The Ledge Mock Election: 2008

[Stephanie]

Mccain, just b/c I think Obama is the anitchrist. As a former New Yorker
i really wanted Guiliani

[Musicman408]

Originally Posted by Stephanie

Mccain, just b/c I think Obama is the anitchrist. As a former New Yorker
i really wanted Guiliani

Yeah, I totally remember when Guiliani was supposed to be this magnificent front runner, and it was sad to see him fail so badly with the results.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

Oh I didn't realize Hil was asking Barack to pay off her campaign debt. For real? Is there a precedent for that?

Yes. It's comon procedure.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Yes. It's comon procedure.

Yep - McCain did it for Guiliani. Yet, not a peep from Fox News about it, much less the innuendo that there was something dirty about it

As for voting for McCain, I do not get it. Why would anyone want to vote for the leader of a party that wants to put people (straight or gay) in jail for consensual oral sex, even while married. IMO - these voters are hypocrites because who amongst us majors has not had oral sex. If you have and you are voting for McCain, I think you should ask the police to put you in jail citing the laws the GOP defends and send the GOP a card explaining that you have acted on their most stringent behest (and in accordance with a large number of their hypocritical private lives) . And, not only is that an issue, it is a primary issue for that party - I mean really

Of course and more importantly at least to me, that same party has driven the US economy from a huge surplus to huge debt in eight years and McCain has no comprehensive plan to pay for it. What he does instead is promise tax relief to everyone, when only the wealthiest 1% will actually get it on any significant level (why o why can't we have the so called fair tax (www.fairtax.org) ?) -- Maybe people think they are somehow part of that wealthiest 1% or will somehow be "in the club" if they are for the GOP. Maybe they think that the national debt will somehow vanish.

Of course, those so supportive of the GOP's position in Iraq, should IMO volunteer for the armed forces as well. Yet, armchair quarter backing is just fine for most, esp. Bush and "I had more important things to do that go to Vietnam" Cheney. Hypoctites once again.

In the end, Obama and the D's are not much better, but they are heads above the GOP. That is why I do not get all this cutting off your nose to spite your face BS about voting for McCain due to sour grapes about Hillary losing.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by mylittledemon

. . . but charismatic doesn't mean you can lead this country.

Interestingly, hasn't he demonstrated in spades that he can do just that. He and his campaign have inspired millions of previously apparently uninterested voters to come into the political circle. He then lead those people and others to defeat one of the most powerful political machines and person seen. To me, that demonstrates he is a leader of large proportion despite my dislike of him. So, I am confused by what you mean by leadership.

[gretchen]

Originally Posted by CharmedHour

Count me in too!

I'm glad I'm not the only elephant on here!!!!! , I thought I was going to get my ass kicked for being one, but not so!

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Yep - McCain did it for Guiliani. Yet, not a peep from Fox News about it, much less the innuendo that there was something dirty about it

As for voting for McCain, I do not get it. Why would anyone want to vote for the leader of a party that wants to put people (straight or gay) in jail for consensual oral sex, even while married. IMO - these voters are hypocrites because who amongst us majors has not had oral sex. If you have and you are voting for McCain, I think you should ask the police to put you in jail citing the laws the GOP defends and send the GOP a card explaining that you have acted on their most stringent behest (and in accordance with a large number of their hypocritical private lives) . And, not only is that an issue, it is a primary issue for that party - I mean really

Of course and more importantly at least to me, that same party has driven the US economy from a huge surplus to huge debt in eight years and McCain has no comprehensive plan to pay for it. What he does instead is promise tax relief to everyone, when only the wealthiest 1% will actually get it on any significant level (why o why can't we have the so called fair tax (www.fairtax.org) ?) -- Maybe people think they are somehow part of that wealthiest 1% or will somehow be "in the club" if they are for the GOP. Maybe they think that the national debt will somehow vanish.

Of course, those so supportive of the GOP's position in Iraq, should IMO volunteer for the armed forces as well. Yet, armchair quarter backing is just fine for most, esp. Bush and "I had more important things to do that go to Vietnam" Cheney. Hypoctites once again.

In the end, Obama and the D's are not much better, but they are heads above the GOP. That is why I do not get all this cutting off your nose to spite your face BS about voting for McCain due to sour grapes about Hillary losing.

It's posts like these that cause me to propose to you.

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by Stephanie

Mccain, just b/c I think Obama is the anitchrist. As a former New Yorker
i really wanted Guiliani

With that expressed, I am very skeptical of Obama because I do not trust very charismatic people as a rule. They tend to have a dark side they are covering. Like Clinton and Kennedy with their womanizing. Some people may not see that as a big deal but it is a character defect that can really weaken a man. I hope Obama proves to be of stronger character and can actually back up his words. Talk is cheap.

However, if we want more of the same, McCain is our man for sure. I for one DO NOT want more of the same. I don't want my cousins to continue going back to Iraq to serve.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

. . . They tend to have a dark side they are covering . . . .

Unless they are in Cape Cod and toilet hugging drunk on Lemon Drop martinis and singing a show tune or two while knee walking down the street

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gretchen

I'm glad I'm not the only elephant on here!!!!! , I thought I was going to get my ass kicked for being one, but not so!

I do not think anyone dislikes you for it. For me, it is all about civil rights, where the R's are far too allegedly "christian" for my tastes as a Christian. Again, Christ lead by example and with love, which was His one true message, of many fantastic ones. Yet, we get these crazy men (mostly) espousing hate and IMO causing violent acts through blurred intent with hate speech all in the name of Christ, Who never did any such thing. That sickens me.

And, I am a conservative when it comes to the economy and defense. Sadly, W was not a true conservative in those two areas and we now have to pay the piper. So, how anyone could vote for four more years of the same old BS is beyond me.

