Judi,

While you are going through your threads, check and see how many times I have been personally insulted by NEOCON apologists. I stopped any trashtalk person to person a long time ago. I have been called moron, stupid, dumb and many other "unmentionables". I have never flagged a political post of anyone who has personally insulted me. Seems to me the personal venom is an issue. And, I think you know what I am talking about.

I think it's good to keep engaged on some of these threads ... I simply realized some time ago that there are those here with whom it is useless to engage in any type of civil discussion.

It's not just pointless, it's counterproductive to the goals of educating those that seek out political threads for news or analysis that doesn't reach the mainstream media.

And there's plenty of things to talk about, such as this gem

In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, David Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Brooks praised Palin's natural political talent, but said she is "absolutely not" ready to be president or vice president. He explained, "The more I follow politicians, the more I think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot, because believe me, once in office there's no time to think or make decisions."

And this is in a book and reported by PoliPoint Press, which has been using the liberal blogosphere to promote its just-shipped title exposing some of Sen. John McCain's less appealing traits that are chronicled in The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't.

Now, when I start putting in excerpts from the book out re: Obama, are we all going to believe them, too? Let's find out . . .I'll do some quoting this weekend.

Hey, WM, I'm trying to be an equal opportunity negative press exposer. The point I'm trying to make is that some people keep saying they are getting tired of the "slugfest" and "hate mongering", and I wanted to see how prevalent and by whom. I'm not going to do the whole thread (geez, I've got a better focus in life than this - ; - >). I'm only including personal opinions, not the propaganda from other sources (I'd be here all month!)

There have been numerous studies that all prove on thing: negative political attacks have a dampening effect on the voters. In the din of the national election cycle, even if most of the scurrilous, negative, personal, vile tactics are all coming from one side of the aisle ... the average voter can't think past the noise and just turns off politics altogether. They're "both" to blame ... there's plenty of blame to go around ... politics is a dirty business, etc. etc.

When people turn away from politics, they are less likely to engage in debate over ideas. They are less likely to defend personal convictions. They are less likely to become personally involved and canvass their neighborhoods or drive people to the polling stations on election day.

And the RNC research also shows, that the lower the voter turnout, the better their party does on election day.

The biggest story of the year are the hundreds of thousands of voters illegally removed from the registration rolls in the key battleground states. For states where we know that the difference can number in the thousands or tens of thousands of votes - - having tens to hundreds of thousands of names removed less that 30 days before election day (with no notice to those voters removed and no way to reverse these actions) is unacceptable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html

Going negative early ... and consistently ... works for Republican operatives on these threads (moderate voters and rational voices are driven away by the personal attacks) ... and it works for the McCain strategy nationally, too. Remember the old adage: Democrats want to fall in love with their candidate; Republicans just fall in line.

Remember the old adage: Democrats want to fall in love with their candidate; Republicans just fall in line.

___

No. I don't think that adage is true. I like to think of myself as an Independent, but I lean a good deal to the right.

I would love to fall in love with the candidates, but I have not. I can't fall in line either. I am feeling really bad and don't like any of the choices at this point. I do hope I can vote and feel okay about it in November.

What is it about this particular election that makes it impossible to talk about a candidate's views without trash-talking each other? I absolutely feel more comfortable with one set of candidates than another but I'm genuinely also curious about why people feel this candidate speaks for them and that one doesn't. Can't seem to get to that conversation, what with all the body slamming...