As an independent Edwards supporter can you really trust the other candiates

[metisnation]

do not fool yourselves...the money they took from their corporate sponsors WILL influence them if elected. If they win expect more corporate welfare and less attention to the common citizen.

[Evergreen Emerald]

1. He takes money from lobbyists

And he has been involved in hedge funds that had a profound effect on the economy.

He is a hypocrite. Don't fool yourself.

[metisnation]

3. national healthcare

to pay back the coffers of those who bribed them in the primaries! Guaranteed windfall profits for the healthcare corporations!!!! who is fooling who?

[metisnation]

4. kucinich

are u kidding me? No respect in the south=no chance.

[fenriswolf]

6. yes he is a smart investor, he was a part of hedgefunds

what beef do you have with hedgefunds? better come educated or your gonna be schooled. and if your refering to subprime loans, the banks are the ones that determine the loan conditions and it was the loan brokers who cheated the banks in reporting false credit and income scores. alot of the people who are losing their houses purchased them for little to no money down with an option arm loan whos starting rate they could barely afford. foreclosure is an ugly thing but i saw first hand that people wanted houses desperatly and their were people who desperatly wanted to sell houses. anyways please explain yourself more clearly as to why it is bad that edwards was involved in a hedgefund.

[Evergreen Emerald]

9. stop being so condescending. I am certain we can have a discussion

without me suggesting that you need more schooling. Read the Kucinich e-mail about why he did not support Edwards..that may help you see my point.

[fenriswolf]

12. i did read his email

and i am a huge kucinich fan. Kucinich does not trust johns word is authentic, basically kucinich thinks that john is changing his values on paper to appeal to the wider majority, something kucinich has been accused of many times (ie abortion) and i have defended him against those accusations many times. to me it seems as if kucinich is triangulating more then appealing to his base, since he has not thrown in the towel he gave obama his support since edwards platform is the one the closly resembles him. This is the first act of DK that i do not take at face value

I do not like obama and he has done and said some majorly stupid things that I just cannot justify him as a candidate.

edwards comes from a non political middle class family. He was not born rich he had to work to get his wealth. He was not born into power he had to work to get their. I respect that and believe that is why edwards would not sell out the middle class for whom he is fighting, that is why i am not listening to kucinich on this issue. I am glad that edwards is a succesfull buisness man, i do not believe that he has had any underhanded dealings and I do believe that he will maintain his campaign fundamentals if elected POTUS.

[cali]

16. oh, I know quite a bit about hedge funds.

And someone I know rather well, told his brokerage firm that no way in hell would he invest in one when his broker suggested it. I know who the creeps are who run them too. That's my neck of the woods- Greenwich and New Canaan.

[fenriswolf]

17. so all hedge fund are evil?

and all are controlled by the same firm? you stated an opinion now can you please explain why it is? their may be some people who don't have intimate knowledge that you posses.

[cali]

20. ALL hedge funds are seriously underregulated. All of them.

No, they aren't all run by one firm. The Headquarters of most of them are in Greenwich with a few scattered throughout the rest of Fairfield County and a few more in other places. All hedge fund managers are seriously undertaxed, and most hedge funds if not all of them have off shore accounts and serve to reduce the taxes paid by their clients.

[fenriswolf]

21. k so basically they are more or less

unregulated financial planning firms with little gov oversite. perfect outfit for shady buisness but does that mean edwards has been doing shady buisness?

[cali]

26. No. but why take the chance and find out later that you're investing in

subprime lenders? It's hardly a secret that hedge funds make some unethical investments.

[fenriswolf]

31. so you dont like him

based upon speculation of the industry he was in. well that is certainly a valid opinion.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. prove he took money from lobbyists...

everything I can find shows that he has not.
Eric Schultz, Edwards' campaign spokesman, told The Washington Post on Monday there is a "clear distinction" between refusing to take money from lobbyists and taking money from the people who employ them as Edwards has.

"Either you lobby the federal government or you don't. Either you are paid to influence legislation and the people who write it or you're not. The line is clear and only murky for those who are trying to blur it," Schultz said.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071024/NEWS08/310240057/-1/news0801


and it was A hedge fund, not plural. (which would apply to many of us who have a 401k, by the way)

[Evergreen Emerald]

8. he admitted in on ABC this morning. Go view the show on-line

That is why he is very specific about talking only of certain lobbyists: what "is" is.