I mean, I always hear my R friends say that R's lower taxes and that is all they really care about because they think (blindly incorrectly) that the social/civil rights issues do not effect "people like them." I always point out that while they may have gotten a $1,000 or so a year more under W's tax cuts (which I mostly supported mind you) -- they now have to pay the piper to the tune of likely three times that on top of their losses in the markets and in their homes. How could that shell game have been worth it? There usually is no coherent or accurate answer other that Oabama is a "liberal," as if that is like saying he is the anti-christ. I mean, Clinton (not really a liberal but often portrayed as one) balanced the budget and left the country in pretty good shape, esp. when compared to W McCain is only a continuation of that. Yet, people just cannot see that. Or, the idea of gays marrying and women getting abortions is just too much for them to handle.

[BombaySapphire3]

Originally Posted by gretchen

I'm glad I'm not the only elephant on here!!!!! , I thought I was going to get my ass kicked for being one, but not so!

and four years ago you likely would have but alas most of the ass kicking lefties are either banned or moved on to hipper pastures.

[strandinthewind]

July 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Audacity of Listening
By GAIL COLLINS
We have to have a talk about Barack Obama.

I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money.

I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about.

Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats.

Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field?

When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a “new consensus,” he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way.

Here’s a helpful story: Once upon a time, there was a woman searching for a guy who was ready to commit. One day, she met an attractive young man.

“My name is Chuck,” he said, grinning an infectious grin. “I’m planning to devote my entire life to saving endangered wildlife in the Antarctic. In five weeks I leave for the South Pole, where I will live alone in a tent, trying to convince the penguins that I am part of their flock. In the meantime, would you like to go out?”

“I have just met the man I’m going to marry,” she told her friends. She had been betrayed by poor listening skills, which skipped right over the South Pole and the tent. Of course, after five weeks of heavy dating, Chuck flew away and was never heard from again.

A year and a half of campaigning and we still haven’t heard Obama’s penguins, either. It’s not his fault that we missed the message — although to be fair, he did make it sound as if getting rid of the “old politics” involved driving out the oil and pharmaceutical lobbyists rather than splitting the difference on federal wiretapping legislation. But if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity. “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war,” he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq. He did not, you will notice, say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building. He was antidumb.

Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance.

On the common-ground front, he’s called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs, but only if the services they offer are secular. People can have guns for hunting and protection, but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers. Putting some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap is better than nothing, even though he would rather have gone further.

Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday, backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals, one should actually pay attention to what the generals say.

Touching both bases are Obama’s positions that 1) if people are going to ask him every day why he’s not wearing a flag pin, it’s easier to just wear the pin, for heaven’s sake, and 2) there’s nothing to be gained by getting into a fight over whether the death penalty can be imposed on child rapists.

His decision to ditch public campaign financing, on the other hand, was nothing but a complete, total, purebred flip-flop. If you are a person who feels campaign finance reform is the most important issue facing America right now, you should either vote for John McCain or go home and put a pillow over your head. However, I believe I have met every single person in the country for whom campaign finance reform is the tiptop priority, and their numbers are not legion.

Meanwhile, Obama has made it clear what issues he thinks all this cleverness and compromising are supposed to serve: national health care, a smart energy policy and getting American troops out of Iraq. He has tons of other concerns, but those seem to be the top three. There’s definitely a penguin in there somewhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/op...=1&oref=slogin

[BombaySapphire3]

Though I have been an Obama supporter all along (knowing there was no chance in hell of the best choice Dennis Kucinich getting near a nomination)I understood that Obama is a politician and for the most part a very astute one who has learned from past Democratic nominee's mistakes..I am not surprised in the least that he has moved to the center for the general election .Though times have changed a bit and the conservative movement is on the wane a politician percieved as an unabashed liberal could likely not win a general election despite the endless blunders of Bush and co.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

Though I have been an Obama supporter all along (knowing there was no chance in hell of the best choice Dennis Kucinich getting near a nomination)I understood that Obama is a politician and for the most part a very astute one who has learned from past Democratic nominee's mistakes..I am not surprised in the least that he has moved to the center for the general election .Though times have changed a bit and the conservative movement is on the wane a politician percieved as an unabashed liberal could likely not win a general election despite the endless blunders of Bush and co.

To me, Obama has not really changed his tune. I think the press (the Fourth Estate) portrays it that way to sell commercial airtime and print space.

To wit: http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Bar...ar_+_Peace.htm

In that cite is this quote:

"I want to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, but I want to make sure that we get all our combat troops out as quickly as we can safely. Now, the estimates are maybe that's two brigades per month. At that pace it would be some time in 2009 that we had our combat troops out, depending on whether Bush follows through on his commitment to draw down from the surge. We don't know that yet. We are spending $9 billion to $10 billion every month. That's money that could be going in South Carolina to lay broadband lines in rural communities, to put kids back to school. When McCain says we'll be there for 50 or 60 or 100 years, it is not just the loss of life, which is obviously the most tragic aspect of it, it's also the fact that financially it is unsustainable. We will have spent $2 trillion at least, it's estimated, by the time this whole thing is over. That's enough to have rebuilt every road, bridge, hospital, school in the US, and still have money left over. "

Source: 2008 Congressional Black Caucus Democratic debate Jan 21, 2008

How is that any different than his recent quote:

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I’ve said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe. I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable. I’m going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold.”

which stemmed from:

"I am going to do a thorough assessment when I'm there," he said. "I'm sure I'll have more information and continue to refine my policy."

_________________________________________________________________________________

Where is the glaring inconsistency

[BombaySapphire3]

I do not think he has been inconsitent but I think there has been a subtle shift towards the center as he is no longer just playing to people like myself, the vehemently anti -war "leftwing" of the Democratic party..obviously he is not going to win a national election just on our votes