Of course I only know what he did publicly, and it is my opinion that he didn’t do nearly enough. If you stand up to your party privately, and it works, then you can feel free to stay in the background of obscurity and not puff your own feathers out about it. But if you attempt to do so privately (and neither of us knows if he did or not), and you aren’t successful, I believe, as a public servant, you owe it to your country to step out from behind the curtain and be vocal and relentless about calling, well, a pig, a pig.
John McCain had a perfect opportunity to prove himself the maverick that he purports to be, by standing up to the bad actors in his party when they were at their worst, when they were clearly doing serious damage to this country, even at the expense of losing “power” in the White House. He didn’t. And not only did he not speak loudly and clearly in denouncing (man, I’m going to hate that word after this election - ugh), Karl Rove, making him a pariah in their party, but he hired the guy who waged the evil campaign against him by Bush, and has now admitted that he’s seeking and heeding advice from that very same Karl Rove on his current campaign.
Let me get this straight. McCain didn’t denounce the Swiftboat campaign forcefully enough and so he has no integrity. Obama can pledge that he won’t opt out of public financing and then goes back on his word immediately after it becomes apparent that he can win and yet he’s the shiznit?
Wouldn’t it be better if you could pick a position and stick with it?
You, or Andrew Sullivan, seemed to imply that Viet Nam vets should support each other for President. This is putting principle “above party”. But Kerry didn’t do that, either now or in 2000. But he gets a pass on it. McCain does it in 2004, and therefore he is not qualified to be President.
You complain that McCain did not denounce the Swift Boat ads. Then you are shown that he did. Without missing a beat, you denounce McCain because denouncing the ad at a press conference is “staying in the background of obscurity”.
I can’t say I am surprised that you are going to reflexively condemn anything and everything McCain does. At least you have done us the favor of showing that your opinion is not thoughtful.
That’s a very disingenuous argument. It was not about Viet Nam vets backing one another or sticking up for one another in a kind of old boys club or loyalty test. The Swift Boat claims were lies, regardless of what certain members of this board have had pounded into what passes for their fear-ridden brains. The “McCain has a black baby” thing in South Carolina was a lie.
The lipstick on a pig so-called issue is a lie. The “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere” is a lie. The “he’ll raise your taxes if you make more than $42,000 a year” is a lie. The “wanted sex education for kindergarteners” is a lie.
This isn’t about Viet Nam vets. It’s about truth. Nice try at changing the subject, Shodan, but it doesn’t work.
McCain is becoming even more brazen in his lies. He was on the The View today and said Palin cut a half billion dollars of earmarks as governor. Joy Behar then interjected, “But she pursued other earmarks”, and McCain said “No she didn’t”. The fact is, she requested over $350 million dollars of earmarks for 2008 and 2009.
Can you provide a cite for that. One of my biggest hangups with O is the thought that a tax increase will be a fore gone conclusion to pay for things like UHC, et al. Has he come out and said that this is a non-issue?
No, McCain didn’t stop his own party from destroying the reputation of a fellow Viet Nam vet, with lies about his brave and honorable service. He stood mostly silently by and watched a very close friend who had been the first (and as far as I know, only) man to stand hand in hand with him at his former prison cell.
Perhaps you would need to know and understand the depth of the personal relationship that John Kerry and John McCain shared, in order to understand the depth of the dishonor that I ascribe to McCain for allowing that swift boating to destroy him the way it did.
I would say that level of (in my opinion) betrayal is a whole hell of a lot different from a candidate reneging on a campaign financing deal.
That’s what was being implied. I’ll take this, therefore, as an indication that it has been adequately refuted.
Well, some of them.
Unfortunately for your and Shayna’s position, it has already been pointed out that McCain denounced the Swift Boat ad. It seems that announcing this at a Washington press conference isn’t public enough to affect her hatred of Republicans who run for President. What’s your excuse?
So why then do you think Sullivan and Shayna brought the subject up?
Oh, that’s right - I forgot. Someone pointed out how contradictory it was, and so it was dropped in favor of a different smear.
By that I mean: when someone who you support says something that may be taken in either a good way or a bad way, you (and I use the pronoun here in its indefinite sense) tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
And when you don’t like them, then you tend to assume the worst.
Now, a rigorously intellectually honest analyst of the “lipstick” comment might say:
I think it’s very unlikely that Obama was referring to Palin, especially since he’s used the phrase so many times before. But I concede it’s possible he was using it now with an intent for a double meaning to slip through.
Intellectual rigor is not simply refusing to arrive at a conclusion because certainty is not possible, certainty is *never *possible. Someone with gifts for parsing (and here I’m using “you” in the direct, accusatory sense) can always pry the words apart and introduce an element of doubt, however feeble.
Happily, some lies are so blatant, so thoroughly false, that we can bat such carping aside without a second thought. As in this instance.
I don’t agree. Obama’s a smart guy - very smart. Do you believe there’s not one sliver of possibility that he recognized a new double meaning for his old, standbye phrase?
What was indefinite about Allen’s use of it? There is no good way you can call a non-white person a monkey.
However, I agree that Obama knew that Palin had walked into a punch. I mean, he paused for the laugh. Were Palin more experienced she would know that “lipstick on a pig” is a common political metaphor often used by Obama and held back her standard “Hockey Mom” joke or made the difference something like earrings or hairspray, but she can’t even drop her “Thanks But No Thanks” line, even as it’s proven to be a lie from sea to shining sea. She needs more and better material.
I don’t see how he thought it would benefit him. Or how it would have even made sense. Do you really think his speech notes look something like:
Talk about change. Knock McCain’s attempt to steal the change theme. Talk about how we’ll get more of the same. Insult Sarah Palin’s physical appearance. Return to change talk…
I really can’t see how any thinking person can argue for McCain on this one.
Oh, please. Read the first few paragraphs. There is nothing in that story that implies he had to be asked. He was asked about whether the WH was involved with the ad, but that does not appear to be what initiated the discussion.
And how is this “hedged”:
McCain couldn’t know if the WH helped finance the ad, and he specifically says Bush should “condemn” the ad.
I do. I think it’s quite likely that he either used it intentionally, or at the very least immediately realized the implicit connection after he said it. Frankly, I don’t understand why other Obama supporters are so rabid in their denials that there’s *any way *it was other than a coincidence.
Of course it might’ve an been intentional bit of humor. The better response is, “yeah? So fucking what?”