Frickin’ doubletalking hypocrite. We see how well he already keeps his promises, not to mention his pledge to change Washington by doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t do, and running a campaign funded heavily by special interest dollars.
And I’m not exactly sure I agree with the McCain camp’s response. Well, actually, I do agree with it, but I can’t help but notice that the disastrous campaign finance “reforms” we live under now, which encourages this sort of thing, are almost entirely Senator McCain’s fault. Not to mention that they trash the 1st amendment. But hey, what’s an amendment or two for an important man like the Next President of the United States?
(Can you tell I’m annoyed with both candidates? I am. But I’m more annoyed with the Obamatron at the moment.)
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Is there room for public financing of the campaign under that bus? It’s getting pretty bumpy down there.
Phelps’s last blog post..Refinery Capacity
Well one good outcome might be the end of government financing for Presidential elections. Which would be a good thing. Neither Republicans nor Democrats lack for deep pocket donors or large organizational support, although I wouldn’t mind a ban on corporate or union donations.
I am The One, Obamatron, the outstretched, grasping hand…
…
I twist the truth, I rule the world, my crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies, you grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you, your downfall is my gain
And all my promises are lies, all my love is hate
I am the politician, and i decide your fate
Just what came to mind.
Corporate contributions to candidates for President and Congress have been outlawed since 1907; contributions from labor unions have been outlawed since 1943.
Phelps’s last blog post..Refinery Capacity
And since I’m quoting anyways:
Phelps’s last blog post..Refinery Capacity
The difference between McCain and Obama is that, McCain actually loves this country while Obama is simply running for president and with the millions of dollars in his campaign chest, he phonies up the ads with airplane aisle interviews limiting reporter/journalist access, has strict US flag backgrounds and as of the other day tells scarfed muslim ladies to move out of camera view so the media cameras wont think he is associated with Islam.
In other words, fill in the ________________(blank).
"The difference between McCain and Obama is that…"
"Frickin’ doubletalking hypocrite."
You know when I hear overwrought rhetoric like this, I only end up with a lot more respect for the candidates than for the ordinary people who think themselves so much more evenhanded and sensible.
Bad’s last blog post..?Theophobia? in Academia and Elsewhere
You
atheistsleftists are all the same,So you’re here to plug yur blog, too ?
Here, Bad,
work on the facts:
"At the rally for Senator Obama in Detroit on Monday, June 16, two volunteers (were) denied us seating behind the stage the Senator would soon take. The volunteers informed us that we were not allowed to sit in that area due to the hijab, the headscarf that each of us was wearing."
Wow. I am stunned. I’m finding myself in too much agreement with McKiernan!
Could somebody post something on science?:)
HB
I always love it when people look at a completely valid charge and go into a snit because it’s mean to say something factually correct. How would I have phrased it better, Bad, so you would not be inclined to love Obama more? Is it just the style where you’re unhappy?
Or is it that I’m wrong, and Obama has not painted himself as someone who will not do "business as usual," has not gone back on his promise to accept Federal matching funds and the limits that go with them, and/or has not done this so he can get oodles more money from the business-as-usual political sources that are funding his campaign?
Umm, Dean? While I think Bad is in the wrong here, he’s not wrong in the way you claim. He’s not an Obama shill looking for an excuse to love Obama more. If you check his recent blog posts, he has one that’s mildly supportive of Senator McCain, one that’s mildly critical of Senator Obama, and I-lost-track-how-many that are sternly critical of (what he sees as) over-the-top rhetoric.
So yes, I think style is the concern here. He’s trying — in an ironically heavy-handed way, in my view — to lower the rhetorical excess.
I think Bad is underestimating the gravity of the situation. This election may matter in the short run, but given the "choice" we have handed ourselves, it is very nearly superfluous in the long run. I now believe that there is about one chance in two that votes will be cast from the rooftops in 20-40 years. I am not, to say the least, very happy about that.
Ken Hall’s last blog post..Meditation on Olofson…
so let me see if i’ve got this straight.
public financing is bad.
mccain is (among others) responsible for the state of campaign finance which encourages obama’s actions.
mccain is taking public financing (which is bad(?)).
why again is obama the bad guy? because of a flip flop?
please.
Public financing is basically bad, yes.
McCain is responsible for the current even worse state of campaign finance than we had before, but it already sucked before he made it worse. We had public financing already even before him that probably still would have encouraged Obama’s actions.
McCain has so far pledged to take that financing (and the spending limits that come with it) but I expect him to very likely break that pledge and blame Obama for it.
Both are bad guys but Obama’s the much bigger hypocrite on this particular issue, because Mr. No-Business-As-Usual is taking money from Business-As-Usual, and Mr. Saintly is already reneging on a major promise that was going to prove he wasn’t Mr. Business As Usual.
How is that not clear?
