Political Punch

so pathetic. how much $$ did mccain get for his tiny little soul? doesn't he realize he's destroying himself?

jgaw, is there anything that matters to you besides taxes? obama will not raise the capital gains rate to 28%. tax rates are going up no matter who wins, because they must. one good thing about this crisis is that it will finally no longer be possible for the GOP to keep saying that Ronald Reagan is their hero. the roots of our current crisis are in the erroneous belief that we can always grow our way out of deficits. wake up! the markets are not infinite!

Too many nuts in Obama's ACORN tree. Keep shaking and let's see how many more fall out.

First, Obama is running on the sole contention that John McCain is GWB...very weak. The fact that the GWB has such a low approval rating and Obama is not crucifying the G.O.P. shows what a poor opinion the general public has of this man. At best, he is seem by some as the lesser of two evils. His best move would be to eat some humble pie and quit acting like he has a mandate from on high.

What is it about McCain/Bush that makes folks go to any level to continue the horror? This war, our economy, the ecology, etc., is at its worst and a person like Obama may make a positive difference in our lives. Give up the hate...please!!

Obama couldn't close the deal in Pennsylvania. Is he electable?

I saw this interview...I know it's campaign season, but does that mean that every time someone mentions something negative or has an opinion about another candidate that makes it an "attack".

Anyone who thinks that hanging out with a terrorist as long as his crimes wer a long time ago must live in Chicago. Obama befriended Ayers for political expediancy. He is really an opportunist with poor judgement. The movement is something else...the man has Achilles heels on both feet.

Could Cyndi McCain's USMC pin (The View) be any bigger? And the audience could read her as fake.

Comment and a Question.

Comment: Senator Obama was not 8 years old when he sought William Ayers' endorsement for public office.

Question: When he met with Ayers to get his support, what constituency was he going after?

I'm so glad ABC had the courage to bring Ayers/Obama connection up in the debate. I hope McCain keeps it going.
Just another seed of doubt about Obama.

How people can just ignore Obama's shady associations with anti-Americans is unbelievable.

I question their patriotism and love of this country.

I'm thrilled that McSame and his merry little band of followers are hanging their hats on stuff like this. This stuff might fool the less intelligent right-wing voters, but that's not going to be enough this time.

Obama supporters are still making excuses for Ayers... who is unrepentant and even said as late as 2001 he wished he could have done more (bombings).

We all have associations with undesirables... but really... do we all make excuses for their illegal and dangerous behavior? NO.

Additionally... the real problem with Obama's connection to Ayers is that Obama has tried to downplay it, yet more information keeps dribbling out. He did the same with Rezko... and Wright. It looks like he is trying to hide something... and anyone knows that in politics it will all come out eventually... so smart politicians reveal the entire story so that they have control over it.

So is Obama trying to hide something... or isn't he that smart?

P.S. I agree with McCain... Obama should never have compared Senator Coburn to Ayers... Obama first called Coburn a friend and then threw him under the bus. It is starting to get really crowded under that bus with Grandma and Jesse Jackson.

McCain's the perfect candidate to lead the march to facism that Bush/Cheney have begun. Goodbye democracy. Welcoem to the United States of Militarism.

People talk about McCain as though he is like Bush when really Obama is more like Bush. Neither has experience so they just blindly make stupid mistakes. The American people will see Obama for the arrogant, slime-ball that he is, hopefully before the general election.

Good old George.... he's still in there. Wow !!!! Must be on the Clinton payroll. Hillary and Bill have been saying for a while that they have an ace in the hole that they were going to use against Obama. His name is George Stephanopolous.All this fuss about Clinton supporters voting for McCain if she doesn't get the nomination is a testament that her followers are not real Democrats.

McCain who ?

to all those harping on this

how about the media doing a single story, just one, on just one of the clinton scandals during this entire primary...not one.

and do you think America knows the details of anything outside of Monica...and the lying on the stand thing...

uh, no, absolutely not...that is what is so funny about this election

your so called "biased media" jumps all over any relationship Obama has had in the past. Predominantly ignoring all of the ones the other candidates have had for the most part. ...but yet

can you tell me the details of the cattle futures? what was the outcome? what was the controversy over Vince Foster? what was whitewater exactly and why was Hillary implicated? what was the wehole fbi thing? who was Norman Hsu? Who is Paul? what was there relationship with clinton? What does the head of Tyson have to do withy the Clintons? are their accusations of Hillary's performance during watergate? and what were they? how many people that were supposed to be involved in some way in a scandal with the clintons and the ensuing investigations have died suddenly? how much money did Hillary's brother have to return when an investigation turned up he had received it for the pardoning of two men?
again this all just off the top of my head... but I bet almost all of you couldn't answer a single one of these questions past ..."the republicans investigated these and spent tons of money on it and came up with nothing"

uh, no. The republicans investigated until they discovered Bill lying on the stand, focused on that issue and spent a fortune trying to get around the cover-up that Bill was trying to put in the way...and in the end after spending all that money they succeeded in ahving him impeached while the Clintons threw sand in the American people's eyes saying it was a great right wing conspiracy...He lied to the American people and on the stand.

It is not just about "sex."
...stop with the biased in the media crap. if the media actually started focusing on what you all want and are trying to win on, hillary would have never won her senate seat.

