Obama’s good with the quips and prepared speeches. He doesn’t seem quite as good otherwise. We’ll see.
No, if Obama thinks people will forget “Reverend” Wright and the weaselly way he handled the matter, HE’S the dumbest person on the planet.
Probably not. But he’s shown willingness to pander to them in the recent past, most notably telling the Arizona Star in 2005:
Did he change his view? Or does he think there should be a separate pseudoscience class to teach creationism? Who knows?
I’ve heard it said that one reason McCain is appealing is because when he’s called for doing sleazy things, he looks embarassed. Nice, but not quite sufficient.
Based on his pandering to the religious right and Ron Paul groupies, I’m embarassed for him. At this point I’d have a difficult time voting for him.
Where do you people come from?
I was talking about the debates, not the polling about them. And I don’t see how my SDMB membership has anything more to do with my political opinions than yours does.
I agree.
No you don’t. You’re a troll, who does nothing but shit in threads with things you probably only half-believe. If you wanted substance, you’d be debating the many substantive policies Obama has proposed. What you want is outrage or whatever internet kicks you hope to get by posting shit like this in this thread and countless others.
Why did you put scare quotes around "Reverend? What do you think people need to remember about the Wright story and what was “weaselly” about how Obama handles it?
No, I am not a troll. Thanks for the shiftless, unfounded accusations, though!
That was pretty uncalled for, but hey! It’s the Pit, so in keeping with the spirit of things here…FUCK YOU, you condescending, self-righteous prick!
Have a pleasant evening!
Looks like someone gets their news from St*rmfr**t. That sounds exactly like the bullshit that paranoid white power nutjobs would spew.
Oh shove it up your ass, you stupid moron. As a matter of fact, it’s the 3rd item from the top of the list of articles listed on FARK under the politics tab from the day I posted this thread. See for yourself, schmuck. Don’t you DARE accuse me of not bringing something to the attention of this board in good faith. G-d you make me sick.
The rest of your post is just more of the same baseless and false accusations, so I won’t dignify your scummy ass with any further reply.
Now go fuck off.
Judging by the fact that posts about Obama have outnumbered posts about McCain by 5-1 or so, since Brother Martin Hyde’s contribution, I’d like to put in a request that he give us Claire de Lune, or possibly My Melancholy Baby.
C’mon. Let’s stop explaining things away and start explaining things.
Barack Obama came to Chicago after Harvard somewhat disconnected from his black identity - we know this because he described the experience for us in his books. This disconnected feeling and the desire to address it drove several of his decisions - to become a community organizer, to attend a black megachurch led by a charasmatic and controversial pastor, to attend the Million Man March (an event not geared toward racial reconciliation and organized by a man who has been controversial himself, to say the least.)
Now, all of these decisions made sense to some degree, and they can be explained in various ways - but this phase of Obama’s life wasn’t devoted to transcending racial identity, but pinning it down. It’s easy to understand that you have to do the one before the other - but I don’t know that Obama has done all that he can to explain this to people who haven’t read his books - which is most people, and most voters. The Philadelphia speech can’t be seen as the last discussion on this subject, IMHO.
I’ll take Non-Sequiturs for a thousand, please Alex.
Seriously, what does this have to do with anything? And who has been “explaining things away”?
I know of no-one who claims that the Philly speech will be “the last discussion on the subject.” Nor has anyone, in this thread at least, claimed that Obama somehow transcends the issue of race; in fact, the Philly speech clearly shows that, rather than transcending it, he is acutely conscious of how important the issue is to American culture.
The only reason that Obama has become the central figure in this thread–which was, if you remember, actually about John McCain’s apparent ignorance on issues of contraception and disease prevention–is Martin Hyde’s claim that Obama is “a long time member of a racist organization,” “a black man with a sense of entitlement,” and a “racist” who will “implement some of the most horrifying programs of wealth redistribution from white to black we’ve ever seen.”
Do you agree with those claims? Do you think that the responses to those claims in this thread constitute “explaining things away”?
Weaselly? Apparently, you did not hear his speech in Philadelphia:
You tube link
Anyone who can give this speech would be a fine president in my book.
While I don’t agree with the claims as such (you’ll see I made my own claims) the responses to those claims seem to indicate that Obama is either completely innocent, unworthy of being associated with these other figures with genuine racial issues, and yes, that he has explained this as much as he needs to.
I don’t think that is so. If Obama attended the Million Man March, that opens him up to questions about how he feels about Louis Farrakhan, then and now. Those would be fair questions.
Given that this is my thread, and the subject matter is John McCain, I’d like to ask that you take your Barack Obama hijack to one of the gazillion places there already are to bitch about Reverend Wright or any other supposed “connection” Obama is supposed to have.
I can see now that the meme “But Clinton. . .” has now become outdated and replaced by “But Obama. . .”
I’m not having it in this thread. If you can’t keep it about what a mental moron John McCain is, I’ll ask a mod to close this thread.
Thank you.
I apologize, I am guilty of participating in the hijack.
My take is similar to some others in that while on the surface, yes, it is indeed frightening that someone with McCain’s supposed accumulation of knowledge and wisdom should know that factual evidence supports that condoms help prevent the spread of STD’s. I mean, 12 year olds know that!
OTOH, as others have also mentioned, he may have felt trapped by the question politically and simply chosen the easiest way out of giving a direct answer that may have compromised his position in some way, and just plead ignorance.
I think it makes him look bad either way, again, as others have pointed out.
For a guy that supposed to have this tough guy image as a POW survivor and a political maverick, you’d think he would shoot from his hip a little more on a question like this one.
The Republicans here were trying to remember all the brilliant things McCain has said. When they failed–they decided to hijack the thread!
It’s a legitimate criticism that a poster’s interest in a candidate’s documented history opens him or her up to imaginative speculation about motives, methods and character, if by “legitimate” one means “bullshit.” Also, in this case “criticism” would also mean “bullshit.”
The internet has a long memory, and a year is not that much time. All that noise the Republicans made about Kerry flip-flopping in 2004 is now biting them in the ass, which was inevitable because you can comb through anybody’s record and find such stuff.
:dubious: The Trinity United Church of Christ is not a racist organization. It is a distinctly African-American church, but 11:00 Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour in America, as we all know, and to which few seriously object.
Insofar as those attitudes exist at all in the African-American community, Obama would have to have been raised in that community to internalize them. In fact, he was not raised in it; he merely married into it.
I wish! Where in Og’s name are you getting that?!
And what would be “horrifying” about it anyway?
But, they’re not. At least, not as you are formulating them (what your strawman has to do with Obama’s actual policies remains unclear).
BrainGlutton, you know I love ya, and these are all good and truthful arguments.
But this thread is about John McCain. Please do not allow these guys to deflect the conversation away from the idiocy of their nominee’s comments. It’s the same game Hillary just played with the “Bosnia? What Bosnia? I would never have stayed in that church with Jeremiah Wright!”
Don’t let them get away with this shit. Either they can support their candidate’s dumbass remarks or they have to acknowledge that they were some of the dumbest shit a presidential candidate could ever say. “I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is. . .”?? That, from someone who wants us to give him control of our government? Is he insane??