""it is only those on the right who use messianic terms to describe Obama.""

That tired old saw is getting as bad as the right's use of the word "Muslim" inre Obama. Of COURSE his supporters have deified him... it was a major part of his schtick, and got the mouth-breathers from the left to come out of their huts to vote for him -- in some cases after 90+ years of never having voted -- in higher numbers than the spectre of a black president got the mouth-breathers from the right to come out and vote against him.

Here is a link to dozens of mainstream photos, video cuts, and other artifacts culled from various public sources. Out of all possible phots from a shoot, it is quite obvious that ones were chosen to present Obama as The Light and The Way.

500... ok now give us back the other 4500...

Jesus Christ.

The DR forums have turned into nothing but a bunch a rabid postings from hacks on both sides.

Dialogue is dead.

This sucks, and is not enjoyable.

I'm out until after the election. Peace.

Fucking republicans and their constant finger pointing and excuses for their greedy unethical money grabbing ways.

Your partisan interpretation is part of the problem. To say the lenders are bad and the borrowers innocent is disingenuous and simplistic. To say borrowers were corrupt and lenders imply following gopvernemnt laws is similarly disingenuous and simplistic. If you blame only the Republicans and only the lending companies, you are no worse than Repubs who blame only the low-income borrowers and the Dem-backed policies that made their loans possible. if you bklame only Repub administrations and ignore the Dem involvement, you are blind to half the blameable parties.

The corporate fat cat scumbags and the low income undeserving scumbags ate all of our lunches for 15 years and now we get to pay once again for their fuck ups. Trying to pin blame fully on one side of the aisle is a glaring attempt by all on here to try and get their own candidate elected in November, and nothing more..

This has nothing to do with 'Wall Street greed' since our own Congress were the promoters of this disaster.

I disagree. This has to do with Wall Street greed. And lender greed. And borrower greed. And real estate agent greed. And politicians greedy for the votes of the disenfranchised. And our own greed.

It became commonly accepted beginning in the mid-1970's that home ownership is a right, not an earned privilege. By 1998, the Clinton adminstration, with the noblest aim, compelled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write loans to people (of all colors) who up until then would typically have been denied mortgages based on the simple fact that they likely could not afford to pay the loans off on a persistent basis.

Over this same period of time -- from the early 1980's to present -- mortgages once writtenand held in the local hometown banks, were now being bundled and sold in complex hard-to-rate packages that got tradd and sold between institutions, to the point where nobody really had a a handle on how rotten the core of some of the packages were -- even though they should have, they didn't. Deregulation of the industry almost guaranteed that no one would ever be forced to check.

By the early 2000's, greedy lenders (some banks, many mortgage companies) and greedy real estate brokers pushed people, who had no idea what they were signing, to take loans they could not afford to ever pay back in full. People who should have known what they were signing, but were either too stupid or too blinded by their own greed.

Enter scam artists (a great number of them illegal immigrants who took the mortgage money and simply returned home with it) who themselves took loans with no intent of ever paying the oney back.

Everyone involved on the lnding side knew there was a chance that ome of the rotten apple loans in the packaged instrument would end up going bad. What nobody realized was that one bad apple does spoil the whole bunch, and in the end the domino effect created was uncontrollable.

Even our own greed fed this: As unqualified buyers were cajoled into (or lied their way into) buying houses, demand went up, and my house's value went up, and I was happy. And I did nothing to compell by rep or senator or anyone else to address what was known to be a bubble about to burst.

Democrats and Republicans both dropped the ball on this issue. Anyone who says it was one or the other is a disingenuous shill.

The linked article is a "progressive" view (by its own admission), which leans heavily toward blaming deregulation and lender greed (the anti-Repub view) but fails to mention the borrower greed and effect of the 1998 action. It is a biased article due to its incompleteness and what one can only assume is an unstated agenda.

""My brother collects coins. He'll shit kittens when he hears about this.""

Hope he doesn't have one of those paper assholes that Sniper was talking about at #11 4:31pm.

""It's like watching "Home Alone". She keeps swinging that paint can into the Dems' forehead.""

