As in all "insults," what is construed as an insult may not be to one person, but is to another. I don't consider the word "blowhard" to be an insult; however, if the word is being used to try to "bait" and/or "flame," then it is an insult, although most people would think of it as being rather tame, or mild, considering that we're adults discussing adult topics.




How is this insulting? I can see where it might touch on a "guilty button," if the person who has been "insulted" is contemplating voting for McSame for his/her own personal reasons, knowing that in doing so, he or she will be helping to give Bush a third term.

The way I see it, neither of the three candidates right now has all the answers. With the mess Bush has made of our nation, who does? But one thing is for sure...we've watched McCain in action for far too long to honestly entertain the idea that he'd make a good prez. He's old, he's temperamental, he's dishonest, he's a REPUBLICAN, he's for the WAR, and none of them have really addressed the issues. NOBODY has asked either of the three how he or she is going to MEND the Constitution because it has been under constant attack from the Bushies since Sept. 12, 2001.

It also seems to me that a real and very close scrutiny spotlight should be made on those running for the House and the Senate seats. Regardless of who gets into the White House, if the Congress is able to enact legislation that is Constitutional and is truly on the side of the people, what can the president do? Veto? Yes, but Congress can override a veto, with a 2/3 majority vote in both the House and the Senate to do so.

Bush has enjoyed supreme power since 2000. He probably got a little antsy in 1996 when the Dems won a very small majority, but Pelosi's taking impeachment off the table I'm sure made Bush and Cheney give big sighs of relief. They high-fived each other and went back to "business as usual," and McCain will do the same.

Let's do try to keep discussions civil, folks. If you think it's gong to be insulting, it probably will be, but it's better to get your point across without insults whenever possible. Discussions with insults belong in the Steel Cage.

No whining, either. If you have something to say that is a complaint against another member, mod or not, hash it out privately at first, not publicly. IF things can't be sorted out, then I'll try to help, but not until you've tried to work it out without my involvement.

Catherine,

I have stated from the very beginning that I never vote Republican nor Democrat. To "thank" me for NOT voting Democrat this time (and, by extension, supposedly allowing a Republican in office) is very insulting. I have never, ever voted for a candidate that voted for war. Both Hillary and Barack have voted for legislation that necessarily prolongs this war. I do not appreciate at all the statements that because I refuse to vote for a Democrat this time I will be the reason that more deaths will occur. My last point on this subject is this; I can point to harassment from APL from the moment I started posting here again. I have noticed that the insults were directed at me, not necessarily my posts, and that the intention was deliberate.

I am not a mod. I do not regulate posting, rules adherence, nor punishment. If a mod is deliberately insulting IN PUBLIC with no private message to explain their actions, then it is understood that that type of behavior is condoned and within guidelines. I am posting here to present my viewpoint. When a mod attacks me, I will point it out, but I will assume that such statements on a board and not privately are statements within the guidelines of the boards t's and c's. I am not whining, I am stating fact.

Now, aside from the fact that I was insulted for being the cause of future deaths by NOT voting for Obama, my first post here still stands. All the signs point to McCain election. I have clearly enunciated them in my first post. If there is discussion about the points made and their relevence, or lack thereof, I will be very happy to continue the discussion.

It is only insulting to you because you realize, on some level, that you are indeed helping to further a cause which will hurt our already devastated country.



But, at least we now know that Barak Obama doesn't wear a flag pin.

No, shoeless, that is not true. I don't feel one bit guilty about voting for peace. I could very easily say that you, and everyone else who constantly votes Republicrat, have the blood of MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE'S DEATHS AROUND THE WORLD, because you constantly vote for a hegemonic policy of US domination at the expense of millions of innocent lives. It is not the peacemaker who feels guilty because others fight over how many more to kill.

If I ask you, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet??" you might very well feel insulted, especially if you've NEVER beaten your wife. On a public forum I am necessarily stating to all who read that you are a wife beater and that perhaps you've changed your ways. Yes, you can answer, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I remember going through fifth grade too.

