John McCain, Sarah Palin are like lipstick on pig - Obama

[Koora-Tuunshe]

This is the strategy Obama's campaign has been missing. He's been too cool and decorous. It's time to paint the true picture of his opponents, who even had the audacity to steal his theme of CHANGE.

 

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John McCain, Sarah Palin are like lipstick on pig - Obama

 

Sep 8, 2008

--BARACK Obama has dismissed the US presidential campaign of rivals John McCain and Sarah Palin as "lipstick on a pig" in his most direct attack on the Republican odd couple aiming to keep him out of the White House.

 

However the line could be interpreted as a personal sledge against Mrs Palin, Senator McCain's surprise running mate who described herself as a "pit bull with lipstick" when she accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination at the party's national convention last week.

 

"We've been talking about change when we were up in the polls and when we were down in the polls," Senator Obama told a rally in Virginia as surveys suggested Senator McCain and Mrs Palin have overhauled his lead for the election to be held on November 5 (Australian time).

 

"The other side, suddenly, they're saying 'we're for change too'. Now think about it, these are the same folks that have been in charge for the last eight years.

 

"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap up an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough," he said to a standing ovation.

 

Last Thursday, Alaska Governor Mrs Palin joked that the only difference between a hockey mum like herself and a pit bull was "lipstick".

 

Embracing the running mate's tradition attack dog role, Mrs Palin has been savaging Senator Obama daily on the campaign trail as Senator McCain talks up his maverick, reformer credentials.

 

He told a rally in Ohio that he had shown himself to be able to work with his opponents, something he said Senator Obama often claimed but could not prove. In her speech, Mrs Palin repeated her widely queried claim that she had said "thanks, but no thanks" to a notorious "bridge to nowhere" project in Alaska.

 

The Obama campaign immediately sent out an email to supporters highlighting the bridge "whopper". It also unveiled a new anti-Palin website called The Next Cheney.

 

The campaign took another nasty turn in a row sparked by education policy, after Senator Obama had accused Senator McCain of doing nothing in 26 years in Congress to rescue failing schools.

 

That prompted a television ad from the Republicans that said Senator Obama supported "legislation to teach 'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners". An Obama spokesman said the candidate had supported a Bill that provided for sex education which encompassed teaching younger children how to avoid falling prey to pedophiles.

 

"Last week, John McCain ... couldn't define what honour was. Now we know why," the spokesman said.

 

Since his shock decision to select the little-known Mrs Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, Senator McCain has come from behind to tie with Senator Obama or pull ahead in some polls. Mrs Palin herself polled well ahead of Senator Obama's running mate Joe Biden in a hypothetical match-up between the vice-presidential nominees - 53 per cent to 44.

 

A survey of news media showed the McCain-Palin pairing had generated more coverage than the Obama-Joe Biden campaign for the first time in three months.

 

- with AFP

[Jacaylbaro]

"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap up an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough," he said to a standing ovation.

[Pujah]

[Pujah]

Blizzard of Lies

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: September 11, 2008

 

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

 

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

 

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

 

But

I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

 

Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

 

Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.

 

So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.

 

Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.

 

And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.

 

Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

 

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

 

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

 

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

 

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

 

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

 

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

 

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

 

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

 

[Aaliyyah]

 

pretty good clip...you should watch it. He made some good points.

[Sir-Qalbi-Adeyg]

Obama campaign is going downhill, Mccain is leading in the polls and will continue to lead in the polls unless obama starts focussing on Mccain and the republican party and not Palin.

[Koora-Tuunshe]

^Though I don't care who wins in this decisive election at this defining moment, It's the media that is on her tail, not Obama's Campaign.

Ps. In the following article, the referenced Barry Goldwater, Arizona senator once, run for the 1964 election and lost in landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson. At the Republican convention, former president Reagan(at the earliest of his political career) was said to have spoken effusively of his credentials. Remember, McCain and Bush both stand for Milton Friedman and Hayez's economic doctrine of big tax cuts for the rich and the elimination of labor unions. In other words, the theory of Neoliberalism -- to which many people confuse of progressive economic policies. Neoconservatives differ from Neoliberalism only in the religious moral and unilitareral decision toward the role of U.S. foreign policy. From economic and political viewpoint, they'are one and the same.

 

 

It's not just about the individual

David Brooks

New York Times

Sep 13, 2008

 

Near the start of his book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” Barry Goldwater wrote: “Every man, for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being.” The political implications of this are clear, Goldwater continued: “Conservatism's first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”

 

Goldwater's vision was highly individualistic and celebrated a certain sort of person – the stout pioneer crossing the West, the risk-taking entrepreneur with a vision, the stalwart hero fighting the collectivist foe.

 

The problem is, this individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there has been a tide of research in many fields, all underlining one old truth – that we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his own life course is often an illusion.

 

Cognitive scientists have shown that our decision-making is powerfully influenced by social context – by the frames, biases and filters that are shared subconsciously by those around. Neuroscientists have shown that we have permeable minds. When we watch somebody do something, we recreate their mental processes in our own brains as if we were performing the action ourselves, and it is through this process of deep imitation that we learn, empathize and share culture.

 

Geneticists have shown that our behavior is influenced by our ancestors and the exigencies of the past. Behavioral economists have shown the limits of the classical economic model, which assumes that individuals are efficient, rational, utility-maximizing creatures.

 

Psychologists have shown that we are organized by our attachments. Sociologists have shown the power of social networks to affect individual behavior.

