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BAR[_3_]

Boater wrote:
BAR wrote:
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On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:12:53 -0400, BAR wrote:

Boater wrote:
D.Duck wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message
. ..
...commentary from conservative pundit George Will:

WASHINGTON -- Time was, the Baltimore Orioles manager was Earl
Weaver, a short, irascible, Napoleonic figure who, when cranky,
as he frequently was, would shout at an umpire, "Are you going to
get any better or is this it?" With, mercifully, only one debate
to go, that is the question about John McCain's campaign.

In the closing days of his 10-year quest for the presidency,
McCain finds it galling that Barack Obama is winning the first
serious campaign he has ever run against a Republican. Before
Tuesday night's uneventful event, gall was fueling what might be
the McCain-Palin campaign's closing argument. It is less that
Obama has bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.

This, McCain and ++his female Sancho Panza** say, is demonstrated
by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William
Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. But the McCain-Palin charges
have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass
mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American
households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of
the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement
accounts -- telling each household its portion of the nearly $2
trillion that Americans' accounts have recently shed. In this
context, the McCain-Palin campaign's attempt to get Americans to
focus on Obama's Chicago associations seem surreal -- or, as a
British politician once said about criticism he was receiving,
"like being savaged by a dead sheep."

Recently Obama noted -- perhaps to torment and provoke
conservatives -- that McCain's rhetoric about Wall Street's
"greed" and "casino culture" amounted to "talking like Jesse
Jackson." What fun: one African-American Chicago politician
distancing himself from another African-American Chicago
politician by associating McCain with him.

After their enjoyable 2006 congressional elections, Democrats
eagerly anticipated that 2008 would provide a second election in
which a chaotic Iraq would be at the center of voters' minds.
Today they are glad that has not happened. The success of the
surge in Iraq, for which McCain justly claims much credit, is one
reason why foreign policy has receded to the margins of the
electorate's mind, thereby diminishing the subject with which
McCain is most comfortable and which is Obama's largest
vulnerability.

Tuesday night, McCain, seeking traction in inhospitable economic
terrain, said that the $700 billion -- perhaps it is $800
billion, or more; one loses track of this fast-moving target --
bailout plan is too small. He proposes several hundred billions
more for his American Homeownership Resurgence -- you cannot have
too many surges -- Plan. Under it, the government would buy
mortgages that homeowners cannot -- or perhaps would just rather
not -- pay, and replace them with cheaper ones. When he proposed
this, conservatives participating in MSNBC's "dial group"
wrenched their dials in a wrist-spraining spasm of disapproval.

Still, it may be politically prudent for McCain to throw caution,
and billions, to the wind. Obama is competitive in so many states
that President Bush carried in 2004 -- including Florida, North
Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico
-- it is not eccentric to think he could win at least 350 of the
538 electoral votes.

If that seems startling, that is only because the 2000 and 2004
elections were won with 271 and 286, respectively. In the 25
elections 1900-1996, the winners averaged 402.6. This, even
though the 1900 and 1904 elections -- before Arizona, New Mexico
and Oklahoma attained statehood, and before the size of the House
was fixed at 435 members in 1911 -- allocated only 447 and 476
electoral votes, respectively. The 12 elections from 1912 through
1956, before Hawaiian and Alaskan statehood, allocated only 531.

In the 25 twentieth-century elections, only three candidates won
with fewer than 300 -- McKinley with 292 in 1900, Wilson with 277
in 1916 and Carter with 297 in 1976. President Harry Truman won
303 in 1948 even though Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat candidacy won
39 that otherwise would have gone to Truman. After John Kennedy
won in 1960 with just 303, the average winning total in the next
nine elections, up to the 2000 cliffhanger, was 421.4.

In 1987, on the eve of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's third
victory, the head of her Conservative Party told a visiting
columnist: "Someday, Labour will win an election. Our job is to
hold on until they are sane." Republicans, winners of seven of
the last 10 presidential elections, had better hope they have
held on long enough.

++Sarah Palin is Sancho Panza...priceless.

Sancho was the illiterate sidekick of Don Quixote.
What's you opinion of ACORN?

ACORN has nothing to do with George Will's column or his absolutely
priceless comparison of Sarah Palin to the illiterate Sancho Panza,
who accompanied the insane Don Quixote.

ACORN is a rather controversial organization, but it has done a lot
of good in pointing out and helping eliminate predatory lending
practices, in easing voter registration regulations, and in pushing
for living wages, all of which I support. I'm aware of some of its
problems, obviously, but whatever it has done wrong pales in
comparison to the horrors perpetrated on this country by Big Oil,
Halliburton, ENRON and Bush-Cheney.

Sarah Palin *is* Sancho Panza...I love it.
ACORN should go the way of Aurthur Anderson. ACORN is a corrupt
organization.

Thta's quite a stretch. Acorn obviously has some members who need to
be weeded out, but I don't think you can condem the whole organization
for that. Lets see how the organization handles the problem, shall we?
I'm willing to wait and see if they acknowlege that some of their
members went far astray, and clean house. There is no indication that
leaders of the organization asked or expected anyone to do anything
wrong. It looks more like a some fol;ks took it upon themselves in an
extremely wrongheaded effort.

A pattern of corruption and alleged criminal activity is a stretch?
You have to be kidding. There are people who worked for who are ACORN
in jail, serving probation, paid fines for their criminal conduct
while performing these so-called get out the vote drives. It's all in
the public record.

ACORN is a criminal enterprise hell bent on subverting the election
laws and disenfranchising voters who follow the the law.

Pretty funny coming from Bertiepoop, an unabashed supporter of the
Bush-Cheney Criminal Enterprise.

How much money did your buddies a Ullico and you have to disgorge in
illegal profits form illegal stock purchases and sales? Talk about
screwing the working man.