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tpm: McCain Campaign Falsely Claims Obama Described Court's Failure to Redistribute Wealth As "Tragedy" By Greg Sargent - October 27, 2008, 12:16PM The McCain campaign's efforts to portray Barack Obama as a closet socialist took a turn into the burlesque today, with the McCain camp falsely claiming that in a seven year old interview, Obama said that it was a "tragedy" that the Supreme Court hadn't redistributed wealth away from hard-working Americans. The Obama interview in question is being pushed relentlessly today by the wingnuts, who are circulating this audio of it. The McCain campaign just blasted out a quote from senior economics adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin hammering Obama. In the interview, Holtz-Eakin claimed, "Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn't been more 'radical' and described as a 'tragedy' the Court's refusal to take up 'the issues of redistribution of wealth.'" Holtz-Eakin asserted that this proves that Obama wants to take money "away from people who work for it" and give it to people "Obama believes deserves it." Apparently McCain himself is going to pick up this cudgel on the trail today, too. But as usual, this latest attack rests on a complete falsehood. If you look at Obama's full quote -- which you can read right here -- it's very clear that Obama was not directly "regretting" the failure of the court to be "radical." Rather, he was saying that the court's failure to take up redistributive issues proved that it wasn't as "radical" as some have claimed. The "radical" line was clearly a dispassionate claim about the reality of history. What's more, take a look at the operative part of Obama's quote that includes the "tragedy" line: One of the I think the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that. As you can see, Obama simply didn't say that the court's faiulre to take up redistribution was a tragedy. Rather, he was arguing that it was a "tragedy" that the Civil Rights movement expected the courts to do too much in this regard, which led the movement away from other ways of accomplishing redistributive goals, such as organizing and legislative politicking. Now, it's true that Obama was describing redistribution as a worthy goal. The wingers are grabbing on to this as proof, along with his recent claims to America's Favorite Plumber, that he harbors a shadowy socialist and redistributionist agenda. But Obama clearly wasn't talking about the mass seizure of wealth -- after all, redistribution is the whole idea behind taxation, which is a fairly mainstream concept that McCain still presumably supports in principle. What's more, Obama legal adviser Cass Sunstein argues to Ben Smith that Obama was discussing "redistribution" in the context of a narrow legal discussion about civil rights, meaning he was discussing whether the courts should make the things that guarantee a social safety net -- education, welfare, and the like -- court-mandated rights. Ironically, Sunstein points out, Obama was arguing that legislative action was a preferable vehicle for accomplishing such goals. If McCain disagrees with Obama's argument that the courts aren't the primary place to accomplish such things, he should say so. It would certainly make news.

Income tax is not the sole tax in this country. While the wealthy pay the vast majority of the welfare tax, middle and lower classes have a significant, if not greater % of their income taxed in different ways. Everyone is paying into this system, and as a result we have a strong infrastructure, strong military and strong country.

imo this is the worst season. All the characters besides ari are unlikeable now. I don't really care if Vince fails after his mexico thing. And like people said, what type of friend would prevent another from a 10 million dollar job.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 25, 2008 -> 11:35 PM) haha thats great. you know he was thinking "WTF is this. I want the usually softball questions the Democrats get. " yeah, not the tough ones like, what newspapers do you read, and what is the bush doctrine

Well played, sir.

I assume that polls may have gotten better since 48

My friend called me to get a play by play cause he was driving and the radio went out. I was so pissed after that ninth I was just telling them to leave me alone, and as this is happening, pods hits the ball, so I said "fine, pods hits the ball, its going deep (I'm still thinking it's a double), and HOLY s*** AHHHHHHHHHHHH WE WON WE WON" and ran out into the hallway and just started jumping into walls.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 24, 2008 -> 03:14 PM) McClellan or D.L. Hughley? McClellan is definitely not black. However, out of these conservatives coming out and endorsing Obama, the one that has to sting the most to McCain is the Goldwater family. Ouch. I'm fairly certain he was making a "Rush Limbaugh on Colin Powell" joke.

Pinochet was an evil, evil man. They used to just take dissenters, put them on a helicopter ride and just drop them in the middle of the ocean. The weird thing about Pinochet is usually countries have a predisposition to some type of dictator rule while Chile really seemed like he came out of nowhere.

sports riots seemed to have faded out in the 00's. When Denver had one I think we all knew it was over.

lol

f*** off daley, go tell that to the people who were on death row for twenty years after providing false confessions after being brutally attacked by chicago police detectives.

that thing about elitists in NYC and Wash really pisses me off. Once again, as I've said, it was really insightful to hear Jon Stewart talk about how it pisses him off that politicians like Palin and McCain come to New York, go to ground zero was such empathy and talk about how resilient new yorkers are, and then leave and talk s*** about how they are just elitists telling the real americans how to act.

Yes, the Wes Anderson mock was the best.

When we have shots around the world party we were candy land.

Turtle is unbearable.

Sportscenter I remember was saying the cowboys were gonna go undefeated after they defeated the packers.

Or if zombie Reagan endorsed Obama.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 03:41 AM) By the way, let's just ABSOLUTELY cut to the chase here. Colin Powell has NEVER really been a Republican, from a social standpoint. So, him endorseing Obama is not race, it's issues, and reality is, he never really stood for anything the GOP ever did anyway, except the military. Period. Bottom line, his endorsment shouldn't mean a damn thing, nor should it be a surprise to anyone who listens to him speak. I disagree kap. Not on the political ideology of Powell, but rather of the impact. Powell is an impact endorsement. I feel like his is the equivelant of if Al Gore would've endorsed Obama in March for democrats. He is such a respected, above-it-all, American pride figure that him endorsing a figure people feel as risky because of his shorter-than-normal resume continues to calm peoples worries about that aspect. Is it a game-changer? no, nothing like an endorsement ever will be. BUt with something like this, in that moment in the polls, where people are going leaning Obama, but at last minute go with what they know, something like this is calming.

We are so smart.

QUOTE (Soxy @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 02:29 AM) The trib endorsement was shocking. Obama is so far from a fiscal conservative that I wasn't sure what they would do. I honestly think that if McCain would have picked a different running mate the Trib would have endorsed him instead. This, and I not only say this because the Trib has been very critical of Palin, I say this because without palin, I believe that McCain wouldn't have switched to the "Maverick"/negative theme, he could've continued to push his experience theme. And as such, he could've had a projection of steady leadership during the economic crisis and used it to hammer Obama on taxes.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 01:18 AM) i do like the increase in the FDICs deposit insurance cap. I like the fact that it allowed it to do the stock purchase that the plan is now as opposed to only letting us buy their s***ty assets.

the more I read this the less I believe it, I don't think they are really pulling out, maybe just saying they are going to dedicate offices and people to Penn and add more like robocalls to CO

Obama cancels thursday and friday campaign appearances to be by his grandmothers side. It is said she's taken a turn for the worse. Thoughts go out to the family.

If you want to know the reason behind ACORN in the news, start looking at recent history. The DOJ firing scandal was born out of these accusations. DOJ lawyers were fired for not further pursuing prosecuting ACORN because they couldn't find anything.