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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (91166)	9/16/2010 3:57:48 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224707

he's 16 points down. Give O'Donnell sometime and let the delaware voters look at the marxist in a beard.No one has paid attention to Coons since they figure Castle would win it all Coons took 'bearded Marxist' turn By ALEX ISENSTADT \| 5/3/10 10:52 PM EDT An article Democrat Chris Coons wrote for his college newspaper may not go over so well in corporation-friendly Delaware, where he already faces an uphill battle for Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. The title? “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.” In the article, Coons, then 21 years old and about to graduate from Amherst College, chronicled his transformation from a sheltered, conservative-minded college student who had worked for former GOP Delaware Sen. William Roth and had campaigned for Ronald Reagan in 1980 into a cynical young adult who was distrustful of American power and willing to question the American notion of free enterprise. Coons, the New Castle County executive who is running against GOP Rep. Michael Castle for the state’s open Senate seat, wrote of his political evolution in the May 23, 1985, edition of the Amherst Student. The source of his conversion, Coons wrote, was a trip to Kenya he took during the spring semester of his junior year—a time away from America, he wrote, that served as a “catalyst” in altering a conservative political outlook that he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with. “My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists,” Coons wrote, noting that at one time he had been a “proud founding member of the Amherst College Republicans.” “[I]t is only too easy to return from Africa glad to be American and smugly thankful for our wealth and freedom,” added Coons. “Instead, Amherst had taught me to question, so in turn I questioned Amherst, and America.” Dave Hoffman, a Coons campaign spokesman, said the title of the article was designed as a humorous take-off on a joke Coons’s college friends had made about how his time outside the country had affected his outlook. Hoffman said the trip to Kenya helped lead to Coons’s decision to become a Democrat. “Chris wrote an article about a transformative experience during his semester in Kenya more than twenty-five years ago,” said Hoffman in a statement to POLITICO. “After witnessing crushing poverty and the consequences of the Reagan Administration’s ‘constructive engagement’ with the South African apartheid regime, he rethought his political views, returned to the America he loved and proudly registered as a Democrat.” In one passage of the article, Coons explains how in the months leading up to the trip abroad “leftists” on campus and college professors had begun to “challenge the basic assumptions” he had formed about America. A course on cultural anthropology, noted Coons, had “undermined the accepted value of progress and the cultural superiority of the West,” while a class on the Vietnam War led him to “suspect…that the ideal of America as a ‘beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world’ was not exactly based in reality.” For Coons, Kenya was an especially jarring experience that significantly influenced his already-changing political beliefs. He wrote that he was particularly troubled by his experience with Kenyan elites, who he said were utterly dismissive of the poor. “I became friends with a very wealthy businessman and his family and heard them reiterate the same beliefs held by many Americans: the poor are poor because they are lazy, slovenly, uneducated,” wrote Coons. “I realize that Kenya and America are very different, but experiences like this warned me that my own favorite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America were largely untrue.” Coons wrote that upon his return to Amherst for his senior year he realized that, while he had discovered the faults of his country, he had also “returned to loving America.”

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (91166)	9/16/2010 5:30:12 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224707

Be still my heart...did you admit your were wrong about something Ken? Congrats! That's one...you've a very long list indeed to check off.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (91166)	9/16/2010 8:40:42 PM
From: lorne	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224707

Democrats spend on anti-health-reform advertisements By SARAH KLIFF \| 9/16/10 politico.com Democratic candidates are spending three times more advertising against the health reform law than they are in support of it. Since the beginning of Congress’s August recess, Democratic candidates have poured $930,000 into ads deriding the health overhaul but just $300,000 in pro-reform spots, according to Evan Tracey at Kantar Media. “Go back to 2006, and even before that, and Democrats used health care as their No. 1 issue,” Tracey said. “They had a villain in the pharmaceutical industry. Now that they passed this law, it’s almost disarmed them rather than given them an opportunity.” Moreover, Tracey’s data shows that health reform opponents – inside and outside of Congress – are increasingly outspending supporters. Opponents now spend seven times as much on anti-reform spots as supporters spend on pro-reform spots, a marked change from early May, when their dollars only doubled those of reform advocates. Anti-reform forces, including the Chamber for Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS, have spent $14 million on advertisements since early August, Tracey said. At the same time, pro-reform groups have spent just $1.8 million. The most notable buy comes from the Health Information Campaign, a new-Democrat led group currently running a three-week, national ad campaign in support of the new law. Even Democratic candidates’ pro-reform ads can offer tepid support for the law. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) ran an ad last week that mentioned his support of health reform briefly, sandwiched between other legislative accomplishments. “When the economy collapsed, Sen. Feingold helped pass tax cuts for 95 percent of Wisconsin family,” the script reads. “Russ also fought for tax credits for small businesses and relief from rising health care costs.” “There’s not any messaging out there by incumbent Democrats trying to promote what people liked, like allowing dependents to stay on their parents’ insurance,” says Tracey. He describes the Health Information Campaign’s advertisements, which do hit on popular provisions of reform, as “one voice screaming in a crowd. They’re not going to get heard with everyone else screaming.” As POLITICO has previously reported, at least five Democrats have run ads touting their opposition to health reform. Anti-health reform groups continue to pour millions into attack ads. The Chamber of Commerce went up Tuesday with new ads attacking Attorney General Jack Conway in Kentucky for supporting the law and accusing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist of flip-flopping on the issue. “Democrats haven’t found a good rejoinder,” Tracey said. “There doesn’t seem to be a significant effort to try and dial some of that criticism down, turn a negative into a positive.”

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (91166)	9/17/2010 11:59:04 AM
From: chartseer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224707

You are wrong most of the time. Ask anyone. comrade chartseer

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (91166)	9/17/2010 2:25:28 PM
From: longnshort	4 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224707

So if Obama doesn’t appear interested in the job of president, what does he do day after day? Well, he takes his meetings just like any other president would, though even then, he seems to lack a certain focus and on a few occasions, actually leaves with the directive that be given a summary of the meeting at a later date. I hear he plays a lot of golf, and watches a lot of television – ESPN mainly. I’ll tell you this – if you want to see President Obama get excited about a conversation, turn it to sports. That gets him interested. You start talking about Congress, or some policy, and he just kinda turns off. It’s really very strange. I mean, we were all led to believe that this guy was some kind of intellectual giant, right? Ivy League and all that. Well, that is not what I saw. Barack Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of intellectual curiosity. When he is off script, he is what I call a real “slow talker”. Lots of ummms, and lots of time in between answers where you can almost see the little wheel in his head turning very slowly. I am not going to say the president is a dumb man, because he is not, but yeah, there was a definite letdown when you actually hear him talking without the script. That sounds like you are calling Obama stupid to me. No – I am not going to call him stupid. He just doesn’t strike me as particularly smart. Bill Clinton is a smart guy – he would run intellectual circles around Barack Obama. And Bill Clinton loved the politics of being president. Obama seems to think he shouldn’t have to be bothered, which has created a considerable amount of conflict among his staff. So how bad are things at the White House these days? I don’t know about right now, because I have not been there in over a month. But I still hear things, and I know what it was like when I left. It’s not good. As bad as it might look to voters based on what they do know, it’s much worse. The infighting is off the charts. You got a Chief of Staff who despises cabinet members, advisors who despise the Chief of Staff, a President and First Lady having their own issues… Read more: newsflavor.com