But we are adults here, not elementary school children. I won't "bait" you with such a double-edged remark like that, and I don't appreciate when others do the same to me. I would like to post here with complete and total respect for all who post here, but I find that hard when childish tactics are used in a negative manner to imply wrong results.

So can we now start discussing the content of the thread and not the unfortunate remarks of one poster??

Good idea...and we all have a responsibility to make sure it acually happens.

Catherine,

That's the second best post on this whole thread (the first post obviously sets the discussion).

Again, I was studying the race this year and I started adding up all the pros and cons for each candidate. My concise version is the first post here. I don't know if anyone remembers 2004, but leading up to the conventions that summer many sites starting running vids about the military difference between Kerry and Bush.

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/this_land

There were many out there. All of them pointed to Kerry's three purple hearts and bronze star. The general wisdom on all the forums I followed was that an AWOL chickenhawk CANNOT POSSIBLE BEAT OUT a 3-time purple heart and bronze star recipient. There was no way that Bush's military record could even be compared in the same breath to Kerry's. Everyone was convinced that Kerry's medals trumps Bush's absenteeism, end of story.

Except what actually happened was far different. By the time November came around Kerry's medals looked like cheap souvenirs he probably got out of a box of cracker jacks. Bush was only challenged once during that whole election about his war record. Hopefully, everyone here knows that Bush went AWOL for nearly a year. I hope that there aren't stragglers on that one, because it has been verified ten ways to sundown.

By November only ONE PERSON dared challenge Bush on that, even though the proof was everywhere. Dan Rather, that lone voice, lost his illustrious career of over 30 years because he dared to challenge Bush. He didn't lose his job because he told a lie, he lost it because his source wasn't credible. So, at the end of the day, the man who braved the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, was wounded three times in battle, and showed bravery far above his duty, looked like a cheap, gutless wonder hated by all who served with him, while the AWOL chickenhawk was portrayed as the poor, innocent pilot wannabe who was viciously and maliciously attacked by those left-wing haters.

Watching this unfold on my TV screen day after day was like watching the Twilight Zone in real time. WE ALL KNOW what happened. No one is confused, or so I thought. The info is out there plain as day. Kerry fought in battle and won several medals. Bush went AWOL and never served a day in Vietnam. Yet, at Veterans rallies across America Bush was wildly cheered and Kerry booed.

But what really struck me was the fact that Kerry NEVER fought back. I was even tempted to make a quick and dirty three-minute video to send to the Kerry people to prove all these pundits wrong. But I thought, "Why isn't Kerry attacking this for what it really is?? These are patent lies, half-truths, and wildly vicious personal attacks on someone who served our country bravely, while at the same time exalting a draft dodger." The only conclusion I can come to for Kerry's lack of response is the fact that he knew he wasn't supposed to win and didn't want to alter the polls. How else can one explain the total void of response by Kerry?

The coup de grace was that Kerry accepted defeat even while his running mate, Edwards, was still pursuing the dubious results in Ohio.

This year the Swiftbaot kids will do the same. I'm predicting that Obama will NOT go after them. I, quite frankly, hope he does go after them. I hope he trounces on them and shows them for the lies they are. But I wanted the same from Kerry four years ago and got squat. There's no reason I know of to make me think Obama will act differently than Kerry.

I had very similar thoughts during the 2004 campaign, and kept wondering when Kerry was going to fight back, to prove that he had the wherewithall to counterpunch the "swiftboaters" back under their rocks. It didn't happen. THEN he conceded so quickly on election night, I was appalled. I was sooooo disappointed!

Catherine,

My sentiments exactly. If we are to compare the mood of the country now vs the mood of the country then, we'd see striking similarities.

By the Summer of 2004:

Abu Ghraib was still VERY fresh in everyone's mind. It was still a major hot button on all sides.