By the way, all politicians change their stances, and Senators are more likely to do it than just about any other type of Presidential candidates (which is why they’re usually lousy Presidential candidates). So what?
so if mccain changes his mind it’s just a change of stance, but if obama does it it’s reneging on a major campaign promise?
if you read the obama camp statements (and believe them to be telling the truth, of course), he makes it clear that the decision to forgo public financing is motivated by the fact that otherwise he would not be able to effectively combat 527 groups, and that efforts to reach out to the mccain camp to curtail these groups didn’t result in an agreement.
in that light, the decision to forgo public financing can still be seen not-business-as-usual, indeed highlighting the aspects of the public financing system which are broken by refusing to take part in them.
of course, i think all of that is pretty charitable towards obama. in the end he probably made the decision because he could raise a crapload more money on his own than public financing is ever going to bring in. but, it’s still his choice how much influence he allows "special interests" (lobbyists are okay but "special interests" are a bridge too far?) to control his campaign. merely opting out of the (by your own admission, broken) public finance system doesn’t mean he’s a double-talking hypocrite OR that he’s suddenly mr. establishment or mr. status quo.
McKiernan: the links are part of a wordpress feature. You might have noticed them on other people’s comments as well. Might you have also neglected to remember that when complaining about me?
Dean: I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t know how I could put it any better than I did. People are deeply cynical about politicians. But I’ve rubbed shoulders with a decent number of politicians. I know the discussions they have, the pros and cons, the hard choices, the things they weigh. Â
And honestly, over time, I ended up having a lot more respect for them than I do for the arguments of cynics.Â
McCain, by the way, already left the system by using public financing promises to secure loans and spending that primary money right here and now.  I don’t think less of him for it. Nor do I think less of Obama for not being stupid and playing by a system his opponent already isn’t going to play by. Neither candidate’s actual positions are changing based on this decision. It’s all basically a matter of more Tv, more staff, and so on.
For you though, it fits into a narrative you’re telling yourself. You aren’t "just" stating facts of course. You’re weaving a psychological thriller in your head, with Obama as the now chosen antagonist.
And that’s good. That’s what exactly campaigns set out to encourage. Obama’s people are going to be encouraging their voters to do exactly the same thing to McCain.
Where am I going? I dunno. I really, really hate election season.
Bad’s last blog post..McCain ?Really Didn’t Love America Until?? Either & The Unreality of Political Blogging
Zach: Are you even reading what I write? I’ve already attacked McCain, repeatedly, for his views on campaign finance. I admit I’d forgotten he’d already foregone the very fucked up system he helped fuck up even worse, but that doesn’t change my criticism. Moreoever, you can change your position on that when you move from primary to election season, and McCain challenged Obama to do just that, saying he would if Obama would and rightly pointing out that Obama already promised to do so.
I find Obama’s bullshit on the 527s just that–bullshit. He knows just as well as anyone that he’ll have a ton of 527s on his side, just like Kerry did (although he also pretended he didn’t).
Bad: Welcome to politics. I like and hate it. But see what I said above. McCain pledged to stick with the limits and the public funding for the general election if his opponent would keep his promise. His opponent did not keep his promise.
I actually share your view of politicians. Most are honest, most try hard to keep their promises and most succeed in keeping most of them. Sometimes they change their minds, or for practical reasons must change their stance. We all do this.
Thus your characterizations of me are more from a lack of context of how I actually feel. I would have thought my frequent harsh criticisms of Senator McCain would have made that point but apparently not? I’m not even all that cynical. That won’t stop me from calling out blatant hypocrisy and broken promises whenever and wherever I see it, most particularly from a candidate whose entire image is at odds with exactly what he’s doing. His excuse on the 527s is the flimsiest of bullshit-impregnated tissue, as he’ll have enormous amounts of 527 help of his own. He’s just demagoguing. He’s allowed to do so–practically any Presidential candidate must do a certain amount of it, after all. But the forces following the Obamessiah need to get real. They have a politician just like any other politician, and he isn’t going to do jack shit to "clean up Washington" any more than Bush or Clinton or anyone else has.
It’s McCain’s embarrassment that he’s done so much to contribute to this unholy mess of a system. How many times do I have to say that?
Here, by the way, is a list of 527s that were active in helping John Kerry as well as George Bush in 2004 (or at least opposing one or the other). We can expect many of these to still be active, and/or new ones with the same people and money but different names, to be active in 2008, and probably in greater numbers.
It’s a sham. Obama’s just another politician who is doing *nothing nothing nothing* to change "business as usual" in Washington. His entire campaign is business as usual for his party and country, except he’s black.
The current public funding system for presidential elections is completely broken. The spending limits are unrealistic. For last several cycles the top candidates on both sides have opted out of the public funding for the primaries. Currently the Federal Election Commission, which is suppose to enforce the rules, does not exist. It does not have enough members to hold a meeting. So even if candidate were to opt into the system, there is no one to enforce the rules.
