Campaign 2008

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m mn mn m,n ,n ,mn ,m ,m

[SuperJerk 0]

This is election getting stupider by the day...

 

McCain camp compares Obama to Spears, Hilton By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer

 

John McCain 's presidential campaign on Wednesday released a withering television ad comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, suggesting the Democratic contender is little more than a vapid but widely recognized media concoction.

 

Obama's campaign quickly responded with a commercial of its own, dismissing McCain's complaints as "baloney" and "baseless."

 

McCain's ad, titled "Celeb" and set to air in 11 battleground states, intercuts images of Obama on his trip to Europe last week with video of twenty-something pop stars Spears and Hilton — both better known for their childish off-screen antics.

 

"He's the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?" the voiceover asks, noting the Illinois senator's opposition to offshore oil drilling and suggesting he would raise taxes if elected.

 

It was the latest effort by the GOP hopeful to cast Obama as a lightweight with little experience in leadership or governing. It also was risky for McCain's campaign to both acknowledge Obama's worldwide fame and depict it as a weakness rather than a strength."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_el_pr/mccain

 

One question: WHO IS RUNNING THIS CAMPAIGN?

 

If this isn't the worst line of attack I've ever heard, I don't know what is.

 

 

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Did they really say he was "baloney"? Awesome.

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Remember when Obama flashed his labia folds to the world?

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Well you guys are forgetting something. What about big cities that are Infinite City Sprawl(ICS). The city of Houston and its suburban out lands is really fucking spaced out. It can take 2 or more hours to cross the city on the highway at 75 mph with no traffic. How does one put a subway or train system in to get from The Woodlands(northern most suburban city) to NASA Road 1 (just south of downtown). There has to be a 3 hour drive to get there. How long of a commute would that be?

 

As for the tax issue, well taxes will rise. But I doubt any one person is going to add a 3 dollar a gallon tax on gas to get people to drive less. Real smart to tax the living hell out of the number one way of interstate commerce travel. Yes, lets make EVERY FUCKING ITEM ON THE MARKET rise up 100 to 400% just to off set the cost of shipping. Because the only one taking the hit would be the buyers. Don't forget that independent truckers would go out of business, another rise in cost of goods. Not to mention that 6 to 8 dollars a gallon on gas wouldn't make any one happy. It would cause a fucking civil war. Environmentalist would be happy people are not driving. But economist would shit a brick talking about the bottom 40% of the nation not affording to go to work, shop, spend any non bear essentials. Think there is a mortgage crisis now, let gas really fuck things up.

 

BTW: $6 dollars a gallon on (e10)87octane would equal up to $90 to fill up a fucking Honda Civic. It would make (b5)diesel around $7.50 a gallon, so a F350 cost $225 dollars a fill up. If you fill up 3 times on that diesel, that could be someone's rent for the month. Or to get scary, filling up a Civic at $8 dollars a gallon would be $120 dollars. 93 would be $8.50 and a Challenger RT would be $153 a fill up.

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My Civic only hold 11 gallons, but its a hybird. At $8 a gallon, $1 would get me about 5 miles.

 

Wait...How did this become the price o' gas thread? And WTF is up with the intelligent analysis all of a sudden?

 

 

OMFG MCCAIN SUX~!!!!111

(There, back on topic.)

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Remember when Obama flashed his labia folds to the world?

DO I?!?!? I jacked off at the sight man!

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Question for John "decades in DC to do something about it" McCain after mindlessly saying that Obama is entirely to blame for $4-a-gallon gas: Is he inexperienced or does he run the whole goddam show in this country?

 

Who would have guessed in 2000 that 8 years later McCain would be running one of the dirtiest campagns this side of LBJ?

That's not dirt. That's desparation.

 

No one is going to buy that Obama is responsible for high gas prices. That's such an...insane...allegation that only the most fundamentally ignorant voter would buy it (i.e. people who were going to vote Republican anyways).

[EricMM 0]

Snuff hit it on the head. America is built for the car/methods of personal transportation. A massive public transit system really won't work in the U.S. and if it was attempted it would cost trillions upon trillions of dollars.

Guess what, just because thats the way things are layed out now doesn't mean thats the way things have to or CAN BE layed out in the future.

 

Things have to change.

[sfaJack 0]

I think we all see (and some, including me--to some degree--even agree with) your point Eric, but do you seriously think that building a massive public transportation infrastructure in this country is feasible from either a cost or a time standpoint?