The Vietnam, er Iraq War was not going as they had originally promised.

In July, 2004, the official 9/11 Commission report was made public. Plenty of blame for the CIA, FBI, NSA and other government agencies was made public.

Moore's Farenheit 9/11 came out that Summer and it was a scathing criticism of Bush's presidency. It won France's highest film award, le Palme d'Or, and played to sold out crowds . It set daily sales record in NYC.

That Summer the UK Guardian newspaper reported that over $20 billion was missing in Iraq.

By the end of June, 54% of Americans thought that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake.

Reports that summer showed that foreign fighters were entering Iraq in droves to fight against the US there. Before the Iraq War, there was almost no terrorist activity in Iraq (Saddam hated competition). By the Summer of 2004, lots of reports of sympathetic arabs from other countries were pouring into Iraq.

June 12 - Afghan Election Delay is New Blow for Bush Campaign

June 16 - 9/11 Commission Contradicts Bush/Cheney: No Link Between Al-Qaida and Saddam

June 16 - Retired Top Diplomats, Soldiers Tell Bush to Beat It

And there's lots more of those types of occurrences. These were considered major gaffes at the time. Kery lead Bush during a lot of that campaign. Bush ran on only one single message, Keeping America safe from the terrorists. That's all he ran on because that's all he could run on.

Granted that Kerry wasn't given the keys to the castle and told to wash up and meet them there in January, 2005. He was sharply critcized on a number of fronts, but a few stick out like sore thumbs.

"Flip-flop" starting at the Republican Convention, all attendees were given flipflops and told to flip them over on cue. Now I realize that that in and of itself is asking quite a lot from the Republicans, but I'm sure they spent hours beforehand in rehearsal during the choreography sessions.

Just days before the election, Osama chimed in right on cue for Bush. October 29, 2004, where he spoke about the 9/11 attacks and how his guys carried it out. It was very nice of Osama to wait until days before the elections to remind Americans that he's the bad guy and Bush was the "Commander in Chief" guy, and Kerry was an "unkown, but probably liberal" guy. Fortunately, Bush's only campaign issue was US security so it was very fortunate that OBL came on days before the election to help Bush.

The Swiftboaters finished the trifecta.

I can honestly say that I see nothing that would make me believe that the Republicans won't continue their very successful PR campaign. In 2004 everyone was saying, "You gotta vote for Kerry. Bush can't get another term. That would spell the end to everything. The other elections where we said you absolutely had to vote for the Democrat pale in comparison to this election. If you don't vote Democrat in 2004, the blood of the thousands who are going to die there will be on your hands"

I think I can safely say that the elections were rigged to begin with and whether I voted for Kerry or not wasn't going to matter miuch. As long as Bush could get close to Kerry's advantage by election day, he had it all sewn up. Again, that's exactly what I'm seeing happen this year. It might "feel good" to rant and rave about the evil Bush and how we can't let it happen here, either, but for me, we are seeing Election 2004 - part zwei, The Passin of the Torch.

i've looked your post over and considered your list of mcsames socalled arsenal.

obama has some things in his arsenal that most national poll numbers suggest favor him in a huge way.

your thinking that the corporately controlled msm is tilted heavily toward mcsame doesn't carry a whole lot of weight. the main offender/propagandistic arm of the right wing element of the repugs is none other than foxnoise channel and the corporate shills purchased and owned by Newscorp/rupert murdoch. most or all of thier right wing sctick has been largely exposed for the sctick that it is.

again the list of shit that mcsame is going to pathetically attempt to use this fall vs obama will pale in comparison to what obama and us dems are going to hit back at him with.

watch mcsame try to run on the economy............it'll get a huge laugh from voters who look into thier wallets as they watch thier hard earned money go toward the ever increasing profit-for-greed margins of the corporate elite. most people with a brain will figure out that as the price goes up at the pump to fill thier tank the poll numbers for the dems will go right along with it. again a big plus for obama.

