<p>“How about a Windbag tax?”</p>
<p>Shouldn’t make fun of people with significant addiction problems.</p>
<p>McCain attempted suicide twice while he was a POW, after he broke under torture. Personally, I don’t think that has much to do with anything, but I do think about it when people suggest that Obama is a “Manchurian Muslim.”</p>
<p>“McCain attempted suicide twice while he was a POW, after he broke under torture.”</p>
<p>That’s a negative?</p>
<p>I don’t know if his attempts were the product of rational thought or if he became psychotic under the stress but if the latter, I would think that he has a better appreciation for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, post-partum psychosis, etc. Mental Health seems to be the third-rail of politics.</p>
<p>^If anything, it says McCain’s leadership as a POW is all the more remarkable. For example, consider how you feel after having the flu for a week. Awful, right? It seems as though it’ll never go away. Now consider the disfiguring injuries and oppressive, agonizing atmosphere McCain endured as a POW for 5 years. Tough for anyone to survive.</p>
<p>All the more reason for Clark not to minimize the courage of McCain as an Obama toady.</p>
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<p>Uh, I guessed you missed the Republican memo to move on from this topic, since everybody realized the truth that WC wasn’t minimizing his courage as a POW just saying that it wasn’t a solid qualification for president.</p>
<p>You’ll have to try a new tack.</p>
<p>Also, since McCain’s folks brought this up so whiningly, it has raised questions about his actions as a POW and in the forces in general.</p>
<p>I hadn’t heard about suicides and didn’t really care to know about something like this, but since the genie is out of the bottle, I want to know about that, about the propaganda McCain made for the enemy, about why he left the service, etc.</p>
<p>^ Bedhead, you are absolutely right! If you peruse (I know it’s a LONG thread with many posters!) you will note that both parent2noles and BCEagle are rabib McCainiacs AND are insistent to keep alive the absurd notion that Obama had anything to do with General Clark’s comment.</p>
<p>I support Obama, but would not have disassociated myself from Clark’s remark, the substance of which was to CORRECTLY question McCain’s military qualifications ON THE ISSUE OF LEADERSHIP ONLY. </p>
<p>The longer this debate continues the more the electorate is learning that McCain, brave as he was all those years ago, has no vision for America’s future.</p>
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<p>I think one of the reasons this died such a quick death in MSM is exactly because Obama disavowed the statement and didn’t get into parsing it. While I agree its pathetic the mainstream media tried to stir up a controversy on this one, I actually think Obama handled it perfectly. And I am very glad that WC did not back off his valid questions. And I am very glad that Obama didn’t do something foolish like suggest he would ask WC to apologize which WC apparently wouldn’t have done anyway.</p>
<p>^ Hey, BedHead, I’m beginning to think that Wes Clark could be Obama’s Dick Cheney. . . at least for all the RIGHT reasons as attack dog, etc.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>That’s interesting. Do you mean he’s a surrogate for Obama? 'Cause I actually don’t think he is. I think he was stating just what he thought – perhaps trying to position himself as a VP candidate --and I don’t think he weighed the implications. I am not sure Obama would have wanted him saying this. Either way, I have no proof, but it doesn’t ring true to me that Obama would have him make these claims because it would feed into exactly the kind of gambit that the McCain campaign responded with – i.e. that Obama was attacking his war record.</p>
<p>Indeed, I don’t think Obama had any idea that Clark would make the remarks. I just think that Clark would BE the equivalent of Cheney if he became VEEP. . .</p>
<p>I have seen another thread today that talks about Texas rep. Chet Edwards as a strong VEEP candidate for Obama.</p>
<p>BarristerDad118 wrote:</p>
<p>“If you peruse (I know it’s a LONG thread with many posters!) you
will note that both parent2noles and BCEagle are rabib McCainiacs AND
are insistent to keep alive the absurd notion that Obama had anything
to do with General Clark’s comment.”</p>
<p>I pointed out your lies earlier in the thread and gave you a chance to
either make your case but of course you couldn’t.</p>
<p>Again, you lie. I am not a McCain supporter but think that he would
make a better president than Obama.</p>
<p>Here is an editorial from today’s NY Times that seems pertinent to this thread. I don’t know how to box copied material. I think the way statements are presented in the press also has a big effect on how the public perceives/takes them.</p>
<p>Op-Ed Columnist
Rove’s Third Term</p>
<p>By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 4, 2008</p>
<p>Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service.</p>
<p>Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, titled his tell-all memoir “What Happened.” But a true account of modern American politics should be titled “What Didn’t Happen.” Again and again we’ve had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place.</p>
<p>The latest fake scandal fit the usual pattern as an awkwardly phrased remark, lifted out of context and willfully misinterpreted, exploded across the airwaves.</p>
<p>What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain’s war service, though heroic, didn’t necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous — especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.</p>
<p>Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.</p>
<p>It was predictable that the McCain campaign would go wild over the Clark remarks. Mr. McCain’s run for the White House has always been based on persona rather than policy: he doesn’t have ideas that voters agree with, but he does have an inspiring life story — which, contrary to the myth of the modest maverick, he talks about all the time. The suggestion that this life story isn’t relevant to his quest for office was bound to provoke a violent reaction.</p>
<p>But the McCain campaign went beyond condemning General Clark’s remarks; it went out of its way to distort them. “This backhanded slap against John as not being a worthy warrior because he just got shot down is one of the more surprising insults in my military history,” said retired Col. Bud Day, who participated in a conference call organized by the campaign. In fact, General Clark had said no such thing.</p>
<p>The irony, not lost on Democrats, is that Col. Day himself has done what he falsely accused Wesley Clark of doing: he appeared in the 2004 Swift boat ads that impugned John Kerry’s wartime service.</p>
