About Obama following Edwards on Non-Proliferation and stealing the idea from him? Please tell me that this is just a spoof.

Obama campaigned on non-proliferation back in 2004 and co-authored the Lugar-Obama initiative back in 2005. This really takes no effort at all to research and fact check. But I suppose it is easier to simply parrot falsehoods that belittle your candidate’s opponent.

Unfortunately in the end it only undermines your credibility.

Thanks for being the hall monitor!

In grade school that position was always performed by a major loser/whiner/jerk too.

If you hate Susan and Larry so much why are you tattletelling on them here? Better run and find your homeroom teacher!

And you know, China and Russia have only the best intentions toward America, really.

And it’s because poor choices are made, poor reasoning skills exhibited, this method is adapted. If I were an enemy of America, I would encourage you to use this tactic, this amateur gaming, to destroy the integrity of elections, faith in the electoral process. But the Republicans didn’t care, and they’re suffering for it, Bush, and Cheney, go on a short leash, and Obama, too.

The idea is to play smarter, make people understand it is not in their best interests, in the best interests of the US, to vote disingenously.

Things haven’t really worked out for the group that chooses to game an election using the Rovian tactics, the cheat.
They’re not very bright, and it shows in every single thing they have attempted, and failed.

They can’t stand up to competition.

They don’t even understand the definition of critical reasoning, how the hell can they run a country, against Putin, say?

They can’t.

They can’t outPutin a Soviet master.

I’ve crossed over into theirs. This is about getting the best candidate and I said before that I felt that McCain was better than Bush when I crossed over then.

The potential for chaos here is enormous, I see people who do this, and I think “what fucking idiots, you’re opening a crack.”

Meaning your cross over vote can have unintended consequences, when used as a form of gaming, you’re actually contributing to the defeat of your chosen candidate, if the other side plays it right.

I’ve crossed over into theirs. This is about getting the best candidate and I said before that I felt that McCain was better than Bush when I crossed over then.

Too bad other people didn’t see it. Now Obama is picking up those angry, disillusioned Republicans. Independent too.
Good for the country. The Clinton campaign dismisses them at their peril.

I idolized Ralph Nader as a teenager. The first activism in my life was getting involved in a Ralph Nader sponsored environmental cause called the Connecticut Earth Action Group (CEAG, early 1970’s or so). Around the same time I campaigned for George McGovern. I continued to have the highest respect for Ralph Nader for years and years afterwards. But over the years I also became less idealistic (while still remaining strongly progressive in my views) and more and more practical as I saw the damage that Republican administration after Republican administration had caused.

I learned two major lessons from all those years: 1) Republicans will do anything, slime anyone and do anything required to win an election. Their party and its sleaze merchants like Lee Atwater (long gone but still probably the lowest of the low), Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, Richard Mellon Scaife and Carl Rove are the undisputed world’s champion masters of sleaze. Their tactics are despicable but unfortunately effective because most voters in this country don’t vote based upon issues – they vote based upon gut feelings. And gut feeling are much easier to influence with negative messages than with facts or ephemeral feel good messages like “hope”. They use blatantly racist and divisive ads like the one’s they used to re-elect Jesse Helms and defeat Harold Ford. They swift boated John Kerry. And speaking personally, as an Army veteran the one that will always bother me most is the way that they portrayed a truly great American hero like Max Cleland as a supporter of Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. I could list many, many more but you get the point.

2) As I said above, the other major lesson I learned from all those years is that elections have consequences. I would have a very tough time finding agreement with Rudy Giuliani on a lot of things. But there is one thing that he’s said that I find profound. In trying to persuade the right to support him in this election he kept saying, “Please remember that an 80% friend is not a 20% enemy”. Supposedly that’s a quote from Saint Ronald Reagan. I’ve called that the 80/20 Rule ever since hearing it.

In other words, Giuliani was saying to the doctrinaire right to remember that “we agree on a lot more than we disagree on”. Ralph Nader never learned that lesson. Yes, I agree with him that there are problems with the Democratic Party – I also don’t like the undue influence of lobbyists and corporate money, for instance. But despite all the evidence of the past 7 years he continues to say that there is “no differences” between Democrats and Republicans? Would Al Gore have invaded Iraq? If nothing else, there are 4,000 grieving families of dead young American hero’s who might disagree with Mr. Nader on his comparison of the two parties.

Ralph Nader (as well as most of the doctrinaire “my-way or the highway” left and right) apparently can’t stomach the 80/20 Rule. Remember that Ralph Nader promised not to campaign in close states. Had he kept that promise, Al Gore would have won New Hampshire and Florida and thus the presidency in 2000. And George Bush would have spent the last seven years engaged in one of the very few things he’s actually good at: Cutting brush on his ranch in Crawford.

That’s why I now loathe the same Mr. Nader that I once idolized. And his continuing apologists are simply laughable.

Her meaning Ms. Obama. I don’t know the gender of Banquo.