Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin

[ghostrunner]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/ ... the_1.html

Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?
...
None of this, of course, proves Ayers' authorship conclusively, but the evidence makes him a much more likely candidate than Obama to have written the best parts of Dreams.

Wow. I don't even know what to say to that. Obama went to Harvard, has a law degree, wrote a second book, and also wrote the best political speech I've ever heard. Somehow I find this a bigger reach than Obama being a Muslim terrorist sympathizer.

In part two of that article, the author speculates that Willie Tyler lipsynched Obama's nomination speech.

I have a cleaning bill to send you.

[GatewaySnayke]

Boy they are really, really reaching now.

[clement]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/ ... the_1.html

Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?
...
None of this, of course, proves Ayers' authorship conclusively, but the evidence makes him a much more likely candidate than Obama to have written the best parts of Dreams.

The best part about that is that the website is called "Americanthinker".

[greenback44]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/ ... the_1.html

Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?
...
None of this, of course, proves Ayers' authorship conclusively, but the evidence makes him a much more likely candidate than Obama to have written the best parts of Dreams.

Wow. I don't even know what to say to that. Obama went to Harvard, has a law degree, wrote a second book, and also wrote the best political speech I've ever heard. Somehow I find this a bigger reach than Obama being a Muslim terrorist sympathizer.

In part two of that article, the author speculates that Willie Tyler lipsynched Obama's nomination speech.

I preferred a line that went in a different direction, that Ayers killed Vince Foster.

[Radbird]

also wrote the best political speech I've ever heard.

Well maybe Ayers wrote that for him too....

Now that I've posted this on the internet, some people will no doubt quote it as gospel fact.

[sighyoung]

The literary scholar in me can't let this go--it's so delightfully stupid, so forgive me. Cashill's arguments are brilliantly idiotic.

Shy of a confession by those involved, I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book. As shall be seen, however, there are only two real possibilities: one is that Obama experienced a near miraculous turnaround in his literary abilities; the second is that he had major editorial help, up to and including a ghostwriter.

1) The first sentence is the money quote: "I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book." Yet he proceeds to a wonderful false choice--he implies that Obama was such an awful writer (based on a single undergraduate poem--a genre different from autobiography) that Obama's ability to write a decent memoir has to be "miraculous". Then Cashill completely inverts the economics of publishing, placing editorial assistance (which comes late in the writing process, long after a contract, and after the book manuscript has been delivered to publisher for revision) at the VERY BEGINNING OF WRITING. In short, Cashill essentially implies that someone, somewhere had such a vested economic interest in creating Obama as a brand that someone wrote a book for him, and slapped Obama's picture on the cover.

With advance in hand, Obama repaired to Chicago where he dithered. At one point, in order to finish without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. He was surely in way over his head.

2) It's common knowledge that publishers are very strict concerning contract deadlines. Cashill conflates Obama losing a contract because he didn't finish writing the book on time with a complete inability to write a book.

3) Literary genre and style. Cashill implies that everyday speech, legal writing, poetry, and autobiography would share the same literary conventions and styles, so that we should be able to hear all of these conventions in Obama's daily utterances. Yet he asserts:

One does not hear any of Dreams in Obama's casual speech.

(Insert ominous movie music.)

4) Literary influence. Scholars work to place literature in a historical and social context, and often try to assess similar ideas or styles within texts written in a given period. We try to understand texts in conversation with each other--for instance, how autobiographies "talk" with each other, share themes, conventions, subjects, styles, and narrative progressions, and depart from prior influences, too.

So--in the universe of literary, political, and social ideas, who is Obama's strongest intellectual and literary influence, according to Cashill? A Black Arts Movement writer, such as Amiri Baraka? James Baldwin? A naturalist such as Richard Wright? A whole panoply of writers of American autobiographies and memoirs, whether about social development, political development, biracial identity, racial relations?

NOOOOOOOOOO. Cashill names William Ayres.

It's so brilliant--Cashill takes "consorting with terrorists" meme to such an extreme that Obama becomes Ayres' creation and puppet. Bravo!

[clement]

I'd like to say it's humorous except that there are too many people out there who read stuff like that and actually give it serious consideration.