mcsame trying to run on the iraq issue will be another big blunder. his comment about staying for another 100yrs is going to be used by obama and us dems like a sledge hammer. plus the sight/video of backstabber joe lieberman whispering in his ear to correct him on the fact that al queda is sunni NOT shiite terrorist group will get continueous airplay.

also throw in the fact that al quedas presence in iraq didn't even exist until the bushicons decided to invade for oil.

as i listed before the lobbying scandals, the pardoning of convicted criminals like scooter libby, the approved use of torture methods like waterboarding, the debacle in new orleans from hurricane katrina and the list keeps going on ad nauseum for the arsenal that us dems are going to use vs mcsame this fall.

the repugs will talk about flagpins as thier main issue as we point out to them that they don't even have one on thier chest 90% of the time.

mcsames weapons of choice are peashooters compared to what we are going to blast back at him.

so looking forward to pulling the figurative trigger on the repugs and mcsame as bush.

rooster,

I hope you're right, but I have to admit that in April, 2004, I heard Democrats say the same thing. Once it seemed that Kerry had the nomination, I saw everyone pull out these huge lists of "Kerry is so much better than Bush on ...."

On huge point at that time was Abu Ghraib. "Bush has been caught with his pants down. There's no way people are gonna vote for him. Just look at these pictures of torture."

And they would constantly tap their list and say, "Nope, Kerry is better there. Nope, Bush doesn't stand a chance there. Nope, there's no way Bush can play that card, he'd lose in a heartbeat."

One of the most important facts they said was, "Only the idiots at Fox News still pander to Bush. All the other stations are running scared. They were lied to about Iraq and they don't want to be fooled again. Let Fox do what they want. No one believes them anymore anyway."

Like I say, I would personally prefer Obama over McCain. But if I shed all my biases, and step back, and look at the US from the point of view of someone who had no hidden biases and was just adding up points on both sides, McCain has more points. One of the hardest areas for Obama to get will be all those church-goers who still believe that Obama has some kinda connection with Islam. After all, he's black and his name certainly isn't Christian sounding. It's been a while since my ultrareligious cousin has sent me "the latest on Obama's connection to Islam" bs that she loves to send out. I somehow think she's leaving me out on her lists of 55 people who get these twice a week. I used to write back and go point by point to show her where her info is wrong. I got tired of than after 15 times explaining that the name "Obama" has nothing to do with "Osama." They are two separate names.

Again, I would prefer to see Obama rather than McCain, but when I shed all my biases and look at the cold hard facts, the megachurches with their millions of supporters, the swiftboat kids for truth, McCain's POW experience and Obama's lack of political experience, the fact that ABC's "debate" consisted of inanities for both Democrat candidates because they were told to do it that way (not because they tried to "pull a fast one on their bosses), and the well-known, well-lubricated tricks the Republicans will obviously pull on election day, I can't help but give it to McCain at this point in the contest.

If you go over your points again, you'll see a lot of "I hope this comes across this way on TV" in there. There's a lot of, "It's so obvious to me the rest of the country can't be blind" as well. I wish you well, but I have a feeling that your macho bravado, as was the case four years ago, will be no match fot the corporate sponsors who run MSM. I wish more Americans saw at least as much as you do about what is really going on, but then I remember back to my twice monthly mass emailings from my cousin who assures me (and the other 55 on her list) that the Republicans better not lose this one because the surrender monkey Democrats will cause us to lose Iraq when we're so close to victory.

I'll let you battle that one out. My choices for president would never have gotten into war in the first place. They are too worried about building a strong economy at home and harmony in the rest of the world, but hey, I'm throwing my vote away by advocating peace.

Screw those people. Anyone stupid enough, or uninformed enough, or Republican enough (oh, I just repeated my self twice) to spout such nonsense at this point, wouldn't vote for Obama if you held a gun to their heads.

Which is it?

