Campaign 2008

[Coffin Surfer 0]

"Let's review...

 

This time we said almost the exact same thing, and this latest post completely contradicts what you already said on the subject..."

 

Eh, you spoke of two different name trends that started in different parts of the century as if they were the same thing.

 

Are you even an American? Most "blacks" in this country actually have European/Mostly British first names and surnames.

 

"...but somehow I'm "kind of wrong." Whatever."

 

Because as I said in the last post, despite these trends the vast majority of American born "blacks" still have European first and surnames; especially among boys.

 

http://www.dhmh.state.md.us/publ-rel/html/aababy.htm

 

A single study but you can probably find more data that supports similar trends.

 

 

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I kind of view Mike Huckabee the same way I do President Bush. I think they'd both make great little league coaches, but terrible presidents.

 

 

I'm thinking Huckabee's setting himself up for a 2012/2016 run. Which is quite terrifying, even if I do like him on a personal level. Maybe that's what make him more worrying: he seems like such an affable guy, which makes it easy to forget that in power he'd be very, very dangerous. He probably would have had the nomination this year, he just lacked the money and connections Mccain had.

 

Anyway, this passport thing has the potential to be huge. Heads will roll, indeed.

[At Home 0]

Well the one positive is that if Obama survives this and still becomes the nominee, this bullshit will have a much less "OMG factor" in the general election.

 

If he survives this? He looks better now than he ever did before.

[snuffbox 0]

It's going to be played another billion more times. Don't doubt the American electorate's ability to come to the conclusion that Obama himself Godamned America if they see it enough on the picture box.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

The timing of passport gate couldn't have come at a better time for Obama. I bet he's never been so glad to have his privacy improperly invaded.

[SuperJerk 0]

"Let's review...

 

This time we said almost the exact same thing, and this latest post completely contradicts what you already said on the subject..."

 

Eh, you spoke of two different name trends that started in different parts of the century as if they were the same thing.

 

Are you even an American? Most "blacks" in this country actually have European/Mostly British first names and surnames.

 

"...but somehow I'm "kind of wrong." Whatever."

 

Because as I said in the last post, despite these trends the vast majority of American born "blacks" still have European first and surnames; especially among boys.

 

http://www.dhmh.state.md.us/publ-rel/html/aababy.htm

 

A single study but you can probably find more data that supports similar trends.

 

Again...you're disagreeing with me without actually disagreeing with me. Your post does nothing to disprove my point that many blacks are singled out sight-unseen because of their names.

[RonL21 0]

Bill O'Reilly says alot of things that annoy me. But nothing annoys me more then when he does the "Nobody watches (insert CNN/MSNBC) I kill them in the ratings

every night thing.

[Kinetic 0]

Nobody watched Obama on Anderson Cooper last night, the Factor totally killed him.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Uh-oh.....

 

Hillary Clinton Questioned Obama Travel on March 12 2008

by johndeebo

Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:29:26 AM PDT

This is what Hillary CLinton campagin said in a memo they released on March 12:

 

 

"As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it’s legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?"

 

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/...

 

It's also emerged that Maura Harty, he State Department official in charge of the Bureau Of Consular Affairs during the first two breaches of Obama's passport, served as an ambassador under Bill Clinton.

 

You don't need to be sherlock holmes to work this one out...

 

 

[EricMM 0]

No no, it was mere 'curiousity'!

 

Pay no attention to the story behind the curtain...

[snuffbox 0]

Bill Richardson is going to endorse Obama.

 

 

[Gary Floyd 0]

Bill Richardson is going to endorse Obama.

I like Richardson, so yeah, he made the right choice.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I used to like Richardson, except that after I saw him on Meet the Press, that just totally killed my whole view on him. Russert demolished the guy.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXmYVRIpu2w

 

 

The Obama camp got 3 am girl to do her own advert.

 

Sometimes I think Hillary is just plain unlucky. Seriously, out of all the stock footage of sleeping kids out there, what where the odds they'd pick one that starred a kid whose a die hard Obama supporter and a precinct captain of his in washington state?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

That girl has a remarkably lumpish head.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

 

There's a civil war over at fox.

