Presidential election may be up for grabs

[aesop081]

  She wanted me to know that Sarah Palin didn't write her own speech.

They never write their speeches. Kennedy didnt write his famous speech during the Cuban missiles crisis. They have speech writters, its a well know fact.

"mayor of a small town...thats kind of like community organizer !! "

Priceless.......

 

[Flip]

They never write their speeches.

Of course! and that goes for all the other crap they trot out as criticism! 

Sarah Palin  rocks - and there's nothing the Dems can do about it!  >

 

[armyvern]

I wonder how it will actually translate, but it sure is a hopeful sign....nice to see..

Them wicked women may be his downfall yet.

This post had me cracking up ...

OB: FAMOUS LAST WORDS:

"I am confident I will get her votes if I'm the nominee. It's not clear she would get the votes I got if she were the nominee." -- Barack Obama, February 1, 2008

Poster's response:

We'll see about that, kiddo...

 

[Edward Campbell]

As one of the commentariat said last night, if McCain is going to win this election it will not be because of his oratory. Try as they might, his handlers could not make him look like a good speaker – and Obama is a near great one.

The message, however, seemed to surprise some journalists and ‘talking heads.’ It was, compared to Obama less than a week earlier, full of reasonably detailed proposals about economic and ‘social’ (mainly education) issues and, especially on education, he is starkly different from Obama, who is beholden to the education workers’ unions.

On balance, and if I’m reading the Monday morning quarterbacks correctly:

• Palin brought the Christian right/social conservative base back on board and energized it; and

• McCain offered the moderate middle and the working class Reagan Democrats a real and attractive choice.

His courageous personal narrative remains compelling and a great ‘draw.’ He is on display as exactly what so many Americans like and respect, indeed revere so much: a modest hero.

I think, I’m guessing that Bush’s totally unfair and really dishonest attacks on McCain in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 will not work, will, indeed, backfire, if the Democrats try anything like them on McCain. There are a few anti-McCain/McCain’s no hero naysayers out there already but Obama has been, wisely, I believe, quick to disavow them.

 

[tomahawk6]

The thing I dislike about Obama is that he uses third parties to do the smears and then he acts like he is above it all.If you look at how he got to this point in his career he did so by disqualifying his opponents a tried and true Chicago strategy. He asked the Department of Justice twice to bring charges against the people behind a campaign ad,his request was file thirteened but if he was President I could see him going after people ge didnt like.They already have stated that if elected they will prosecute Bush,Chaney,Rove for war crimes something out of the communist playbook.

 

[stegner]

something out of the communist playbook.

Tomahawk you have provided absolutely no hard evidence of Obama being a communist, instead you proffer innuendo.  This is not the first time either.  If you continue to do so without providing any I will be forced to think you academically lazy.  But I know you are vastly more intelligent than this.    While I will defend your right to dislike Obama I ask that you do so for intelligent reasons  (i.e. he is weak on national security, he is a snake oil salesman with few concrete plans or as simple as I just don't like him).  However, I resent your labeling of anyone that does not share your views as a communist-this is not an intelligent argument.  Was Bush a communist when he outed Plame?  Certainly not.  What about the Republicans with Whitewater, Monica and etc.  Revenge is not limited to communists.  Capitalists and Republicans do a mighty fine job in this respect.  Obama is not like Clinton who traveled to the Soviet Union as a student.  The same work for those folks that label Bush a fascist: hard evidence please.   

 

[tomahawk6]

I didnt call Obama a communist. But some of his tactics seem to be the same as practiced by communist/totalitarian regime's.Its certainly not normal actions for US politics. Try not to read more into my comments than I actually post. I dont have a personal bias toward Obama I just dont agree with his VERY liberal views.For many Americans his close association with former domestic terrorists and extremist religious figures isnt acceptable for a Presidential candidate,but hey we just have a couple of months before the voters make their will known.

Here is his letter.Simmons by the way is doing exactly what Soros does for the left through groups like moveon.org.
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM106_aip_letter_082608.html

Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121918996082755013.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

[2 Cdo]

Tomahawk you have provided absolutely no hard evidence of Obama being a communist, instead you proffer innuendo.  This is not the first time either.   If you continue to do so without providing any I will be forced to think you academically lazy.  But I know you are vastly more intelligent than this.    While I will defend your right to dislike Obama I ask that you do so for intelligent reasons  (i.e. he is weak on national security, he is a snake oil salesman with few concrete plans or as simple as I just don't like him).   However, I resent your labeling of anyone that does not share your views as a communist-this is not an intelligent argument.  Was Bush a communist when he outed Plame?  Certainly not.   What about the Republicans with Whitewater, Monica and etc.  Revenge is not limited to communists.  Capitalists and Republicans do a mighty fine job in this respect.  Obama is not like Clinton who traveled to the Soviet Union as a student.  The same work for those folks that label Bush a fascist: hard evidence please.   

