Maybe Joe's the One To Go:
There was some talk earlier this week that Sarah Palin might get dumped by John McCain. Obviously that was just silly and for some, such as Gary Wills, simply embarrassing.
But maybe Joe Biden is the one who should be nervous--I haven't been able to find any Obama-Biden items in the Obama store; by contrast, McCain-Palin has its (or is it "their," I'm not sure of the grammar on this one) own page of stuff. Maybe Rudy was right that Joe should've gotten it in writing.
(BTW, this post is intended as a joke for those who might think otherwise).
"JOE BIDEN" -> "I NEED JOB"
attribution
National news reporters may feel they know who McCain, Biden, and Obama are, but the voters have jobs and may either not know or not remember the details well.
I look forward to national news reporters coming here to Chicago to look into Obama, who is a nice man but not an agent of change or reform in Chicago. While he himself is not corrupt (the Rezko land deal was unseemly but about as bad as McCain's Keating connections) his allies here are. Cronyism is huge here in Illinois, both Republicans and Democrats. Our previous governor, a Republican, is in federal prison, and our current governor will be indicted soon.
Obama has never opened his mouth on this. Not once. He doesn't want to rock the boat of Mayor Daley, the President of the Cook County Board (who had to cut domestic violence prosecutors, public defenders, sheriff's officers and hospital workers).
Maybe Obama will be a good President, but he is not a good senator to the citizens in Illinois.
Oh, I see they are trying to pass Obama off as an authentic Black Democrat.
Have you been living in a cave for the past six months?
I seriously doubt the investigation of Palin is any more intrusive than it's been against Obama and McCain. Aside from this apparently being the talking point du jour, it only seems that way for two reasons.
1. It's been packed into a week. When Obama entered the race there was no time Crunch, reporters had weeks to dig through his background. I'm sure almost everyone who might plausibly have some personal insight into Obama has been asked for comment at least once. Biden and McCain have, of course been in the public eye for decades.
2. Aside from the hurricane (which was largely overblown, if you'll pardon the pun) Palin has completely dominated the News Cycle for the past 5-6 days. For better or worse I think this was quite deliberate on the McCain Campaign's part. You get her name out there, and even if the coverage is substantially critical you get name recognition.
Of course there's always still the chance that there's *something* big and personal that the other main candidates have succesfully concealed until now. I mean edwards managed to conceal an affair for quite some time. But given the hundreds and or thousands of people that are literally working full time jobs finding information/dirt on these candidates for the past months that's pretty unlikely until now.
You must know all about state Sen. Emil Jones (Obama's Il state Senate political mentor) deciding to retire after the primary and install his son as a state senator, John Former Cook County Board President John Stroger doing the same for his incompetent son, the patronage hiring scandals in which the City and County both ignored federal laws and federal court consent decrees and passed over the politically unconnected people Obama claims to represent for the politically connected, whose test scores on civil service tests had to be doctored because they were unqualified.
Obama has said nothing here. He has done nothing here. Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois are filled with corrupt politicians.
Cook County and Chicago just approved millions of dollars in settlements to those who were not hired and not promoted because of their illegal political patronage. Mayor Daley's patronage chief is going to prison for 4 years.
Obama has not said anything against this. He hasn't called for Daley or Stroger to resign. He hasn't called for Gov. Rod Blagojevich to resign, even though he's about to be indicted for political corruption.
The only national news media stories I've seen are about Obama's crazy ex-pastor or former-and-still-proud domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, which are guilt by association non-sense.
What's not nonsense is the man of Hope and Change ignores his constituents here. And the national media ignores the story.
The media has not vetted Obama. Look at the situation with the CAC papers.
Stanley Kurtz wanted to read public documents of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Obama chaired this organization as it flushed $110 million dollars meant to improve education. Kurtz was initially told no, then given the ok about a week later after a big outcry. He probably was the first reporter to request the documents for the closest thing to an executive job Obama has ever held!!!!
If he was not the first to ask, but the first refused, why was he refused?
If he was not the first to ask, and not the first reefused, why was he the first to make a big enough stink to get in?
I'm well aware of this. I have numerous family members in the Chicago area.
But I don't see the pressing importance of this story as it relates to the personal investigations of candidate's backgrounds.
I don't dislike Obama, but I'm a pretty cynical sort of person. I see Obama as a very skilled politician, and one that is totally willing (as is nearly every politician with the skills to get to a national level) to make the necessary associations to Succeed in your area.
In my opinion, which may or may not be true, Obama joined the Church he did because as an intellectual with a harvard degree he needed street cred as a black politician in Chicago, and belonging to a "black church" got it for him. He had associations with Ayers and Dohrn because they are apparently quite influential in his (very liberal) former state senate district. (Hyde Park).
He's not presently condemning the criminal activities of Machine Politicians in Chicago because the Machine and Daley still swing a lot of power in the City. Lots of his biggest supporters are still Chicago based. Illinois is probably a lock for him, but he can't afford to piss on his political benefactors, nor would it necessarily be wise to do so. (Wise is not necessarily the same as right.)
Is this "a" story? yeah probably, but it's different in two ways.
1. It's a local politics, nitpicky, detail oriented story that's not a flashy subject matter.
2. Its connection to Obama is primarily that he grew up (politically) in the same machine and has refused to condemn former associates.
Bias in the media exists, but (again in my opinion) it's a bias toward Flashy stories and money than any particular political affiliation.
Stories about Palin's daugthter having a baby out of wedlock are tabloid material, but how much tabloid material makes it to 24 hour news channel headlines on a daily basis?
no one on the national circuit has any interest in mushmouth, I mean Emil Jones. the fact that Obama loyally voted however EJ, not of Harvard or Columbia, told him means nothing and could not possibly tell us anything about Obama's actual political courage.
