Who will be the next President of the United States?

[Platapus]

I think the border area between Iraq and Pakistan is called Iran. Perhaps it was not a mistake he made?

[August]

AMMAN, Jordan – Democrat Barack Obama’s entire traveling campaign apparatus is in place. He will speak Thursday at an historic site in Berlin that could draw tens of thousands of spectators. And chief campaign strategist David Axelrod might even assemble film crews to gather footage of it, possibly for a TV commercial.

But senior aides engaged in a bit of rhetorical gymnastics Tuesday as they faced reporters who questioned their resistance to acknowledging the political aspects of Obama’s week-long, high-profile tour against the backdrop of an intense American presidential campaign.

At a morning background briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the characterization of Obama’s speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United States.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=4A670F03-3048-5C12-002034DF88C14E66).

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

I'm beginning to wonder if Obama even has a chance...

[Platapus]

Probably a very good chance. So a staff member made a mistake or spoke flippantly? It is not like Senator Obama said he was president.

The staff member is not running for President. Senator Obama is. I am more interested in what Senator Obama says than some staff member.

Must have been a slow news day or something.

[Tchocky]

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/mccains_surge_of_time_travel.php

Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history. Spencer Ackerman asks the press corps (http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/07/22/macfarlandknowsbetterthanmccain/) to recognize that "this is completely ****ing wrong" and points to then-Colonel, now-General Sean MacFarland explaining the origins of the awakening (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3738) to UPI's Pam Hess on September 29, 2006. That was a bit over a month before the midterm elections. The surge wasn't announced until after the elections and wasn't actually implemented until long after MacFarland gave the interview. And presumably the events he was describing happened before the interview itself.This specific timing issue aside, we can see here the larger point that McCain doesn't actually seem to know what the surge was.


EDIT - Joe Klein is pissed.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Klein_Meltdown.html

[August]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/07/15/are_facts_obsolete

Are Facts Obsolete?
By Thomas Sowell

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall//ColPics/columnistsSowell.gif

In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual. As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.
Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s.
The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.
Putting new restrictions of international trade, in order to save American jobs? That was done by Herbert Hoover, when he signed the Hawley-Smoot tariff when the unemployment rate was 9 percent. The next year the unemployment rate was 16 percent and, before the Great Depression was over, unemployment hit 25 percent.
One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country's problems, just because they say so-- or say so loudly or inspiringly.
Politicians' top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.
Some of his more trusting followers are belatedly discovering that, as he "refines" his position on various issues, now that he has gotten their votes in the Democratic primaries and needs the votes of others in the coming general election.
Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.
The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to "the rich" in the name of "fairness" gains more votes.
Since about half the people in the United States own stocks-- either directly or because their pension funds buy stocks-- socking it to people who earn capital gains is by no means socking it just to "the rich." But, again, that is one of the many facts that don't matter politically.

[kiwi_2005]

Thumbs up to Obama's speech in Germany and Israel. Usually i don't really give a damn. I thought he did well.

[Tchocky]

Interesting question on McCain's Iraq thinking.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/did_mccain_back_the_new_counte.php


Robert Wright and Jim Pinkerton raise an important issue (http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13030?in=14:00&out=20:41) -- it's very clear from the record that John McCain strongly supported the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq, but it's not at all clear that he supported the suite of counterinsurgency tactics that he now wants us to believe is what the term "the surge" refers to. Indeed, the basic shape of the Anbar Awakening -- talk to your enemies, make concessions to bad guys to get them out of the terrorism business, etc. -- doesn't sound at all like the kind of thing McCain supports philosophically.
I'm open to being corrected on this point if anyone has evidence of McCain saying something like "we really ought to be reaching out to the insurgency and negotiating with them" during or before the summer of 2006 then I hope they'll let me know. But fundamentally the tactical turnaround that led to a lot of the successes north of Baghdad doesn't actually seem to have been anything McCain was calling for.

[Tchocky]

McCain is running this ad in South Florida.

http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/castro__oPt.jpg

Never mind that Castro and Obama have criticised each other repeatedly.

[Platapus]

McCain is running this ad in South Florida.



Clean campaign :nope:

[Tchocky]

A rather good summation from the NYT on gas prices. While not pointed at the coming election, the truths herein should frame candidates rhetoric nicely.
ie, McCain implying that Obama's opposition to offshore drilling is keeping prices high.
ie, Obama continuing to push ethanol*

* - funny, it's about the only area where McCain is right and Obama is inisputably wrong, yet McCain has'nt made use of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/opinion/28mon2.html?th&emc=th

[TDK1044]

I think the inevitable answer to the question posed by the poster is Barack Obama.

