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Tag: political stunt

In Response to Larissa

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/29/08

This comment response grew to the point of absurdity in length and earned itself the status of a post. It is in response to my friend Larissa’s comments here about Braceletgate. Wait, I promised not to do that.

Well! To which comment shall I respond? First, glad to have you here. I always enjoy a lively debate.

I haven’t gotten an opportunity to really opine on the happenings of Friday night’s debate yet as I’ve been working and getting sick all weekend. The one probably led to the other.

In short, my thoughts are this: reactions to the debate are absolutely all over the place. Pundits have a mishmash, smorgasbord of opinion. A poll can be found to agree with almost anyone’s perception of the debate. Diehard Republicans and Democrats, a group to which I believe you reside, seem to be sure their respective candidate wonderfully trounced the other and came off looking great. In the last two days, I’ve seen and read The Faithful of both camps feverishly repeating the rhetoric from spin alley, and the broad spectrum of polls taken after the debate, both scientifically and otherwise, seem to reflect the defined positions of those being polled more than anything else. What’s funny is that much of the criticism of the candidates could be, and actually is, applied to either. You mentioned that you thought McCain was rude and disrespectful. I’ve heard the same argument leveled at Obama for his continuous interruptions and references to McCain as “John.” (I had actually not read the arguments about McCain being disrespectful anywhere until I looked up network news coverage of the debates to get their poll numbers. Seems that was a common thread amongst former Democratic operatives like Stephanopoulos.) What a person saw in the debate depends largely on the political lenses through which they watched. More…

Obama shouldn't have mentioned his bracelet

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/28/08

The mother of the fallen soldier asked him not to.

…she has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn’t, she just didn’t want it to get turned into something that it wasn’t. She had told me that in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet anymore at any of his public appearances.”

And apparently Obama even minced her request to end the war:

“I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say. I just cried,” Tracy Jopek told the newspaper. “It wasn’t for anything but for him to know this is real, something he needed to know. . . I do believe (the war) needs to end, but I believe it needs to be done very carefully and very thoughtfully.”

To me, there is a clear difference between wanting the Senator to know the reality of war and putting in a personal request to end the war because it hurts too much. Either way, of course, I’d rather have a Commander in Chief that understands just how horrible and necessary war can be. The desire to pull out of Iraq because soldiers have died and are dying is simply ridiculous. Do we seriously give up when the scenario is anything other than no lives lost? How did we get to this idea that it isn’t our soldiers’ duty to protect and defend our country at any cost?

Let’s be straight on this: we ALL want the war to end. But I for one am not willing to tuck tail and run. And anything less than victory is defeat. That’s not hawkishness. That’s reality. It’s a concept with which Obama desperately needs to become familiar.