Nappy - FF for the great visual at 4:13pm.

I have to admit I am mostly amazed by the fact that an Ice Age article got up here and after 4 hours there are no lame wisecracks about finding little Johnny McCain's pet dinosaur leash in the pothole. Until now, I suppose. Sorry folks.

OK, boaz. But I live in a state that requires someone to get certified, to go to gun safety classes, to pass various hurdles in order to even get a basic ID card. A licnse to carry is next to impossibe to get. But just over the border (only 30 minutes from my house) guys can buy guns with their driver's license. If that's states rights as the founders envisioned it, I'm not sure I am comfortable with that. Besides, the Feds already say I cannot own a rocket launcher or machine gun. If states rights were truly in play here, couldn't Montana say it's ok for me to own those if they decided to, or have the states agreed in writing to that Fed restraint as a result of the Pretty Boy Floyd and Al Capone issues back 70 or 80 years ago? I don't know. Seems like a level playing field would be safer and easier to police. Or at least fairer.

I didn't know that any civilized nation - Finland included, the U.S. not - allowed civilians to run around loose with firearms.

Actually, herm, it seems based on the article that Finland is worse. What the heck is a "temporary gun license"? In the U.S. in most places, you need to get at least a firarms ID to own a gun, and in many places (should be standardized nation-wide, but is not) you can't carry a gun without a fairly rigorous license-to-carry process involving training and vetting by the police. In Finland, it seems you can get a license just for a weekend. WTF.

I disagree. The reason Palin has dropped so far so fast in polls is because of the vetting she's gotten, a lot of which came from harsh scrutiny on blogs. It would have been far worse for Democrats to give her a pass out of fear there might be pushback.

I agree with you, RCade, that the vetting process has resulted in her drop from the heady highs of the first few days after she was announced, and I cannot imagine what benefit would have resulted frmo giving her a pass. But beyond the vetting process, there can be a point where the barrage of negativity can result in a reaction to off-topic personal attacks or off-color remarks aimed at her. In much the same way Obama can benefit when someone says something very stupidly racist or off-color about his family or his demographic situation, and that pushes some people to redouble their efforts to support him. It is not the vetting process that pushes things across the line I mention; it is over-the-top attacks.

If you say Sarah Palin broke ground on a $15 million dollar hockey rink on land the town had not yet fully purchased, costing the town thousands of dollars in fines and lawsuits, and in the next breath tell me her husband may have impregnated the teen daughter, then your point about the hockey rink, though valid and relevant, gets tossed with the bathwater of the second argument. I have heard people whose opinions I trust and respect (and these are very moderate middle-of-the-roaders) say "She's getting ganged up on". Even if not wholly true, the perception is there.

Typo: In first para, should read "there is little TIME". Sorry.

The more Palin is trashed this way, the more positive attention she gets...

Rob, I don't always agree with you, but I think you're right here. There is a fine line that has to be walked before Palin gets cast as a victim or underdog. If the media or Obama supporters or whoever keeps pushing too hard, they will end up making her someone who people feel sorry about, and Americans' will always support those. if that happens, there is little tie for anyone to correct it before the election.

Read Matt Taibbi's article in this week's Rolling Stone, in which he catalogs all the things that are bad about Sarah Palin, most true and some exaggerated. Unlike Taibbi's previous articles, this one had virtually no humor in it, and that made it come across as mostly mean-spirited and just a bunch of tired previously-vetted talking points that he could embellish with a bunch of "fucks" because he has the luxury of working for a magazine that has an editorial policy that allows it. It ended up reading more like a screed from a rabid Obama supporter, rather than a balanced political analysis like he normally does. In addition, he basically says in at least 3 or 4 places that only fat stupid trailer trash votes Repub, a simplistic stand that he has never taken; it seems like Palin has made even the most honestly introspective Dems start to unravel for whatever reason. (In defense, he does defer for one or two paragraph to the fact that Obama and Palin have some things in common in terms of media treatment, but only as an afterthought).

I know an article like Taibbi's may convince some to vote against any ticket that she is on, but it can just as easily make some people vote for her in some weird kind of reaction that I think is unique to the US. If that tipping point is reached, the Dems risk losing in November.