I think we pretty much agree.
And 0bama's vote "...could not possibly tell us anything about Obama's actual political courage" could be true -- but the fact that 0bama hid out from taking any stand in a couple of hundred votes tells us a lot about his complete dearth of political courage.
"I’ll tell you why I criticized the Supreme Court. They upheld the ban, and then they engaged in what we lawyers call dicta that is frightening. You had an intellectually dishonest rationale for an honest justification for upholding the ban, and that was this: They went further, and then they, in the language associated with the decision said, by the way, they blurred whether there is the first trimester and third trimester in how much—I know this is going to sound arcane to the listeners—but whether or not they blurred the distinction between the government’s role in being involved in the first day and the ninth month. They blurred the role in terms of whether or not there is—they became paternalistic, talking about the court could consider the impact on the mother and keeping her from making a mistake. This is all code for saying, “Here we come to undo Roe v. Wade.” And it went on to say, by the way, that the life of the mother was, in fact, permissible exception, and it went on to say that even—that any woman could challenge, even if her health is at risk, could come back to the court to challenge that. So the bottom line here is, what they did is not so much the decision, the actual outcome of the decision, it’s what attended the decision that portends for a real hard move on the court to undo the right of privacy. That’s what I’m criticizing about the court’s decision."
Joe B. actually said this on Meet the Press. He should thank his lucky stars that Barack needed what passes for a heavyweight in the Dem Congressional Caucus.
Barack should have picked either Hillary or Steny Hoyer.
Actually, I think that dismissive comments gives Biden and McCain a free pass....
So she holds a tee-shirt that says "nowhere," which, to the idiots on that site, proves that she's liar.
How long until the Alaska Air National Guard memoes issue alongside breaking news that SARAH PALIN IS A SERIAL MURDERER!!!!!!!
The kindest interpretation is that he was an innocent who fell in with bad companions and was shocked into becoming a reformer by his close call with corruption. The unkindest, that he's been a career politician all along.
Not mutually exclusive.
McCain's "fault" ended up being that when his new wife introduced him to a family friend, and that friend donated money to his campaign and did him favours, he should have investigated him, found out that he was a crook, and realised that accepting things from him looked bad. Even though he never did a thing for Keating that he wouldn't have done for any constituent, donor or not, and had no idea that Keating was bribing three of his colleagues.
It was the Times.
elliot:
That's not what Wills said. He was suggesting that Bristol's pregnancy is one of a number of things that are not going to help Palin politically. Do you really think he's wrong?
If the campaign thought this story would help them, I think they would have told us sooner, instead of saying they were 'compelled' to do so only because of all the nasty bloggers.
This sort of reminds me of when George Allen said that the people who mentioned his Jewish heritage were "making aspersions." In that moment, he revealed how he really feels about his Jewishness. In other words, he was sort of saying 'there's nothing wrong with being Jewish, but how dare you say that's kind of what I am.' He preferred to keep it a secret.
Likewise, the McCain campaign is now kind of taking the position that 'there's nothing wrong with the fact that Bristol is pregnant, but we're terribly disappointed that you forced us to reveal this secret.'
So it's not that "having a pregnant teenaged daughter disqualifies a woman from office." It's that "having a pregnant teenaged daughter" is politically negative, not positive. And that would be true (although probably not to the same extent) even if dad was running office, instead of mom.
Rezko cost the taxpayers $125 billion? Rezko and Obama had a close personal relationship going back to 1981? Michelle invested $359,100 in a Rezko shopping center? Obama and his family made nine trips at Rezko's expense, including vacations in the Bahamas?
All things I didn't know.
I'm waiting patiently for the proof that Obama did something for Rezko "that he wouldn't have done for any constituent, donor or not."
Some major stories about McCain (e.g., his adultery and Keating Five) are effectively concealed from the public, because many people know little or nothing about those stories, and the press is giving those stories little or no attention.
A detailed factcheck of Palin's speech is here. It includes some helpful information about Obama's legislative record.
I don't know about those t-shirts, but proof that Palin's a liar is here.
Very wrong. It shows that the Palin's are a regular family.
Why the Palin Baby Story Matters
A detailed factcheck of Palin's speech is here.
and
I don't know about those t-shirts, but proof that
Palin's a liar is here.
As has been pointed out before on other VC threads over the last couple of days, linking to an Obama campaign press release and to one of your own posts does not provide any proof that, as you contend, Palin is a liar. Please provide a link to a disinterested and independent source for your contention that Palin is a liar.
By the way, the Obama release does not "fact check" Palin's speech. All is does is provide rebuttals to her statements. For example, in response to the statement "Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.", the press release cites to numerous actions and decisions that Palin took/made while mayor of Wasilla. This proves two things: 1.) that Palin's statement that she was mayor of her hometown is correct; and, 2.) that the Obama campaign disagrees with her decisions and actions while she was mayor. What is does not prove is that Palin is a liar.
Glad you picked up on it. Thanx.
Good luck selling this to the folks outside your little bubble. As someone elsewhere said:
Yes, "glorious day for traditional values," and "it shows that the Palin's are a regular family." These interpretations reveal a remarkable elasticity in your belief system.
I guess you didn't bother looking at my post that I linked to. I cited Palin's words directly, from primary sources. The lie is unmistakable.
That document also has links to external sources. Waving your hand doesn't make the proof go away.
In some instances, that's what it does. In other instances, it shows how she mangled the truth.
white, Republican teens get pregnant = a glorious day for traditional values."
The difference is that one results in a young couple supported by family and the other is a young girl on her own with only the government "helping."
McCain Palin Bumper Stickers via http://www.mccainpalinstickers.com
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The tides are changing and the McCain Palin ticket can not be stopped. Go McCain Palin in 2008!