Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

obamas not scared of anyone....hes already in lebanon today!..... lebanon Pennsylvania

What about Rev. Wrights extramarital affairs and firing a lady when she broke it off with him. Is he scared of that?

[BW23]

I can't believe that there's actually complaints from liberals about Palin not doing an interview yet.

First, it's not as if she'll ignore every request for the next seven weeks. There's a better chance of her screwing up earlier rather than later. If I'm a liberal, I'd rather her screw up closer to election time than now.

Second, she has to be prepped. Nobody's gone into this without having been prepared for the national media. You can't wait a week?

Third, every time she speaks, the right's numbers go up. I'd rather her not talk, again, if, God forbid, I was a liberal.

[KyCardinalFan]

Politics and the English language, GOP-style
Posted on Sun, Sep. 07, 2008

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@miamiherald.com


"We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals.'' -- Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008

And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn't we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney's? If he's allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he's spoken intelligently, why can't I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can't I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.

And again, ahem.

If you're a regular here, you've heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty. By this, I mean more than just your garden variety lie. No, to be intellectually dishonest means to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you'll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line.

Yes, we're all intellectually dishonest on occasion. But no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball or the Temptations to harmony: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it . . . art. Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo's David, admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration.

Unfortunately, some of us are too plodding and earthbound, too blind to the seductions of art, too stubbornly wedded to some vestigial notion that intellectual honesty matters, to walk past a steaming pile of bovine excreta without calling it a steaming pile of bovine excreta.

So excuse me, beg pardon, so sorry, but I have to ask: what liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e., Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 until 2007. The judicial, i.e., the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said.

Washington is already what Romney wants to make it. Our current state of affairs, love it or loathe it, is indisputably a product of conservative governance. I wish that mattered more than it does.

That it doesn't matter much at all you can credit to conservative politicians who have, over the years, trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say ''conservative,'' and they wag their tails. Say ''liberal'' and they bare their fangs. More to the point, say either and all thinking ceases, so much so that a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the last 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there. And people hear this Orwellian doublespeak . . . and cheer. Why not? They have been taught that words mean what you need them to in a given moment.

Sadly, it has proven an easy lesson to impart. Turns out, all it requires is a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers.

And all it costs us is language, the ability to have reasoned and intelligent political discourse, the idea that words do, and should, have weight, dimension and intrinsic meaning. Maybe you disagree. In which case, let me just say this:

Piffle crack eat monkey snow. Really.

[Socnorb11]

In fact, I don't think they even mentioned it. Biden's son isn't doing it for publicity. He's doing it for his country.

Obviously someone mentioned it otherwise we wouldn't all know about it. Even they have said the kid's are off limits. This is not a fair statement, they are both going to Iraq, leave them both out of it.

You chopped up my quote, and took it out of context. I said Biden himself isn't using it for propoganda. Obviously the press has mentioned it.

Palin brought the Iraq thing up long before I did. Is it off limits, or isn't it?

[ghostrunner]

Politics and the English language, GOP-style
Posted on Sun, Sep. 07, 2008

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@miamiherald.com


"We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals.'' -- Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008

And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn't we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney's? If he's allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he's spoken intelligently, why can't I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can't I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.

And again, ahem.

If you're a regular here, you've heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty. By this, I mean more than just your garden variety lie. No, to be intellectually dishonest means to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you'll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line.

Yes, we're all intellectually dishonest on occasion. But no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball or the Temptations to harmony: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it . . . art. Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo's David, admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration.

I'm glad you posted this. I've always liked Pitts, but I couldn't remember his name a few weeks ago. I haven't read a paper that carries him in a while.

[Freed Roger]

Democrats basically cannot show pride in anyone serving in the military because they basically hate this country and what it stands for.

This just in: Joe Biden hates his son and everything he stands for.

I've also heard Democrats can't fight and are too wussy. So, they are only sent to war to toughen up and become mean and rough and rowdy and learn from the respectable Republican young adults that are over there.

Republican mantra of late is personal responsibility - if you want to fight in Iraq, you should go over there and do it on your own dime. Not mine. Ok being facetious. but really.

As far as Palin and Obama taking time off and hiding from the media as you say... I'm all in favor. if these people hid out for the next two months -fine by me. its not like anything relevant is going to emerge at this point. all the next 2 months is for extremely dense people.

[BW23]

When is Barack Hussein Obama going on vacation?

[haltz]

When is Barrack Hussein Obama going on vacation?

Your mom.

[BW23]

Meh. She'll probably vote for him.

But seriously, when is he going?

[PujolJunkie]

Can we lock this thread down yet before someone gets their feelings hurt or someone gets banned?