H2O_MAN wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:H2O_MAN wrote:By all means, please explain the reasoning behind your opinions.
If you can be more specific as to which ones, I would be more then happy to do so.
I'm just not convinced that you would be honest.
I assure you, my reasoning behind my opinions is no secret and nothing worth lying about. But, you were the one who asked, so I'll leave it up to you to pursue it further if you wish.
I'm curious to know: what do you think I would stand to gain, by being dishonest about my reasons behind my opinions?
Cycloptichorn
I suppose when one has no substantive comments, pictures will suffice.
Cycloptichorn
the picture says it all...
woiyo wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:The media hasn't made much mention of the fact that he is a serial adulterer, who left his permanently disabled wife (who was faithful to him while he was a POW for years) for a 19-year old heiress who he was having an affair with. I'd like to see a little more written about that. Wouldn't you, Fox?
After all, it's indicative of his morality and judgment, that he would betray those who stood by him during his toughest times.
Cycloptichorn
Serial Adulterer???? Is that what concerns you now?
Did it bother you that Clinton is a serial adulterer? Does it bother you that Obama ignores his mothers heritage? How must she feel?
Apparently, you can not debate issues, so you go to the trash bin to see what you can find. How typical!
I don't care that he is an adulterer. I do care that he was the founder of the Keating Five, which was a disaster for the country.
Advocate wrote:woiyo wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:The media hasn't made much mention of the fact that he is a serial adulterer, who left his permanently disabled wife (who was faithful to him while he was a POW for years) for a 19-year old heiress who he was having an affair with. I'd like to see a little more written about that. Wouldn't you, Fox?
After all, it's indicative of his morality and judgment, that he would betray those who stood by him during his toughest times.
Cycloptichorn
Serial Adulterer???? Is that what concerns you now?
Did it bother you that Clinton is a serial adulterer? Does it bother you that Obama ignores his mothers heritage? How must she feel?
Apparently, you can not debate issues, so you go to the trash bin to see what you can find. How typical!
I don't care that he is an adulterer. I do care that he was the founder of the Keating Five, which was a disaster for the country.
Conclusion
After months of testimony revealed that all five senators acted improperly to differing degrees, the senators maintained they were following the status quo of campaign funding practices. In August 1991, the committee concluded that Cranston's, DeConcini's, and Riegle's conduct constituted substantial interference with the FHLBB's enforcement efforts and that they had interfered at the behest of Charles Keating. The Ethics Committee concluded that Glenn's and McCain's involvement in the scheme was minimal.[5] The committee recommended censure for Cranston and criticized the other four for "questionable conduct."
Re: Obama's electability
au1929 wrote:Based upon a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being a certantcy. What do you believe is Obama's chance of being elected to the presidency?
Seven.
If the election was decided on the issues, I'd give him a nine. Obama is a mainstream liberal, as various people have commented here. At the same time, American voters are telling pollsters that they, too, have generally turned liberal on the issues that matter most to them. Conservatives are fooling themselves when they believe that liberalism is still some kind of political scarecrow in America.
But sadly, Americans are reluctant to base their votes on political issues. It's more about who has what kind of hair cut or what kind of voice, or whether he mangles a word or two, or whether he's a nice fella you may want to hang out with some day. Add to that the effectiveness of organizations like the Swift Boat Veterans, and Obama is back from a nine to a seven.
Thomas,
Do believe that all of the non-rational, or beyond rational effects you listed and others that may exist, work to Obama's detriment? Or are there other like factors that work against McCain or pro Obama???
If you convince him of that, he'll raise the number!
Cycloptichorn
georgeob1 wrote:Thomas,
Do believe that all of the non-rational, or beyond rational effects you listed and others that may exist, work to Obama's detriment? Or are there other like factors that work against McCain or pro Obama???
I guess there are two points that I mingled together carelessly. Point one is, in general I think of the non-rational effects as statistical noise in the democratic system. Because noise benefits or harms every player at random, it will tend to weaken the relative position of whomever the fundamentals favor. Point two is, I think the Republican hype-and-spin machine is still more effective than its Democratic counterpart, which is a systematic advantage for the Republicans. (Sadly, Blatham isn't around to make this point, so I have to make it for him.)
Where is Blatham, by the by?
snood wrote:Where is Blatham, by the by?
He seems to have left the site
in a huff about a month and a half ago.
Oh. Ok. Just read your link...
woiyo wrote:Advocate wrote:woiyo wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:The media hasn't made much mention of the fact that he is a serial adulterer, who left his permanently disabled wife (who was faithful to him while he was a POW for years) for a 19-year old heiress who he was having an affair with. I'd like to see a little more written about that. Wouldn't you, Fox?
After all, it's indicative of his morality and judgment, that he would betray those who stood by him during his toughest times.
Cycloptichorn
Serial Adulterer???? Is that what concerns you now?
Did it bother you that Clinton is a serial adulterer? Does it bother you that Obama ignores his mothers heritage? How must she feel?
Apparently, you can not debate issues, so you go to the trash bin to see what you can find. How typical!
I don't care that he is an adulterer. I do care that he was the founder of the Keating Five, which was a disaster for the country.