He also admitted that those lobbyists he is taking all that money from, he will not let in the White House. Sounds hypocritical to me.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. ABC.com no search results for Edwards..

more info? a link maybe?

edit: nothing on the blogs so far either... did everyone else miss it? :shrug:

[Evergreen Emerald]

14. The Sunday morning show with George Stephanopolus

[fenriswolf]

13. what lobbyiests?

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.asp?id=N00002283&cycle=2008

and where is the requested link?

[upi402]

2. Kucinich is the only one that was 100% against Iraq war, spying, patriot act

etc


Pretty sad the Dems blocked him and/or failed to back him.

[metisnation]

5. still waiting for a reply

from the other coporate whoreistas out there....its hard to defend a candiadate who is running, "for the people" if they take so much money from big buisness ehhh? Feel sold out?

[951-Riverside]

10. So if I don't like "your guy" I'm a "coporate whoreistas"?

If thats the case...

[metisnation]

33. Whoreista

go get me another black coffee corporate yesman!

[cali]

15. I don't trust John Edwards

I don't trust him because of his repeated exercise of poor judgment. He is not consistent. Futhermore, nearly a third of everything he's raised comes from one special interest group- lawyers.

Nope. Don't trust him. At all.

[fenriswolf]

18. funny in most countries

lawyers are the people who most of the citizenry look up to uphold their countries constitution. yeah lawyers get a bad rep from frivolous lawsuits and such but i ask you, where would we be without the aclu? where would we be if we didn't have hundreds of lawyers working for free trying to follow george bush and co and cry foul when they do something underhanded? if the lawyears are backing john and no one else why corporations are backing everyone else except john and kucinich then by gum, if for john edwards.

[cali]

22. I didn't say I didn't trust lawyers. I said I don't trust him.

and any time a special interest group invests heavily in a client, it's not unreasonable to question what they want out of it. I'm not saying he'll give them anything, but you can be sure that they aren't simply doing this for purely altruistic reasons.

[fenriswolf]

24. good point

i still like the fact that edwards has lawyers backing him while corporations back the other candidates. so what about edwards totally turned you off to him?

[cali]

27. A lot of it was his

strong support for war- not just diplomacy but bombs. He supported that position for three years. He didn't apologize for his vote until November of 2005. And political apologies mean little to me. Judgment means a lot. The rest of his Senate record was pretty lackluster with a couple of good things and support for such things as Yucca Mountain and a bad bankruptcy bill. He hasn't really provided a strong rationale for his conversion on so much.

I don't trust his rhetoric on corporate power. He worked for a corporation after leaving the Senate that I'm none too impressed with. Why? Nothing he said about it made any sense to me.

Maybe he's completely sincere and I just can't see it. I'd certainly take him over Clinton, but I just don't see that he's invested in the poor and disenfranchised the way Obama has, and Obama was against the Iraq war at the time that JE was co-sponsoring war legislation with Lieberman.

[fenriswolf]

30. that is true and one thing that you have to vote on faith

is if a candidate really has turned over a new leaf. you have to do that with every candidate to a degree, even kooch (abortion) and i guess we just leave it at i believe edwards believes what he is saying or he is lying to become president so he can pillage the country even more. thanks for the discussion.

[Garbo 2004]

28. Looks like lawyers have "invested" in Clinton, Edwards and Obama:

http://opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=K01

[mitchtv]

19. Funny I feel the same about Obama

being gay, I've seen the politician side of BO, and it ain't pretty, The kyle leiberman vote was telling. I don't trust him to not give away the store in his effort to get along with Pukes, other than tha,he's alright. I like Edwards' lies more than Baraks finnessing the language

[cali]

23. there you gol.

different people come away with different impressions.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. I don't "trust" any politician to do anything other than be a politician.

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." - Thomas Paine

[K Gardner]

29. I just don't think these kinds of attack threads are helpful to our candidate or

anyone else's. Calling other people ignorant because of their choice really doesn't change their mind. Best to tell us something good about Edwards.. why you personally trust him.

I'm supporting Edwards, but I would also get behind Obama and happily campaign for him. And I don't think myself a fool for trusting either of them. Just sayin :-)

[metisnation]

32. attacks

the only attack going on here is the auction of democracy going on by most of the candidates. Obama, Clinton, huckabee, Romney all took from the lobbies. Big buisness put their cash down to those who said yes to do their bidding. As an independent I like john Edwards message to fight back and not folding in by taking their money. I like him because he speaks from the heart and do what's right for commonfolk.