politics: mccain's supporters' slander debacle
according to rachel maddow and breaking news over on msnbc (last night), mr. mccain finally took charge on his campaign's fanclub's negative comments. for the first time in a year i was saying "attaboy john."
he replied to one woman's question, more like statement, that she was afraid of obama because he's so much like an "arab" and john promptly took the mic back from her and said (i'm paraphrasing) "Senator Obama is a good man, a family man, with the best interests of his country at heart. I respect him and expect you all to respect him as well. you would have nothing to fear from an Obama Presidency." which got him both boo'd and applauded once the initial boo'ers got out of their group mindset. he didn't admit defeat however because he followed up with something like "however I'm running for president because I believe I can do the job better."
THAT is the kind of campaign mccain promised to run months and months ago. it's a nice change from the campaign's standpoint that his opponant is evil incarnate. mccain proved himself a maverick in saying that, too, because just a few hours earlier his campaign's official statement on all the negative, hateful rhetoric being generated at the rallies was "how dare anyone call in to question the motives of our voters. mr. obama's already called them names and now he wants to silence them."
again, i'm paraphrasing because i haven't yet had a chance to pull up the news articles on this, i just saw it on tv last night and i've been busy this morning cleaning house in the wake of parents and sibling taking off for LA. i opened this lj post last night (friday night) with intent to post it then, but did not have time to sit down then either because dad and i were buzzing around the house trying to get things ready for the folks to leave in the morning. this is the first time this morning i've had to wander in to the office (i was coming in here to open a window. LOL!) and it's almost 2pm!
but i did want to weigh in with my attaboy for mccain personally for having said what he said to his voters. the media was calling it a vote-killer but to me it redeemed the man, brought back a shade of the man mccain was back when he was running against Bush. because back then i would have voted for him. the vitriolic campaign he's run this year though, i won't vote for him. the addition of sarah palin means i REALLY won't vote for him. but he's elevated himself from sell-out scum of the earth back to a decent human being in my eyes, and that deserved my attention for an lj post. =c)
(note: apparently obama appreciated the change in tone, too. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/11/obama-thanks-mccain-for-defending-him-to-supporters/?mod=loomia&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r2:c0 )
at the center of the campaign's ire at the moment is the whole bill ayers thing. according to fact check, it's not true.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied_about_bill_ayers.html
and aside from that, mr. ayers is a professor at an Illinois state-recognized institution of education. he teaches classes to presumably hundreds of students a semester. he's signed off on the grades of thousands of students who are now noted alumni of the college. for senator obama to have sat on a republican-dominated community-recognized education board, even for him to have "Started his campaign in mr. ayers' living room", and to have that being akin to terroism and treason, is just the worst kind of propaganda. that logic implies that every student, every fellow on that board, every one of mr. ayers' current collegues is a terrorist sympathizer and guilty of treason. that's thousands of people. thousands of *voters* that the mccain campaign is either pissing off, or slandering. that's just stupid.
in other news, it was released last night that sarah palin was found to have abused her power as governor of the state of alaska by the legislative committee that has been investigating the situation since prior to her nomination as VP.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122364495587222887.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop
and
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-troopergate11-2008oct11,0,3721967.story
and
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE4998X420081011
for more info there.
i need to get back to cleaning and then homework, but i wanted to at least get this crazy "post" screen off my poor puter screen. LOL!!