When November rolls around, the great unwashed will blame this Administration for the slow economy, the price of gas, and just about everything with the posible exception of the JFK assasination.

The GOP has nominated a sad old man who stumbles over his words, who is seen by many as Bush the third, and who the conservatives in the GOP don't trust at all.

The mirage formaly known as Obama is seen as the new Messiah. He's eloquent and articulate, and people listem to him even though he actually has very little to say. The Europeans love the guy. 200,000 Germans turned up to listen to him when he visited there.

Obama is seen by many at home and abroad as a new start for America. It doesn't matter how simplistic a view that is. We live in an era where everyone knows who won American Idol but few people can name their State Representatives.

[OneToughHerring]

Obama still doing well.

Although I have to say McCain is at least entertaining. The fact that he himself was tortured and therefore is strongly against the use of torture makes him unwanted in the eyes of the republicans who can't wait to torture folks. And the religious folks don't like him for some reason, I guess they feel he's kind of a letdown after boy-Jesus W. ;)

[Monica Lewinsky]

http://sendables.jibjab.com/

[Zachstar]

Even tho I feel there are better democratic candidates than Obama. I think I am going to say Obama 08 with about 95 percent certainty.

Reason: McCain... Not Obama's traits and so called promises but how McCain is stumbling along this campaign.

#1 He has flip flopped more than it took to sink Kerry in 04.

#2 And VERY important in this day and age. He barely knows how to operate a computer. And his lack of knowledge is killing netroots support. Today not knowing how to use the net effectively is effectively limiting oneself to working at entry level jobs and even those are switching. So it is destroying the "Man of the people" image.

#3 War support. It sunk Clinton it will sink McCain.. Nuff Said.

#4 Lack of understanding of how his words come back to bite him moments after he says them.

#5 Lack of ability to adapt correctly. Seems to just follow Obama.

#6 Extremely hostile campaign.

[Platapus]

I have a feeling that there will be many people not voting for McCain.

[Tchocky]

#1 He has flip flopped more than it took to sink Kerry in 04. This has become a Republican meme, accusing McCain of changing positions brings shouts of "but he's a maverick, a war hero". How he ever got the first label is beyond me.

#2 And VERY important in this day and age. He barely knows how to operate a computer. And his lack of knowledge is killing netroots support. Today not knowing how to use the net effectively is effectively limiting oneself to working at entry level jobs and even those are switching. So it is destroying the "Man of the people" image. McCains answer to this was that he was not a user, but he was well aware of the impact of computers on society. I think that's ridiculous.
It might work for someone who doesn't drive, but has ridden in cars and understands their purpose. To understand computers you have to use them.

#3 War support. It sunk Clinton it will sink McCain.. Nuff Said. He's demonstrated quite often just how confused he is on foreign policy. This wonderful idea of kicking Russia out of the G8 and forming some weird-ass League of Democracies comes to mind. That's just what the world needs, more divisive, exclusionist platforms.

#4 Lack of understanding of how his words come back to bite him moments after he says them. He seems to disagree with the entire concept of being on the record, considers it unfair that the press don't always use the rose-tinted lens.


#6 Extremely hostile campaign.A former campaign staffer has blasted McCain's strategy. I think it'd hard to accurately criticise something that makes no sense whatsoever. http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/weaver_mccains_former_strategi.php

hilarious aside from a campaign staffer :roll: "I will defend every single word in every single ad," a senior McCain campaign adviser told me last week. "But you can't really blame Obama for gas prices," I responded. "As they say, if you're not part of the solution," and here the adviser paused and smiled, "you're part of the problem."
So, the adviser slyly admits that the charge isn;t true. Same with the wounded-troops-hospital story. Not true. When will headlines change from this (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/30/1234797.aspx) to the proper title of "Lying"? I'm guessing never. And it's a bloody shame.
EDIT - Good God, this is the McCain campaign memo, declaring that protein, exercise and tea are suspect and un-American. More to the point, it wants to paint Obama as a celebrity before a politician. Is that really a good idea? McCain has been a celebrity since he was shot down? (But no, he's a grizzled tough old maverick cowboy war hero, he doesn't hold with this "celebrity")
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/mccain_campaign_mocks_obamas_c.php
Honestly, things are looking good for Obama when the major attack line is that he's too popular.