McCain first decided to opt into public financing for his primary campaign, and he filed paperwork to do so. He used the commitment to public financing for the primary to get loans to his campaign to keep it going when he was having trouble raising money. Then when his campaign took off and he could again raise money, he changed his mind and decided to opt out of public financing for the primaries. Some FEC officials say he cannot decide to opt in and then change his mind and opt out, but since the FEC does not have enough members to hold a meeting, there is no one to rule this illegal, so McCain was able to get away with it.
In fact, since there is no FEC, candiates can take public financing, ignore all the rules and do whatever they want right now. The system is totally broken.
Yeah, that’s all about right.
How about this: abolish the idiotic fucking donations limits completely, require instant disclosure over the internet of all donations above a certain relatively low amount, and let voters decide whether they like what they see or not on a campaign donor’s list?
Hey, freedom, and more information for the voters! And almost no tax dollars spent! What a whacky idea!
I find Obama’s bullshit on the 527s just that–bullshit. He knows just as well as anyone that he’ll have a ton of 527s on his side, just like Kerry did (although he also pretended he didn’t).
Wrong.
Fundamentally, the model where a candidate raises millions from small-donor donations is better than the one where they must court a stable of far fewer, wealthy ones – because the latter model is every definition of "special interests".
By forgoing public financing, ironically, Obama frees himself from having to court those big guns. Only, of course, because he has the small donor base – an innovation which matured from the Dean campaign 4 years prior. So in every sense, abandoning the public financing system is a good thing, from an etics standpoint and a reform standpoint.
There’s a good editorial on this at The Nation that gets into these issues, but also looks forward:
Of course, small donations alone don’t alleviate the need to fundamentally change how elections are run or financed in this country. Senators Susan Collins and Russ Feingold have sponsored legislation to modernize and update the current presidential public financing system, while Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter have introduced a bill to publicly finance Congressional campaigns. Obama is an original cosponsor of both Feingold-Collins and Durbin-Specter. McCain has declined to sponsor either. The campaign finance reform community recognizes these changing realities, but some leaders still remain wedded to the days of old. Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, one of McCain’s closest allies in the campaign-finance movement, said he was "very disappointed" in Obama’s decision. Public Citizen also proclaimed itself "deeply disappointed." Both Wertheimer and Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook helped to create the post-Watergate system of public financing, so they are naturally reticent at watching it die. Other groups accept that the current system of public financing, in the words of Common Cause President Bob Edgar, "is badly outdated and in need of a major overhaul." They hope Obama, based on his past and future commitments, will be the one to change that. As one campaign-finance reformer told me, "holding Obama accountable for not opting into a broken system isn’t really fair. We want the best reformer to win, not the candidate with a hand tied behind their back."
So, the jist of what I am seeing here is that the plan by Obama supporters is to take swing voters who traditionally sway Democratic (Dean) and take a big steaming squat on their heads as soon as they say anything crosswise about Obama.
Brilliant. See you again in 2012.
Phelps’s last blog post..Refinery Capacity
Aziz: Don’t see how it’s wrong. Not so far anyway. Nor why I’m supposed to see some sort of clear difference between PACs and 527s, which are just McCain-Feingold PACs (which were themselves foolish creations of earlier campaign finance "reforms" which messed the system up).
As for "every definition" of a special interest being wealthy individuals, I could not possibly agree less. A special interest can well be large group interests. Emily’s List is damn well a special interest. So is NOW. So is Planned Parenthood. So is the NRA. So is AARP. And so on and so forth.
Right now, the truth of the matter is that Democrats have far more big-money uber-wealthy donors than Republicans do, and that appears to be the real reason the Obaminator is eschewing the public financing, platitudes about "the little guy" aside. Opensecrets.org has plenty of info anyone can check; there are tons of billionaires just itching to hand out Barack Bucks in big fat checks, not to mention the PACs and 527s they’re already running for him and/or planning to ramp up.
By the way, conservatives are right: some of the biggest left/liberal/Democratic heroes of all time were funded by a tiny cadre of wealthy individuals. Truth of the matter is that there’s no shortage of rich people on any political issue, and quite a few who swing left (like the current editor of The Nation, last I heard). Being able to get wealthy donors actually frees up candidates to be themselves and not constantly hustle for dollars and promise favors, which is what they’ve had to do ever since "reforms" started in the 1970s. “Reform” is shorthand for “make the system less free, less accountable, more arcane, more elaborate, and more corrupting.” Or at least, every reform to date has done so, and I expect that trend to continue.
I have zero faith–less than zero, honestly–that Obama will do jack shit to reform things that will do anything other than help him and his party. I guess that’s the one saving grace, if you can call it that, of McCain’s arrogant "reforms," since he shot himself in the foot with McCain/Feingold.
I just saw a "republicans for obama" bumper sticker.
"But see what I said above. McCain pledged to stick with the limits and the public funding for the general election if his opponent would keep his promise."
This is irrelevant though: he’s already broken the system in the primary, meaning he can spend more now (which is only technically still "the primary") than he otherwise could. It’d be like him agreeing not to use steroids AT the Olympics when he’d just got done training with them.
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