Rev_Beezer wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Palin to do an interview with Charlie Gibson later this week.

What's Charlie Gibson's credibility these days?

He's on commercial television, so I'd say zero.

Rev_Beezer wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Palin to do an interview with Charlie Gibson later this week.

What's Charlie Gibson's credibility these days?

He's not known as a tough interviewer. I would expect plenty of softballs. I would be interested to see if they are making anything off-limits or pre-screening questions.

I would like to see her on The Daily Show

CMD wrote:

Rev_Beezer wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Palin to do an interview with Charlie Gibson later this week.

What's Charlie Gibson's credibility these days?

He's not known as a tough interviewer. I would expect plenty of softballs. I would be interested to see if they are making anything off-limits or pre-screening questions.

I would like to see her on The Daily Show

Democrats wanted an interview, they'll get it. She'll do well, and it will drown out more of the Obama message.

But Democrats are demanding it, and they'll see what happens.

Keep focusing on her, not McCain. Real smart.

kimbatiste wrote:Yes, life does begin at different times for different people because the question is when does an unborn fetus attain protectible life. To assert otherwise is just using your own biased and self-serving definition of life. Medical people may assert that life begins when the fetus can be self-sustaining - something that occurs much later then conception.

You have really lost all objectivity. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with believing, as a Catholic, that abortion is wrong but fine for other people to do it. I would not want my daughter to have abortion - I make no judgments on what is best for other people.

You're seriously telling me I've lost objectivity? Please let me know when you make your first objective post. First, medical people disagree when life begins. There is no one view on this. But let's set aside the medical definition and stick with the religious definition.

The Catholic church believes abortion is murder. This isn't a situation where a Catholic partakes in the Host or doesn't eat meat during lent and it's okay for the non-Catholic to do so. I've never heard of anyone say that they don't believe that they should murder someone but it's okay for someone else to.

If you truly believe as a Catholic that abortion is wrong but fine for other people to do it than you don't believe abortion is murder and that the prohibition on abortion is just part of Catholic dogma. That isn't the view of the Catholic church. They think it is murder. I'm sure you can still be a Catholic and not believe a life is being taken, but that isn't what Biden believes. He said that life begins at conception. If he truly believes that all human life begins at conception than he condones murder. So either Biden believes murder is okay as long as we aren't killing Catholic fetuses or he doesn't believe life begins at conception. You can't have it both ways. Yet Biden seems to want to.

pacino wrote:Biden's in debt. In that regard, he is more like the average American that most Congressmen. He does not seem to be too slick with his own personal finances.

Considering that his estate, which has two homes, is worth anywhere from $2.5 million to $4 million and he owes only $731,000 on it, he has to be horrible with personal finances to be in debt. How did he accumulate more than $3 million in liabilities? It's not from his Presidential campaign. His campaign has $173,999 in debt. Considering that after taking $2 million in Federal matching funds his campaign has $196,537 in the bank. Tthe AP is taking this from official filings, and it doesn't look like Biden has huge debts. Chris Matthews cites a Washington Post investigation indicating Biden's net worth as $100,000-$150,000. That may be the value of his liquid assets, but clearly he's worth a lot more than that.

If he's truly destitute he should talk to his Washington lobbyist son Hunter and brother James. They are doing so well that lawsuits are being filed against them.

Laexile wrote:

The often repeated Democratic mantra that John McCain hasn’t voted against the Bush administration once in 2008. He voted 95 percent of the time with the Bush administration in 2007 is, of course, misleading. He has barely voted in 2008 and hasn't voted on a bill in five months. He voted less than half the time in 2007. The National Journal regards his sample sizes insignificant to make a classification.

In 2007 Barack Obama voted with President Bush 40% of the time! In 2006 he voted with George Bush 49% of the time! Do we really want to elect a Democrat so aligned with President Bush? Of course these vote numbers are nonsense. Most Senate votes are unanimous and many of them are resolutions congratulating the World Series champs. A better indicator is how Obama voted in relation to his Party. He voted with fellow Senate Democrats 97 percent of the time in 2007 and 2005, and 96 percent of the time in 2006. Democrats need not worry. He votes straight Party line, even if it coincides with President Bush.