I might think you academically lazy for reading too much into a statement.   I honestly don't think Obama is a communist but he does have some very left-wing ideas. Along with his fear of NAFTA and his wanting to bring the US into a more protectionist, isolated country. This idea alone should cause Canadians to fear him being elected.

 

[observor 69]

New York Times

September 5, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Resentment Strategy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Can the super-rich former governor of Massachusetts — the son of a Fortune 500 C.E.O. who made a vast fortune in the leveraged-buyout business — really keep a straight face while denouncing “Eastern elites”?

Can the former mayor of New York City, a man who, as USA Today put it, “marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu” — that was between his second and third marriages — really get away with saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think small towns are sufficiently “cosmopolitan”?

Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?

Yes, they can.

On Tuesday, He Who Must Not Be Named — Mitt Romney mentioned him just once, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin not at all — gave a video address to the Republican National Convention. John McCain, promised President Bush, would stand up to the “angry left.” That’s no doubt true. But don’t be fooled either by Mr. McCain’s long-ago reputation as a maverick or by Ms. Palin’s appealing persona: the Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right, which has always been much bigger, much more influential and much angrier than its counterpart on the other side.

What’s the source of all that anger?

Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.

Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.

What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon.

One of the key insights in “Nixonland,” the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon’s political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates’ resentment against the Franklins, the school’s elite social club. There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.

And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that.

Can Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin really ride Nixonian resentment into an upset election victory in what should be an overwhelmingly Democratic year? The answer is a definite maybe.

By selecting Barack Obama as their nominee, the Democrats may have given Republicans an opening: the very qualities that inspire many fervent Obama supporters — the candidate’s high-flown eloquence, his coolness factor — have also laid him open to a Nixonian backlash. Unlike many observers, I wasn’t surprised at the effectiveness of the McCain “celebrity” ad. It didn’t make much sense intellectually, but it skillfully exploited the resentment some voters feel toward Mr. Obama’s star quality.

That said, the experience of the years since 2000 — the memory of what happened to working Americans when faux-populist Republicans controlled the government — is still fairly fresh in voters’ minds. Furthermore, while Democrats’ supposed contempt for ordinary people is mainly a figment of Republican imagination, the G.O.P. really is the Gramm Old Party — it really does believe that the economy is just fine, and the fact that most Americans disagree just shows that we’re a nation of whiners.

But the Democrats can’t afford to be complacent. Resentment, no matter how contrived, is a powerful force, and it’s one that Republicans are very, very good at exploiting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/opinion/05krugman.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

 

[Adamant]

Along with his fear of NAFTA and his wanting to bring the US into a more protectionist, isolated country. This idea alone should cause Canadians to fear him being elected.

I personally don't think either of them is a tremendously good candidate, however, I do not in  any way fear the economic backlash.  Quite the opposite I see it as an opportunity to realize that there are other countries who would be more than willing to purchase our resources (the first one being...us)

Exporting natural resources and importing manufactured goods is a plight of the third world, and more and more the Canadian economy is relying on this kind of trade, leaving resources such as fresh water hanging in the balance.

If an elected big-D Democratic president wants to renegotiate NAFTA more power to him if they think they are getting the short end now, they will realize what a deal they had when the next Conservative Canadian government steps up and protects our resources. 

American citizens aside, the American government sees us a one big mine, a mine of uranium, lumber, oil, water, etc...  And one that when their industries complain their first reaction is to shut down imports thereby shuntting our economy.  Free-trade isn't free-trade when one side is constantly shutting it down crying not fair.

 

[GAP]

John McCain: One Prisoner of War's Fresh Appraisal of U.S. in 1973
Interview with Cdr. John S. McCain III Posted July 30, 2008
Article Link

This story originally appeared in the Dec. 31, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report.

Commander McCain spent 5½ years as a war prisoner. Because he was the son of a top U. S. admiral, his captors made every effort to wring propaganda from him. His first-person story appeared in this magazine's May 14, 1973, issue. Now, nine months after his return, he reports on what being home has been like.

Commander McCain, what has life been like for you in the nine months since your release from prison camp in Hanoi? Was there, for example, a big letdown after the initial joy of being free?
There certainly has been no letdown. The reception that we, as prisoners of war, received was overwhelming and somewhat embarrassing, because we felt that we were just average American pilots who had been shot down. We never anticipated such a feeling of warmth. It still shows no signs of letting up.

The only thing that has been somewhat of an adjustment is the difference in the pace of living now, as compared to in prison.

There, the big event of the day usually was when it came your turn to go out of your cell to bathe. I still seem not to have enough time to do all the things that I want to do—or have to do.

