I stopped reading comments on other sites because people talked so much garbage. I thought it was a little different here. But there are a lot of people here who forget that we're all Democrats and want more than anything, to see Obama elected.

Too many people also forget that because they're saying things not to someone's face in person, that they can be rude and dismissive. I've done it myself in the past. I've reformed.

And there's one thing that I really think is childish. Calling the other side things like "repugs" or "rethugs" and whatever the other side call us. Grow up. I hate it when "they" do it and even more when we do it.

I click on TPM about 74 times a day, but I'll be restricting it now to TPM itself and not its comment pages.

I feel better already!

Bye.

Posted at August 24, 2008 6:33 PM in response to McCain Himself Invokes POW Past To Deflect Criticism Of Houses Gaffe

Tena,

Just because you're ultra-cynical doesn't mean that everyone else is "naive". Some things ARE likely to backfire, and, as I said, Obama being "black" is one thing that the GOP daren't go after directly. They know it would backfire big time. Even Rove knows that...

Posted at August 24, 2008 12:17 PM in response to McCain Himself Invokes POW Past To Deflect Criticism Of Houses Gaffe

Tena and Bacon,

I'm not convinced that Rove would have gone after Kerry if he'd been a POW. Everything else, yeah, but trying to turn a POW experience into a negative is very, very, risky.

Rove is/was as ruthless as they come, but even he knew/knows that some things can backfire. That's why the Republicans haven't gone directly after Obama on race. Too risky.

But the point is that McCain's doing it himself by overplaying the POW card. He's the only one who can weaken the positive that it brings and he's in danger of doing so. Not sure he's completely done it yet, but he's getting close...

Posted at August 24, 2008 11:57 AM in response to McCain Himself Invokes POW Past To Deflect Criticism Of Houses Gaffe

By playing this card so often, he's allowing Dems to attack him on the very thing they couldn't. The Rovian technique of taking a positive and turning it into a negative can't be used on McCain's POW experience - that's one place Obama and his surrogates just can't go.

But by overplaying this card, McCain risks neutralizing what is a positive to him and turning it into a running gag. They're either desperate or have come to the conclusion that it can never be overplayed.

(If Kerry had been a POW, would Rove have gone after him? Surely that's one area that even Rove wouldn't have gone? Right...?)

Posted at August 24, 2008 11:34 AM in response to McCain Himself Invokes POW Past To Deflect Criticism Of Houses Gaffe

Marginal Player.

This is a site for Democrats. If you want to post your points I suggest you go to Little Green Footballs or some other conservative site.

Of course, you can post your comments here, but you'd probably be happier with your kind over there.

Cheerio...

Posted at August 21, 2008 6:49 PM in response to New McCain Ad: It's Obama Who Has A "Housing Problem"

Well, if he only made $4 million last year that puts him squarely in the middle class...!

Posted at August 21, 2008 11:52 AM in response to McCain Campaign Response: Obama Worries About Arugula, Vacations In Hawaii

"The gun that Obama brought to this particular knife fight appears to have been of the squirt variety."

Well, McCain seems to have fooled everyone into believing that the gun he brought to the fight was actually loaded... What's he going to do, go to war with Russia?

BrianinMKE is absolutely right about the coverage in our media. I feel embarrassed to recall that I thought that all this would backfire on McCain. Firstly for his "presumptuous" actions in thinking he was already president by personally inserting himself in the diplomatic process, and secondly in thinking that the American public might recoil against such obvious warmongering for political advantage. Man, how wrong I was...

Posted at August 19, 2008 10:06 AM in response to Poll: Obama's National Lead Shrinks; McCain Leads On Russia

JTHB (man, you're an angry guy. Maybe you should go and lie down...)

Experts consulted by Bloomberg News sided with Obama. They dismissed the uproar as political banter and mundane compared with questions over authenticity in past political cycles.

`From a legal view, the allegations of plagiarism were preposterous,'' said Charles Sims, a First Amendment and copyright attorney at Proskauer Rose LLP in New York. ``The amounts here are totally trivial and not a legal issue. There would be no claim whatsoever.''

To accuse Obama of stealing ``two lines by somebody who is a colleague of yours is almost like saying you're plagiarizing from your speechwriter,'' said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was a speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Posted at August 12, 2008 1:57 PM in response to McCain Advisers Deny Lifting From Wikipedia

"There are only so many ways to state the historical facts". Hmm. Listen, if this had been taken from, say, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and Doris Kearns Goodwin had used the same language in an article, then the E.B. would have been mighty annoyed. As would little Timmy's teacher if he'd used it in a paper.

From Wikipedia :) "Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." It's not copying word for word and the plagiarized version may indeed be better written, but this seems like a pretty open and shut case of it.

A speech writer was in a hurry and thought nobody would notice. Not a big deal, really, but own up to it!

And although it's not a huge deal really (if they hadn't denied it...), it's the kind of thing that Dems tend to be too nice about. We play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules while they play for keeps... Now, I don't want to stoop to their level but when they make a mistake they should be made to pay the consequences.

Posted at August 12, 2008 1:41 PM in response to McCain Advisers Deny Lifting From Wikipedia

If Obama's camp had done this you can bet your bottom dollar it would be on cable tv news and we'd all be talking about it. It would be on cable tv news because the McCain surrogates would bring it up at every opportunity. The traditional media won't bring something like this up without someone else doing so first. (Wouldn't be "fair" to do so...)

Dems don't seem to coordinate the message that surrogates use very well.

Get the message out and make Matthews, Wolf et al discuss things like this!

Posted at August 12, 2008 12:56 PM in response to McCain Advisers Deny Lifting From Wikipedia