Presidential Race '08 Panders to Prejudices

Truth-in-Politics just isn't what it used to be, and nobody seems to know the difference.

(SALEM, Ore.) - It's bias that is the by-word in the Great Presidential Race of '08. Color of skin? Shade of hair? Tenure vs. tenderfoot? Born on mainland or the Hawaiian Islands somewhat offshore?

The name of the game this political season: muddy those murky waters. Shun clarity. Evade the genuine issues that affect war and peace, wealth and poverty, jobs kept here or outsourced to oblivion.

We are wary of phony rumors with no substance. Lies are tossed about with no sense of liability.

If America's political campaigns were subject to the Truth-in-Advertising Law for bending the truth and overt misstatement, our courtrooms would be one of the busiest industries around.

The McCain Camp assaults Obama for the senator from Ill. saying he's different than most presidents on US dollars and assuming that's a "race card". However, most faces shown are old hairstyles (Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson) or bearded (U.S. Grant), not at all mod and boyish like Obama.

Gen. Wesley Clark shot verbal schrapnel at McCain as being a vet but "not qualified" for the Presidency. The same could have been used against Vietnam vet John Kerry. We look at each man's Senate voting record as a guide to their moral compass.

It happens that Obama opposed using Iraq as an alibi to beat back terrorism from Day #1. McCain was a key cheerleader in this war of occupation. Both evidently felt that Afghanistan is ripe for retaliation for 9/11. It is curious that Bush's pretext that Saddam was a dictator wasn't invoked to fight North Korea or even our recent buddy-buddy, Musharrif in Pakistan.

McCain is no longer in a Vietnamese POW cell. Now fast forward puts him with the Raving Rove Regiment of nasty handlers. Is there no escape route for John?

Note: Lee Coyne has covered political issues as reporter and columnist since the 60's. He can be contacted at: notcoy@netzero.net.

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Henry Ruark August 22, 2008 6:06 pm (Pacific time)

To all: Don't miss NATION excerpt posted under Cold War Is Over, re "Georgia Conspiracy".

Henry Ruark August 22, 2008 3:58 pm (Pacific time)

To all: Here's pertinent "see withown eyes", written by famed conservative Pat Buchanan Himself: McCain's Neocon Warmonger And none dare call it treason. By Patrick J. Buchanan 22/08/08 'WND" -- - Who is Randy Scheunemann? He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States. But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role. He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man. From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 – pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili. What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia. Scheunemann came close to succeeding. Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy. ---- Long-link at Cold War Is Over story above.

Henry Ruark August 21, 2008 2:37 pm (Pacific time)

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." - Walter Lippman

Henry Ruark August 21, 2008 7:16 am (Pacific time)

sts: Respect your deep frutrations which I mostly share. We differ only on what-to-do and perhaps how, due almost certainly to life experience and your deeper abilities conferred by faith. BUT we need every vote to offset WDs who, via that fate, have no basis for rational choice, while we do. Don't waste your God-given power as person, force self to confront possible chance of better, and act as final set of possibilities tells you. Too early yet to see the future in what either has done or will do as we see it now. Thank you for kind words,but if true "NOT my doing-alone", and if NOT, "all my fault" with what I was given !!

sts August 20, 2008 8:28 pm (Pacific time)

henry: with all due respect to your intelligence which I admire. obama is no different than mccain. In deep respect,, I do not understand how you do not recognize this. I have went for the lesser of the two evils before..I wont do it again. I will either write in Ron Paul (which wont count, I understand the voting process), or I will vote for Chuck Baldwin. I am sick and tired of the circus. Obama is just as bad as mccain, and maybe even worse. My thoughts on this are: Mccain will shoot you point blank, and obama will stab you in the back a little later while you are not looking. You, Henry, know this is true. There was another person..in England, that used the same "change" verbage to get elected in 1997...who was that? :-)

Henry Ruark August 20, 2008 7:00 pm (Pacific time)

To all: Firmly on the record is the fact the Bush cabal lied to get us into Iraq. Now it has been revealed the plan was under way long before G.Bush began his run,guided by same crowd helping his Dad. NO WAY to expect anything different from McCain. He will continue Bush-cabal policies and add his own flourishes. What choice does he have? He was picked for job and set up that way to delude, manipulate and mislead American public. If you want more-of-the-same neocon/debacle economic and education, health and foreign policies so abysmally failed in last eight years, vote for him. At least Obama represents a possibility for change --and if we work on him AND CONGRESS it MIGHT just come true. If you find yourself and family seeking some way to get further-ahead, seek education, security, and access to health, you DO NOT want McCain. Rational, reasonable and responsible Americans can be trusted --despite political manipulation of print and tv, to make sensible decisions, if given the truth. Seek it out for yourselves, use YOUR OWN mind, let NOBODY sell you guff no matter how well packaged, and lushly paid for by billionaires aiming to profit further while all the rest of us go downhill.

Biden? August 20, 2008 1:37 pm (Pacific time)

In an indication that he expects to be Barack Obama's vice-presidential pick, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del) has begun writing a 50,000-word acceptance speech, aides to the senator confirmed today. The address, which Mr. Biden has been working on around the clock, is an abridged version of a 200,000-word acceptance speech that Mr. Biden wrote when he ran for President in 1988. According to those familiar with the speech, if Mr. Biden is tapped as Mr. Obama's vice presidential choice the Delaware senator would begin delivering the speech on Wednesday night of the Democratic convention and conclude it on Thursday night....

Craig August 20, 2008 9:56 am (Pacific time)

I imagine no one would do negative adds if they did not work. The below article sure shows a big swing in the polls. I have read theories that this change is caused by a number of reasons. Negative adds, that this last weekend the quasi-debate betwwen McCain and Obama at that suer-church went badly for Obama, the Russian military's recent activity, and that there are people now who will vote for McCain rather than just against Obama. Polls will probably change a lot in the next few months. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday. McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama's solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

Sinbad August 20, 2008 7:34 am (Pacific time)

I'm quite sure that it was Senator Obama who stated during a number of speeches that it was he who did not look like the presidents on the dollar bills. But the above writer is right on the money when it comes to misleading or outright lying by all political parties, and many others. Not much the candidates can do when their supporters do this other than asking them to cease, but when they do it themselves, then it's all right to point it out in my opinion.

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Presidential Race '08 Panders to Prejudices

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