This is the Presidential Campaign Thread.

Barack Obama Vs. John McCain.

Edited November 6, 200817 yr by Toups

Why, Greg, there is ABSOLUTELY a need to bring proven falsehood back into this discussion!! They are fun, excellent discussion-starters, and of course there is also that off-chance that someone will be swayed politically by them.

OK. Ya got me there.

I think Bill says EXACTLY what he thinks... I recall some accused him of being the perfect liar (perhaps a better description is the perfect politician!) -- but I think those days are behind him. I think he has nothing to lose and tells the truth every chance he gets. I don't see the thinly-veiled jab at McCain. On the contrary, I think he likes McCain and likely wouldn't be crushed to see a President McCain. He doesn't stick to the same script as Hillary for obvious reasons. I think he empathizes with Palin given the sort of press he received earlier this year when he was relegated as the Big-Mouthed Primary Pariah by the pro-Obama media. The Clintons have long memories...

You know, that is an excellent analysis and now that I'm thinking about it a little more, you may not be too far off.

Joe Biden. I have said many times he is the most qualified candidate on his ticket. But I wonder if his loose lips can help Republicans make a strong argument that Biden is too unpredictable, too volatile, and unable to restrain his impulsive mouth -- is that acceptable for someone who is a heartbeat away from the Presidency? How would these Joe Biden quirks play on a national stage, dealing with Iran, Russia, etc.?

There's no doubt that Biden is a liability for Obama at this point IMO. And frankly, I'm surprised that the McCain campaign hasn't zeroed in on some of his mis-statements, particularly what he said about taxation. Or have they? I seem to remember that someone said there was an ad out already about that, but I could be wrong.

As far as the argument that JB has too big a mouth to be president. Ummm. No. We already have someone like that occupying the White House. The [!@#$%^&*] that comes outta GWB's mouth is way worse off than what JB has said.

Question: What person here in these threads has intrigued you enough that you are curious about what they are like in real life?

Simple question... who is it and why?

No one mentioned my name?!?!?

There's no doubt that Biden is a liability for Obama at this point IMO. And frankly, I'm surprised that the McCain campaign hasn't zeroed in on some of his mis-statements, particularly what he said about taxation. Or have they? I seem to remember that someone said there was an ad out already about that, but I could be wrong.

There was coverage of it when it happened. But that seems to have fizzled out over time, like most of these situations.

My guess is that educating kindergarteners on the proper way to apply a condom is likely low on the list of hot-button issues for candidates...

LOL.!

Kindergarteners should also know (after the learn how to properly apply a condom) that they are only 98% effective...

They could play last night's episode of Two and a Half Men in the class room. Did anyone see that? It was hillarious..

Okay, completely weird and off topic...

But I'm politicked out for tonght. I have some other things going on this evening that are depressing me, so I need a change of topic.

Question: What person here in these threads has intrigued you enough that you are curious about what they are like in real life?

Simple question... who is it and why?

I'd like to know more about Greg and B&Bfan...

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Casey008

I think Bill says EXACTLY what he thinks... I recall some accused him of being the perfect liar (perhaps a better description is the perfect politician!) -- but I think those days are behind him. I think he has nothing to lose and tells the truth every chance he gets. I don't see the thinly-veiled jab at McCain. On the contrary, I think he likes McCain and likely wouldn't be crushed to see a President McCain. He doesn't stick to the same script as Hillary for obvious reasons. I think he empathizes with Palin given the sort of press he received earlier this year when he was relegated as the Big-Mouthed Primary Pariah by the pro-Obama media. The Clintons have long memories...

I'll bet Bill understands Palin's appeal!

I've heard Dick Morris talk about how Bill Clinton is still at the top of his game and he is a political genius.

Morris thinks that the Clintons have an October surprise up there sleeves that they will give to the Republicans...Morris thinks that the Clintons want Obama to lose so that Hillary can run again in '12.

I don't know what kind of "inside information" Dick Morris has, or if he is just taking an educated guess (after working for the Clintons). I've heard him hint that the Michelle Obama "whitey" tape probably does exsist, and the Clintons/Republicans (LOL! oxymoron!) are waiting for the right moment to release it..

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Casey008

I'll bet Bill understands Palin's appeal!

I've heard Dick Morris talk about how Bill Clinton is still at the top of his game and he is a political genious.

Morris thinks that the Clinton's have an October surprise up there sleeves that they will give to the Republicans...Morris thinks that the Clintons want Obama to lose so that Hillary can run again in '12.

I don't know what kind of "inside information" Dick Morris has, or if he is just taking an educated guess (after working for the Clintons). I've heard him hint that the Michelle Obama "whitey" tape probably does exsist, and the Clintons/Republicans (LOL! oxymoron!) are waiting for the right moment to release it..

OMG. I don't even know why I'm bothering to comment on this.

First of all, this is nothing but a bunch of hogwash. Ya know what I heard? That McCain has a black baby in South Carolina! Yes, another smear campaign by Republicans. Do you see a pattern here at all? How can you support a party that will do anything to win an election? What happened to all of the "morals" that Republicans are supposed to have?

Of course, the Clinton's have dirt on everyone in their party, don't they? They are like the Edgar Hoovers of the Democratic party, right? GMAB. These same things were said about the Clinton's in 2004 and they were going to spring something on Kerry. Riiiiiight. They are not a couple of evil-doers, huddling in the corner giggling to each other about their next "plan". I know it's a picture that Republicans love to hold onto, but it's just not real.

Now let's get back to some real issues, shall we?