Conclusion
After months of testimony revealed that all five senators acted improperly to differing degrees, the senators maintained they were following the status quo of campaign funding practices. In August 1991, the committee concluded that Cranston's, DeConcini's, and Riegle's conduct constituted substantial interference with the FHLBB's enforcement efforts and that they had interfered at the behest of Charles Keating. The Ethics Committee concluded that Glenn's and McCain's involvement in the scheme was minimal.[5] The committee recommended censure for Cranston and criticized the other four for "questionable conduct."
McCain, the founder of the Keating Five, got off light because Ethics was controlled by the Republicans. McCain took gifts and trips, which he repaid with legislative-type favors for Keating.
PRUDEN: A large crowd under the bus
Wesley Pruden (Contact)
Friday, June 6, 2008
Obama learns a lot of things from the newspapers. He only learned yesterday that Hillary plans to concede tomorrow by reading about it in the papers.
He famously learned that his pastor - the man who he says led him to the Lord, presided at his wedding and baptized his two daughters - was a hateful old bigot who had been preaching racist nonsense only when he read about it in the newspapers. (He dozed through all 20 years of the preacher's sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ.)
If it hadn't been for the newspapers, the senator might never have known that Bill Ayers, in on the organization of his first political campaign and with whom he sat on the board of a charity dispensing money and favors to left-wing troublemakers, was an unreformed member of a cop-killing cell of 60s radicals.
He learned that Tony Rezko, his one-time fundraiser and accommodating pal who was convicted by a Chicago jury this week of 16 counts of fraud and money laundering, was a crook and a slumlord only by reading about it in the newspapers.
Mr. Obama, truly a pigeon among the cats, is a man badly served by his friends. They don't tell him about the bad stuff they're up to. He's the last man on the South Side of Chicago who still doesn't know where babies come from, or how they get here.
His Rezko connection may turn out to be the most interesting connection of all. Tony, an associate not only of Mr. Obama but of Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit, Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Harry the Horse, stunned everyone in the courtroom when the jury returned with the verdicts. While his lawyer was saying he would appeal the convictions, Tony surrendered to the bailiffs to start serving his time at once. Just why he was in a hurry to get to work on license plates he didn't say. Las Vegas gamblers hold his markers for nearly a half-million dollars, and besides, if he has any secrets embarrassing to Barack Obama nobody in the prison chow line will be bugging him for particulars. But he will live in interesting times.
The senator was not in on any of Tony Rezko's nefarious schemes; all he did was hang out with Tony long after it became clear to everyone who had been reading the Chicago newspapers that Tony was in the business of buying and selling politicians. Newspaper delivery is never perfect, and as a one-time paperboy I know it's perfectly credible that Mr. Obama's paperboy missed his front porch on the various days that Tony Rezko's deeds were splashed on Page One.
Tony Rezko
Tony Rezko is certainly not unique in Chicago, where profitable coincidences abound. He started buying and selling pols a quarter of a century ago, raising money for his favorites, most prominently including Barack Obama, and making deals with the city to buy up and redevelop slum housing. Neither he nor his partner had any experience in developing housing, but that didn't matter because experience, as we have seen, is not necessarily prized in Chicago. With help from his friends in high places - at City Hall, in Springfield, even in Washington - Tony obtained more than $100 million in government grants, earning $7 million for himself. But in his haste to do good for the poor people of Chicago, he forgot to furnish heat to his tenants, and the city had to sue him several times to correct his oversight. More than half of the properties have been foreclosed; some are boarded up.
It was about this time that Tony helped the senator and his wife buy a house, and when the senator couldn't afford to buy the lot next door - to give himself a little breathing room - Tony bought the lot and sold them part of it at a bargain. Chicago's a toddlin' town, after all, where everyone's eager to lend a hand not necessarily to the down and out, but to the up and coming (and certainly to the already arrived).
The senator was "saddened," he said, by the jury's work. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury. That once again shines a spotlight on the need for reform." Alas, the spotlight might shine on something besides "reform," so it's under the bus for another unsavory someone in the senator's past. Tony joins a growing crowd.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Times.
Au, after all that this seems to be an appropriate summary:
In truth, however, those who have already decided to support Obama aren't going to care what kind of baggage he carries, and those who don't support Obama already have factored that in. So the most who might at least consider it will be the few who are still on the fence.
joefromchicago wrote:au1929 wrote:It was about this time that Tony helped the senator and his wife buy a house, and when the senator couldn't afford to buy the lot next door - to give himself a little breathing room - Tony bought the lot and sold them part of it at a bargain.
False, false, and false.
How do you know it's false,
Joe? Or did you just mean it hasn't been proven to be true?
These are the facts, per the Times:
Quote:A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood -- a deal that has dogged Obama the last two years. The doctor sold the mansion to Obama for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price. Rezko's wife paid full price -- $625,000 -- for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a strip of her land, so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Questioned later about the timing of the Rezko deal, Obama called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor.
LINK
au1929 wrote:
The senator was "saddened," he said, by the jury's work. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury. That once again shines a spotlight on the need for reform." Alas, the spotlight might shine on something besides "reform," so it's under the bus for another unsavory someone in the senator's past. Tony joins a growing crowd.
That's not the Rev Wright I knew!
I doubt Bill Ayers the mad-bomber is the Bill Ayers Obama knew either.
Pattern?