No one ever claimed John McCain was the most liberal US Senator. He hardly appears very conservative either. In 2007 the ACU ranked him the 33rd of 49 GOP Senators in Conservatism. In 2006 he was 42nd of 49. The National Journal didn't rank him in 2007, but put him 46th, 45th, and 49th in 2006, 2005, and 2004. He does not vote against his Party less than many other people in the Republican Party do. He actually does it more than just a few.

I can see you were taught to push back on the 90% voting with Bush point. Baffle them with numbers, I guess. It's too bad that those are McCain's own words, not some invention of the left. He used those words to get votes in the primary, so I don't think it's fair to run from them now.

And 40% by Obama strikes me as very low (lower than I would have expected) considering the number of procedural votes, budget votes, normal bipartisan laws, etc.

But what's most damaging to McCain, IMO, is the way his voting has changed over the last few years. I posted this before, but watch the incredible transforming McCain. The more he needed Bush and the Rove machine, the more he voted with them. His ambition was more important than his integrity, or that's the way it looks to me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBfngOsvmA0&eurl=viewtopic.php_t=6260&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=105.html[/youtube]

Rococo4 wrote:Democrats wanted an interview, they'll get it. She'll do well, and it will drown out more of the Obama message.

But Democrats are demanding it, and they'll see what happens.

Keep focusing on her, not McCain. Real smart.

Don't you feel the attention on Palin and not McCain has a real chance to negatively impact the McCain campaign? Obama is garnering all of attention on the Dem side. Biden is a known entity, there is no need to vet him publicly, he falls largely in step with Obama's views. Palin has a lot of negatives to the average middle of the road voter once you get past her aw shucks demeanor. Does McCain want his campaign to be tied to social issues like creationism and banning same sex marriage while the Dems are focusing on real issues? Kind of negates the "maverick" image and makes people think of GWB. I think thats the impact Palin will have in the long run. She has little to bring to the table and is not very credible when discussing economic plans, foreign policy, etc... We shall see.

Top 25 Congressional Races

If anyone wants to read a brief House summary, I think this is pretty good.

McCain +1.2

McCain's first lead in RCP polling average since April 15th, which was a few days after the cling to guns and religion gaffe. McCain would still be up a tiny bit if they used the RV numbers from that astounding Gallup poll. I think at this point, given that turnout is so hard to project, I'd be more comfortable looking at the registered voter number than the likely voter number. That said, that 10% number is just beautiful to look at.

MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors

Sarah Palin, slave to Big Oil

jerseyhoya wrote:MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors

Im a bit confused at Matthews removal as he's usually pretty fair. But I do agree with Olbermann's removal. It would be like having O'Reilly anchor the coverage. They have their own opinion shows and that's fine but neither make a good "reporter".

So it is true, McCain wants Democrats in his cabinet.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/07/ ... index.html

I like the idea of a bipartisan cabinet - with the best staff for the jobs, no matter what the party. Would Obama do the same thing and invite Republicans to work for him?

TheDude24 wrote:So it is true, McCain wants Democrats in his cabinet.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/07/ ... index.html

I like the idea of a bipartisan cabinet - with the best staff for the jobs, no matter what the party. Would Obama do the same thing and invite Republicans to work for him?

I'm pretty confident that either guy, should he win, will have members of the other party in his cabinet, and not along the Bush model (a hack Dem congressman with a low-profile agency) either.

TheDude24 wrote:So it is true, McCain wants Democrats in his cabinet.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/07/ ... index.html

I like the idea of a bipartisan cabinet - with the best staff for the jobs, no matter what the party. Would Obama do the same thing and invite Republicans to work for him?

