So, as proof of your contention that McCain was “far more bi-partisan than Barack Obama”, you cite an article in the newspaper owned (and frequently manipulated) by the Unification Church and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon????

C’mon, give me a break! Surely you could find some MSM to source this contention ….or… NOT?

And Calvin Dodge,

Please, PLEASE… stop this… Have you heard of the Downing St. memo? EVERYTHING came from the Bush/Cheney progaganda machine! The most credible of non-partisan sources now reliably confirm each other with the understanding that the W/Cheney regime was ready to pull the trigger on Iraq from DAY 1 – they just needed to find some lame-ass excuse. Here’s a nice quote from Dick Armey in Barton Gellman’s new book “Angler”:

“Did Dick Cheney . . . purposely tell me things he knew to be untrue?” Armey said. “I seriously feel that may be the case. . . . Had I known or believed then what I believe now, I would have publicly opposed [the war] resolution right to the bitter end, and I believe I might have stopped it from happening.”

NO WMD – NO TIES TO AL-QAEDA – NO IMMINENT DANGER TO US OR OUR ALLIES. BUSH LIED, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS DIED. It’s all over but the international war crimes tribunal (but I won’t hold my breath).

And Doc,

Sorry to contradict, but … ” all of that ” DOES MAKE him a “flip-flopper”, BY DEFINITION – that’s what a flip-flopper is! It’s just that you think being a flip-flopper is OK. Fine.

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

I think what you’re seeing with McCain is the last throes of someone who is having his last “at bat.” McCain has always played this role as “maverick” in which he was always playing the gadfly to whatever issue of the day needed that kind of pushing, even if it meant he was contradicting his own prior positions. He’s done it with choice, with immigration, with free trade, with Martin Luther King Jr. holidays, with confederate flags, etc. I think that one reason why he was as successful as he was back in 2000. He was the anti-Clinton and the anti-Bush rolled in one. Now, he’s got to lead the GOP (as opposed to being their full time gadfly). That, and he made the significant error of hiring a bunch of beltway mercenaries (often called lobbyists) to run his campaign. And with Rove in the wings, it’s win at any cost. Including lying.

As for Obama (which this *isn’t* about), Calvin, you might take a look at Obama’s actual record. He’s a lot more conservative than you might think (regardless of the “associations” he’s had). And your slam dunk on Clinton was the damage that he did to the luxury boat industry? That makes as much sense as Lady Rothschild calling Obama an elitist. You may want to check your data on economic growth during Clinton vs. during Bush. Or even during Reagan (since any possibility of economic growth in the past 8 years has cleary been made moot with 9/11, wars in Iraq and Afdganistan costing us billions a year, the collapse of the housing market, oh the list goes on).

And Doc, back the bipartisan issue. I’m actually not convinced that bipartisan is necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. I’d like to know that the person I voted for is going to stand up for whatever he or she campaigned on. If that requires bipartisanship, so be it. If it requires something else, that’s OK too. Not every good piece of legislation HAS to be bipartisan. In fact, I’d probably argue that bipartisanship actually waters things down. That’s part of the reason that the current Senate is viewed so poorly by the public. In order for them to get anything done, they’ve had to compromise with the GOP minority. Which means they’ve had to give some things up. Which is what bipartisan legislation gets you. Not necessarily bad. But not necessarily what you’re looking for either.

justcorbly, “It seems many Americans are less interested in issues and information than they are in having their bigotries confirmed.”

That is sadly true. What bothers me, though, is that we do have two candidates who really differ dramatically on the issues, and that should be enough. But the political race has either focused on identity politics, or “pigs-in-the-mud” “he said, he said, she said, he said”.

We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.

I believe that is a false pretense. Do you have evidence that foreign intelligence agreed with this pretense?

This actually brings up a more important topic to me. The standard of honesty has become so low that saying something intentionally misleading is defended by surrogates as being ‘true’. Calvin gives us an explanation about how it is true that she opposes earmarks and opposed ‘the bridge to nowhere’; but supporting something that is intentionally misleading as technically true is also dishonest.

I don’t understand the uproar about WGN. You think when something negative is said about McCain that has the potential to gain traction they don’t rally their troops with what their talking points are and get it out there as much as possible? What is wrong with Obama sending an action alert to get as many of his supporters as possible to call the radio station and get his talking points out there? Can you explain to me why that is wrong without using a vague metaphor, like choking? Obama has explained his relationship with Ayers several times. McCain has explained with relationship with Keating several times. Both campaigns do their best to not let the campaign be about someone they had a relationship with in the past. Neither campaign has refused to say anything about these past relationships, but they do their best to keep them from being the prominent issue in the campaign.

Perhaps right wing websites are trying to make this campaign about Obama’s past associations. Perhaps left wing websites are trying to make the campaign about McCains past associations. To the credit of the campaigns themselves, I don’t think either have made these prominent issues. This is not to equivocate the campaigns. McCain’s campaign manager has said over and over again they want to make the campaign about Obama, not about issues.

After reading your last post more carefully, I guess maybe you’re not _quite_ a member of the “Bush Lied – Thousands Died” idocracy, since you said “he _believed_ those false pretenses”. (emphasis mine)

That still begs the question – why did so many other countries’ intelligence services believe the same thing? Were they all working together in some massive conspiracy?

I’m intrigued by your claim that I would “imply follow the standard conservative pattern of denying something you don’t like and trying to divert attention by pointing to something irrelevant”. Can you point to something I’ve written here as an example of that?

If not, what do you base your claim on? Your vast personal knowledge of me? Our years-long relationship? Since neither of those, in fact, EXIST, then I assert you have no RATIONAL basis for your claim. I furthermore assert, therefore, that your claim is based simply on your beliefs, not on reality.

Doc,

I’m kinda getting the impression that you are one of the “Bush Lied, Thousands Died” brigade. If so, then that’s pretty sad. The “false pretenses” remark ignores the fact that _many_ other countries’ intelligence services came to the same conclusion about Saddam. If “Bush Lied”, then it seems logical to conclude that those other intelligence services lied, too.

The war with Saddam’s forces DID end quickly – what has been going on since is a guerilla war supported by neighboring countries who also support Islamic terrorism, and who count on people like you to help defeat our side, just as North Vietnam did during the Vietnam war.

In fact McCain has been on both sides of many issues, and has contradicted himself often — and nearly as often has apologized for past positions and statements. As one of his biographers recently remarked in a radio interview, he’s an apologizer of the first order. (And, as Matt Welch says, it’s “a great way to get laid”.)

To me all of that makes him neither a “flip-flopper,” nor a liar. It makes him human, and reveals him to be something less than a full-bore ideologue. How much less is an open question.

On one thing McCain has been consistent, however. Although he says he hates war (as any sane person would), he’s quick to make it, and to believe in it as a way to solve problems. For example, he continues to believe, as does George Bush, that we could have won in Vietnam — a war we should never have entered in the first place, and which we entered under false pretenses. And he supported the war in Iraq, believing not only the false pretenses on which it was entered (that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction, when it was obvious to the inspectors that it did not), but that it would quickly end. More recently his rhetoric around the Georgian conflict suggests that he loves to fight a bit too much. From what I’ve heard from Sarah Palin so far, I see no difference. And that for me is reason enough to vote against both of them.

Bonus link.