[sighyoung]

I'd like to say it's humorous except that there are too many people out there who read stuff like that and actually give it serious consideration.

Obama has been successful partly because his opponents routinely underestimate him, and see him as a mere bundle of rhetoric, rather than a shrewd political operator. Cashill can't even give him credit for the rhetoric.

Let Cashill think Obama is a fool. Shhhh. Let sleeping dogs lie.

[jim]

Catching up....

Most of this feeling is fear-based due to her isolated life on a farm in northern Wisconsin.

I was in SW Wisco this weekend closer to LaCrosse. In rural areas that I saw in terms of yard signs, it was literally like 20:1 Obama. We live on a very rural gravel road that gets about 5 cars a day counting the school bus and milk truck i.e. isolated, and the 60 year old farmer down the road has a big Obama sign in his pasture. I keep hearing that Wisco is in play, and I know the demographics of Milwaukee and especially Madison that give a huge head start to Obama. So where is the McCain support? I just don't see it at all anywhere. Is it up in the northwoods, is that solid McCain country up there? I know our rural area has a large collection of hippie from the 70's that might tilt our little area left more than most rural areas, but not to the degree that I am seeing.

Alaskans?

This was funny.

Obama and McCain may both be appealing to a certain level of "stupidity", but one of them is appealing to a dangerous xenophobic stupidity and the other is a naive hopeful one. I'll take hopeful naivete over dangerous xenophobia anyday.

Nicely put. The stupid in the McCain camp just scare me.

I've never been more worried about the direction our country is headed in than I am now.

Definitely agree, which I think is why this election is so heated.

]I'll say it. I'm not that crazy about Obama. I would have preferred Hillary Clinton.

I got in the car on primary morning intending to vote for Clinton, and punched the ballot for Obama. I'm glad I did, I think it was the right choice. The fact is, a President needs to inspire. McCain tries to tell you it's all fluff, that it's not important, but he's wrong. And Obama inspires me like no candidate has done in my lifetime, and in a close race on policies (Obama vs Clinton) that pushed him over the edge.


[quote="gkeenan"He is a better man and a better politician than the campaign he's been running, which has driven his reputation into the ground with a lot of people who respected his candor and what he brought to the national discussion.[/quote]

I don't know gk, I hope you are right. I know my respect for him as absolutely tanked over the past two months, but what I saw in those rallies seemed like a genuine concern he had and brought hope that my initial impressions of the man were more accurate than what I feel right now.

I keep hearing that "he has no choice" but to run his campaign like this. Bull. He could stop it right now, fire his campaign manager if he has to.

"Palin is just a dumb hick"
"Really? Why do you say so?"
"Didn't you see Tina Fey play her on SNL? She played her as a dumb hick. And, she shoots wolves from helicopters."

There's a double standard here.

I don't think so cole. Big difference between her being a big dumb hick and the racist feelings toward Obama. You think it's coincidence that Palin uses the word "terrorist" 10 times a day when talking about Obama?

[Radbird]

Most of this feeling is fear-based due to her isolated life on a farm in northern Wisconsin.

I was in SW Wisco this weekend closer to LaCrosse. In rural areas that I saw in terms of yard signs, it was literally like 20:1 Obama. We live on a very rural gravel road that gets about 5 cars a day counting the school bus and milk truck i.e. isolated, and the 60 year old farmer down the road has a big Obama sign in his pasture. I keep hearing that Wisco is in play, and I know the demographics of Milwaukee and especially Madison that give a huge head start to Obama. So where is the McCain support? I just don't see it at all anywhere. Is it up in the northwoods, is that solid McCain country up there? I know our rural area has a large collection of hippie from the 70's that might tilt our little area left more than most rural areas, but not to the degree that I am seeing.

In my mother-in-law's case, I'm sad to say that I think it's just a racial thing. Not out of hatred, mind you, but out of fear and ignorance. What glimpses she catches of black culture on tv have led her to believe that if we have a black president, the White House will be infiltrated by gansta rappers and their ilk. She's also prone to hearing a report about someone accusing Obama of being a Muslim or associating with Ayers and saying "oh no, he's a Muslim terrorist". I wouldn't draw any wholesale conclusions about the Wisco Northwoods based on her view of the world. She doesn't get out much.