Campaign 2008

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

The CEO of my company told me that he thinks Barack Obama is actually a Muslim plant, and that if he wins in November, he's going to "turn" and surrender to al Qaeda. Time to accelerate my job hunt.

 

The resource officer at my school told me he wouldn't vote for McCain because of post-traumatic stress issues.

[Jingus 0]

At least that might, in theory, be somewhat plausible. Poor guy did spend an awfully long time in that P.O.W. camp. As opposed to "Obama might have had a relative who was muslim, plus his name just sounds like a towelhead's, ergo he must be an Al Quaeda sleeper agent who just pretended to go to this one Christian church for decades".

[SuperJerk 0]

McCain lays out vision of America four years from now under a McCain Administration.

 

...The Republican presidential contender also envisions April's annual angst replaced with the option of a simpler flat tax, illegal immigrants living humanely under a temporary worker program, and political partisanship driven by weekly news conferences and British-style question periods with joint meetings of Congress.

 

...While calling for Congress to drop mindless partisanship, McCain also chided the media--with whom he has enjoyed a generally positive relationship--for fueling contention with its campaign coverage.

 

Anticipating a key achievement of his administration, McCain said: "The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced."

 

Speaking to reporters afterward, McCain denied that by saying the war would be won by 2013 he was setting a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq --something he has criticized former rival Mitt Romney for doing.

 

In outlining other potential achievements of a first term in his speech, the 71-year-old McCain implicitly was suggesting he would seek a second term, an attempt to mute suggestions he would serve only four years after being the oldest president elected.

 

In particular, he sees a world in which:

• The Taliban threat in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced.
• "The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants," McCain said. "There still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001."
• A "League of Democracies" has supplanted a failed United Nations to apply sanctions to the Sudanese government and halt genocide in Darfur.
• The United States has had "several years of robust growth," appropriations bills free of lawmakers' pet projects known as "earmarks," public education improved by charter schools, health care improved by expansion of the private market and an energy crisis stemmed through the start of construction on 20 new nuclear reactors.
• McCain also pledges to halt a Bush administration practice of enacting laws with accompanying signing statements that exempt the president from having to enforce parts he finds objectionable.

 

I'd like to point out that McCain has no realistic domestic agenda (he seems to hold to the notion that cutting taxes, regulation, and government spending will solve every problem), and neglects to mention that he will make an attempt through judicial appointments to overturn abortion rights.

[SuperJerk 0]

Factcheck.org goes after McCain's budget proposals...

 

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/th...ain_part_i.html

McCain's pronouncements on cutting spending, and even on the growth in the size of the federal government, are dubious at best:

• McCain seems to say that he can save $100 billion by cutting out earmarks. But budget experts say that cutting earmarks would actually save very little. And questioned more closely, McCain's campaign now says that his planned savings have nothing to do with eliminating earmarks.
• With earmarks out as a potential source of savings, McCain hasn't said what he'd cut out of the discretionary budget to get to $100 billion. He's even indicated that defense spending might increase. If defense spending is off the table, saving $100 billion would require 18.5 percent across-the-board cuts in every other discretionary program, including things like student loans, veterans programs and highway construction. The alternative would be severe cuts in a few programs, as yet unnamed.
• McCain says that "just in the last few years" the government has puffed up "by 40 percent, by trillions." Actually, it has taken federal spending a decade to grow 40 percent, and even longer to grow by "trillions." This year federal spending is projected to come to $2.45 trillion, including $1.4 trillion for Social Security, Medicare, military spending and veterans programs.

And his stance on taxes...

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/th...in_part_ii.html

• McCain says that eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax will save "more than 25 million middle-class families more than $2,000 every year." But McCain's "middle class" includes families making up to $200,000 per year, and the $2,000 figure is an average. Those earning more money will see the lion's share of the savings. McCain also leaves out the fact that the proposal could cost as much as $1.6 trillion over 10 years.
• By the measure most economists prefer, McCain is wrong in his claim that Sens. Clinton and Obama want to implement "the single largest tax increase since the Second World War;" it would be the fifth largest. At a more basic level, it's misleading to tag Clinton and Obama for something that was scheduled during the Bush administration – the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which by law will occur at the end of 2010.
• McCain also repeats the mantra that cutting the capital gains tax rate will increase government receipts. In fact, rate cuts produce a spike in revenue, but it's only temporary. McCain also falsely claims that higher capital gains tax rates will affect 401(k) plans.
• McCain was the first to announce the now widely discredited proposal to suspend federal gas taxes. The proposal wouldn't lower prices at the pump and would result in (effectively) an $8.5 billion windfall to oil companies.

