jerseyhoya wrote:We haven't had 51 votes for about 40% of the time Obama has been in office.

Edit: I mean honestly, we hold all the cards...how'd you come up with that?

The Dems control Congress for $#@!'s sake.

Monkeyboy wrote:I like McCain's new ad:

Pity me, I'm old and so many bad things have happened to me because of war. I'm a helpless victim.

Nevermind that he supports such wars.

jeff2sf wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:I like McCain's new ad:

Pity me, I'm old and so many bad things have happened to me because of war. I'm a helpless victim.

Nevermind that he supports such wars.

Nevermind that he made sacrifices the likes of which I hope none of us ever have to go through and the likes of which most other Americans never have done so that you can enjoy your posting on message boards.

The Red Tornado wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:I like McCain's new ad:

Pity me, I'm old and so many bad things have happened to me because of war. I'm a helpless victim.

Nevermind that he supports such wars.

Nevermind that he made sacrifices the likes of which I hope none of us ever have to go through and the likes of which most other Americans never have done so that you can enjoy your posting on message boards.

So that makes him free of criticism?

jeff2sf wrote:

The Red Tornado wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:I like McCain's new ad:

Pity me, I'm old and so many bad things have happened to me because of war. I'm a helpless victim.

Nevermind that he supports such wars.

Nevermind that he made sacrifices the likes of which I hope none of us ever have to go through and the likes of which most other Americans never have done so that you can enjoy your posting on message boards.

So that makes him free of criticism?

No of course not, but it DOES make him free of criticism on the idea of some very very very terrible things DID happen to him because of war. He sacrificed a lot for us. More than you or I have, that's for sure. So if you want to criticize him as someone who's running Bush's 3rd term, go ahead. But don't try and blow off a sacrifice that was pretty much monumental.

PS - I'm voting Obama.

jeff2sf wrote:If by mind made up that he's an honorable man who won't torture, you bet, I have my mind made up. The personal courage and integrity in this clip speak volumes as he flatly disagrees with the "right". Incidentally, who pointed me to this in the first place? Noted right-wing wacko Dajafi.

http://davidcpodhaskie.com/2008/05/john ... rture.html

dajafi wrote:....the question (and this is where we get into nanny-state arguments, which I admit to feeling conflicted about) is the extent to which society at large/government has any right or even obligation to guide people away from (or even restrict their access to) "temptation & chaos."

(Great R&B band name, btw.)

If I didn't know better, this might almost read as a Diggers argument...

Monkeyboy wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:If by mind made up that he's an honorable man who won't torture, you bet, I have my mind made up. The personal courage and integrity in this clip speak volumes as he flatly disagrees with the "right". Incidentally, who pointed me to this in the first place? Noted right-wing wacko Dajafi.

http://davidcpodhaskie.com/2008/05/john ... rture.html

Oh, OK, McCain said on O'Reilly that he was against troture. You win the argument, I'm convinced. LOL.

Why don't you take a look at his voting record -- you know, what he's actually done over the past few years, rather than what he said on a right wing talk show. Geez, Jeff, I expect more out of you.

jeff2sf wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:If by mind made up that he's an honorable man who won't torture, you bet, I have my mind made up. The personal courage and integrity in this clip speak volumes as he flatly disagrees with the "right". Incidentally, who pointed me to this in the first place? Noted right-wing wacko Dajafi.

http://davidcpodhaskie.com/2008/05/john ... rture.html

Oh, OK, McCain said on O'Reilly that he was against troture. You win the argument, I'm convinced. LOL.

Why don't you take a look at his voting record -- you know, what he's actually done over the past few years, rather than what he said on a right wing talk show. Geez, Jeff, I expect more out of you.

You mean where he was one of three Republican senators who took a principled stand against party and president to speak out/vote against torture? Are you really so blindly leftist to think that John McCain is going to support torture? You're just a lefty sheep who's not worth a debate if that's the case, because no Republican will ever do anything you can support. There are PLENTY of things to criticize John McCain for, but his principled stand against torture on the whole is not one of them.

