New U.S. President

[ewmayer]

Senior Moment: McCain Confuses Spain With Venezuela

A SENIOR'S moment or a genuine hardline stance against Spain from Republican John McCain? Comments made by the presidential candidate in an interview with a Miami radio station this week about his attitude to the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, have caused consternation in the European nation.

In an interview this week, a reporter asked the senator whether, if elected, he would receive Mr Zapatero in the White House.

He answered: "Honestly, I have to analyse our relationships, situations and priorities, but I can assure you that I will establish closer relationships with our friends, and I will stand up to those who want to harm the United States."

McCain on banking and health

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

''Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.''

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

[AES]

Please... ...

A NY Times blog column entitled "The Conscience of a Liberal" and an AU Newspaper article by "Anne Davies, Washington Correspondent"?

I can tune to the local NBC station (or MSNBC if I want it spoon fed) and get the same spew, out of context, unopposed, and out of date.

Maybe we should reference some Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh spew to even it out.

I look forward to the debates.

[99.94]

That is a cheap shot. Anne Davies is a respected and experienced journalist. Perhaps you would like to explain just what is out of context and out of date about her report?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...941209257.html

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by AES

Please... ...

Please what?

A NY Times blog column entitled "The Conscience of a Liberal"

So? It quotes McCain's own words, from http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/mccain.pdf. See for yourself. The quoted portion is on page 30, starting at the bottom of the left-hand column and continuing at the top of the right-hand column.

"Out of context"? There's the link, right in the blog, so anyone can see the context for themselves.

"Unopposed"? Well, the same Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies also has an article by Obama at http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/obama.pdf. But I don't suppose that's what you mean.

I hope you don't mean that the blog's pointing-out of the contradiction between McCain's messages in different places is unaccompanied by some opposition, in that same blog, to this pointing-out-of-contradictions.

So, exactly what opposition do you expect that blog to provide that could equally be expected to be provided by any blog written from any other political point-of-view?

"Out of date"? It's the September/October 2008 issue!

an AU Newspaper article by "Anne Davies, Washington Correspondent"?

"Spew"? Are you claiming it's not factually correct? How so?

"Out of context"? How so?

"Unopposed"? What opposition, exactly, was this news article supposed to include?

"Out of date"? The article is dated "September 20, 2008"! It refers to "Comments made by the presidential candidate in an interview with a Miami radio station this week" (my italics)!

- - -

Or is it just that you wish to characterize any unfavorable comment about, or coverage of, McCain as having some inferior qualities such as being "out of context", "unopposed", or "out of date" "spew", regardless of whether there is any evidence to support those characterizations of that comment or coverage?

[cheesehead]

AES,

Care to comment on the following section of the "Blizzard of Lies" opinion piece linked by Ernst above? It's the continuation from the last sentence that Ernst quoted.

I've boldfaced a phrase I consider important.

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

I notice that the most frequent TV ad for McCain that I see nowadays repeats the already-disproved assertion that Palin stopped "The Bridge to Nowhere". Even though it's been well shown in multiple news reports elsewhere that Palin actually supported the bridge up until it became too publicly notorious, and that her supposed "Thanks, but no thanks" must not have been referring to the federal money, because Alaska kept that, the Republicans' ad keeps repeating the false "Bridge to Nowhere" assertion over and over and over and over ...

AEC, that's the Big Lie technique -- if you repeat a big lie (not a little lie ... a _big_ one) often enough, forcefully, as though it were actually true, a substantial proportion of the population will believe it.

We have had 8 years of a Big Lie administration. Can you provide any evidence whatsoever that a McCain/Palin administration would be more honest than the Bush/Cheney administration?

I'm not inviting you to avoid direct response by simply asserting that Democrats are liars, too. I'm asking you to directly and honestly answer my queries about McCain/Palin honesty.

[AES]

I apologize. It's just irritating when one can see the bias in so many news reports. Political advertising has always been fairly nasty and something I try to avoid. And no, I don't believe a McCain/Palin administration would be any more honest. The "Bridge to Nowhere" assertion proves this to me.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by AES

Please... ...