(I put that in bold because I remember Charles Gibson loading a question with this false premise during the last Democratic debate.)

[NoCalMike 0]

I want to know what McCain's "expansion of the private market" means when he talks about Health Care and how it would bring costs I mean really, just what in the fuck is he talking about, because they way it seems is that the private(and for profit) system we have in place for health care is precisely the reason we are where we are in the health care crisis.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Looks as if Jesse Ventura is considering a run for the US Senate in Minnesota against Norm Coleman and Al Franken. I think in that race he could win, especially due to the ease of registering to vote in Minnesota and the fact that neither candidate is incredibly appealing.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Wait, an Al Franken-Jesse Ventura senate race? Should be fun to watch.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Wait, an Al Franken-Jesse Ventura senate race? Should be fun to watch.

 

Yea, if Ventura enters I imagine the debate between the 3 candidates should get a good rating on C-SPAN. I always like watching those debates on C-SPAN @ election time, they let me size up the races across the country fairly easily.

[SuperJerk 0]

Looks as if Jesse Ventura is considering a run for the US Senate in Minnesota against Norm Coleman and Al Franken. I think in that race he could win, especially due to the ease of registering to vote in Minnesota and the fact that neither candidate is incredibly appealing.

While I agree with Jesse Ventura on many issues and think he's a hell of a guy, I think the media will BBQ him for his comments on 9/11 if he commits to running.

[SuperJerk 0]

Someone finally admits it...

 

Florida, Michigan cannot save Clinton

 

WASHINGTON – Michigan and Florida alone can't save Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign.

 

Interviews with those considering how to handle the two states' banished convention delegates found little interest in the former first lady's best-case scenario. Her position, part of a formidable

comeback challenge, is that all the delegates be seated in accordance with their disputed primaries.

 

Even if they were, it wouldn't erase Barack Obama's growing lead in delegates.

 

The Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee, a 30-member panel charged with interpreting and enforcing party rules, is to meet May 31 to consider how to handle Michigan and Florida's 368

delegates.

 

Last year, the panel imposed the harshest punishment it could render against the two states after they scheduled primaries in January, even though they were instructed not to vote until Feb. 5

or later. Michigan and Florida lost all their delegates to the national convention, and all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, stripping them of all the influence

they were trying to build by voting early.

 

But now there is agreement on all sides that at least some of the delegates should be restored in a gesture of party unity and respect to voters in two general election battlegrounds.

 

Clinton has been arguing for full reinstatement, which would boost her standing. She won both states, even though they didn't count toward the nomination and neither candidate campaigned in

them. Obama even had his name pulled from Michigan's ballot.

 

The Associated Press interviewed a third of the panel members and several other Democrats involved in the negotiations and found widespread agreement that the states must be punished for stepping out of line. If not, many members say, other states will do the same thing in four years.

 

"We certainly want to be fair to both candidates, and we want to be sure that we are fair to the 48 states who abided by the rules," said Democratic National Committee Secretary Alice

Germond, a panel member unaligned with either candidate. "We don't want absolute chaos for 2012.

 

 

"We want to reach out to Michigan and Florida and seat some group of delegates in some manner, at least most of us do. These are two critical states for the general (election) and the voters

of those states who were not the people who caused this awful conundrum to occur deserve our attention and deserve to be a part of our process and deserve to be at the convention," she said.

 

Just as Democrats across the country have been divided over which candidate would make the better nominee, most of the panel members also bring personal preferences to the table.

 

Many are long-standing party officials with close ties to the Clintons. The former first lady has 13 members publicly supporting her, including campaign advisers Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy who

are working to build her delegate count. Eight are openly aligned with Obama. Nine others are officially undeclared.

 

"We have to have delegates, and they have to be delegations that reflect the opinions of those two states," said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a committee member supporting Clinton. "How

we get there is very different because everyone sees these questions of who it helps and who it hurts. I don't think the formulation has been found that will get around the piece at this

point." But he said a solution is probably possible among the diverse interests.

