Watching Cunningham strut around in that video, I knew he reminded me of someone.
Well, ignorance is Blitz.
On the Obama blogs, people have changed their screen names to include ‘Hussein’, as a way to take positive ownership of it to prevent it from having any power when someone tries to use it as a weapon. I love it!
I’m still giving McCain a pass. The guy “meets” like a thousand people a day, and most of the time it’s a handshake and a “nice to meet you,” and it’s on to the next rube in line. I don’t believe he should be expected to remember every asshole he’s ever shaken hands with or shot the shit with at some fundraiser. I have no doubt that he forgets who most of these people are 4 seconds after he meets them.
This is a game which could be played just as easily with Hillary or Obama. God knows how many people Hillary “met” as First Lady, not to mention Senator and there’s no reason she should remember 99% of them.
I saw Olbermann making McCain his “Worst Person in the World” tonight for saying he’d never met Cunningahm and it bugged me. I thought it was cheap and reaching and the kind of thing that Fox News always does to Democrats.
I think John McCain’s only mistake was that he probably should have asked his staff if he’d ever met Cunningham before he made the claim. I honestly don’t think he was intentionally lying, though, and I think that his disavowal of Cunningham was an expression of who he really is (and it didn’t help him either since Rush Limabaugh, et al were attacking him for it today).
John McCain might be a conservative and might be profoundly wrong on Iraq, but he is not the kind of scumbag that we’ve seen in the past. Neither is Obama, for that matter, who routinely praises McCain at his rallies and calls him an “American hero.”
I actually think that Hillary is probably the dirtiest campaigner left in the race, and I’m including Huckabee. Not that I think she approaches Rovian levels or anything, but she’s more old school than the rest of them. The Clintons will still go for the nuts when they have to.
I also think that Obama will be swift-boated. John McCain will have nothing to do with it, but he has to be aware that there is a very good chance that it will happen.
I wonder how much about McCain’s divorce will be brought up. I believe she was in an accident that changed her physical appearance quite a bit. I don’t see Obama bringing that up, but the Democrats will get out the word.
To the best of my knowledge, the Episcopal Church has not taken an official stand supporting same sex marriages although many individual Episcopalians support the idea.
I can’t name anyone in public office whose bravery has been tested that way. I admire his courage beyond my ability to express it. But he also has feet of clay and other parts of his character may be lacking.
Does anyone remember the testy letter that McCain sent Obama a couple of years ago? I wonder if that letter will come into play during the campaign. It was so cutting it made me cringe. I don’t remember the contents – just the blood and tears.
“Steal this ilk.” – maybe said by Abbie Hoffman (who would have been 71 this year)
No one could have predicted that a Republican talk radio host, asked “to throw some red meat to the crowd" might get out of hand?
Anyone but a stupid person could have predicted that. McCain’s not stupid.
If he really wanted to limit this sort of incident, McCain would, at a minimum, have to talk to his state campaign chairmen about keeping to the high road. That doesn’t seem to have happened here, or if it did, the talk was ineffective.
Here is a list of tatics Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin thinks will work for McCain:
I think Cunningham was trying to work #6 but that backfired.
You can do #13 only by wishing really, really hard for voters to forget that they don’t like where this country has been heading for the last 7 years.
McCain’s lack of specificity in reality (as opposed to Obama’s perceived lack of specificity) will make #14 hard to pull off.
Bloggers and such already are researching Obama’s past. That’s why we keep getting the Muslim/turban/not really black crap.
Manchurian Candidate? Seriously? This ran in Time Magazine?
Political Judo–if Obama’s people can bribe a prominent McCain supporter or two to use racial slurs in a high-profile way, major damage to McCain could be done.
(does sad victory dance)
-Joe
I heard him on All Things Considered too and Robert Siegel was noticably irritated with him. When Cunningham said he may endorse Clinton and have Clinton on the show, I cheered! Go right ahead and endorse Clinton, Send out press releases! Clinton pairing with that assh*le would be great! Push her even further into the ditch. I now her bus already crashed into that ditch, but obvisouly she can go even deeper.
Oh, don’t be silly. That’s like all those dittoheads out there who say, “I’ll vote for a Democrat if McCain is the Republican nominee”.
No. No you won’t. You’re not fooling anyone even a little bit.
-Joe
Fitting nicely into the “Democrats support terrorists” theme is the recent attack on Obama for having visited with a university professor, William Ayers, back in the mid-90s when Obama’s political career was just getting off the ground. Seems that in addition to supposedly being a local political power, Ayers was involved in bombing the Pentagon as a member of the Weather Underground in 1970.
Now, Obama’s having had anything to do with Ayers a dozen or so years ago is not appealing, though it’s unclear what that association amounted to. I am going to have to balance it against things like John McCain currently sucking up to and getting an endorsement of Rod Parsley, Ohio right-wing evangelical political kingmaker. Parsley was big in backing the Ohio gubernatorial campaign of Ken Blackwell, best known for his sleazy tactics as Sec. of State in trying to disenfranchise Democrats. Parsley runs something called the Center for Moral Clarity, which does things like smear Planned Parenthood over the abortion issue.
If it comes down to Obama vs. McCain, I’ll have to weigh this kind of stuff carefully.
Sorry to have to disabuse you, but the camp that actually started the “Obama meets with terrorists” crap was a fellow Democrat – Hillary!
See Howard Wolfson’s Blog on the official Hillary website, here, where it concludes with this zinger. . .
Lovely, huh?
I loved the part where Cunningham was claiming that he emphasized “Hussein” out of respect and honor for Obama, the way that, according to him, one does when they say “Franklin Delano Roosevelt” or “John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
Of course, the host didn’t call him on the obvious weasely-ness of such a claim.
Since he’s got so much respect in him, I wonder if someone in his show’s listening area could call him and ask him what John McCain’s middle name is.
Any volunteers? I’d like to hear how long that pause is before he can answer.
-Joe
Tiberius.
On Hannity he called his former endorsee “Juan Pablo McCain”.
Man, this middle name bit has legs.
Hannity has seen the light, hasn’t he? Surely by now he has discovered his deeply felt admiration and loyalty to McCain?
This is sweet:
RNC denounces use of ‘Hussein’ in Obama’s name
Whatever slime gets tossed up on the beach between now and november, it’s comforting to know that the Republicans won’t be behind it. 
A number of Obama-ites here have claimed they will "stay home in droves’ :rolleyes: if Hillary gets the nod over Obama.