A.) Obama is an Islamist terrorist
B.) Obama is a Christian, but he attends one of those nasty black churches that we don't approve of

Give me a break. Anyone who gives one of the answers above is either a racist right-wing propagandist, or a dumbass Christo-fascist zombie, and one of Bush's 25% deadenders. We don't want their vote. They can just punch the name with the R next to it, like they always do. They have become irrelevant, but they just don't realize it, yet.

shoeless,

I know what you're saying. I can go back to those Dems emailing everyone about Kerry and Bush in the Summer of 2004. Their emails and yours would match almost verbatim.

Just thought I'd use the wayback machine and put up some of the threads that were happening four years ago. The gist is the same; Obama, like Kerry, has some great virtues which the media and the public seem to chose to ignore, and McCain, like Bush, is a known idiot who is licking his way to the White House, cheek by cheek.

Kerry's military service
http://tvnewslies.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4

Read This YOu'll Feel Better
http://tvnewslies.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=231

Kerry's Steamroller is coming Bush
http://tvnewslies.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=12

Heal the nation's wounds by voting for John Kerry
http://tvnewslies.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=15

Primer for the Undecided: Why It's Kerry
http://tvnewslies.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=225

Just thought I'd bring some of the older threads out of mothball retirement. I don't know who Carly101 is, but she/he sounds pretty smart. Shouldn't use the "fascist/nazi" thing so freely, though. There were specific times and places in the last century that dealt with those ideals specifically.

I'm actually surprised that you don't have more of a list from those times. It seems that this started in early 2004 and was quite sparse for a while.

And I can remember many, many people in 2000 saying it didn't matter who was president, so what should have been a landslide, became close enough for the Republicans to steal. There aren't too many of you saying that in this election.

Are you saying we should spend time, money, and energy trying to convince these propagandists, and their terminally ignorant audience that Barak Obama is not the devil? Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

You have made a conscious decision to make yourself irrelevant, so you might as well spend your time spreading your ludicrous hypothesis that there is no difference between Obama and McCain to the wingnuts, and see how that works for you.

Oh shoeless, I have mentioned it on several Republican forums. It's usually either the post that gets me banned, or the one before the one that gets me banned. Right-wing forums tend to look at people with your viewpoint as, "way out there and clueless, but has a good heart." When they read one of my posts, they sic the hounds on me, and if I dare post again, there's usually at least one macho John-Wayne-type "hero" monitor who "doesn't have to be kind to lunatics, I can just ban 'em." That's their idea of free speech.

I don't mind. There aren't many who share my opinions until you get outside of the United States. On foreign forums I find many people with similar opinions. There I can debate the nuts and bolts of the issues. I talk a lot about the 2000 election. It was never a landslide. If you think that, you should review the whole election. It wasn't even the first time that chicanery was used to steal an election. It was just the most obvious one before 2004, that's all.

You, and there are many here and elsewhere who echo your sentiments, can state that I chose to be irrelevent in this election by voting for someone other than the two front runners. The Constitution grants me the right to vote. The Constitution does not force me to vote for someone else's choice for president. You Republicrats always tell me how I'm wasting my vote by not picking either Tweedledee or Tweedledum.

Here's a quote from George Washington. It pretty much sums up how I look at my vote and my right to use it how I want to and not how someone else "thinks" I should:

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.
- George Washington

I am not a slave to the Republicrats. You can be, that's your call. I would appreciate it if you would respect my wishes to be a free man and not a slave to the Republicrats, but I also understand that for too long the choice has been between the lesser of two evils, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The process has been completely narrowed to force everyone to look at ONLY those two, and ignore anyone else that might be better because THAT person isn't Tweedledee or Tweedledum. Like Washington said, "The time is near at hand which must determine3 whether Americans are to be free men or slaves."

Until the day that you FORCE me to vote ONLY for one of those two, I will take my RIGHT to be a free man, as Washington said, and vote the way I want. When you make me a slave, then I'll follow in line, but not before.