 

Because Obama is in the lead for the nomination, his camp heads into the meeting in a position of strength. It is possible the Illinois senator could clinch the nomination by the time the panel

meets if he picks up the pace of superdelegate endorsements in the coming weeks.

 

But Obama has such a lead that he may be able to afford to be generous and give Clinton most of the delegates. That would help put the issue behind them and help him build goodwill in Michigan

and Florida heading into the November election.

 

Still, some think the fairest solution is to disregard the primary votes and split the delegations evenly between the two candidates. Yvonne Gates, a member of Nevada who said she is keeping her candidate preference private until after the meeting so her decision won't be questioned, said she isn't sure what position she would support at the meeting but that it must be fair to both

candidates.

 

"My definition is a 50-50 split is something that is fair," she said. "It cannot be a situation where you give one candidate more votes than the other. In my opinion that wasn't an election when they didn't have a chance to get out and talk to the people of that community."

 

It's also possible that any vote that recognizes the Michigan and Florida results would legitimize their elections. Clinton has been arguing that she leads in the popular vote, but that's only when both states are included and it is very slim — fewer than 5,000 votes out of 34 million cast.

 

Her accounting also doesn't include some caucus states that favored Obama and where the popular vote wasn't tallied. The measure of winning the nomination is not the popular vote but whoever can get the majority of delegates — currently 2,026 are needed for the nomination although adding Michigan and Florida back in would change the threshold.

 

Obama climbed to 1,904 on Friday, according to The Associated Press count. Clinton has 1,719 delegates and is trying to use the popular vote argument to win over more.

 

Clinton encouraged supporters in an e-mail Friday to sign a message to the DNC asking them to count Michigan and Florida in the May 31 meeting. "I need you to remind them that in the Democratic

Party, we count every vote," her e-mail said.

 

Fourteen of Clinton's Hispanic supporters in Congress sent a letter to the Rules and Bylaws Committee Friday arguing that disregarding the votes cast by Hispanics, 12 percent of the primary

vote in Florida, could damage the nominee.

 

So far, Obama's campaign has not been giving direction publicly or privately to panel members. The Clinton campaign's official position has been full reinstatement, but her advisers acknowledge

they are considering an idea before the panel to seat the delegates with half a vote each. Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that they "certainly

might" accept a compromise to seat half the delegates.

 

If their elections had been held according to party rules, Michigan and Florida would have allocated a total of 313 pledged delegates based on the outcome of the vote. Using the results of the January elections with no votes for Obama from Michigan, Clinton would get 178 to Obama's 67, giving her a 111-vote advantage. As of Friday, she was behind 185 delegates, so that would not catch her up even under that unlikely scenario.

 

The plans before the committee will be more generous to Obama.

 

The Michigan Democratic Party has proposed giving 69 of its 128 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama, an advantage of 10 delegates for Clinton.

 

A proposal from Florida would halve its 185 delegates. From that, Clinton would get 52.5 and Obama 33.5, a 19-delegate advantage for Clinton.

 

"I think it's a reasonable solution to the problem that was created, and my hope is that we'll be able to get past this and move on," said Allan Katz, an Obama supporter who serves on the

panel but won't be able to vote on any Florida solution because he is from the state.

 

The committee is not bound to select the proposals offered and has authority to reinstate any number of delegates and divide them in any way.

 

An open question is how to handle the other type of delegates each state lost — the superdelegates who are party leaders not bound by the outcome of the vote and are free to support whatever candidate they personally choose. Michigan has 29 superdelegates, and Florida 26. A total of nine have declared for Obama, 15 for Clinton and the rest are undeclared.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/...t-save-clinton/

 

Other things that can't save Hillary Clinton:

• Bill Clinton
• Superman
• White Jesus

 

[SuperJerk 0]

Karl Rove re-emerges to star in another episode of "Righteous Indignation Theater."