A NY Times blog column entitled "The Conscience of a Liberal" and an AU Newspaper article by "Anne Davies, Washington Correspondent"?

I can tune to the local NBC station (or MSNBC if I want it spoon fed) and get the same spew, out of context, unopposed, and out of date.

Maybe we should reference some Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh spew to even it out.

I look forward to the debates.

Typical Repugnican diversionary strategy ... avoid talking about the idiotic and/or frightening things your candidate says by railing against the "liberal elite" messenger.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

I notice that the most frequent TV ad for McCain that I see nowadays repeats the already-disproved assertion that Palin stopped "The Bridge to Nowhere".

... and another Republican ad just showed (during a Packer game break) that talks about Obama and liberal cohorts wanting to:

increase government spending by billions (as though all those Bush administration "supplementary" bills for hundreds of billions of war expenses have _not_ increased government spending -- I've seen an estimate that if US withdrew troops in a few years, there'd still be so many follow-on expenses for things like paying for rebuilding Iraq ["You broke it -- you fix it"] and treating veterans' health problems that the eventual Iraq total will be over two trillion),

increase the size of big government (as though Homeland Security had _not_ been the biggest increase in size of federal government since the 1950s [maybe since WW2, I don't recall which]), showing a looming shadow (as though the PATRIOT Act had _not_ been the biggest Big-Brother diminution of personal privacy in US history),

increase taxes on natural gas and heating oil (as though Republican refuse-to-save-energy policy had _not_ greatly increased the amounts we pay to not-too-friendly countries for oil, which also had _not_ had the side effect of greatly diminishing our national security),

and some other similar mirror-image stuff.

[AES]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Typical Repugnican diversionary strategy ... avoid talking about the idiotic and/or frightening things your candidate says by railing against the "liberal elite" messenger.

ewmayer, I apologize for railing against your message. I was out of line. I have a great deal of respect for you and your work. I believe I saw one too many references to lipstick in the news AGAIN last evening combined with with a withering 401k and a healthy portion of Evan Williams.

The point I intended to convey is, the media is in shambles. It's either biased for or against a party, candidate, or idea... Or worse yet, the reports are about absolutely nothing of importance. I see complaints by conservatives as well as Liberals.

Eric Boehlert is not a "Repugnican" in my judgment. He contributes to a very Liberal site. He details his perception of news media incompetency and bias extensively in an article he posted here: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200809160015

I don't agree with his political ideology, but I agree with many of his assertions about the press.

Someone posted a link to factcheck.org earlier in this thread. This is the type of delivery I prefer. National news organizations should adopt this format IMO.

[99.94]

Originally Posted by AES

ewmayer, I apologize for railing against your message. I was out of line. I have a great deal of respect for you and your work. I believe I saw one too many references to lipstick in the news AGAIN last evening combined with with a withering 401k and a healthy portion of Evan Williams.

The point I intended to convey is, the media is in shambles. It's either biased for or against a party, candidate, or idea... Or worse yet, the reports are about absolutely nothing of importance. I see complaints by conservatives as well as Liberals.

Eric Boehlert is not a "Repugnican" in my judgment. He contributes to a very Liberal site. He details his perception of news media incompetency and bias extensively in an article he posted here: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200809160015

I don't agree with his political ideology, but I agree with many of his assertions about the press.

Someone posted a link to factcheck.org earlier in this thread. This is the type of delivery I prefer. National news organizations should adopt this format IMO.

I don't follow. One of the two reports about which you sneered ("spew") appeared in a foreign newspaper, written by a foreign journalist for a foreign readership in a Western country. Where is the axe to grind? What incentive would such a person have to pursue a bias? Few in your domestic market would read it. And in any case, how does it reflect in any way the shambles you say is the US media?

[AES]

Originally Posted by 99.94

I don't follow. One of the two reports about which you sneered ("spew") appeared in a foreign newspaper, written by a foreign journalist for a foreign readership in a Western country. Where is the axe to grind? What incentive would such a person have to pursue a bias? Few in your domestic market would read it. And in any case, how does it reflect in any way the shambles you say is the US media?

I was out of line.