Readjustment has its amusing aspects, too. The other day I was talking with some friends about a movie star I remembered and somebody said, "Why, she's dead now."

I said, "What? She can't be!" And my wife, Carol, said: "You have to excuse John. He's only caught up to 1969 so far." It's become a big family joke.

Do the memories of those long years haunt you in any way? Do you, for example, have nightmares?
No, I sleep very well. But sometimes, a little thing can bring back those days in a flash. For instance, one of the most unpleasant aspects of living in a cell is to hear the keys rattle in the door at an unusual time of day—or night—when you know it isn't routine. That usually meant you were going for interrogation, and that could often turn into a long period of no sleep, no food, or severe torture.

A couple of times recently, I've heard keys rattle at a door, and for a very brief instant I've tensed up just as I did over there. But that's very rare.
More on link

 

[TCBF]

WASHINGTON (WOMENSENEWS)--Some groups working to send New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to the White House are preparing to ...
-------------------------------------------------------
sophia jane

- What they be smokin'?

 

[TCBF]

- What they be smokin'?

- Guess she can't answer me now, can she?

 

[tomahawk6]

Obama in the no spin zone tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1vSgA-MVBw&eurl=http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/

 

[a_majoor]

An interesting chart on this link. The blogger has tried to quantify the "experience" of each past American president and the current crop of contenders (Senator McCain, Senator Obama, Governor Palin, Senator Biden and Senator Clinton) using the same criterion. While this is somewhat subjective, at least each person is measured with the same metrics. Look at where everyone stands:

http://powinca.blogspot.com/2008/09/presidential-experience.html

 

[TCBF]

... I could see him going after people ge didnt like. ...

- Gadzooks...  shades of Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General

 

[GAP]

An interesting chart on this link. The blogger has tried to quantify the "experience" of each past American president and the current crop of contenders (Senator McCain, Senator Obama, Governor Palin, Senator Biden and Senator Clinton) using the same criterion. While this is somewhat subjective, at least each person is measured with the same metrics. Look at where everyone stands:

http://powinca.blogspot.com/2008/09/presidential-experience.html

As expected, Palin, up in Alaska, and fairly new to it all didn't rank very high.....but the surprise is where the guy who wants to be the next Democrate President ranks.....9....really?

 

[GAP]

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Article Link

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows John McCain reaching the 50% level of support for the first time since Barack Obama wrapped up the Democratic Presidential Nomination. McCain retains a three-point advantage for the third straight day, 50% to 47% (see recent daily results).

Tracking Poll results are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day and a FREE daily e-mail update is available. Earlier, Rasmussen Reports reported tracking poll results both with and without leaners. Now that Election Day is drawing near, we will report only the results with leaners.

Voters are evenly divided as to who they think will win, but McCain voters are now more excited about the election than Obama’s. Rasmussen Markets data gives McCain a 52.3% chance of victory while expectations for Obama are at 46.5%. These figures are updated on a 24/7 basis by market participants.

McCain is viewed favorably by 57% of the nation’s voters while Obama earns positive reviews from 53% (see trends). McCain is supported by 90% of Republicans and has a six-point edge among unaffiliated voters. Eighty-two percent (82%) of Democrats say they’ll vote for Obama.

Other key stats of Election 2008 can still be seen at Obama-McCain: By the Numbers.

The Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator shows McCain leading in states with 200 Electoral College votes while Obama has the edge in states with 193 votes. When “leaners” are included, shows Obama leading 259-247 (see Quick Campaign Overview). A total of 270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the White House (see 50-State Summary).

This week, Rasmussen Reports released polling data for Nevada, Missouri. Washington, Michigan, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 1,000 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 3,000 Likely Voters--is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. 
More on link

 

[tomahawk6]

Zogby has McCain leading in the key states of Ohio,Florida,Pennsylvania and Va. Pennsylvania is a must win for Obama to be elected.

 

[Edward Campbell]

A couple of weeks ago, former US House of Representatives majority leader Dick Armey told USA Today that the Bubba Vote will hurt Obama in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Others say it will work both ways: blacks will vote in unprecedented numbers for Obama, maybe even by enough to offset the Bubba Vote.

Traditionally blacks are weak voters – that is to say few of them bother to vote at all, ever. But vote they did in the 2008 primaries, in those very same unprecedented numbers – offsetting Hillary’s share of the Bubba Vote that came out strong for her thanks to Bill, the Bubba in Chief.

Recent data, cited earlier here on Army.ca, says 90% of registered Republicans support McCain but only 82% of registered Democrats support Obama – that ‘missing’ 8% might the Bubba Vote, and if only half of it actually goes out and votes for McCain it would, if the current polls hold up for another seven weeks, put John McCain in the White House.