Barack Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world, comparable to Tom Cruise, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. As he told Congressional Democrats yesterday, he has become the "symbol" for the world's aspirations for America and that we are now at "the moment ... that the world is waiting for."

Only a celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin who gathered for the mere opportunity to be in his presence. These are not supporters or even voters, but fans fawning over The One. Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand "MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew -- Black Forest Berry Honest Tea" and worry about the price of arugula
EDIT 2 - A correction from the NYT, which is loaded with backpedaling and is just gallons of fun to read.
In her column last Wednesday, Maureen Dowd wrote that a Democratic lawmaker privately asked Gen. David Petraeus why there weren't more Democrats in the military, and he replied, "There are more than you think." Col. Steven Boylan of the general's public affairs office in Baghdad, which was not contacted for comment, says the quotation "is in error as he never made nor would make such a statement."

[Tchocky]

http://outtheotherear.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/gr2008061200193.gif

From the Washington Post and the Tax Policy Center.

Also interesting, the Tax Policy Center found a $2.8 trillion gap between McCain's policy proposals and his words on the stump.

EDIT - just saw this from FOX

http://www.newshounds.us/ssF%26FObamaOsama073008.jpg

K, who thinks this was a mistake?

EDIT 2 - Oh my god, this is too funny to be true. John McCain attacks Obama for being a celebrity candidate (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444626/)

[August]

The part Obamas Irish supporter failed to quote:

On issues big and small, there is a gap between Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric and celebrity and the facts behind them. What he says and what he does are often two very different things, leaving the American people to wonder what he actually believes, or if he believes in anything beyond himself. He says he will change Washington, but in the U.S. Senate, he has requested nearly $1 billion in pork-barrel spending. He says he will only raise taxes on the rich, but he voted to raise the taxes of those making just $32,000 per year. He says he wants energy independence, but he opposes new drilling at home; opposes nuclear power; and opposes encouraging the invention of an advanced, affordable electric car. On Iraq, he says he wants peace, but even today opposes the surge strategy that has succeeded and will succeed in Afghanistan. Our nation doesn't need another politician in Washington who puts his self-interest and political expediency ahead of problem-solving.

[Tchocky]

He says he will only raise taxes on the rich, but he voted to raise the taxes of those making just $32,000 per year. This is factually incorrect. The 32,000 here is taxable income, the actual wage in consideration here is those making $41,500. A difference of 25-33%, depending on where you start from.
Look at the graphic in my last post.
He says he wants energy independence, but he opposes new drilling at home; The dogs in the street know that offshore drilling is well-nigh irrelevent to oil prices and is totally the wrong direction to be taking for energy policy.
Our nation doesn't need another politician in Washington who puts his self-interest and political expediency ahead of problem-solving. Well, touche.

[dean_acheson]

I have a feeling that there will be many people not voting for McCain.

I have a feeling that there will be enough.

[Stealth Hunter]

But are there enough for him to win?

I think people are probably going to stick with Barack when the final drumbeat rolls. They've become tired of the failed Republican tactics in the past, and they're sick of the manner in which the Bush Administration ran the country (something that McCain seems to want to continue; the man flip flops too much).

[Platapus]

It will be a close election that's for sure.

How many states have Republican stooges in charge of the election commissions? And will they be enough?:nope:

[Tchocky]

As far as I know there's been some purging of voter rolls in FL, CO, MI. This is unsuppported, half-remembered rumour .