 

For instance, Houston: it took 3 1/2 years and $350 million--and a few years of litigation over right-of-ways before that--to get a SEVEN MILE stretch of light rail downtown in place. The result of all of that time and cost was a toy train that is pretty useless and a bunch of businesses that were forced to close because their parking was stolen and the streets in front of them were closed for months at a time due to construction. I guess the rail line nice if you live/work in the medical center but it ultimately does NOTHING to ease freeway congestion or commuter headaches because it doesn't go anywhere near where 98% of the population actually lives.

 

3 1/2 years and $350 million for THAT. It's a joke.

 

Now consider the time and cost it would take to build the 20-30 mile commuter rail lines (in six different directions, by the way) that are actually needed around here. It will take DECADES and cost trillions. Multiply that by pretty much every city of even moderate size in this country and you've got quite a tab.

 

Even if we started construction on these rail lines tomorrow, what the fuck do you suggest we do in the mean time?? (And don't say "ride a bike" because that isn't practical in this city.)

 

 

[EricMM 0]

First of all, I didn't say we should build a light rail in every corner of the country.

 

Busses are simpler than trains, take the bus to the train or something.

 

Look, people are going to have to MOVE. If you live in the middle of nowhere, and the costs are too high for you to constantly ship you and yours around, for an hour or so every day, you need to go someplace else.

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Jerk: Accusing Obama of 'rather winning an election than a war' is about as dirty as it gets. So is blaming him for the biggest frustration currently plaguing the country, gas prices, when he's the one who's been in Washington since his halcyon days of Reagan. Subliminally attaching him to the likes of Britney & Paris is also very dirty stuff.

 

Eric: Ass, or a hole in the ground?

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I define dirty as swift-boating or accusing people of father illegitimate children. Putting blame where it obviously doesn't belong or making moronic comparisons is just the act of a desperate man that anyone with a brain can see through. But that's my opinion.

 

 

This might also be considered dirty:

 

Republican John McCain says he's disappointed that Democratic rival Barack Obama claimed Republicans will try to scare voters by saying he doesn't look like previous presidents. McCain told local reporters Thursday he agreed with his campaign manager Rick Davis, who said Obama was playing the race card.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_...r/campaign_race

 

This argument would only work if Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Cunningham, Michael Savage and the rest weren't all Republicans.

 

For fuck's sake, the entire first half of this campaign was the Republican Party trying to convince people that Obama hates white people.

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Q: Eric, have you ever visited any other parts of the US besides MD? Its a different world from the Mid-Atlantic/New England areas. I am just wondering if you have.

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Snuff hit it on the head. America is built for the car/methods of personal transportation. A massive public transit system really won't work in the U.S. and if it was attempted it would cost trillions upon trillions of dollars.

Guess what, just because thats the way things are layed out now doesn't mean thats the way things have to or CAN BE layed out in the future.

 

Things have to change.

 

I usually think that Eric's kind of a holier than thou faggot, but he's pretty much dead on here. People act like America's "car culture"/suburban sprawl/whatever just appeared fully formed one day ex nihilo and is now here to stay forever. Except, it didn't. It was a mass social movement spurred on by a whole slew of social/cultural/political factors. I don't see why it's so inconceivable that a reverse movement out of the suburbs and back into the cities couldn't be brought on by high gas prices and shit. Is there any real reason to live in some backwater small town 40+ minutes away from your job/proper civilization? Not really.

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I'm pretty confident that rural/farm communities and small towns/villages didn't just recently pop up out of the blue.

 

This might be the dumbest thing I've ever read in this folder.

 

 

[Guest Vitamin X]

MX: Googling the Woodlands to Houston is pretty nuts. I've been to texas and several other parts in the country, but I can attest that with proper urban planning, it can be possible to build a rail transit system that works, it will just have to take some time. Here in Portland (which, I know, is denser and much smaller in land size than Houston) we are continuing to expand our light rail service to reach all the way out to Wilsonville, OR, and eventually far south on the Willamette to nearly Salem, which is about 30 miles south of downtown. And they're talking about putting in a bridge to nearby Vancouver, WA with transit on board so you're talking that you could reach all that, and the total time it would take is maybe about an hour, hour and a half. Light rail transit hasn't been instituted in many major American cities in intelligent ways, and from sfaJack mentioned about this medical hooey they have, it sounds like it's not very easy to plan things out with the community because of the way things are built. I'm not from Houston, so I can't really comment, but what about a transit system, for example, that would run parallel to the loop, and then connecting to parts of downtown? A Ride N Share system (meaning you could park your car for free while you hop on a train that runs parallel to the loop, similar to how we do things out in the Pacific NW as well as down in the SF Bay Area) where people could drive to a nearby station, then hop on a train to get them to work, would be a great solution.