BETEL, I just read through the whole thread above from yesterday. I think you may have reacted too soon to the issue that came up about joking. I think Publictruth and Goatman were bringing up the impression that you immediately jumped on some of the more con people here, but waited half an hour to go after the original guy who posted it. In fact, at 10:16pm you said something about FWTHOM not caring, when his only posting in the whole thread was at 9:17pm, and was nothing close to what you said he posted (see below). I'm not taking sides, but looking at it objectively, your 10:16 posting looks like you just scanned the thread for any repub names and then blasted out a half-correct retort. That might be what they were talking about.

FWTHOM's ONLY POST:

This kind of freak accident is every parent's nightmear.

#14 | Posted by fwthom at 2008-09-22 09:17 PM

YOUR RESPONSE:

These are not real people to FWTHOM and RideOn and the others. The people they know and love are nothing like other pretend people.

#17 | Posted by BetelG at 2008-09-22 10:16 PM

I think you definitely made a knee-jerk mistake, and they called you on it. Aside from their personal attacks on you, I think they had a valid point. Just my two cents.

No matter who wins, this one is going to be tainted by ugliness.

Good posting #71 overall, Nappy. I do agree that if Tim Wise went to the trouble of calling attention to Palin's error, it is ironic that he makes a similar error in the details. But that makes you guilty of the same snippy parsing, no?

What the guy said was offensive to some and brought his organization into an unflattering light, and for that reason he had to resign. He is free to say it without fear of prosecution, but he is not free to say it without fear of it affecting his gig. An indiscretion costs someone their position in order to protect the reputation in which they hold that position. That's pretty much the extent of the story here.

What we really need to do is understand our role in the whole thing

Our role was victim. Remember?

Partisan theme? Someone had to come up with the idea. In this case it was Obama.

Agreed. But your immediate response to "they are working togther on this" was to assign credit to one candidate over the other. That is partisan in my opinion. Let's take it on faith that they are both equally proud of this country and both intend to be equally involved in the 9/11 ceremonies, even if they will be back taking swings at each other on 9/12.

Just more proof the Party of "Ownership" ...

Link? Where does the GOP refer to itself as the Party of "Ownership"? Even more fundamental:: What the hell are you talking about? Ownership, as in pwn"?

Why am I not surprised that the republicans were completely clueless about the meaning of the song when they chose to use it?

How do you know that to be that case? The back story on that song is well-known.

I'm a fan of Heart's music, but I cannot understand why they care. Besides, the Wilson sisters (who should be thankful for ANY publicity -- their summer tour was far from sold out) admit in the liner notes to their CD "The Road Home" that they ripped off the riff for "Barracuda" from the group Nazareth, who they were touring with in the mid-70's.

The Clintons used "Don't Stop", which is about looking past the divorce and rancor in a marriage until the day you are free of each other. Now THAT'S irony!

Obama's idea.

We can read all about it in his next book. Thank God he does not have you as an advisor or you would fuck this up by trumpeting that partisan theme..

The link is busted... it looks like some middle school HTML project so I suspect the server is toast from many hits, but if she did in fact call for banning books, then that is bad. Unless it was "The Paucity of Hope".

An article about Obama that does not talk about Muslims or cocaine:

the coked up LESBIAN skank's advice is to not talk about the pregnancy and talk about issues

do you disagree

Lip, my only take on this is that she is playing the game of "You know, Palin's daughter is pregnant and here are the details for your purient enjoyment, and I'm even going to put a picture of the daughter on the front page of my newspaper, above the fold, but please be advised that we are NOT talking about it. Oops, sorry we're out of time.. maybe we can talk issues in the next installment of our blog/paper/show."

I applaud Obama's quick request that the daughter's situation is off-limits, but large portions of his supporters continue to trumpet the situation, so either they don't respect Obama's wishes enough to abide by them, or Obama is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Or maybe it's just that we all suck and have no attention span for the "boring" aspects of anything not covered in the Enquirer or on "Entertainment Tonight".