 

I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially Rove said, "I'M OFFENDED THAT BARACK OBAMA DIDN'T WANT TO WEAR A FLAG PIN BECAUSE IT IS AN INSULT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR FLAGS AS PART OF THEIR UNIFORM!" He also said, "I'M HOPING PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE BELIEVING THAT OBAMA TELLING EVERYONE HE HATED GOD AND GUNS WHEN HE SAID PEOPLE WERE 'BITTER', INSTEAD OF WHAT HE REALLY SAID!"

 

The irony of the "bitter" comment was that, in context, it was actually a criticism of the Democratic Party's economic betrayal of the working class, and an acknowledgment that the Republicans had outmanuevered them by appealling to voters based on the hand-full of issues the Republicans emphasize. Surely you'd think Rove of all people would agree with that assessment.

 

[Guest Desensitized]

I'll be honest: I have no fucking clue what the flag pin thing is about. I don't know why

 

1) Republicans are making a huge deal about Obama refusing to wear a flag pin, or why

2) Obama can't just wear the fucking pin if everyone will just shut up about it already

[Kinetic 0]

He actually has started wearing the flag pin recently.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Karl is just pissed because his plans for a 1000 year republican reich have been scuppered.

[Guest Desensitized]

Gogo, shut up.

[Gary Floyd 0]

Karl is just pissed because his plans for a 1000 year republican reich have been scuppered.

 

 

Gogo, shut up.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Gogo, shut up.

 

 

Well done you! What a put down!

 

Back onto adult conversation: I doubt even rove was expecting something like 1000 year republican rule, although supposedly he used to brag about a republican majority for the rest of his lifetime and his kids lifetime to people. but that's just a rumour. But I can't think he's too happy with the state of the republican party in 2008 and that frustration is showing. Just freaking out about a flag pin seems so unusual for a man that seems to pride himself in always being in control. Maybe the Siegelman case is taking its toll.

 

Either way, Mccain shouldn't be relying on Karl to win this election for him. Most of his tactics are outdated anyway: Black babies and swiftboaters probably don't have the same impact they used to.

[Jorge Gorgeous 0]

He actually has started wearing the flag pin recently.

 

He wears it to veterans events.

[SuperJerk 0]

I'll be honest: I have no fucking clue what the flag pin thing is about. I don't know why

 

1) Republicans are making a huge deal about Obama refusing to wear a flag pin, or why

2) Obama can't just wear the fucking pin if everyone will just shut up about it already

Because no one in the Republican Party thinks they can win on real issues anymore, given the situation in Iraq and the poor state of the U.S. economy.

[Guest Desensitized]

Gogo, shut up.

 

 

Well done you! What a put down!

If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't rely on the tired old Hitler crutch, the dumbest and most toxic standby of Internet discourse. Pull that shit again and I'll boot you for a few days.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I'm sorry. I'm really not in the mood to argue with someone and their points scoring ego. So, let's leave it there.

[Guest Desensitized]

I'm not "scoring points," I'm telling you that comparing the Republican Party to the Nazis is deeply inflammatory, hyperbolic, and offensive, and I'm not going to let people get away with it.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I felt it was obvious by the tone of my post that it was sarcasm. I also suggested Edwards get a jet ski for endorsing Obama....was that serious too?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Desensitized]

It's not a matter of sarcasm versus sincerity here. You don't invoke the idea of the Thousand-Year Reich "sarcastically," unless we've really redefined sarcasm as of late.

[SuperJerk 0]

"Schließen Sie mich daraus aus!"

[Guest Desensitized]

Stellar callback.

[BUTT 0]

I'm not "scoring points," I'm telling you that comparing the Republican Party to the Nazis is deeply inflammatory, hyperbolic, and offensive, and I'm not going to let people get away with it.

Especially since the Democrats are the ones more like Nazis. Taking away our guns and such!

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

You must've been OUTRAGED when the president called Obama Neville Chamberlain, Czech.

[Brett Favre 0]

[Jorge Gorgeous 0]

It's not a matter of sarcasm versus sincerity here. You don't invoke the idea of the Thousand-Year Reich "sarcastically," unless we've really redefined sarcasm as of late.

 

Jesus Christ, you're an idiot sometimes, man. It was obviously sarcastic. Where does it say you can't be sarcastic, or hyperbolic in a mocking manner, about the Nazis? I take umbrage with your cock-measuring form of moderation. Participate in arguments, or be a moderator, but when you do both... well... you know who else did both...?