[At Home 0]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/21/m...ac_n_92757.html

 

McCain's spiritual guide says the American government enables the "black genocide"

[snuffbox 0]

 

There's a civil war over at fox.

 

I, too, would need about "20 hits" to get through Fox & Friends. Hi-5!

 

Seriously, though, good for Chris Wallace.

[Guest Beastalentier]

Brian Kilmeade is starting to take on that unearthly "attempting to be perpetually youthful" appearance and it's getting really hard to look at him.

[SuperJerk 0]

Maybe someone can explain something to me, as I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around it.

 

Limbaugh and many other conservatives have spent entire careers getting angry at black people. They've been bashing the urban poor for supposedly reproducing just to get a government check, blaming urban strife on them being too lazy to work, speaking out against affirmative action that gives job preferences to non-whites, making fun of the black people for their dialect, referring to biracial people as "Halfrican Americans," and absolving current racism of any responsibility for the current income gap between whites and blacks (again, it's black people's own fault for not "pulling themselves up by their boot-straps"....something those born into wealth, but still considered to be at the top of society, have never had to do).

 

A black person responds in anger to how his people have been treated by our white-dominated society, and Limbaugh and the rest are quick to call him a hate-monger, and completely ignoring what effect their own words may have had on creating or perpetuating white anger against blacks.

 

Even though Barack Obama has said Wright's comments were an isolated incident and that Wright is really better than that, the conservatives are absolutely certain that Wright's anger is the norm, that the man has nothing else to offer, and that Obama is just as guilty as Wright is by association.

 

Is the pure hypocrisy really that obvious, or am I missing something here?

[Coffin Surfer 0]

Again...you're disagreeing with me without actually disagreeing with me. Your post does nothing to disprove my point that many blacks are singled out sight-unseen because of their names.

 

My point about the "European" thing is that Hazim and Aisha are hardly a fair representation of the black labor force in America.

 

As far as "disproving" or any "proving" there have only been two somewhat differing major studies on the subject. I'm certainly not saying that name discrimination doesn't occur from time to time but there doesn't seem to be much evidence at the time of an institutional block forever fucking "Hazim" from birth.

 

A pretty fair look at both studies and what they could mean:

 

http://stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2006...hnic_names.html

 

"To sum up, Bertrand and Mullainathan suggested that racial discrimination may affect the likelihood of being interviewed by some companies. However, it is unclear whether discrimination in some interviews leads to worse economic outcomes overall. Fryer and Levitt asserted that outcomes, as the authors define them, do not appear to be worse for those with ethnic names after controlling for social background. Only a small percentage of employers in the Bertrand and Mullainathan study seemed to discriminate based on name. Thus, that number of discriminatory employers may not be sufficiently large to affect job market outcomes across the board. Additionally, some employers may be attempting to infer underlying productivity from ethnic names.

 

In the end, ethnic names appear to serve as a hindrance in the labor market, but the exact extent has yet to be conclusively determined."

[SamoaRowe 0]

Is the pure hypocrisy really that obvious, or am I missing something here?

 

Nope, you're right on the money. Well done.

[The Robfather 0]

Richardson waited until it was safe to pick a side.

 

Once Hilary started fading, he slide over to Obama, abandoning his post as long-time Clintion suck up. Ah, fair weather friends... in politics, people are really just opportunists.

 

The actual endorsement is meaningless, the politics behind it is fascinating.

 

If Hilary did somehow get the nom and win the general, the only fun to come out of it would watching her take revenge against the Dems that 'betrayed' her.

[snuffbox 0]

Breaking your post into four separate lines doesn't make what you say any less dumb.

[The Robfather 0]

heh... whatever, dude. Meanwhile...

 

Carville Equates Richardson With Judas:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/20...lle-equate.html

 

 

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Well the one positive is that if Obama survives this and still becomes the nominee, this bullshit will have a much less "OMG factor" in the general election.

 

If he survives this? He looks better now than he ever did before.

Not being an Obama supporter myself I can't help but understand some of what he had to say in his defense. If I had a dime for every time I had heard my grandfather utter a racial slur.... ugh.

