Letters posted here are associated with the following Salon Premium Member:
Published Letters: 1605
Editor's Choice: 27
First of all, can I just say that I love how the right wing trolls are poo-pooing this? "Free speech"? That's classic. I guess if I say that I'm the one who captured Saddam it's also free speech too? Takes credit away from the guys who actually did it but hey, free speech and all. Same difference. The campaign had to sign off on the letters before sending them out for signatures. Nice try though.
Now, let's assume that the Obama campaign also does this. The question is, to what degree? Does it pretend to be a war mother waiting for her son to come home? Does it have standards of conduct for how it's practioners behave? Mass letters for causes are one thing, claiming to have a chld at war when you don't is another. If the Obama campaign does this, and you would literally have to prove it to me to get me to beleive it, then it should stop. The republicans are the bad guys, we need to be better then them or we may as well be the ones who let energy companies right environmental policy and load gays into the boxcars ourselves.
If you are going to make the claim that both sides do it, then let's see 1) which side does it more and 2) what the tactics are for the different campaigns. See if they both do things the same way. I can only assume the republicans do it more based on the their past dirty tricks and the fact that they gave the job to someone who literally walked in off the street. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing you just hand to someone you just met unless you assume everyone is as unscrupulous as you are.
Granted, I thought it would be over stupid things like gay marriage and abortion, but still.
"this dutch woman was never told to lie. she was told to write whatever she wanted. it's called free speech."
She claimed that she had a son in Iraq when she did not. That is an outright lie. You defended said action by calling it free speech. Does it qualify as free speech in the technical sense? Yes, I suppose it does. But so does my claiming to have caught Saddam. But that doesn't make either statement true, now does it? My point was that you were defending this action at all by simply refering to it as "free speech". Regardless, the campaign signed off on said letter (presumably knowing it not to be true) and sent it out to be signed.
Talk radio works by controlling the narrative. Don't let anyone on who will disagree with the host and don't let anyone go off topic. This is the format that conservative voters are used to and thus this is how the republicans are running their campaigns. McCain had a hell of a time getting the hard core right wingers in his camp on his side and he's not going to blow it by deviating from the strategy they are used to now.
I think the media is trying to overcompensate for letting Bush off the hook 8 years ago and while this is a good thing, I think they have a long way to go before they can say they cleaned up the mess.
Not to be a prude or anything but these girls are risking a lot going public for this. One of them, by the look of it, even went on the Howard Stern show. The legality of professions like porn have always been dubious at best and the public outcry over it semes to be more about how it creates an unfair standard for women rather then whether or not it is even legal. Not that I dislike porn, I just love how our society has a double standard when it comes to getting paid for sex.
Hey morons, refusing to acknowledge a problem exists is the equivalent of signing off on it. Of course if it had been about her being molested by lesbians they would have insisted it show in every theater in America and called it a realistic threat.
He was too intelligent. As one of the commentators stated, Obama appeals to the intellectual, McCain the emotional, which is all the reps have been appelaing to for the past 30 years. Take a look at what McCain actually said, all he did was repeat "victory" over and over again. All the while dodging the issue of whether or not we should have gone over there in the first place. He is clearly still suffering from Vietnam syndrom. "Our boys lives can't be in vain". Even his "spending freeze" was a clear pander to the militant wing of the republican party. He didn't even mention funding education.
Yes, the right wing is going to gloat but remember that the debate was mostly about foriegn policy.
I assume you can list some specific examples of how he won, including what Obama got wrong. Including why McCain dodged the issue of whether or not we had any reason to go over there in the first place.
Paul Newman was the model for Green Lantern which means he was a literal hero as well as one on screen.
Their creationists, they don't beleive Neanderthals ever existed.
Your right! What was I thinking?!
I don't think any of these "pundits" have their own opinions, I think they just read whatever the republican party hands them verbatum. The right likes to say that the reason left wing radio isn't very successful is because there is no audience for it. A fellow liberal suggested another reason recently, he said it was becuase we don't have the patience to sit and listen to the same talking points repeated for three hours ad nauseum. We actually think there may be more then one side to issues and like to discuss nuance. The right doesn't seem to have the intellectual capacity for that.