Thread: US Presidential Campaign 2008

In Obama’s America, we’ll finally be able to break free of the “constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution” — and in so doing, achieve “social justice” through “redistributive change.”

Source

What are the presidential hopefulls saying about the illegal attack inside Syria? These bastards need to stand up condemn this or they can both go to hell.

Originally Posted by mad_dog

What are the presidential hopefulls saying about the illegal attack inside Syria? These bastards need to stand up condemn this or they can both go to hell.

They must "be strong" and not talk about it, or say, "we must go after terrorists."

They cannot sound weak.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

As I say, patience. It'll be front-page news soon

How soon Booners?

Originally Posted by lom

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

As I say, patience. It'll be front-page news soon

How soon Booners?

That story has been briefly sidelined by this .

Anyhow, for your reading pleasure:

The Wikipedia page for Rashid Khalidi is being edited to cover up Barack Obama’s associations with the former PLO spokesman: Revision history of Rashid Khalidi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
40

this made me laugh.....

Suppose that instead of a relatively decisive win by Barack Obama on Election Day, we instead have a very close election.

Wish state might the McCain campaign really, really wish that they hadn't insulted?

I'll give you a hint. It's not technically a state, but rather, a commonwealth.

Five separate polls of Virginia have been released within the past 48 hours. Zogby has Obama ahead by 7 points there, the Washington Post by 8, SurveyUSA by 9, Public Policy Polling also by 9, and Virgnia Commonwealth University by 11.

Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, is a bit more electorally potent than Colorado; Obama could afford to lose either New Hampshire or New Mexico if he won there (though not both), which is not true about the Rocky Mountain state. We are currently projecting Obama to win every John Kerry state, except New Hampshire, but plus Iowa, by double digits. If Obama wins all of those states plus Virginia, he's at 268 electoral votes, meaning that any more electoral votes anywhere in the country would win him the election.

^ True. McCain has voted against the farm bills, but Obama wants further protection, including tighter trade policies. This will harm free market trade, IMO.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

^ True. McCain has voted against the farm bills, but Obama wants further protection, including tighter trade policies. This will harm free market trade, IMO.

The farms bill is the most corrupt peice of legislation agriculture interests lobby harder than oil or the NRA.

Originally Posted by mad_dog

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

^ True. McCain has voted against the farm bills, but Obama wants further protection, including tighter trade policies. This will harm free market trade, IMO.

The farms bill is the most corrupt peice of legislation agriculture interests lobby harder than oil or the NRA.

Yes it is . . . but look further than the farm bill . . . the first one that oops off the tongue is Boeing . . . and conversely Airbus

So, Jet, if you hate the EU for its supposed anti-free trade laws you must also hate the US for its anti-free trade laws . . . Yes?

Originally Posted by mad_dog

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

^ True. McCain has voted against the farm bills, but Obama wants further protection, including tighter trade policies. This will harm free market trade, IMO.

The farms bill is the most corrupt peice of legislation agriculture interests lobby harder than oil or the NRA.

Yes it is . . . but look further than the farm bill . . . the first one that oops off the tongue is Boeing . . . and conversely Airbus

So, Jet, if you hate the EU for its supposed anti-free trade laws you must also hate the US for its anti-free trade laws . . . Yes?

Whoever is elected president will, within weeks after moving into the WH, be viewed as just another politician.

It doesn't matter what they say now. If you believe either of these lines of promises, you're delusional. Events reshape the world and realities replace rhetoric.

To wildly gesticulate in the direction of either candidate is folly. In six months, either one of them will be reduced to mediocre -- or worse. The best Obama or McCain will do is carefully place blame and paint himself as a fixer-upper. Much as a new football coach is granted a grace period following a losing season.

Both candidates are the same. I can't get excited about either of them.

Originally Posted by Texpat

It doesn't matter what they say now. If you believe either of these lines of promises, you're delusional. Events reshape the world and realities replace rhetoric.

Agree. Events are the realities either will have to face. No way either are going to be able to provide the promised tax cuts. The economy and current government spend rate will preclude it. Either will be considered a "genius" IMO if they can figure out how to avoid raising taxes to pay for past economic policies sins.

“Sen. Obama is running to be redistributionist in chief; I’m running to be commander in chief.”

Sen John McCain
Not quite ‘new politics’ | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA

The President isn't your "commander," and the "Commander-in-Chief" power, now synonymous in our political culture with "President," is actually extremely limited (Art. II, Sec. 2: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States").

