Obama '08?

dyslexia wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

Has anybody noticed that at times Rama is the last person to have posted on every single active Politics Forum thread?

Interesting syntax. Noam Chomsky would probably be disappointed as he conceives syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in the human mind and yet suggests it be congruent. So it goes.

I see your point, Dys, but that is getting picky.

Roxxxanne wrote:

BTW I am not a genius, I am a sub-genius.

You are a sub-genius.

Ticomaya wrote:

Roxxxanne wrote:

BTW I am not a genius, I am a sub-genius.

You are a sub-genius.

Actually, it was just a quip that went over the head of the only brainless person to ever (or so he claims) have passed the Kansas Bar Exam.

Ticomaya wrote:

Roxxxanne wrote:

BTW I am not a genius, I am a sub-genius.

You are a sub-genius.

Actually, it was just a quip that went over the head of the only brainless person to ever (or so he claims) have passed the Kansas Bar Exam.

Actually, it was just a quip that went over the head of the only brainless person to ever (or so he claims) have passed the Kansas Bar Exam.

Roxxxanne wrote:

Actually, it was just a quip that went over the head of the only brainless person to ever (or so he claims) have passed the Kansas Bar Exam.

Actually Roxi, you can't hold a candle to Ticomaya. I would suggest you quit trying, as each attempt only makes you look worse, as if it could worse.

Catherine Crier says it well here:


Here are the controversial comments Barack Obama uttered in San Francisco. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and...... they cling to ....antipathy to people who aren't like them ...... as a way to explain their frustrations."................

Inartful........

It's a smooth way of calling Pennsylvanians bigots.

real life wrote:

It's a smooth way of calling Pennsylvanians bigots.

not really very smooth, I'd say blunt. I believe he's correct.

dyslexia wrote:

real life wrote:

It's a smooth way of calling Pennsylvanians bigots.

not really very smooth, I'd say blunt. I believe he's correct.

I'd say Obama has very little room to talk regarding 'antipathy to people who aren't like them' when he associates with religious bigots like James Meeks and Jeremiah Wright.

Fortunately, folks don't tend to vote for someone who calls them a bigot. So this strategy will probably set him back some. Keep it up Obama.

real life wrote:

dyslexia wrote:

real life wrote:

It's a smooth way of calling Pennsylvanians bigots.

not really very smooth, I'd say blunt. I believe he's correct.

I'd say Obama has very little room to talk regarding 'antipathy to people who aren't like them' when he associates with religious bigots like James Meeks and Jeremiah Wright.

Fortunately, folks don't tend to vote for someone who calls them a bigot. So this strategy will probably set him back some. Keep it up Obama.

Yeah right, just forget about folks like Dobson.

Should i post a thread with my usual cut and paste
to expose my ignorance?

Bitter and Angry in Rural Pennsylvania: Obama's Reality vs. Hillary's Fantasy

By astral66 - April 12, 2008, 4:40PM

Maybe there aren't Bubbas driving around in pickup trucks with the classic bumpersticker "God, Guns and Guts Made America Free" where Obama's detractors live, but here in rural Pennsylvania that line may as well replace "e pluribus unum" as the motto on the national currency.

I live in western Pennsylvania, and I can tell you, people here are bitter and angry. Poverty is prevalent. People hunt squirrels and eat them, along with racoon stew. People also hunt deer here, not for sport, but so they can put meat in their freezer so they can feed their families. They cut wood in the forests and heat their homes with wood stoves because they can't afford to pay the gas bill. I know a guy who goes to old landfills to dig up old milk and beer bottles to sell on eBay. He uses the proceeds t o buy clothes for his family at the Salvation Army (and to pay for his dial-up connection).

Racism and prejudice are ever-present here. A friend of mine is part-owner of bar in a small rural town south of where I live. I meet up with him there occasionally and watch as down-and-out people come in with their disability and welfare check money and drink it away. It's a pretty depressing place, but it does serve as the social center for a town that has seen its few industries shut down and the local people's jobs eliminated or shipped off elsewhere.

I hear the usual rants there, that it's all the fault of gays and minorities and immigrants (although those aren't the terms used, but rather the usual, virulent slurs). A black man walked in the last time I was there, and a guy near me at the bar muttered in a not-so-quiet way, "What's he think he's doing in here?" When I brought up the presidential race and Obama with an other man at the bar, his response was, "there ain't no way America is ever going to vote for a black guy." Later on my bar-owner friend told me about his experience talking about Obama with another woman at the bar, and her angry response was that "it's because of half-breed n*****s like him that America is in such bad shape today."

Prejudice, racism and fear do run rampant in areas like this. People are poor. They are in bad health, overweight from a deep-fried diet, and toothless from the lack of dental care. They are unemployed. They are uneducated. They do cling to their hunting rifles and to their religious beliefs. For many, it is about all that they have. The towns around here are full of decaying, boarded up buildings. People live in rundown old trailers with abandoned cars in the front yard. I have seen people using an old car as a stable, with their goat tied to and living in it. I could drive you by a least three old houses that have Condera te flags in the windows.

So go ahead and discount Obama's talk of how bitter and angry that some of the people of rural Pennsylvania are. Call him elitist for taking the time to pass through areas such as this to listen to what the people have to say, and to then relate what he has heard to people in more prosperous parts of the country when he is asked about it. I have lived in San Francisco, and let me tell you, there is a marked difference between the general attitude there and the attitude here in the "rust belt". Go ahead and dismiss everything that Obama said as political posturing. Let Hillary and McCain "pick him apart" and parse his words. But please keep in mind that when Obama said:

"it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

that he is 100% accurate in his assessment.& nbsp;

I know, because I live here, my family and my friends' families have lived here for generations, and we see it every day, all around this region. There is a very fine line between poverty and prosperity here, where making above $20,000 a year puts you in the realm of the "haves", but also knowing that you're one contract termination away from joining the ranks of the "have-nots".

I come from a family of dairy farmers. I know what it's like to spend up to 12-16 hours a day sitting on a tractor for three dollars an hour, which I did through high school and every summer until I was fortunate enough to head off to college. Many of my friends were also fortunate and went to school, and then relocated to other parts of the country. Some of us were able to come back under better circumstances, but the large majority of people here are not as fortunate.

Thirty years worth of the right wing dismantling our public education system has t aken its toll. Thirty years worth of mismanagement of the economy, of shutting down factories and shipping jobs out of the country, of subsidizing corporate farms and taxing family farms out of business, has taken its toll.

Yes, people are angry, and bitter, but Obama never said that they aren't resilient, opitmistic or hard-working. Those are Hillary and McCain's twisted words, and for them to stand up and suggest that rural Pennsylvanians aren't fed up with the way things are, only reveals how out of touch they really are with at least this part of the country.

Of course, all McCain has to do is suggest to poor rural folk that the party of gun-control, gay marriage, and NAFTA is going to take away what little they have left, and rural conservatives will vote for him, just as they did for Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. As for Hillary, the more she "takes apart" Obama's message, the more she does the GOP's work for free. If Hillary can't see that the p eople of rural Pennsylvania are bitter, and angry, and mad as hell about the way things are, then she needs to step down from that one hundred million dollar platform of hers and take a real look around.

In western Pennsylvania I hear two things: the "God, Guns and Guts" crowd see John McCain as the heir-apparent to the mantle of rural conservative values; and the people who hope for some kind of change see Barack Obama as the person who understands the situation that we are in, and maybe is the one who can lead us in a new direction. What I don't hear is anyone talking about whatever and whomever it is that Hillary claims to stand for.