The liberals are only hurting America by their criticism.

And obama is the worst

The republicans have put forward a progressive agenda to protect "all"
Americans. Yes that means you liberals too.
We see what Democrats can accomplish - NOTHING.

If it wasn't for our Christian President you all would have lost your
true freedoms by now. Why do you think our founders were all Christian
conservatives.

All the liberals seriously need to get their heads out of the sand and
realize their freedoms are being protected by President George Bush and
Vice president Cheney.

Real patriots realize this and respect their commitment.

Like the well oiled, unintentionally satirical machine that is Obama's campaign, they brilliantly left the most ironic line for last: "Not politics as usual." Indeed.

I agree Rick.
I use to be a Democrat and voted that way in the last election - but it is just more of the same. They just simply cannot run the congress.
I will vote for Mike Huckabee as he seems to be a moderate republican with my family values who can actually move legislation forward.

Why do I suspect that Rick and Dan are actually the same troll, er, person?

The only candidate I trust less than one I know is dishonest is a politician who campaigns on his own honesty.
I hope people see through this ad.

NCSteve: I dunno. Family resemabance, maybe?

That Atrios quote was me BTW. Just forgot how to write my name for a second, there. Happens.

Who Would Jesus Torture?

I get the feeling

NCSteve
and
loki

may be the same person
both one and the same belonging to the same mutual admiration society.

Lets get back on topic here

I think the post is a little unfair. Obama's certainly proven adept at going negative without looking like he's going negative. This isn't it, it's a puff piece, no more and no less. I don't think it's a very good ad, but that's the campaign message, win or lose. I guess we'll see in a couple weeks...

"Jeremy wrote on December 17, 2007 2:20 PM:"

Not me. I'm leaving this thread. Further posts by "Jeremy" are not the Jeremy that is an Obama supporter who has been posting fairly regularly here.

I get the feeling

NCSteve
and
loki

may be the same person

Funny! Man, apparently you haven't see some of our exchanges!

Hey, NCSteve made a very good observation...credit where due, right?

Some of the people on these posts
would fit right in with our

talk talk talk
do nothing congress

I log on once a week for ten minutes at most
to see what the chattering classes have to say
and it's always the same nonsense
and the same people

Don't all of you have anything usefull to do -
till next week

I have better things to do

Bupalos,

Hey, good job! Way to maintain that high level of discourse! ;^}

Eric, you are remarkably Orwellian. Obama runs what a political science textbook would call a classic positive ad, and your headline treats it as if we were about to see a negative ad. Please get real.

loki,

Of course all the campaigns are still running this sort of ad, and you might note my comment was not limited to any particular campaign.

A really atrocious.

Might be helpful if a campaign commercial touting Obama's honesty didn't have some dishonesty.

In plain fact, Obama's health care plan has avoided taking on the insurance companies. Kucinich is speaking the truth when he says his one-payer proposal is the only one that does that.

You can't beat Hillary or the other Republicans for dishonesty but why try?

Best, Terry

loki,

Actually, some of us had a similar conversation not too long ago when Clinton put out an issue-oriented ad in Iowa and NH. Eric was suggesting it was actually a veiled attack on Obama because Clinton mentioned her "strength and experience", Desider argued it was actually an issue-based ad designed to appeal to new audiences, and I agreed with Desider.

But I am sure that was all just me cleverly anticipating your future comments in this thread, and back then I was merely laying the groundwork for this future defense to your future comments. Because surely it could not be the case that I actually believe this stuff.

People who say that Democrats aren't getting anything done in Congress willingly overlook the fact that the Republicans (those in Congress and Bush) are obstructing at peak capacity, with record filibuster threats and nearly daily veto threats from the White House. I agree that the leadership has made bad decisions, like not actually forcing the Republicans to filibuster and show to the country how they are the ones obstructing, but as much as we are frustrated, we would do well not to overlook the fact that Republicans are trying to grind the whole Congress to a halt while urging the Democrats to compromise and stop obstructing. The only problem with the Democratic leadership in Congress is that they haven't made the Republicans work for anything, and they have been all to eager to compromise.

If only they would have given Dodd that benefit.

Anyway, check this out, pass it around: http://home.ourfuture.org/filibuster.html

Paul Krugman has a very interesting piece on Obama in NYT. Krugman comments on the brawl between Edwards and Obama and points out that “Mr. Obama comes off looking, well, naïve.”

As for health care and the progressive agenda Krugamn concludes that “Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has in effect become the anti-change candidate.”

Looks like Mr. "Refreshing Candor" just took a swing at John Edwards. You know, I've been kind of figuring that Obama needs a piece of Edwards to pull off a convincing win, if not to finish in first place at all, and that Obama probably knows that as well as I do.

I am also pretty sure Edwards figured a week or two ago that Barack Obama, by virtue of having the stronger "not-Clinton" brand, has been the chief beneficiary of Edwards previous attacks on Clinton (as well as his own). And I further suspect both of them have figured out that Clinton has proven to have a high floor and that attacks on her have basically stopped working (and now she's angry).

So what are a couple of guys who really want to be president to do?