Blogger and constitutional expert Glenn Greenwald comments on this sorry state of affairs:

JOTMAN

Good question asked by Obama:
'Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

Link: RealClearPolitics - Articles - McCain, Running on Empty

McCain, Running on Empty
By Eugene Robinson
WASHINGTON -- Probably, John McCain and Sarah Palin will lose this election. Certainly, they deserve to.
With a campaign designed more to play on insecurities than promote ideas, McCain and Palin have practically framed Barack Obama's "closing argument" for him. "The question in this election is not 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?'" Obama told an audience Monday in Canton, Ohio. "We know the answer to that. The real question is 'Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

The Republicans don't even try to formulate an answer, and with Obama's lead growing by the day, it's hard to imagine what might turn things around. An "October surprise" international incident might end up working against McCain rather than for him, given his all-over-the-map reaction to the financial crisis. The vaunted Republican get-out-the-vote machine looks almost puny beside Obama's next-generation juggernaut.
There's always race, of course, and we can't say with certainty whether there's some huge, hidden racist vote out there just waiting to emerge next Tuesday. My hunch is that race is already factored into the poll numbers -- that it has already been "discounted by the market," to use the financial jargon that's so fashionable these days. I believe that race is a subtext of Republican attack words such as "dangerous" or "socialist," and that it's the real target of the attempt to paint Obama as unknown, mysterious, exotic and somehow alien. My guess is that voters who are responsive to this kind of coded appeal have already responded.
So we're not likely to see some kind of deus ex machina salvation for McCain, Palin and their down-ticket allies, and that's as it should be. It's not just that they have run a weirdly erratic campaign, bitingly sarcastic one minute, earnestly serious the next, uncertain whether to present McCain as a serious, experienced statesman or a hypercaffeinated, overeager publicist for Joe the Plumber. It's not just that Palin, and let's be honest, should never have been allowed anywhere near the ticket -- and certainly not anywhere near those frocks from Saks and Neiman Marcus.
More damning is the fact that at a time when it could hardly be more obvious that Americans desperately want to change direction -- more than 80 percent tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track -- the Republicans offer nothing new.
That's a shame. McCain's repeated references to "maverick" have drained all meaning from the word, but it's true that he's an iconoclast with little reverence for Republican orthodoxy. Why he chose, in an election that was always going to be decided by independents and Reagan Democrats, to campaign on a platform of slavish devotion to Republican orthodoxy is beyond me.
On the economy, McCain offers some relief for homeowners facing foreclosure, but only within a context of classic Republican trickle-down economics. He wants to lower taxes on business and rejects Obama's plan -- raise income taxes for the wealthy and lower them for the middle class -- as rampant socialism. If you set aside the incendiary rhetoric about class warfare that McCain and Palin have been tossing around, basically what they propose is staying the course that brought us to this point of global crisis.
McCain makes much of wanting to get rid of congressional earmarks; everybody wants to get rid of earmarks, except the one that benefits my community or my industry. He proposes an across-the-board spending freeze -- during a recession? -- and then, in the next breath, proposes new spending. He overestimates the voters' tolerance for incoherence.
On foreign policy, once the centerpiece of McCain's campaign but now mostly an afterthought, McCain promises "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan without telling war-weary voters how much more time, money or blood he will spend.
In choosing a running mate, McCain made absolute mockery of his "country first" slogan and instead put politics above all other considerations. It suffices to note that the Anchorage Daily News -- the biggest newspaper in Palin's state -- endorsed Obama, saying that Palin was being stretched "beyond her range" and that she clearly is not ready to be "one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world."
It's hard to imagine that a McCain presidency could possibly be as scattered, irresponsible, uninspiring and intellectually bankrupt as the McCain campaign. It's even harder to imagine that Americans, at this crucial juncture, will take that risk.

Will this country be better off four years from now?

Nobody can answer that silly question. Is Obama betting that things won't get worse?
Does he really think he's the messiah?

What a silly thing to say.

Originally Posted by Texpat

What a silly thing to say.

not really tex.

he is running for president after all.

It's empty rhetoric.

A waste of breath.

Did I say that?