The leading Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war who steadfastly opposes the use of torture, voted against the bill. Mr. McCain said the ban would limit the C.I.A.’s ability to gather intelligence. “We always supported allowing the C.I.A. to use extra measures,” he said.

At the same time, he said that he believed “waterboarding is illegal and should be banned” and that the agency must adhere to existing federal law and international treaties.

Underscoring the complexity of the political currents, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumed GOP nominee for president and a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure. McCain led earlier efforts in the Senate to ban cruel treatment of prisoners, and has denounced waterboarding in presidential debates. But preserving the CIA's ability to employ so-called enhanced interrogation methods has broad support in the party's conservative base.

Senator McCain rightly insists that the U.S. may not (i) torture; (ii) engage in cruel treatment prohibited by Common Article 3; or (iii) engage in conduct that shocks the conscience, under the McCain Amendment. He also insists that waterboarding violates each of these legal restrictions, that the Bush Administration's legal analysis has been dishonest and flatly wrong, and that we need "a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program."

The Feinstein Amendment would have accomplished all of these objectives, but Senator McCain voted against it, presumably because he wishes that the CIA be permitted to continue the use of other of its enhanced techniques, apart from waterboarding. Those techniques are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain has not explained which of these he thinks are not torture and cruel treatment, nor which he would wish to preserve for use by the CIA. But if the President does as he has promised and follows Senator McCain's lead by vetoing this bill, the CIA will continue to assert the right to use all of these techniques -- and possibly waterboarding, as well.

There are two reasons, and two reasons only, that the Bush administration is able to claim this power: John McCain and the Military Commissions Act. In September, 2006, McCain made a melodramatic display -- with great media fanfare -- of insisting that the MCA require compliance with the Geneva Conventions for all detainees. But while the MCA purports to require that, it also vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the Conventions. After parading around as the righteous opponent of torture, McCain nonetheless endorsed and voted for the MCA, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. That law pretends to compel compliance with the Conventions, while simultaneously vesting the President with the power to violate them -- precisely the power that the President is invoking here to proclaim that we have the right to use these methods. As Columbia Law Professor Michael Dorf wrote at the time:

Americans following the news coverage of the debate about how to treat captives in the ongoing military conflicts could be forgiven for believing that the bill recently passed by Congress, the Military Commissions Act ("MCA"), was a compromise between a White House seeking far-reaching powers, and Senators seeking to restrain the Executive. After all, prior to reaching an agreement with the President, four prominent Republican Senators -- Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and John Warner -- had drawn a line in the sand, refusing to go along with a measure that would have redefined the Geneva Conventions' references to "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." No doubt many Americans believe that because these four courageous Senators stood on moral principle, the bill that emerged, and which President Bush will certainly sign, reflects a careful balance between liberty and security.

Yet if that is what Americans believe, they are sorely mistaken. On nearly every issue, the MCA gives the White House everything it sought. It immunizes government officials for past war crimes; it cuts the United States off from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions; and it all but eliminates access to civilian courts for non-citizens -- including permanent residents whose children are citizens -- that the government, in its nearly unreviewable discretion, determines to be unlawful enemy combatants.

Destroying the protections of the Geneva Conventions while pretending to preserve them was accomplished by Section 6(a)(3) of the MCA (.pdf), which provides:

jeff2sf wrote:I said you WOULD be a sheep if you really believe that. I didn't call you that. Now please, go on, keep trying to argue that John McCain would continue this country's shameful policy on torture. Go ahead, please keep trying.

Again, the sad thing is I want Obama to win, and I'm going to vote for Obama, but when you can't concede certain points on your opponent, you lose all credibility. You're not fit to argue with because you'll never acknowledge the good in McCain, and he is genuinely good (but Obama is better) If Obama's taught us anything, it's to acknowledge when the other side has a point even while not rolling over on your own position. For instance, while I think Bush is one of the worst presidents of all time, I'm ready to concede he's never actually eaten a baby. I don't think you would concede that.