2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

What's sad is that McCain's "bomb Iran" song seems to be thought of as just for laffs, while Obama's pastor's comments, which don't involve killing people, aren't thought of as just for laffs.

yay America

Anyway, I do think Obama has to be very careful about how he responds to this Wright stuff. It's particularly dangerous for him because he still remains largely a blank slate to a lot of people, and things like this run the risk of defining him.

this has been said 100000000x about every near-scandal that's hit Obama and he's handled them all gracefully

we're doomed i tell you

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED

I think the 'uncle who occasionally says crazy stuff' angle is good, 'cause I bet even evangelicals occasionally disagree with their pastor.

DMX on the presidential race:

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” (laughs) “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.

But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.

We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.

Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.

The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?

He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!
Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.

Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.

tracer, your elitist stance does not excuse you from the same fallacious elisions in logic that you accuse others of indulging and which you yourself have indulged in. and for whatever it's worth, being critical of all sides of an argument does not mean you've transcended it.

p.s. fuck yourself.

i think my posting history on these threads shows something better than tribalism.

tracer i also think sticking with above-it-all equanimity is its own kind of tribalist pose -- americans and people all over the world have seen enough evidence to make a decision about this race, even through the media's great cloud of unknowability, as you'd have it.

xp2 MW: yup, mccain can't push this too hard cos he needs Hagee's evangelicals AND those seduced by the whore of babylon in november... talk radio will still have a field day with it.

xp2 ahem.

DMX for secretary of defense

when i started reading that interview for a second i thought it was someone doing custos

holy shit DMX

xp haha deej me too

So did I.

Obama respons on HuffPo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barack-obama/on-my-faith-and-my-church_b_91623.html

"Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack."!!!!

do you think custos is actually dmx

you should feel honored that i didnt react the same way to '-- max' that i would to '-- StanM'

dmx is bullshitting about dudes name (sorry we cant all be named EARL homie) but this is real talk:

"With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”"

I like Obama's response in that Huffington Post link; if he can spend the weekend saying that a bunch of times, this could be a net plus, since it emphasizes his Christianity (so it can knock the Muslim rumors out for a while at least).

Plus, he's basically saying that we shouldn't hold a retiring dude's words against him, which is kind of a dig against McCain.

xpost to and what: yeah, I think the Republican kingmakers would actually be kind of happy to lose this one; that's why they stuck it to McCain, instead of someone they really wanted in office (e.g. probably Jeb Bush).

He should've went more in depth about what Rev. Wright teaches, and the good things he's done to uplift the people of his congregation, but overall I think it's a good response.

+ points for mentioning his military service, lol

funny it just occurred to me i have no idea to what church Hillary belongs to or anything.

church of the poison mind

haha oh god no way

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. "A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation," says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. "I don't....there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html

(article may be tendentious bs, still reading)

(but, you know, LOL)

"There is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."

i like how he describes Jesus talk as a vector for getting INFECTED BY GOODNESS

xpost haha

lol @ DMX. i loved it

i heard the government infected people with real good

Actually, I've heard that exposure to low levels of Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer can help you develop an immunity.

Pat Buchanan: McCain 'will make Cheney look like Gandhi'

I think he just means that Cheney's bald.

"In an ideal world, I think, people would spend a lot less time parsing remarks by people other than the candidate and then demanding that that candidate disavow them; and more time trying to figure out what we can infer from a candidate's relationship to someone, if we imagine both parties as actual human beings, rather than as walking position papers who relate to each other only via agreement and disagreement on policy."

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

The Fellowship's ideas are essentially a blend of Calvinism and Norman Vincent Peale, the 1960s preacher of positive thinking. It's a cheery faith in the "elect" chosen by a single voter—God—and a devotion to Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers....The powers that be are ordained of God." Or, as Coe has put it, "we work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

That Obama response on Huffington Post is good and quite persuasive when read in full. However, my worry is that this little storm in a teacup won't be decided by long, reasoned arguments and statements of fact - it will be decided by soundbites. Obama needs a strong soundbite to counteract the inevitable YouTube clips. I'm not sure if condemning the statements is going to do it. Sadly, this campaign season has been marked by lots of silly statements that got blown out of proportion and only died down when someone quit the campaign. Now obviously Wright was never in the campaign and he's now retired, so maybe that won't be necessary this time, but it seems like the pattern so far has been that condemning the statements hasn't been enough.

The concept of the Elect = WASP Entitlement 101 xpost

In a rare Senate appearance yesterday, McCain failed to attract support for a halt to pork-barrel spending, losing on a 71-29 vote. An angry McCain told voters today that he was only “doing the Lord’s work” but unfortunately was doing it “in the city of Satan”: mccain83.jpg

Later in Springfield, Penn., McCain told voters: “We were voting on major issues of profound consequences with no discussion, no debate and 10 minutes to vote.

“Anyone who had the misfortune of watching it will know how hard it is to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan,” said McCain, who has served four-terms in the Senate.

you should feel honored that i didnt react the same way to '-- max' that i would to '-- StanM'

-- deej, Friday, March 14, 2008 9:48 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

?

http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/~sperduto/images/peace.jpg

Sure, no problem - I just didn't know.

That Hillary Bible Study is almost as funny as what will happen when they ask her who came to pray with Bill post-Monica.

He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!

uh pot calling the kettle black here

btw DMX is a fucking moron and his music sucks

He got blood on his dick cuz he fucked a corpse.

Anyone who had the misfortune of watching it will know how hard it is to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan,” said McCain, who has served four-terms in the Senate.

lol the reporter sounds quietly incredulous that this man has been in DC so long.

God hates earmarks?

I mean, really? Is that in the Bible somewhere?

God loves earmarks. Ever heard of tithing?

btw DMX is a fucking moron and his music sucks

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, March 14, 2008 9:53 PM

lol stfu

eh I never liked him

next controversy, plz. this one is already played out.