Yes, the last couple of weeks of the campaign, even from my remote perch, were pretty uninspiring on the GOP side. Here's my brief take, for what it's worth. Obama's fortnight was an objectively miraculous one: Maliki and then (almost) Bush endorsed his withdrawal timetable from Iraq (game, set and match to BO), he conducted himself with foreign leaders flawlessly, burnished his international rep, and proved the force of his soft power potential. (200,000 in Berlin was less, it seems to me, about the celebrity of Obama than about the disaster of Bush-Cheney. Obama is the vehicle for the world's hope for the return of the America they remember.) But the flipside of this kind of success is always an attempt to take the dude down a few pegs. The arrogant-celebrity meme is a variation on the usual Rovian fare: empty of actual policy substance but evocative of playground loyalties and resentments. Basically, McCain called Obama a girl, to appeal to the jocks, and then called him arrogant to flatter the nerds. Paris Hilton is a two-fer. Choosing a female celebrity is integral to the usual attempt to feminize the Democrat. I could see nothing racist whatever in the message, mind you, but it was, as Weaver noted, pretty asinine.
Less asinine was McCain's two-pronged lie that Obama would rather lose a war than a campaign and that he snubbed injured troops in Germany. The former is repulsively low-life and you can tell McCain knows it because he has a weird habit of saying it and then grinning broadly and humming a little to himself as a semi-laugh. He doesn't own the statement even as he says it. The statement itself is about as uncivil as it is possible to be, close to calling him treasonous, right? And the troop snub jibe is simply, demonstrably untrue, as the McCain camp was forced to semi-concede.
So McCain's main moves these past two weeks have been either childish or disgusting, and both times he has signaled he didn't really believe his own message. He doesn't seem like a serious president to me.

[dean_acheson]

Bump.

[Happy Times]

Obama will win and Biden will be his running mate.:know:
Seems the republicans dont have anyone to throw against them.

02-05-2008

Whats my price? :p

[geetrue]

I have a feeling that there will be many people not voting for McCain.

I have a feeling that there will be enough.

Did you hear about Fred Thompson when he found out Sarah Palin was the pick for McCain's running mate.

"I approve of this decision"

I remember you were for Fred ...

[dean_acheson]

Fred's supposed to get a good speaking spot at the convention. It will be nice to see him again.

See this today?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrBus8ORR78&eurl=http://www.redstate.com/diaries/absentee/2008/aug/30/fowler-fouls-hurricane-is-gods-favor-to-dem/


Stay classy Dims!

[geetrue]

Anybody remember four years ago?

[CCIP]

I'd rather not :O:

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Anybody remember four years ago?...and I was wondering who is the necromancer... :stare:

[Sailor Steve]

Anybody care?

[Oberon]

OH MY GOD! JOSS WHEDON WAS RIGHT!! THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS COMING!!! :o:o:o:o

[Jimbuna]

OH MY GOD! JOSS WHEDON WAS RIGHT!! THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS COMING!!! :o:o:o:o

Should be a few programmes on the subject matter to choose from tonight after mrs buna retires to bed.

[Sailor Steve]

I predict that the next President of the United States will not be me.

This is the only prediction I care to make, as no matter what happens I can't be wrong. :sunny:

[Jimbuna]

I predict that the next President of the United States will not be me.

This is the only prediction I care to make, as no matter what happens I can't be wrong. :sunny:
Best to wait and see who all the eligible SubSim voters have voted for :03:

[AVGWarhawk]

Anybody remember four years ago?

Why yes, we spent a better part of our time and money bailing out failed housing, car and financial industries. It was an awesome time had by all from what I recall. :shifty:

[Jimbuna]

Why yes, we spent a better part of our time and money bailing out failed housing, car and financial industries. It was an awesome time had by all from what I recall. :shifty:

Cynic :D

[yubba]

So who would children vote for, hard work or Santa Claus ???, guess who won,??? Santa Obama Claus,, borrowed that from Rush wish i'd thought of that one,,, had an elbow caught in my throat at the time..

[AVGWarhawk]

Cynic :D


You have know idea! :haha:

[Jimbuna]

You have know idea! :haha:

Your probably right :doh:

[Mr Quatro]

Ok, a year from now, we will know (unless Florida has a problem reading their ballots). My question, who do you think will be the next President of the United States? Now, not necessarily who you want to be the next President, but if you had to bet $100 of your lunch money, who do you think will ultimately win the nom and general election?

Let's see your political savvy up front, state your claim now.

Edit: Poll is now public, click on one of the vote numbers to see how predictions are faring.

Jeb's the man :up:, oh wait a minute this is 2015. Okay someone start another poll with two democrats and eleven republicans so far :o

Jeb Bush can take Hillary one on one, but first he has to get through the others not so far behind him either.

[STEED]

ZOMBIE THREAD ALERT! :huh:

Get your shot guns and beer cans out.

[em2nought]

ZOMBIE THREAD ALERT! :huh:

Oh, can we dig somebody up out of the ground to run? I like zombie Ike, bet he'd have a Michael Jackson thriller style fit when he saw the defense spending budget. :dead:

[Platapus]

Phew, a zombie thread. I forgot to look at the date. For a moment, i thought that Skybird came back.