Dear Senator Obama:

I've been supporting you since you announced. For the first time I feel like putting you in a room and screaming "stay on message!" Even at your weakest during the primary you only faltered in style here and there. But now you sound like Clinton during her darkest days -- a new message everyday, lacking clarity, letting the other guy get away with the story of the day.

It cracks me up that after your groundbreaking overseas trip, McCain started calling you a prima donna celebrity. What'd you do? You stopped being one! Hey, Obama, own it. You are a celebrity -- and we're ready for someone bigger than life after someone smaller than an ugly dog.

I've already spent a month for you in Iowa (toes still frozen) and the wife and I have donated the maximum for the primary and the general. We volunteer, we wear T-shirts, we sweat blood for you Obama. We do it because the country is too messed up for a hideously militant McCain administration.

So here's our advice:

1. I mean it, screw being defensive and start pounding the Democratic message home. Given the wrong track numbers at 80% you would think all you would have to do is repeat the mantra --"let's get back on track." This is the theme you started the general with -- nailing McCain with the "third Bush term" slogan. (It works because it's true.) Now you spend your time lamenting and backing down. Cut it out, you're scaring me.
2. Adjust to being a Democrat's Democrat -- selling the message and not yourself. It isn't enough just to say it's not about you -- you need to speak more plainly and forcefully about the core democratic arguments. The country's ready for it.
3. You get in trouble when you overthink and become enamored with your own reasoning and insight. That works for me, but it is apparently death to the voters you need now.
4. It's all about getting past the eight disastrous Bush years and getting the bus back out of the ditch and speeding on down the road. That's your message: following me down a new path!

This convention has to work or you might have lost by the time the debates roll around. The convention has to be forward looking -- specific, repeated messages about how the Obama administration is going to prepare us for the prosperity, security, and imagination of our children's futures.

There is a real opening for you to ignore the old man in the baggy pants telling old war stories, and to transcend the negative campaign with tough, clear, unequivocating messages about getting back on track.

Biden will help because he is no nonsense and will play the game like Chicago plays it--rough. He'll be so excited to be your VP he'll wet his pants before he tears down McCain and builds the Democratic vision. He's perfect.

I hope the message has already been drawn up. I hope what we've seen these past several weeks is about to change. I hope your advisers are giving you some high-dose energy pills. I hope you take my advice.

AND I HOPE YOU STAY ON MESSAGE THROUGH NOVEMBER 4!

Go get 'em.

John

Did you watch Bill Maher on Larry King last night? He spoke to the frustrations of many liberals right now.

Both candidates are generally hanging back a little bit until the Olympics are over.

If I were you, I'd be a little bit peeved about Hillary wanting to make a good chunk of the convention about her. She should be told, "Thanks for playing, here's some cash to pay off your campaign debt and some hookers for Bill. Now go away."

I personally think most Americans don't want the nanny state but want a government that actually governs. Katrina was a prime example.

Obama cannot win the race because his radical racial leftist affiliations will trip him before the finish line.

Condescending atheist Bill Maher is so ignorant that he doesn’t understand that hearing his religious bigotry and linking his views to leftists and Obama is the best advertising for McCain possible!

Just like Obama’s religious mentor does not understand that expounding on Black Liberation Theology turns people away from Obama as well. Next Obama will have Osama, Chavez and Mugabe and Castro campaigning for him as well.

Did you hear that Obama’s cousin in Kenya is named Fidel, after Castro?

When Che Obama turns up we will know that Obama has become as passé as forgotten Kerry.

After Obama loses, do you expect that fellow leftwing radicals will enflame their ideologues into murder, mayhem and race riots?

Why do leftists nearly always fulfill our negative stereotypes?

escalation;

Normally I try to be civil and analytical, but you're an idiot. Seriously. You're an idiot. Can your mind wrap around that?

John

P.S. His cousin was named after Castro? You're an idot.

Escalation is culling smears, lies, distortions and innuendo from the same wing-nut blogs that Ralph7 uses. It is a variation of the Big Lie technique favored by propagandists. Repeat the same nonsense often enough and it will plant the seeds of doubt. The swiftboaters who smeared John Kerry understood the technique very well.

Like Ralph7, Escalation avoids linking to any sources to support this nonsense. There is a good reason for that. There are no credible sources. Barack Obama has had an eleven year history in politics. Nothing in that history, not a single speech or a single piece of legislation, supports any of Escalation's outrageous smears.

People, don't you know a troll when you see one?

“Barack Obama has had an eleven year history in politics. Nothing in that history, not a single speech or a single piece of legislation..” Let us all agree that Obama does not have the prerequisite evidence needed to be the president.

Too bad the presidency is not affected by Affirmative Action laws. Would you all require that all formerly free elections now have Marxist equality quotas for every race, gender and sexual orientation?

Wikipedia - <link>

“Raila Odinga is married to Ida Odinga (born Ida Anyango Oyoo). They live in Nairobi (but has a second home in Bondo District) with their four children - two sons and two daughters. His oldest son, Fidel, is named after Fidel Castro…”

“In a January 2008 interview, Odinga suggested that he was the first cousin of American Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama through Senator Obama's father.”

Hey, here's the whole quote from Wikipedia:

In a January 2008 interview, Odinga suggested that he was the first cousin of American Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama through Senator Obama's father.[27] However, Barack Obama's paternal uncle Said Obama has denied any direct relation to Odinga, stating "Odinga's mother came from this area, so it is normal for us to talk about cousins. But he is not a blood relative."[28] Obama's father belonged to the same Luo tribe as Odinga. [27]

Escalation:

.

Too bad the presidency is not affected by Affirmative Action laws. Would you all require that all formerly free elections now have Marxist equality quotas for every race, gender and sexual orientation?

Nobody's talking about affirmative action, dipshit. Typical Republican strategy: lose the argument because of pesky facts, then change the subject.

What is truly weird about a smear based on the alleged name of one of Barack Obama's African cousins is that Obama's relatives in Africa had absolutely nothing to do with Obama's upbringing. As smears go, this one is just pathetic.

Fidel is great name, second only to Che. Obama was raised by a single mother, and was abandoned by his polygamous father. Because it is “racist’ to mention Obama’s middle name, I will say only, “Fidel.”

Why should Obama know all of his father’s wives and children? Those Americans who do, must be too ethnocentric.

Besides we all experiment with crack, don’t we? In fact, all presidents should experiment with drugs and hang out with leftwing radicals.

Just because Obama chose to attend a church for decades that spouts angry Black Liberation Theology, because of white oppression, we must understand the “context’ of the angry racist messages.

I can’t image why anyone would be uncomfortable choosing Obama to represent America.

Ralph7, Jr:

Mock away to your heart's content. Your lies, distortions, innuendo, and bad-faith spinning do not make effective argument. Good luck with that.

Escalation has this conversation with Escalation:

"Why should Obama know all of his father’s wives and children? Those Americans who do, must be too ethnocentric."

"Obama was raised by a single mother, and was abandoned by his polygamous father."