On today’s Op/Ed page, former state climatologist Patrick Michaels brings his A game.

R. Smith,

This is not one of your most stellar threads.

You mention Petraeus, but no one mentioned or alluded to him running for office, so you are just swinging at open air. That statement makes zero sense. No one said anything at all about his honor, only that the Swiftboat ad was considered below the belt too. In the same category.

Be rational please.

The remarks about Kerry will go unanswered because I’m not terribly interested in dragging out stale campaigns when we have a live and relevant one to talk about instead. Don’t know what you are referring to with “fake documents” regarding Bush but I really don’t want to know either.

No one is blaming a politician for the system being “broken”.  It just means that campaign finance reform has never fully succeeded. How does that reflect blame ?

If you are trying to say that Obama is crooked for no other reason than he accepted money and that Bush was not crooked back when he took the money that would be one huge piece of evidence you have gone off the deep end.

It’s election season. I guess the craziness and politics is to be expected. Does this mean you are not going to vote Democrat ?

I wasn’t aware Petraeus was running for an elected office when his honor was attacked the perpetually angry, hate filled playskool marxists at MoveOn recieved their special cut rate ad price from the pretend journalists who run the NYT’s. Kerry, on the other hand based his entire campaign on 3 months of service in Nam. Since the aforementioned pretend journalists have no interest in doing their jobs and investigating the backgrounds of leftists like Kerry (and Obama), someone else had to point out the conflicting accounts regarding Kerry’s heroism.

Maybe they were too busy making up fake documents to smear Bush with?

And I clearly stated that republicans usually out raise dems in presidential contests...which is why democrats like Obama pretend to care so deeply about public financing....until it is they who are raising more. Suddenly they’re not so concerned about such things. And to say that his rejection is based on “smears” by 527’s that have yet to occur is laughable. It only shows what a disingenuos scum bag he really is....and how stupid people are to believe anything he says about...anything. People say he’s brilliant. Anyone can be brilliant when the press actively supports you and maliciously attacks anyone who criticizes you.

And blaming crooked politicians on a “broken system” is like blaming guns for murder or cars for speeding. It’s just another way of leading the nitwits away from the truth.

Just because the money is offered doesn’t mean you have to take it. If our elected leaders were men of good character and not scum bags then, campaign finance would not be an issue and Obama wouldn’t have to keep making up excuses to go back on yet another committment.

R. Smith,

You might be going off the deep end with
“hate filled, drooling sociopathic freak crowd (and the media that coddles them)”
but hey, why not have some fun. Next time quit pulling your punchs.

When you say Betrayus was offensive you conveniently forget a great many thought Swiftboat was too.

I tried to Google the 2004 election for comparison and came up empty. 

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepoliticalsystem/a/industrybucks.htm

- basically shows Bush clobbered Kerry in hard contributions but it leaves out the all-important 527 contributions.

Even when you look them up, most of the 527s “claim” to be nonpartisan, representing an issue not a candidate, and so not easy to see which side of the ledger they belong on.

There is no easy way I know of to compare one candidate against the other for campaign contributions in a meaningful way, because the soft money is not as tightly regulated as the hard money. In a nutshell, campaign finance reform is still waiting to happen.

When Obama says the system is “broken” he may be speaking a no-brainer for political insiders but something harder for Ma and Pa Voter to digest.

Who is McCains “Big Money”? Or is that just another comfortable stereotype that just won’t die?

The only 527 ad that made a difference in any election since these groups were formed was the Swift Boat ad which, by current standards was a dirt cheap ad buy. It worked because it was believable and no one has yet been able to refute it, even though there is a 1 million dollar reward offered by T.Boone Pickens for anyone who can. Liberal groups have squandered millions on ads but, because liberals are such nasty, miserable people, they usually end up offending people as they did with the Betrayus ad.

Liberals need to realize that what plays well among the hate filled, drooling sociopathic freak crowd (and the media that coddles them) doesn’t often work with normal people.

This would be the first election in recent history where Republican 527s did not play a major factor.

My guess is they will come out of the woodwork somewhere around convention time. Keep in mind we are still early in the season. Like prize thoroughbreds the candidates and their teams must pace themselves or else take the lead but lose the race.

If McCain were to entirely lose funding and the support of Big Money, and if Obama were to gain that support, that would be some strange development. In the past, both parties have used 527s to make up the difference, the gap, in normal funding.

Could Obama be the tool of the establishment ? No, doubt it.  While his change platform may be overblown McCain’s credentials as a maverick are way overblown as well.

There is a lot of hype about this election that does not pass the smell test.

Obama’s a politician.  Period.  End of story. 

Oh, and he’s a politician from Chicago, no less.

This is Obama’s fresh and different way of rationalizing away his “reversal” of his previous promise to use public funding lifted from the Powerline blog…

“And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations,” Obama said.

This was too much even for the Associated Press, which commented:

“Despite that claim, few Republican-leaning groups have weighed into the presidential contest so far. In fact, Obama allies such as MoveOn.org are the ones that have been spending money on advertising against McCain.”

So Obama accuses McCain of doing what he, himself is doing while claiming that McCain is the reason he can’t honor his word.

Change and hope.....

Reagan didn’t belong to the klan for 20 years and quit only when it became politically expedient to do so.

Again, trying to equate active participation with unsolicited support is an act of self delusion and an attempt to excuse the inexcusable.

In short, an act of political expediency in itself.

Larry,

I was saying that I don’t respect the opinions of those who would condemn my comments as racist. And BTW...Monroe Park is full of “fresh and different” people....why not elect one of them to run the country?

Larry,

Both Obama and McCain are viable candidates for me so far.

Racism is not a major factor for me because it isn’t what the unwashed supporters think that matters but what the candidate himself thinks. If the Klan supported Reagan did that make even the slightest difference in Reagan’s presidency ?

Racists and jack-boots vote too you know. No reason for guilt by association unless it can be shown that a “real” problem exists rather than a smear or character assassination.

I have read a few things about both candidates that curb my lacklustre enthusiasm for them, but it’s too early in the campaign to commit or to form strong opinions.

I guarantee if one proves racist or stiff-necked I will vote for that person anyway if he looks better than the alternative.

You don’t take my opinions seriously, R. Smith? Ha ha. I’m just messing around.

Honestly though, I like Obama’s fresh & different approach—he’s not the typical stiff-shirt banking conservative. I am not, however, very comfortable with the racial aspects of his candidacy.

The fact that 99.99999% of African-Americans back him is troubling. I dare say that 30% of those 99.9999% are pretty racist, mainly because 30% of EVERY race is racist. That’s a lot of racists behind one candidate.

You might recall that Ronald Reagan was criticized because a Klan group (containing 200 members total, according to the SPLC) openly endorsed him in 1980.
The number of racists behind Obama is much more significant than that, I’m afraid. Like 1000x more. So, with me, the jury is still out in regards to Obama. I’m leaning toward him but am also wary.

Post Your Comments: