LSJ Blogs: People's Politics

misinformation politics

How can our country carry on an election where facts don't count. and assassination by association or outright lies is the norm?  I keep getting e-mails filled with garbage that would be laughable if  I didn't know thats its swaying some dullards to vote against their best interests. Case in point, http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr07-28-08.html....just one of the many smear campaigns waged I think, because of the success of the swiftboat lodged in the last election. While no one is more of a proponent of free speach than I,  shouldn't the dissemination of outright lies  be punished?  Even the most diehard republican knows Obama had nothing to do with  the bombing of the capitol,  and was never a member of a group that advocated it. Surely they know too, that being a liberal doesn't mean we hate america (that is a fovorite of theirs) or favor higher gas prices . In our own way, we all want what is best, for our country and the world ( I think).  So the question is, how do we get to a point  where  this trash cannot be aired?  You know that if the same things and even some truthful things were aired about the sitting president or vice president, the people responsible would be jailed, does this constitute a double standard?  After all, whomever is elected, will  carry those dirty little lies with them, while representing our country.

A Hillary Supporter's Thoughts on the Presidential Race

My good friend Norma sent me the following by e-mail, and I thought it was so thought-provoking, I asked her permission to share it here.

Norma has been a strong Hillary supporter from the beginning, and she still is. She is part of a big demographic that Obama and McCain are trying to woo.

So, here's Norma:

All in

Thank you, Senator McCain. I used to think that this was the only way I'd be able to vote for you. Your pick of Sarah Palin has changed my mind and I'm now in... bumper stickers, yard signs and all.

Go Kemp!

Today John McCain introduced America to the Harriet Miers of vice-presidential nominations. The choice of Sarah Palin to be J. Sidney McCain III’s running mate sure looks like a hail-mary pass from a desperate campaign. (It is clear now that when the brain trust on the McCain bus sees polls showing a 45-45 split, they read those numbers as their man’s ceiling and Obama’s basement floor. It’s also clear the Denver convention scared them.) Palin may indeed be a clever pick intended to help McCain surge with an array of target demographics. The problem is that McCain has picked a VP who is right for his campaign over the next two months but wrong for America over the next four years. In doing so, McCain has shown us his steadily declining judgment and the unplumbable depths of his self-interest.

Sarah Palin

I’m sure there will be a number of comments on McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for VP, but I thought I’d toss in my 2 cents worth.

At first I thought it was a gimmick, as I had only heard her name from Bill Kristol as a possible running mate for McCain.  Quite frankly I didn’t see her mentioned by anyone else; I thought McCain would pick the Minnesota governor but the consensus seemed to be Romney.  So much for conventional wisdom.  Doing a bit of research on the web, I think McCain may have changed my mind; I may vote for him out of choice rather than as a last resort now.

The Real Barack Obama (for All Who Would Listen)

Thursday night, for forty-five minutes, Barack Obama spelled out his beliefs, his motivations, his plans, and his promises before 80,000 people in Denver and millions more at home. It was a great speech — in this way more than any other: if you want to know who Obama is, what he believes in, and what he wants to do as president, your answer is in the text. From now on, claims of confusion as to what Obama stands for are merely willful self-delusion. From now on, attempts to define Obama through the histories of his neighbors and coworkers are bald-faced appeals to guilt by association. Let’s start debating our first African-American nominee’s worthiness to be president based not on innuendo and name-calling, but on the facts.

Obama and Ayers, two of a kind?

I have long been concerned about the unsavory characters with whom Obama has had some sort of relations/dealings with in the past.  The anti-American radical Rev Wright has been covered in fairly good detail, but surprising to me is that the left (nor most of America in fact) doesn’t care about the rantings of a 20 year relationship with a spiritual mentor.  The convicted felon Tony Rezko is another of Obama’s relations that may be innocent, but certainly has more than a hint of the unsavory about it.  Obama’s relationship with the unrepentant bomber and terrorist Bill Ayers is the biggest problem I see with Obama’s relations, but again I don’t understand why no one seems to care about it.  I believe this relationship is far more serious than what the libs and the MSM pass off as trying to paint Obama “guilty by association.”  Indeed, is it possible that Obama shares Ayers' clearly radical views?