 

As for cost, we've invested $3 billion into the MAX so far here in Portland, which has a daily ridership of 120,000 people during the weekdays, and covers 44.3 miles of rail. We're a much smaller economy as well, and we've made it work here, I think it's taken 20 years to get to the current point, so it's not like it's quick to get to this point, but these solutions take time. In larger cities like Boston, Philly, and San Francisco, they take advantage of heavy-rail subway systems as well, which is possible in Houston, I'd imagine.

 

[NoCalMike 0]

When I read about other countries and how high much more they pay for gas then us, I laugh for about a half a second until I realize that they also probably walk to their jobs, the market, to dinner etc etc etc and probably only really need to use a vehicle when they are going on some type of trip.

 

I mean seriously, as much as 4/gal gas sucks, it wouldn't suck nearly as much had our entire infrastructure not been planned and based on needing a vehicle for every working american that doesn't like in a major metropolitan area.

[Guest]

We have a nice rail system out here, but even then, it's hard to get where you need to go. 73 miles on the Metro line ain't too much in these parts (strictly LA County I mean). Would I take the train if I had to commute to LA every day? Yes, but in some cases, there isn't enough room for people to hop on. They were talking about that a few weeks back on the news. There's not a whole lot you can really do about it, save add more cars to the train. We spread out to avoid living on top of each other (not literally), but we are still doing so. Very rare you find an empty lot out here.

 

My pops drives all the way out to the Valley every day, but he doesn't pay for gas, the county does. He cares about rail, but only in that it gets other people off the road and takes time off his commute. He couldn't use it or anything, and you can say the same for a lot of drivers in the area. People need their vehicles.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

Whenever I go to the Os game, I always take the light rail from Glen Burnie right to Camden Yards. $3.20 for a round trip ticket only is a good idea because it costs at least $5-10 to park at Camden Yards. Otherwise it comes out about even in terms of the amount of gas Id burn driving all the way into Baltimore and back and it would probably be a bit faster.

 

My 2 days experience with the NYC Subway system and trying to walk around and across streets there on the otherhand had me glad I wasnt trying to drive around in NYC. I still dont have a clue how anyone in their right mind would try to drive around in NYC.

 

Locally the closest thing we have to mass transit is a bus service which runs a spotty schedule and has out of the way stops. Its primarily used by seniors as a way of getting around and I seriously doubt it will be around much longer if its only Seniors that continue to use it the most.

 

 

 

 

[Timmy8271 0]

Here in the Orlando area, they are actually cutting bus routes even though Public Transportation is up like 15%. Most of it is because of the shitty budget and the millions of dollars the local government has to cut because of the brilliant plans they planned out. They have been trying to get a "rail transit" system together for years but It will never happen. Not as long as the Government is in bed with the Transportation authority about building more roads.

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I'm pretty confident that rural/farm communities and small towns/villages didn't just recently pop up out of the blue.

 

This might be the dumbest thing I've ever read in this folder.

 

I'm not sure what you're responding to??

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How can you possibly drive from Glen Burnie into Baltimore, on a game night, on less than a gallon of gas?

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

How can you possibly drive from Glen Burnie into Baltimore, on a game night, on less than a gallon of gas?

I was just estimating earlier but I looked it up on google maps and the Distance from the Cromwell Light Rail station to Camden Yards is roughly 10 miles by road. My car gets, at worst 35 mpg, so roughly half a gallon of gas for round trip which at the current rate of $3.79 per gallon is $1.90, but with parking the light rail is still cheaper.

As far as time, If I was driving into Baltimore Id definitely leave earlier and try to be at the park by 5pm to avoid rush hour and sitting around burning gas.