 

But I would also defend good old Grampy to my grave. A Korean War vet with 3 Purple Hearts and I'm going to tell him he can't call the enemy "gooks"? I have not the nerve. The one adult in my childhood that never let me down and what... if I were running for President am OBLIGATED to send him up the river? No thanks. I'll stay loyal to those who are loyal to me. So I can totally see why Barack pretty much told anybody trying to make political hay out of this to go fuck themselves. It is what I would do.

 

So to pretend like Obama is obligated to disown a guy who has meant so much to his life is asking way too much. Besides who is he going to lose? Conservative voters?

 

So yeah, he looks a LOT better to me now.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I look at that speech, flawed though it was, and it's sad to me that at most he's only 1 or 2 points ahead in the polls even after that. For the first time, you have a politician that treats people like adults, empathises with them, and urges them to actually talk about their problems instead of sticking their heads in the sand. But he's currently behind Mccain in the polls.

 

Say he does get elected: at best he'll be a once in a generation leader that turns the country around who'll finally bring universal heathcare to the country and improve America's standing on the world stage. At worst, he'll be a Jimmy Carter for the noughties. And even in this worst case scenario , it still won't be nearly as bad as another four years of repbulicans.

 

And really, what would people be rejecting him for? A 72 year old man who offers nothing new, seems as blank of on middle eastern culture as his Bush, and doesn't even seem willing to acknowledge there is anything wrong with the country. I wouldn't go out there and say Mccain would be as bad as another four years of Bush, but it will be business as usual.

 

It goes back to what people were saying about Ohio voters being gulliable after voting for Hillary despite her Nafta involved, and Bush in 2004 despite how many soldiers/jobs theyve lost. Someone like John Edwards talks non stop about ending corporate tryanny and helping the poor (he was way more radical than Obama or anyone else) but he doesn't get anywhere, even with poor voters. Why not? It's in their best interests. Meanwhile the other people that sound like Ayn Rand surge ahead in the polls. I swear if Bush could run for a third term he'd have a decent chance of getting re-elected again.

 

If there's one thing the Bush administration well did it was convincing people to vote against their best interests. It's pretty depressing the amount of people that will vote against Obama because they think he hates America, because he's 'inexpereinced' (you know at taking us into to unwinnable wars and being influenced by special interests) or because he's some mad communist. It used to be 'is this guy good enough to be president?'. Maybe America isn't good enough for Barack Obama. If voters are still gullible enough to let their prejudices be played to like that, maybe the US doesn't deserve a good president.

 

Honestly, if I met Barack Obama a year from now and he's not president, I'd probably say to him 'you did nothing wrong. We just didn't deserve you.'

[At Home 0]

Obama won't have a problem getting elected. Although, we are facing the conservative political machine, it's not something to fear. He's got everything going for him. The Clinton voters aren't just going to not vote for him. Once he's up there in the gen, he's gonna have all the democrats. The Clinton/Obama debate isn't a question of their policies, it's a question of their electability and character.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Most people thought Kerry would have no problem getting elected in 2004 because Bush had done such an atrocious job. And what were the main reasons Kerry didn't win? Oh, yeah his wife was unlikable, and they believed there was some sort of conspiracy and he did bugger all in Vietnam. People will find the dumbest reasons imaginable not to vote for someone. And that's why Obama will suffer come GE time.

 

Thinking about it: it should be easy for Obama to win. Him and Mccain onstage will be like Nixon/Kennedy, the age gap between is the most ever, youtube versus feeding tube as Maher said. But there's just too many other stuff going on. I wouldn't say there's more dirt on Obama than there is on Mccain, but people are more willing to believe dirt about Obama than they are about Mccain, because he's surrounded by people with questionable patriotism, because he's so liberal and yes, even because he's black.

[At Home 0]

John McCain isn't a candidate that Conservatives can really get fired up behind. I read a handful of analyses that predicted it would be the lowest voter turnout ever for McCain. We just went through the Bush years. Is there going to be Obama smear? Of course. Is there going to be McCain smear? Of course. But in the end, people are going to look at the ticket, see McCain's box, see "GOP" next to his name, and check Obama. The American people want change!