I think I read somewhere that Obama is a big fan of Lincoln and the way he built his cabinet. Lincoln brought in the people he ran against for president and generally just people that disagreed with him. That doesn't mean Obama has pledged to do the same thing but it is something.

Monkeyboy wrote:I can see you were taught to push back on the 90% voting with Bush point. Baffle them with numbers, I guess. It's too bad that those are McCain's own words, not some invention of the left. He used those words to get votes in the primary, so I don't think it's fair to run from them now.

But what's most damaging to McCain, IMO, is the way his voting has changed over the last few years. I posted this before, but watch the incredible transforming McCain. The more he needed Bush and the Rove machine, the more he voted with them. His ambition was more important than his integrity, or that's the way it looks to me.

I can't find the post you're referring to. What are his own words? McCain has complimented the administration and criticized it in the past. I don't see how any Republican could always be critical of a Republican administration.

Are you accusing me of baffling them with numbers? By posting a Youtube video that baffles with numbers? Your statement doesn't jibe with the facts. How does he need the Bush-Rove machine? Steve Schmidt didn't come on board until the spring of 2008. McCain hasn't voted since. So that can't be it. In the primaries he didn't align himself with Bush. Romney did. Mitt's strategy was he that he believed in what Bush did but he was an outsider who knew how to do it well. McCain took a more moderate position on most issues. He won a lot of open primaries drawing independents as a result.

The last year he had a full year of voting was 2006. At the time he was at his most liberal. As we've determined voting with the President isn't unusual even if you're Barack Obama. Since he's missed so many votes in 2007 and 2008 it's possible that he hasn't voted on many of the most partisan issues. Have you analyzed his votes during these two years to determine he's aligned with the administration?

In 2007 McCain supported two unpopular issues, immigration reform and the surge. The surge was his stance, one that Bush adopted, not the other way around. When President Bush steals your ideas should you flip flop? He was aligned with Bush on immigration but the issue was one opposed by the base and supported by many Democrats including Obama. Can you name two issues that America has so vehemently opposed that Obama has supported? I can't think of one. FISA did alienate his base but the bill was popular with the moderates he wants.

The Dems can keep distorting McCain's record. You can agree with it without examining it. I hope this keeps happening. The Left has been trying to tie Bush and McCain together for six months. And McCain keeps gaining in the polls. Because the only people buying it are people like yourself. You'd think when a strategy is such a major failure the Democrats would abandon it. Go after McCain instead of Bush. Nope. They think it's because they haven't tried hard enough to tie the two together. Keep it up Dems. I'm sure that's it.

I can think of one issue that the Republican party opposes that Obama supports and that is the issue of community organizing.

CalvinBall wrote:

TheDude24 wrote:So it is true, McCain wants Democrats in his cabinet.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/07/ ... index.html

I like the idea of a bipartisan cabinet - with the best staff for the jobs, no matter what the party. Would Obama do the same thing and invite Republicans to work for him?

I think I read somewhere that Obama is a big fan of Lincoln and the way he built his cabinet. Lincoln brought in the people he ran against for president and generally just people that disagreed with him. That doesn't mean Obama has pledged to do the same thing but it is something.

Lincoln kept firing generals because he couldn't find any that agreed with him. He made Andrew Johnson his VP as part of a national unity party. The result was one of the worst, if not the worst, Presidencies in US history. Johnson makes Bush look like Harry Truman. Edwin Stanton wasn't aligned with Lincoln but he wasn't brought in to provide another ideological point of view. He was there to win a war. He and Lincoln had a rocky relationship, but Stanton eventually became a Republican aligned with Lincoln. I don't think Lincoln is a good example.

CalvinBall wrote:I can think of one issue that the Republican party opposes that Obama supports and that is the issue of community organizing.

McCain called community organizing "very honorable" yesterday. He's always going against his own party.

I am talking exclusively about his cabinet. It is pretty much common knowledge that Lincoln brought in his rivals to be part of his cabinet. You can disagree with historical fact though, I guess.

Good book