 

Oh, and Glen Beck brought up a good point today on his show. Congress' ban on Offshore drilling is set to expire at the end of September and it doesn't look like they are going to even bother voting on an extension or anything. The plain and simple reason is that the Democrats dont want their party members who are up for re-election in November (read: Obama) who will mostly be voting against it (cause Nancy Pelosi would be angry if they did), giving the Republicans key ammo against them in the late months leading up to the election on such a key issue which Republicans actually seem to be gaining support for (Democrat X voted Against offshore drilling..he doesn't care about the high cost of gas and increasing prices on goods even though just talk of beginning offshore drilling dropped prices $25 a barrel in 1 week, just imagine what would happen if we were actually allowed to drill for oil..).

 

So it looks like offshore drilling will be able to start in October although it will take a while to get started. I would imagine by October we could actually see the price of a barrel of oil below $100. Good news for everyone except the environmentalists! And of course, it will probably only last for a couple months until Obama comes in and shuts it all down, but if he goes and shuts it down then the price will go up again which will anger people.

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From the man who says that McCain can't win.

[SuperJerk 0]

This "let's blame Democrats for gas prices" strategy's success is already being reflected in the national poll numbers. In other words, people don't buy it.

 

Those gas taxes and regulations Beck, Limbaugh, and others are trying to blame for price were in place for many YEARS before the price spike happened. Couple this with media reports of RECORD PROFITS for oil companies, no one with half a brain and any sense of intellectual honesty is going to blame Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi for this.

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Glen Beck didn't tell Marvin anything about these so-called 'record profits' or supposed decades of the regulations being in place.

[EricMM 0]

Eric, have you ever visited any other parts of the US besides MD? Its a different world from the Mid-Atlantic/New England areas. I am just wondering if you have.

I have. Not an enormous amount, but I have.

 

What, exactly, is your point?

 

That it will be "too hard" for people to relocate, or build adaquate public transportation?

 

If people had been trying, slowly, for all the years that people like me have been railing for it, it wouldn't be so fucking hard. But NO. Now people are going broke because the price of gas went up five times in eight years. THEY set THEMSELVES up. There is no possible way for America to supply its own oil. We are too greedy.

 

Accept that. The "American lifestyle" is something we buy from the rest of the world, and cannot produce ourselves. If, instead, we curtailed our energy use thirty years ago when this FIRST became a problem, we would NOT be in this mess, obviously. If, perhaps, we had decided to produce electric cars, we would not be in this mess. If, hopefully, we understand that we need clean, renewable energy to protect our future, we could be driving around in American cars powered by American engines driving on American energy.

 

But look what we have instead. And this isn't the last time. After Katrina, conservatives said that that was the peak, that soon gas would go back to $2 or below. Not gonna happen. Production cannot increase at the rate supply is and will.

 

So if it is "unfair" or "unreasonable" for me to suggest that people who commute fifty miles everywhere because they live fifty miles from anything MOVE, what, pray tell, is "reasonable"? Status quo? Please.

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Unrelentingly dumb.

 

Where do you expect these people to find the money to move into a city? When the cities become impossibly huge, will each block have a train station? Will the fed. Govt force people who've lived in their smaller communities for generations to move to a new big city? Will the magic trains be built first so people can afford to move the truckloads of belongings to their new homes? Do the factories and farms in smaller communities get torn down or are they left to erode? How much pollution and congestion are we looking at with everybody living side by side? As an environmentalist, how can you condone destroying all of the outlying land that will have to go to make room for these exponentially expanding cities? Do the people living in the cities already have to move to the the expanding outreaches thereof to make room for all of the trains that will be needed? Will there be any concern for all of the historic and scenic buildings, parks, and such that will have to be overrun for the city expansion? Are family vacations going to be prohibited? Will roads be maintained despite the lack of usage thus wasting more taxpayer money? If they are not maintained, does that eliminate anybody's freedom to wander elsewhere by any means other than the magic train? When a train, as the only allowable means of conveyance, experiences technical/mechanical problems will it be a day off at every concecting office, factory, school, etc? Will all food be grown in factory settings within the cities?

[SuperJerk 0]

Hey, THIS is more like it...

 

Obama slams McCain over oil company tax breaks.

 

 

On a side note...can we please retire the expression "play the race card" from the political lexicon? For starters, its come to mean any time race is referenced by black people (which is a silly thing to use a card-game metaphor for), and second because that thing's been a cliche since the O.J. trial...you know, 13 YEARS AGO.