. Her Democratic opponent raised nearly US$500,000 from around the country in just 24 hours, and he now has a chance of beating her.

That would be nice. But let’s go back to the big contest. With Bachmann, the lid came off the rightwing id. It will happen many more times over these next week. McCain, who now openly uses the word “socialist” to describe Obama’s proposals — the week after his friend US President George W. Bush took federal control of nine major banks — and especially Palin have shown every sign of encouraging it. Their goal is to scare the US citizens about Obama, but moderate, independent voters might well decide that Obama looks a lot less scary than they do.

My point is simple, you are calling this a legitimate political tactic. I don't think it is or ever could be. I know that the independents think this tactic stinks to high heaven and are fleeing the McCain ticket with good cause. It may well play to the base but if that base is all about pitchforks and lynchings that's not a base that can used to run the most powerful nation on the planet without as radical a reaction to them both in and outside the US. If your base is radical your platform inherently must be as well not matter how much lipstick you put on that pig.

We protest vehemently when Iran elects someone like Ahmadinejad with his radical religious agenda yet the US is doing exactly the same thing in electing a McCain with rallies marinaded in hate just as Ahmadinejad panders to his own clerical base. We call out his regime as illegitimate but by that same standard the US can be measured as well.

[Pseudonym]

Scape wrote:

Sorry your trying to pick out a few bad seeds and expecting that to stick as what all Obama supporters are like and not using any standard at all to McCain supporters who ARE lining up by the hundreds and screaming racial epithetes and calling Obama anti-American and why not when Palin is outright doing so herself?

I believe this is the critical point. It is YOU who are trying to pick out a few bad seeds. If I have done so, I shall apologize, but I am rather certain you will not find adequate grounds to level that charge against me.

[Scape]

Pseudonym wrote:

I dislike negative political campaigning as much as the next man, but all I'm trying to defend against here is the false viewpoint that somehow McCain and Palin are to be held responsible for the comments of a select radical few.

When you were pointing out the legitimacy of negative ads as a tactics you were equivocating for McCain in his stead.

[Streaker]

Scape wrote:

Wow... just... wow.

There it is for all to see: America's cultural retardation exposed.

[Pseudonym]

Scape wrote:

Pseudonym wrote:

I dislike negative political campaigning as much as the next man, but all I'm trying to defend against here is the false viewpoint that somehow McCain and Palin are to be held responsible for the comments of a select radical few.

When you were pointing out the legitimacy of negative ads as a tactics you were equivocating for McCain in his stead.

How does that equate to me accusing Obama's supporters as a whole of bigotry and radicalism?

[Arctic_Menace]

Man, I love that video...I'm sorry to all my American friends out there, but it's people like that who make me feel ashamed to be part American.

I know that they are supposedly a minority, but jeez, even up here this stuff is almost entirely unheard of...

[Scape]

Pseudonym wrote:

How does that equate to me accusing Obama's supporters as a whole of bigotry and radicalism?

Your argument is based upon moral relativism yet there is no equivocal attack being waged from the Obama leadership as there clearly is from the McCain camp.

[Pseudonym]

So are you challenging me to produce some sort of attack along the lines of "McCain is a terrorist Marxist Muslim" from the Obama supporters?

[JJ]

Arctic_Menace wrote:

Man, I love that video...I'm sorry to all my American friends out there, but it's people like that who make me feel ashamed to be part American.

I know that they are supposedly a minority, but jeez, even up here this stuff is almost entirely unheard of...

I bet I could make a video just as shockingly hateful and ignorant in this country. I'd just have to film a bunch of leftist-nationalist types talking about Americans.

[Scape]

Pseudonym wrote:

So are you challenging me to produce some sort of attack along the lines of "McCain is a terrorist Marxist Muslim" from the Obama supporters?

As long as you link it directly to what the Obama campaign leadership is currently espousing. We are not talking about a few loose screws, we are talking about an concerted effort being put forth intentionally which has unequivocally been demonstrated on the McCain side. I have yet to see anything even remotely of that caliber being telegraphed from the Obama campaign either passively or directly.

[Zipperfish]

JJ wrote:

Arctic_Menace wrote:

Man, I love that video...I'm sorry to all my American friends out there, but it's people like that who make me feel ashamed to be part American.

I know that they are supposedly a minority, but jeez, even up here this stuff is almost entirely unheard of...

I bet I could make a video just as shockingly hateful and ignorant in this country. I'd just have to film a bunch of leftist-nationalist types talking about Americans.

Probably true, much as I hate to admit it.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

John McCain is a lot different than George W. Bush--granted. But he does identify with the same party--and presumably then, the same idological foundation--as George W. Bush.

"Party" and "ideological foundation" are not synonyms in US politics, or even close to it. Ron Paul is in that same party; do you imagine he shares an ideological foundation with George W. Bush? They disagree on three times as many issues as they agree on.

Zipperfish wrote:

Also, the apparatus that supports the Republican power structure--the advisors, the handlers, the appointees, etc-- remains the same to perpetuate the same old, same old.

The party apparatus or the bureaucracy in Washington? As I understand it, the entrenched bureaucracy in Washington is quite left-wing.

Sure, the Republican party apparatus is mostly the same: it's the same people who opposed Bush on the Dubai ports deal, Harriet Miers, No Child Left Behind, immigration reform, the financial bailout (at least superficially), and on and on. Bush has not been paralleling his party any more than he parallels McCain. For that matter, McCain hasn't exactly stood the party line historically either.

(For the record, the only one of the above issues on which I agreed with Bush was the Dubai ports deal.)

Zipperfish wrote:

the Republicans need to go stand in the corner and rethink their message, in my opinion.

They ought to rethink this false compromise fetish they've been harboring and go full bore towards the pluralistic democratic freedoms and spending cuts. That's what made them popular in the 80s.

Zipperfish wrote:

Of course, the Republicans could still well win the election

Hahahahaha! That's a good one. Now I'll be able to go to sleep with a smile on my face. Republicans could still win... ha! It gets funnier every time.

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Have you ever noticed the 30-year repeating pattern in US politics? The country goes conservative or right-wing for about a decade, liberalism takes over for about a decade, an ugly hodgepodge corrupt mixture rules for about a decade, then it repeats.

Conservative decades: 1920s (I love Coolidge), 1950s (the Red Scare), 1980s (Reagan and my birth =)
Liberal decades: 1930s (Great Depression), 1960s (The Hippy Trippy Decade), 1990s (The Clintonian Era)
Moderate decades: 1940s (okay, WW2 was a pretty good decade for moderate politics), 1970s (Nixon), this decade (Bush).

For this schedule to continue, whoever gets elected this time around will be a 1-term President, followed by a real conservative administration. That suggests Obama will win; why would the Republicans not run the incumbent?

It's slightly ridiculous to assume the pattern means something when you don't know why it's occurring, but it's a fun little superstition of mine. With Election '08 sucking as it is, it gives me some hope for 2012. It also reinforces my belief that a bad compromise is worse than a well-considered partisan position, even if I disagree with that particular partisan view.