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Greg's GL

A new poll in Florida has Obama up 2 points.

Mason-Dixon Poll

Take it for what it's worth. I know a lot of people like to keep up to date with these numbers.

I live in the "I-4 Corridor" that they talk about in the article and this area has traditionally been the swing area of the state. The panhandle and SW FL are strong Republican areas, Miami and SE FL more Democratic. If memory serves, Orlando/Orange county went for Kerry in 2004, but the rest of the corridor was in the Bush column.

An interesting editorial at The Orlando Sentinel regarding the proposed bailout:

Bank bailout may save economy but will weigh heavily on taxpayers

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Greg's GL

More on possible Obama "October Surprise"

I don't know if this constitutes as real news as of yet, but it is food for thought...Maybe this is what Dick Morris is salivating about...

Former DNC Chairman and Philadelphia attorney Phillip Berg is suing Obama, asking for him to drop out of the election. Berg is a Clinton supporter, so there may be alterior motives here.

Are you ready for this?? Berg's suit states the birth certificate provided by the candidate is a forgery, and that even if Obama's a natural-born citizen, that he forwent his citizenship when he was supposedly adopted in Indonesia.

This could be very damning for Obama.

Could this even possibly be true??

Probably just total BS...

I'm just wondering why the Republicans are so quiet on this....it's either really big (and they are saving it for the right time) or not true...

What does Hillary know?

Phillip Berg's lawsuit against Obama

Official website for plantiff's case.

Sorry if this has been discussed or posted before. I've only read about it for this first time today..

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Casey008

Up to Date National Polls

Poll Date Obama (D) McCain ®

RCP Average 09/11 - 09/22 -- 48.3 45.4 Obama +2.9

Rasmussen Tracking 09/20 - 09/22 48 48 Tie

Battleground Tracking 09/17 - 09/22 46 48 McCain +2

CNN/Opinion Research 09/19 - 09/21 51 47 Obama +4

Gallup Tracking 09/19 - 09/21 48 44 Obama +4

Hotline/FD Tracking 09/19 - 09/21 47 42 Obama +5

CBS News/NY Times 09/12 - 09/16 49 44 Obama +5

Quinnipiac 09/11 - 09/16 49 45 Obama +4

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Casey008

A new poll in Florida has Obama up 2 points.

Mason-Dixon Poll

Take it for what it's worth. I know a lot of people like to keep up to date with these numbers.

I live in the "I-4 Corridor" that they talk about in the article and this area has traditionally been the swing area of the state. The panhandle and SW FL are strong Republican areas, Miami and SE FL more Democratic. If memory serves, Orlando/Orange county went for Kerry in 2004, but the rest of the corridor was in the Bush column.

realclearpolitics.com has included the Mason/Dixon poll...it has cut into McCain's average and lead quite a bit in FL..--McCain is only up by 2 points on average..His lead was a lot bigger than that a few weeks ago..

RCP Average (Florida) 09/14 - 09/21 -- 48.0 46.0 McCain +2.0

FOX News/Rasmussen 09/21 - 09/21 51 46 McCain +5

---->NBC/Mason-Dixon 09/16 - 09/18 45 47 Obama +2

Sun-Sentinel/R2000 09/15 - 09/18 46 45 McCain +1

SurveyUSA 09/16 - 09/17 707 51 45 McCain +6

Miami Herald/SP Times 09/14 - 09/17 47 45 McCain +2

CNN/Time 09/14 - 09/16 48 48 Tie

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Casey008

An interesting editorial at The Orlando Sentinel regarding the proposed bailout:

Bank bailout may save economy but will weigh heavily on taxpayers

I found an interesting read on the financial crisis and its link to the Dems. from Bloomberg.com

Link to article..

... For the first time in history[2005], a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. ...

Now how does Barack Obama fit into this picture? Do the words Community Reinvestment Act and ACORN come to mind? How about the fact that Obama worked as a community organizer for ACORN. Yesterday I heard some quotes on the radio from bank managers and their interaction with so-called community groups. The bank employees acknowledged the harassment tactics on banks from community groups aimed at getting them to make more loans to "unqualified" low-income buyers. One example was that they would make it difficult to put in something as simple as an ATM in a community, unless the bank made loans more available to "unqualified" low-income borrowers.

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Casey008

I keep trying to read through the posts made since I was last on but I keep getting interrupted so I've given up on catching up.

I just want to comment on that lunacy in Casey's post about Obama's citizenship and then I'll post an article on something else in a separate post.

I don't know what goes on in the mind of a lunatic because to me you'd have to be one to file that kind of a lawsuit.

Basically he's saying that the State Department is incompetent (and I know some people already think that it is). If they're issuing passports to people that aren't citizens then.....

If Obama were adopted in Indonesia, it would have been by his stepfather and his surname would have changed....one would think. As to how that would change his citizenship.....'beats me. Unless the U.S. has some law that states if a citizen is adopted in a foreign country, citizenship is revoked....I don't get how that one works.

Obama lived in Indonesia from 1967-71, according to what I read on CNN, so I want to know how any child between the ages of 6-10 is capable of revoking his/her citizenship?

Geez Casey.....what's up with all the National Enquirer style posting?

Geez Casey.....what's up with all the National Enquirer style posting?

Sometimes..even the Nat. Enq. breaks stories! LOL..

I'm still leaning on the side of this being BS, but you never know....

I guess someone besides me is a bit cranky today:

McCain Loses His Head

By George F. WillTuesday, September 23, 2008; Page A21

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17, Page A4; and the New York Times of Sept. 20, Page One.)

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8092202583.html