Sarah Palin, politician, 44
Compiled by John Hind
Sunday October 26 2008


Asked in August about the prospect of becoming a vice-presidential nominee
It kind of cracks me up. It is so far out of the realm of reality (2008)

On her favourite food
Moose stew, after a day of snow-machinin' (2006)

On what got her into politics
I'm one of those people, y'know, I see a soldier walk through the airport and, y'know, my heart does a little double-take (2008)

On Barack Obama
Al-Qaeda terrorists still plan to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried someone won't read 'em their rights (2008)

On John McCain
He's the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this great country. Only he was among those who came home (2008)

Speaking at her old church, the Wasilla Assembly of God
I can do my part in doin' things, like workin' really really hard to get a natural gas pipeline (2007)

On her son, Track
When he turned 18, right before he enlisted, he had to get his first tattoo. And I'm like, 'Nah, I don't think that's real cool, son' until he showed me what it was and I thought, 'Oh he did something right', because he had a big ol' Jesus fish. So OK (2008)

When asked: 'what if Israel attacked Iran?'
We shouldn't second guess Israel's security efforts because we cannot ever afford to send a message that we would allow a second Holocaust, for one (2008)

On how Alaska's proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience
That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada (2008)

Asked if she regularly got up early
Yup. We don't sleep much. Too much to do. What I've had to do, though, is in the middle of the night, put down the Blackberries and pick up the breast pump (2008)

On Alaska
We want to see Ivana Trump because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture (1996)

On the American forces
They are building schools for the Afghan children, so there is hope in our neighbouring country of Afghanistan (2008)

Asked if she was ready to be a mere heartbeat away from the presidency
Absolutely. Yup yup (2008)

guardian.co.uk

Originally Posted by Texpat

Whoever is elected president will, within weeks after moving into the WH, be viewed as just another politician.
.

Great point anyone expecting any overnight chnage will be sorely disapointed. America will still biasly support Israeli war crimes, reserve its "right" to bomb any country in the world "preemptively" and preside over a world wide network of bases, fleets and client states which amount to the largest empire world has ever known. Americas military power is designed to inforce American business interests and ensure "access" to all states and markets but in the modern world even neo-imperialism has lead to America being despised and ridiculed almost universally. Small countries such as the Scandinavian countries have built modern vibrant wealthy economies without the need for barrel of the gun diplomacy and treating nations like plantations.

All part and parcel of being the sole superpower. Not arrogant, just stating a case.

It's why I've been saying for the better part of a year that little will change regardless of who is elected.

Obama/McCain will be the new face. If you think that changes the entire country, you're sadly mistaken. There is no wholesale change in American public opinion. There is no immediate change in the periphery that a president can influence. There is precious little that will strike anybody as a breath of fresh air -- regardless of who wins the election.

If you look at who actually calls the shots, and pay attention to it, you might begin to understand that it's the guy on the street. Maybe that's an alien idea to you, but that's how we do it.

Congressional elections occur as frequently as bowel movements. They hold the purse strings.

The next president should have no problem with improving the image of his country worldwide.
But how will you react when a Spec Ops strike force hits a AQ target in Feb, 2009?

It'll break your widdle heart, won't it?

Originally Posted by Texpat

All part and parcel of being the sole superpower. Not arrogant, just stating a case.

It's why I've been saying for the better part of a year that little will change regardless of who is elected.

Obama/McCain will be the new face. If you think that changes the entire country, you're sadly mistaken. There is no wholesale change in American public opinion. There is no immediate change in the periphery that a president can influence. There is precious little that will strike anybody as a breath of fresh air -- regardless of who wins the election.

If you look at who actually calls the shots, and pay attention to it, you might begin to understand that it's the guy on the street. Maybe that's an alien idea to you, but that's how we do it.

Congressional elections occur as frequently as bowel movements. They hold the purse strings.

The next president should have no problem with improving the image of his country worldwide.
But how will you react when a Spec Ops strike force hits a AQ target in Feb, 2009?

I agree that the next figurehead president will change little as both parties have broadly the same global outlook but as for the man on street being in charge I don't think America's polity consists of people who are informed of the way their government acts on their behalf.... picking up a University history book of the 20th century will show that US taxpayers handsomely funded the Khmer Rouge while they were at the height of their genocide or how hundreds of millions of dollars were past from the US to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar one of the most extreme anti-western Islamist warlords in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Hekmatyar now fights the Americans with the massive fortune and armoury which the Americans gave him. Or its supprot for the fascist Franco governments in Spain or its funding of the fascist Military coup of the Generals in Greece. Americans remain sadly ignorant of the "freedom fighting" that the US does around the world. Do they know even blessed Christians like Bush view the international arena as an amoral anarchical battle ground?

Many Americans want to change the image of their country overseas but I fear after a little Obama bounce the rest of the world will realise it is business as usual from an aggresive belicose state and Americans will become even more isolated and bitter.