The mere idea that Obama be “honest” is kind of funny. Obama lies his ass off whenever it helps him with the audience.

WTF was BO thinking attacking Krugman? The man has impeccible credentials in the liberal world going back about to when Obama was a baby in Malasia. Krugman is right to hand him his butt on a platter. Enjoy it Mr. "I'm above old partisan wars."

Actually, Eric Kleefield, I think Obama's ad does NOT 'go right after a certain unnamed candidate's honesty'. That becomes tiresome narcissism of 'all things' on the part of Hillary and her team, i.e., everything in the world just has to be about her person, right?

What Obama's ad does do, and competitively too, is this: the ad she just put up repeatedly flashes the name Des Moines Register while reading a bunch of quotes from that one endorsement with accompanying shots of Hillary.
Obama's ad flashes the names and dates of seven different news sources while quoting praise for Obama from each of the seven sources, all with accompanying shots of Obama. I think he just saw her one ace and raised her.

DTM,
Dear God, what is it with you and semantics??? I’ve read some deconstructionists in my days but on a political blog???

DemAC,

Asking you to explain what you mean when you say something that vague is not "semantics". Just the opposite, in fact: it is asking you to provide the substance which is lacking in your rhetoric as it stands.

Anonymous at 7:17,

The proposed cap was 30 percent, and Paul Sarbanes, the senior Democrat on the Banking Committee, persuaded Obama it would be a bad idea to set an arbitary cap at that level.

Obama has since proposed a "credit card bill of rights". With respect to interest rates, it "would force credit card companies to give consumers the option of dropping out of an agreement if the companies raise interest rates. It would ban increasing rates on past debts and prohibit charging interest rates on transaction fees." See here:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iXFQbVLl-ShP1_pg6CGNiyaBTmfwD8TA96GG1

I'm with MarkL. As all politicians 'lie', it's kind of absurd for a politician to run an ad proclaiming his 'honesty'. I like Barack, but he's got to come w/something better than 'vote for me because I'm honest'. That hardly inspires confidence.

In fact, that's why he'll ultimately rue the decision to disclose his drug use. Because as they say, there's a difference between 'knowing' and 'knowing', and voters generally don't want to 'know' what they already know.

I really can't stand George Bush, but I have to agree w/a recent New York Times op-ed written by Gail Collins. Voters gave Bush a pass for past drug use because his admission was implicit, not explicit.

As the saying goes: "she who lies most artfully will win the White House". And I don't think I'm alone when I say that the Clinton campaign's so-called 'cocaine blunder' was actually a *deliberate* masterstroke. She knew she'd take a hit, but bet that the noise of righteous indignation in the Obama camp would be the engine of its own destruction.
A cynical bet to be sure, but I think a profitable one in the end.

She's a genius in my estimation.

A cap is a cap.
The NAACP was against that other bill.

Why did Obama sponsor a bill calling the Iranian military a terrorist organization?

2008 Presidential Election Weekly Poll

http://www.votenic.com

The Only Poll That Matters.
Results Posted Every Tuesday Evening.

DTM: Continually making my point.

Anonymous at 9:59,

Right, but how does that make 30% a reasonable cap?

Of course, the Class Action Reform Act does not prohibit class actions.

The United States has already designated five countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba (1982), Iran (1984), North Korea (1988), Sudan (1993), and Syria (1979). The purpose of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in particular as a terrorist organization was to trigger certain financial sanctions.

loki,

What point exactly would that be?

loki,

Anonymous at 11:31,

Just FYI, I am going to halt this discussion at three issues for now, since I think that is confusing enough.

I think you are missing my point about a 30% cap: a cap set at 30% when prime is 6% is not unreasonably low, it is unreasonably high. And really, a fixed interest rate cap like that makes no economic sense. If you are going to have a cap at all, it would make more sense to do it as some particular spread over the prime rate--and again, a 2400 basis point spread cap is unreasonably high.

The Class Action Reform Act does not somehow remove the threat of serious financial loss in class actions. Indeed, it reduces the threat of defendants buying off the lawyers with cash while only giving the plaintiffs themselves a coupon settlement. And one of the notable problems with a coupon settlement is that it makes the plaintiffs buy more of the defendants' products, which of course lessens the financial impact of the settlement (and studies have shown that few of the coupons are actually redeemed).

Again, we already declared Iran a state sponsor of terrorism back in 1984, so if that is a declaration of war, it was done long ago. Incidentally, the Act also specifically provided that "[n]othing in this Act should be construed as giving the President the authority to use military force against Iran."

The legal consequences of designating the Revolutionary Guard a FTO is that doing so triggers a number of financial sanctions administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It is true though that Congress can impose other sanctions, and in fact there was a lot more to the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007. For example, there was an entire section on Russia, a section on on Iran itself, a section on U.S. parent companies being liable for their actions to violate sanctions overseas, a section on eliminating tax incentives for oil companies investing in Iran, and so on.

The 2 gee whiz honest guys turn on each other........

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/12/17/obama-jabs-edwards-on-senate-record/

This should be interesting.

Maybe both wives can attack each other