And McCarthyism? Please, why don't you convict her of the Kennedy assassination as well, while you're at it? Hey, she likes guns, she must have been the second gunman on the Grassy Knoll – and the fact that she wasn't even born at the time is just one of those silly, irrelevant, inconsequential things we call facts…

Look, two wrongs don't make a right, but the Obama campaign deserves it. Did you voice such loud outrage when they brought up the Keating Five, completely omitting the fact that McCain was totally exonerated?

As for the media, no, they don't deserve the insults that Palin is tossing at them. They deserve the insults Ahmadinejad has tossed at Israel, and then some.

Go back to playing with puppets.

Both campaigns are guilty as charged.

My humble thoughts on this new tack (and a few other things) here.

More interesting tomorrow on my airplane ride to California will be last week's and this week's Economist, which addresses the bailout, the two US Presidential candidates (may also graze the two VP candidates), and economic problems in the rest of the developed world (the USA is not the only place with problems). I have to say, that's more important right now than c hildish overreaction to the McCain campaign. Roger Bootle's second well-known book (”Money for Nothing”) goes on the airplane in addition to the boat trip this weekend across Lake Michigan and back as it discusses not only deflation risks and the stock bubble, but the housing bubble and the risk of a developed-world slump instead of continued world-wide economic progress (mainly through expanded trade, the best thing that could happen to the undeveloped _and_ developed world). But the articles about the two Presidential candidates will be worthwhile. I believe this week's Economist has a 20-page or longer section about this…

Thanks for asking:

http://don-thelibertariandemocrat.blogspot.com/

Take care,

Don

Sorry if you've mentioned it before, what what is your blog?

Everybody who cares about this stuff has already heard about it, and already made up their minds. Bringing it up now is not going to sway any new minds. (Same is true with McCain's sleazy Keating Five connections – old news, folks).

Fibber McCain's best hope is that any heated discussion over Obama's already-disproven links with Ayers and Rezko and the like is that it will draw out all of the oxygen from the room and prevent real discussion about real issues. However, external events have a way of driving the discussions, and any non-political event (like, say the meltdown of the US financial system, anyone?) can easily disrail any attempt at a smear campaign.

The better question is not verifiable association, but whether McCain acted improperly on Keating's behalf. My recall is that McCain pretty stupidly went to a meeting with 3-4 Senators (maybe Cranston, Glenn, somebody else?) early on that could have been construed as pressuring regulators to back off Keating. After the stench started to whiff off Keating more clearly, McCain backed off and had nothing else to do with him (I believe a couple of the folks kept pushing the issue but McCain bailed out).

I have not seen Obama go after the Keating 5 issue though.

Same goes for Obama with Keating et al.

Bob Bennett was involved in the Keating Five investigation, he is a left-wing Dem and the brother of Bill Bennett who isn't. Bob says McCain had zero culpability in the Keating mess & the four Dem Senators coaxed him into it for “balance.” McCain was guilty of bad judgment, nothing more.

Barney Frank's boyfriend was involved in the CRA ramp-up in Fannie Mae during the time Clinton proposed it and Frank blocked investigations of the fact that the CRA was defaulting at a rate five times above the normal rate—in the early nineties.

That's a conflict of interest almost as big as that male prostitution ring Barney was running in his Capitol Hill basement. BTW, Saturday Night Live's Pelosi skit had her calling in her friend George Soros who said he was about to short the US dollar like he shorted the UK pound in the early '90s. Soros is still under indictment in France, though in corrupt Britain, he has managed to buy off his charges of criminal malfeasance. SNL did the country a service by recalling Soros as the Caliostro behind sock-puppets Pelosi, Dodd, and Frank.

I can promise you one thing: anybody who claims to be voting against Obama only because of these “radical associations” is a racist. It's the same as believing he's a Muslim. Utterly irrational and nonsensical statements.

Now, if you oppose Obama for other reasons and you throw in Ayers/Wright, etc. for good measure then you are not necessarily a racist. But if you oppose him ONLY because of these “association” issues then you most likely are racist.

I've found in conversations I've had with admitted racists – and there are plenty here in Tennessee – who have exhausted all the anti-Obama cultural arguments (these are people who agree with Obama on the issues) and the “associations” thing is still part of the arsenal. These same people have explicitly said they worry that Obama will “give everything to the blacks.”

The problem is that the associations argument only works for committed racists who were not likely to vote for Obama no matter what. Those who really do care about the economy and are planning to vote for Obama on that basis are not going to pay attention these association issues – especially as they've been in the public view for months now.

My advice to the Obama campaign when these ads start rolling out is to mock McCain for soiling himself with dishonor, call him a “tired and desperate old man watching his political future fall away,” etc. If necessary, bring up the Keating Five. But don't get thrown too far off track with this stuff. Obama has proven so far that by sticking with his message he wins. He doesn't need to get in a tit-for-tat with a loser.

Your right but it isn't going to happen during Election '08. Maybe we'll get better in Election '12. Maybe…

McCain: My opponent, Barack Hussein Obama, pals around with terrorists.

Obama: John, I understand you're angry. A lot of Americans are angry these days. That's because many promises have not been kept these last eight years.