I got this from a fellow blogger and thought this might be interesting for us here -
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Maybe someone should ask Cheney his thoughts on Bill Ayers:

On ABC's ``This Week,'' Cheney defended his 1986 vote against a resolution that called for U.S. recognition of the African National Congress in South Africa, freedom for the organization's then-imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela and negotiations with the black majority.

``The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization,'' Cheney said Sunday. ``It was a step that we simply weren't prepared to take.''

Now, Cheney says he believes the ANC has ``mellowed'' and Mandela is ``a great man.''

``He deserves an enormous amount of credit for the transformation of South Africa,''

Cheney said ``But I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.''

How corrupt is the system when John McCain can operate outside of the campaign finance laws and no one questions this action?

That is the major problem with McCain. He changes his position on issues almost weekly. It is a form of lying. McCain will say one thing to this group of voters and the exact opposite to another set of voters. McCain lies. He even lied about public campaign finance money. McCain is another Bush in so many ways. McCain just wants to be president at all costs. McCain lies when necessary.

It seems that the anti-war protest in which Obama spoke and opposed the war was attended by Ayers and Dohrn. Read below; this article is from that time and has many quotes that are reminiscent of Obama today and his call for post-partisan view. Ayers and Dohrn hate the Democrats and they say so, explicitely.

Debunking the 60s with Ayers and Dohrn
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, activiists leaders in SDS in the ‘60’s, say a new movement must be built.
By Laura S. Washington
'One of the things that sits very heavy on the progressive impulses today is the myth that there was a golden age in resistance.'Tags activism Share Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine They are storied and iconic, America’s Numero Uno radical couple. In the ’60s, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were activists and leaders in Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. Dohrn, now 64, and Ayers, 61, played starring roles as Vietnam War dissenters. When their protests turned violent, they became fugitives from the law.

Forty years later, they are still in the game. I recently invited them to dinner at Yoshi’s Café in Chicago’s Boys Town. The national convention of Students for a Democratic Society was coming to Chi-Town. So what do these longtime Hyde Parkers think about those good old days, when radicals were radicals and the movement was muscular?

“The ‘good old days’ is a funny way to think about the left,” said Dohrn.

Ayers picked it up. “One of the things that sits very heavy on the progressive impulses today, and young people in particular, is the myth that there was a golden age in resistance, that the ’60s was where it was really at.”

Today Dohrn is a scholar and director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. Ayers serves as a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They visit college campuses around the nation, where, Ayers says, “We spend a fair amount of time debunking the received wisdom of the ’60s.”

That “wisdom,” he explains, is that resisting the war “was easy to do and everybody did it.” It was a hard-fought slog.

Iraq brings its own lessons of protest. He points to a failure of leadership in the run-up to that war. “In March 2003, we participated in the largest antiwar movement in our lives, possibly in history. Now there was a leadership problem in a sense that the leadership said this is the demonstration that will prevent a war.

“It was a wrong thing to say,” Ayers argues, “because it didn’t help people who participated in that, particularly young people, to analyze the situation, to make sense of it, to make a contribution, and then to continue organizing. It said we’ll prevent a war. That war was not preventable.”

Forget the Democrats, they say. “The Democratic Party supported the war in Vietnam …” Dohrn began. Ayers cut in: “Led the war in Vietnam.”

“And they’ve been supporting, and leading this war,” Dohrn continued. “I don’t look to the Democratic Party. I don’t have hope for the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. And I think the only answer is for us to build an independent, radical movement, and, I mean, the big ‘us.’ “

To mount a movement, “let’s look at history,” said Dohrn between bites of her tuna nicoise salad. “Lyndon Johnson was not a civil rights leader; Lyndon Johnson was responding to a civil rights movement. FDR was not a labor leader; FDR was responding to a labor movement. We confuse these things when we think about them today.”

Indeed, that’s “a great mistake. Lyndon Johnson was the most effective politician of his generation, but it took a movement independent of Lyndon Johnson to get Lyndon Johnson to use that effectiveness for the good.”

Still, I asked, aren’t progressives putting high hopes in November? Even leading Republicans admit that the Dems are likely to recapture at least one house of Congress.

So what? That’s not the point, Ayers says. Electoral politics is a tool to connect causes, like gay rights, disability rights, voting rights, human rights. “That’s how you use electoral politics. Not as an end in itself, but as an organizing mechanism. Our deepest belief, I think, is that we need to connect all these good projects and build the movement. …we should always be positioning ourselves, thinking, okay, if I’m involved in this next election, how am I positioned to help contribute to building a movement, raising consciousness, making the connections, and that’s a real tricky business.”

It wasn’t so tricky for Ned Lamont. On Aug. 8 Lamont blew out of nowhere to knock off the pro-war U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic senate primary. For my money, that vote is a strong predictor of the power war-weary voters will bring to the polls this fall.

Despite their critiques, Ayers and Dohrn are eternal optimists. Over coffee, Dohrn reflected that their activist days can serve as a metaphor for a “candle” that illuminates the past—and the future.

“The issue holding us back today, to me, is the idea that what you do won’t make a difference. The elite powers tell us the world is too complicated. They spend a lot of energy fostering despair,” she argues.

The candle shows us that “it’s not true,” Dohrn says. “I don’t think it’s all the complicated issues of what kind of an economic society we really want and how are we going to deal with globalization and all of that. Those are tremendously complex challenges but they’re solvable by human creativity and ingenuity and collective effort.”

Stay vigilant. The light will come.