Hillary Hits Stand-up Triple

A day ago, I was not expecting to praise Hillary for her speech in Denver last night. When I first heard it, I agreed with Keith Olbermann who called it a home run and that it could not have been better. After thinking about it for a bit, yes it could have been better. But it still was a solid performance that went a long way toward reuniting the party and healing the wounds of a bitter primary campaign. I’d call it a solid triple.

The speech was well-crafted and well-delivered. The best part was when she challenged her supporters- “Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?” These are the questions her supporters need to ask themselves. They have lost the battle, but do they want to lose the entire war, too? Is their frustration over the primary worth having a third and possibly fourth term of Bush? She did an outstanding job of stressing the importance of this election and what was at stake.  She even took on John McCain with these words: “John McCain says the economy is fundamentally sound. John McCain doesn't think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis. John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. And in 2008, he still thinks it's okay when women don't earn equal pay for equal work. With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart.” Great stuff and with just the right delivery. She did not attack McCain’s character, she attacked his policies. The punchline was hilarious. It also served a purpose- a shotgun wedding of John McCain to George W. Bush. Whatever can tie those two together in the public’s mind is good news for Barack Obama. But she wasn’t mean-spirited about it. It was rather like rapping McCain’s knuckles with a yardstick. Let Biden wield the crowbar, she just needed to sting him a little bit.

She did leave some cards unplayed. She declined to vouch for Obama’s character. She could have said something like “I’ve campaigned against Barack Obama for nearly a year and let me tell you, I have come to know him as a patriotic man of great character that we can depend on to do the right thing....” More significantly, she neglected to recant her doubts about his ability to be commander-in-chief. The McCain campaign has used her 3 am ad against Obama only because she created it in the first place. She could have said something like “if that phone ever does ring at 3 in the morning, we can be assured that Barack Obama stands ready to answer it and do whatever it takes to protect this great nation...” She said nothing that would compel McCain to pull his 3 am ad from the airwaves, nothing that would protect Obama from swiftboat assaults on his character. The Clintons are so calculating that one never knows if she had thought of these things and didn’t include them so as not to be too helpful. It still isn’t clear if she wants Obama to win. She did look and sound sincere, but as they say if you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made.

Despite what she missed, it was a magnificent speech. If she could have spoken like that in Iowa, she’d be the nominee. Her supporters have been put on notice that if they believe in the causes that Hillary fought for, then it is important that they elect Barack Obama in November. If they can’t be reached by her with this speech, they can’t be reached.  Assuming Bill does his part, and Biden roughs up McCain a little harder than Hillary did, and Obama gives his usual great speech, this will be a successful convention. Even though I have my doubts about her motivation and predict she will shed crocodile tears if Obama loses, you have to give her her due and say great speech, Hillary.

My prediction is that Obama gets about a 10 point bounce out of this convention, and gives about half of it back the following week. What’s yours?

The Olympics Are Over

I took a break from American politics during the Olympics, perhaps honoring the ancient Greek tradition of suspending wars while the athletes competed.  "Politics" is nothing more nor less than the process of dividing scarce resources, and it occurs everywhere. 

Platform of the American People

As I’ve posted a number of times, I am a conservative, not a democrat or republican.  The problem individuals of my political persuasion have is that there are so few conservatives in the political hierarchy, much less in national positions of power.  There are none in the democrat party, and very few in the republican ranks.   True there are people such as Bush, who claims to be a compassionate conservative, McCain, who claims to be a Reagan conservative and a whole host of other Reagan wanabes, but the people who stand up and actually vote for conservative principles are few.  Ron Paul comes to mind as the only one left in Washington that stands up to the conservative test, but he has other problems with which he must deal.