 

What emerges is not a picture of self-creating individuals gloriously free from one another, but of autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another. Recent Republican Party doctrine has emphasized the power of the individual, but underestimates the importance of connections, relationships, institutions and social filaments that organize personal choices and make individuals what they are.

 

This may seem like an airy-fairy thing. But it is the main impediment to Republican modernization. Over the past few weeks, Republicans have talked a lot about change, modernization and reform. Despite the talk, many of the old policy pillars are the same. We're living in an age of fast-changing economic, information and social networks, but Republicans are still impeded by Goldwater's mental guard rails.

 

If there's a thread running through the gravest current concerns, it is that people lack a secure environment in which they can lead their lives. Wild swings in global capital and energy markets buffet family budgets. Nobody is sure the health care system will be there when they need it. National productivity gains don't seem to alleviate economic anxiety. Inequality strains national cohesion. In many communities, social norms do not encourage academic achievement, decent values or family stability. These problems straining the social fabric aren't directly addressed by maximizing individual freedom.

 

And yet locked in the old framework, the Republican Party's knee-jerk response to many problems is: “Throw a voucher at it.” Schools are bad. Throw a voucher. Health care system's a mess. Replace it with federally funded individual choice. Economic anxiety? Lower some tax rate.

 

The latest example of the mismatch between ideology and reality is the housing crisis.

The party's individualist model cannot explain the social contagion that caused hundreds of thousands of individuals to make bad decisions in the same direction at the same time. A Republican administration intervened gigantically in the market to handle the Bear Stearns, Freddie and Fannie debacles. But it has no conservative rationale to explain its action, no language about the importance of social equilibrium it might use to justify itself.

 

The irony, of course, is that, in pre-Goldwater days, conservatives were incredibly sophisticated about the value of networks, institutions and invisible social bonds. You don't have to go back to Edmund Burke and Adam Smith (though it helps) to find conservatives who understood that people are socially embedded creatures and that government has a role (though not a dominant one) in nurturing the institutions in which they are embedded.

 

That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes – when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service.

 

If Republicans are going to fully modernize, they're probably going to have to follow the route the British Conservatives have already trod and project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state.

[Pujah]

Making A Story 'stick'

By Steve Benen

 

(Political Animal) MAKING A STORY 'STICK'.... CNN had a segment this morning about Sarah Palin lying on her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, but instead of delving into the McCain campaign's apparent inability to tell the truth, CNN's John Roberts asked why Barack Obama is having trouble making the truth "stick."

 

It was an unusually inane question, which Paul Begala handled

very, very well.

 

quote:

---

"Because the press won't do its job, John..... It is the media's job when a politician flat out lies like she's doing on this bridge to nowhere so call her on it. Or this matter of earmarks where she's attacking Barack Obama for having earmarks, when she was the mayor of little Wasilla, Alaska, 6,000 people, she hired a lobbyist who was connected to Jack Abramoff, who is a criminal, and they brought home $27 million in earmarks. She carried so much pork home she got trichinosis. But we in the media are letting her tell lies about her record."

At that point, Roberts did what CNN tends to do -- turn to a Republican to offer a competing side to the truth. In this case, Alex Castellanos said the media should be "a little gentle" with Sarah Palin's obviously false claims. "The amazing thing about Sarah Palin is when she became governor she actually stood up and said no" to federal pork, he said.

 

So, again, Begala tried to set the record straight.

 

"That's just not true. You know, John, the facts matter. There's lots of things that are debatable who is more qualified or less experienced or more this or more passionate, whatever. It is a fact that she campaigned and supported that bridge to nowhere. It is a fact that she hired lobbyists to get earmarks. It is a fact that as governor she lobbies for earmarks. Her state is essentially a welfare state taking money from the federal government."

Roberts wrapped up the segment, concluding, "We still have 56 days to talk about this back and forth."

 

But therein lies the point. The nation doesn't need 56 days of "back and forth." We don't need 56 seconds of "back and forth." There's an objective truth here, and CNN, as a neutral, independent news source, is supposed to tell viewers what the facts are.

 

But CNN can't do that, because reality has a well known liberal bias. If Roberts conceded that Begala was telling the truth about demonstrable facts, then he'd be "taking sides." For a media figure to acknowledge that a candidate for national office is lying shamelessly would be wholly unacceptable -- it would break with the "balance" between competing arguments.

 

The viewer at home hears one side, then the other. Who's right? That's not CNN's problem. If viewers wants to hear an argument, they can turn to CNN. If viewers wants to know which side of the argument is right, they can look elsewhere.

 

Which is precisely why candidates for national office feel comfortable lying shamelessly in the first place.

 

And which is why the candidate telling the truth can't get the story to "stick."

CBSNEWS

[xiinfaniin]

Obama aide: McCain campaign 'sleaziest' in modern history

[dhulQarnayn]

Seriously, in the upcoming debates, Obama better be impress the women. He should view the debates like his first date, and talk about issue that will woo women to his side. Issues like; Equal pay for equal work; Why McCain won't look after them but he will; Why Hillary agrees with his policies; Why his wife and two daughters are the most important people in his life.

 

If women aren't impressed after the debates, he should stopping calling and go back to Kenya. No means no!

 

dhulQarnayn :cool:

Republic Of California

[Aaliyyah]

McCain has an Old Man Alzheimers Moment

 

 

LMAO you guys should see this.....

 

poor Maccain!!!