<p>The willingness of the McCain campaign to engage in these tactics, employing such tainted spokesmen, tells us that the campaign has decided to go negative — specifically, to apply the strategy Karl Rove used so effectively in 2002 and 2004 (but not so effectively in 2006), that of portraying Democrats as unpatriotic.</p>
<p>And sure enough, Adam Nagourney of The New York Times reports signs of the “increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s shop in the McCain operation.”</p>
<p>Will Rovian tactics work this year?</p>
<p>In 2002 and 2004, Republicans were so successful at playing the patriotism card thanks to a combination of compliant media and cowering Democrats. At first, the Clark affair suggested that nothing has changed. News organizations reported as fact the false assertion that General Clark criticized Mr. McCain’s military service, and the Obama campaign rushed to “reject” his remarks.</p>
<p>“Two days into the Wesley Clark fallout,” wrote the Columbia Journalism Review on Tuesday morning, “the press, the G.O.P., and the Obama campaign all seem to have agreed that Clark’s recent remarks on John McCain’s service record were at best impolitic and at worst despicable.”</p>
<p>Since then, however, both the press and the Obama campaign seem to have recovered some of their balance. Opinion pieces have started to appear pointing out that General Clark didn’t say what he’s accused of saying. Mr. Obama has also declared that General Clark doesn’t owe Mr. McCain an apology for his “inartful” remarks and denies that his own condemnation, in a speech given on Monday, of those who “devalue” military service was aimed at the general.</p>
<p>In the end, the Clark affair may have strengthened the Obama campaign. Last week, with his cave-in on wiretapping, Mr. Obama was showing disturbing signs of falling into the usual Democratic cringe on national security. This may have been the week he rediscovered the virtues of standing tall.</p>
<p>Furthermore, my sense, though it’s hard to prove, is that the press is feeling a bit ashamed about the way it piled on General Clark. If so, news organizations may think twice before buying into the next fake scandal.</p>
<p>If so, the campaign has just taken a major turn in Mr. Obama’s favor. After all, if this campaign isn’t dominated by faux outrage over fake scandals, it will have to be about things that really did happen, like a failed economic policy and a disastrous war — both of which Mr. McCain promises will continue if he wins.</p>
<p>Using a surrogate to deliver your message has been a tactic of political campaigns for the past many elections. The trial balloon went up to try to attack McCain’s best asset - his character as a patriotic soldier. If it works, you keep doing it. If it doesn’t the mouthpiece takes the hit and the candidate can distance him/herself. The Clintons were pros at this. Obama is merely taking a page from their campaign strategy book. I was really leaning Obama’s way, because he seemed to show the idealism of not being a politico, but an honorable person. Now he is turning into just another politician. Sad, disillusioning, and losing my vote.</p>
<p>^^Same here. </p>
<p>“Worked his way through college and law school.” Doing what? Maybe someone here can fill us in.</p>
<p>This kind of duplicity is a real turnoff to me. It spits in the face of kids who really did put themselves through school ib their own. Ditto for Michelle’s whining about just finishing paying off her and Barack’s college loans. Poor baby. What a mean country!</p>
<p>[Factcheck.org:</a> Obama’s Work Claim | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com](<a href=“http://www.newsweek.com/id/144336]Factcheck.org:”>Factcheck.org: Obama's Work Claim)</p>
<p>I don’t think Michelle was whining–merely pointing out that she and Barak didn’t have … oh, say, a billion-dollar beer distributorship/trust fund to rely on for their college expenses. Like many of us mere mortals, they know what it’s like to have debt.</p>
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<p>The Republicans are geniuses at this kind of garbage. They effectively swift-boated John Kerry in 2004 and cast ugly innuendo on the distinguished military records of Max Clelland and John Murtha. I feel the same stomach-turning shame when I hear attacks on McCain’s service–at least some of which are coming from radical right-wingers who hate him.</p>
<p>Get over it! John Kerry swift-boated himself when he chose to testify before congress after Viet Nam! Insert foot here or was it silver spoon I forget!</p>
<p>Ilsa (re post #194), Obama attended Columbia University. Students in NYC typically make very good money taking part time work doing tutoring or bartending, where they are often paid cash. Also, as students focus on their careers, they often drop jobs that are not related to their career goals from their resumes – there isn’t room to list everything, and as time goes on the less glamorous positions are the first to be dropped. For anyone who has worked a lot of different jobs it can be hard to reconstruct later on. (My son just ran into this problem when he was asked to list every job he had held for the past 10 years by his present employer - and he’s only 25 – we had to wrack our brains to remember some of things he had done along the way, and then had a problem remembering the name of the employer or other relevant details.) </p>
<p>The absence of evidence to support a fact is not the same as evidence that the fact is not true. </p>
<p>If Obama had to take loans to get through school, its a pretty good bet he also was working along the way – and he very likely had financial aid to fill the gap.</p>
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<p>He never worked while in school. </p>
<p>[FactCheck.org:</a> Obama’s Work Claim](<a href=“http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_work_claim.html]FactCheck.org:”>http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_work_claim.html)</p>
<p>Like a lot of his claims about his his childhood, this one is also false.</p>
<p>Obama may question McCain’s patriotism, but I question Obama’s competence and general intelligence. Going to a church, listing the pastor as one of your main, influential mentors, and then somehow NOT KNOWING that he was a nutjob. Not likely.</p>
<p>Also, universal healthcare is terrible, and abortion is completely unethical in every way. Meh, gay rights, I don’t really mind.</p>
<p>Obama’s biggest problem is that uses words like “Dream” and “Hope,” only to get the vast majority of stupid, clueless America to listen to him, even though he has absolutely nothing to back up his claims.</p>
<p>Lastly, zero foreign policy experience, a quality we desperately need…zero</p>