McCain's VP pick

[Swimmy]

Thank you for understanding. I'm really sorry. I try hard not to let that happen. I guess we are all human in the end.

[dgriffin]

Advisers say conservative ire pushed McCain away from picking Lieberman

Good article on selection of VP.

"Palin, and not Pawlenty or Romney, would reinforce McCain's self-image, an adviser said. She had a reputation as a reformer in Alaska, she hunted and fished, and she had once belonged to a union. Just as crucial, Palin, 44, was beloved by the party's religious base but did not come off as shrill. "She's conservative," Black said, "but she's not an ideologue.""

www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/31/america/31reconstruct.php

[rickolney]

Aug 29, 2008 15:09:37 GMT -5 @stoney said:

Jeez, he already had the NRA vote snared. I think he chose a woman to pick-up the disgruntled Hillary diehards who refuse to vote for Obama.

Who the hell knows. I'm just glad he didn't pick Romney..

Stoney, Romney's glad he didn't pick Romney too! ;D

No, this looks to be THE choice and chance for America to come out of a rather long tunnel on the war. I can't possibly see this as a choice of John McCain hiring a woman with no voice. So it appears to me beyond a shadow of doubt that he's listening to what ALL potential voters are saying. There really couldn't be a better choice than Sarah Palin, far as I'm concerned.

[rickolney]

Aug 29, 2008 21:35:31 GMT -5 Swimmy said:

I don't think anyone should be telling anyone else how to vote. Everyone should use their own intelligence, gather the facts, form their own opinion, and vote accordingly. If they did that, Democrats would be nonexistent! lol I'm just kidding aobut that last part.

I agree with Countrygal about the experience bit. It's one of the reasons I'm for Obama. We've seen what the "experience" has gotten us. Perhaps it's time for a clean slate...

Swimmy! Of course!

But if we're talking about picking our leaders for their lack of experience, while then placing them in very responsible positions who is to say that the machine that is politics simply absorb them into the inner workings and pollute America's chances at fixing the things that ARE wrong.

Gov. Palin brings much more in the way of experience that isn't tied to mainstream politics. She has real life connections to real and personal life interactions behind her, as mentioned above.

[rickolney]

Aug 30, 2008 7:35:17 GMT -5 @dgriffin said:

Wilum, have you noticed all the world's women leaders are getting better looking? Or am I just getting older.

You're just getting older. Heh, heh... ;D

No, they do seem to be easy on the eyes of many men and (I suspect) women, in this day and age.

[wilum47]

VS.

VS.

VS.


;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[gearofzanzibar]

Ya know, I'm pretty cynical about politics, but the absolute meltdown some on the left are having about Palin is beyond the pale. In just 48 hours they've managed to not only accuse her of faking her last pregnancy, but of covering up the fact that her youngest son is the product of incest. Seriously, is this what it's come down to?

I know politics is a full-contact sport, but this crosses the line.

[dgriffin]

Expect worse to happen. Internet-tabloid-crap. Then again, previous outlandish claims about politicians have turned out to be true. One can hope someone will make the same dumb mistake as Howard Dean, when he said, "I didn't say George Bush knew about 911 beforehand, I said OTHER people are saying it."

[Clipper]

I am not at all surprised. It is typical of the modern day desperate politics of the modern day desperate Democratic party.

Am I alone in thinking that the Democrats have stooped to futile and desperate measures to demean and discount anyone that challenges their inadequacies with legitimate qualifications?

All I have to say is that the Democrats made a serious mistake in trying to run the "firsts" in this particular election. We don't need to focus on first woman and first black, we need to focus on qualified, and experienced. Now was a time for them to run a less contentious candidate with the attributes necessary to rival the Republicans. They have this ticket backwards of a ticket that could win this election. They should have run Joe Biden and left Hillary or Barrack Obama to fill the VP ticket.

I hate to keep pounding on the Democrats, as I AM truly a non partisan voter. I would love nothing more than to see the Democratic Party run a candidate that could both win the election and fulfill the agenda that they ran on.

What is it that Democrats do not understand about picking a candidate that can win? I am sure that we have Democrats in congress and that can meet the challenge. It is just that the party keeps picking losers like John Kerry and Al Gore.

Key issue number one is that they need to find something to run on, besides demeaning and criticizing the administration and the oppositon. We NEED to hear what they will do instead of what bad things Goerge Bush did. We need to hear what a young black man can do that an old white guy can't. We need to hear what Joe Biden brings, not what is lacking in Sarah Palin (who is more qualified experience wise that Obama)

I will be glad when this election is over, and maybe with ONE MORE defeat, the Democrats will back up, re-assess their agenda, back off of the administration and partisan bullshit, and work WITH the Republicans to pass meaningful legislation, instead of playing a "chess game" of blocking the next move of the "oppositon."

Our country's future is at stake. We have troops in combat, and we have issues of economic importance as well as issues concerning social programs and housing. We have enough on our plates to indicate to the average intelligent American that it is time to seek common ground instead of drawing lines in the sand, or seeking revenge for an election that was decided in the Year 2000.

It is absolutely ridiculous for congress to be divided by a hatred for the President of the United States. Nothing gets done, while congress wiles away their time bitching about the administration and planning ways to capsize the ship of power in the white house.

Do people not see that any issue that is disputed between the parties has an ultimate resolution through negotiation and compromise? The republicans are as guilty as the Dems when it comes to opposing anything with a Democrat tag on it.

It is time to end the damned "gang war" on capital hill, and to resolve old issues and put bandaids on old wounds. It is time for Dems and Republicans to pull together for the country, instead of standing on opposite sides of the aisle making and throwing meaningless snowballs.

I have been interested in presidential politics since I was old enough to vote. Incidentally, I became old enough to vote while serving in a combat environment in a political war, with many similarities to the political aspects of the war on terror in Iraq. The main difference being that in Viet Nam, politics dictated that we pull out as "losers", with many men my age having lost their lives or limbs for political bullshit. In Iraq, we HAVE liberated a country from a despot, and a murderer. We HAVE made things better, and continue to do so. It seems that the modern generation has never read about the timelines of past wars. We didn't win WWII in a heartbeat. We fought it on two fronts and lost many times the number of lives that we have lost in Iraq.

People today are idealists. They want the status quo for them and their children, but they are hesitant to pay the price or to fight the fight. There is no free lunch and as is said over and over "Freedom is not Free!"

We need to spend the money, and back the troops and win the war on terror, not back down, hide in our closets, and wait for it to come to our street and our neighborhood.

Our children have become lazy assed couch potatoes, playing video games and watching TV instead of hunting, fishing, and playing sports. Only inner city kids even seem to play a game of pick up basketball after school. Probably because their mothers and fathers can't afford to buy them a Wii video console. Instead of giving these kids a cell phone and text minutes, tell them to get their chubby little asses off the couch, and put on a jacket and go see the person. Hey, even try the unimagineable, RIDE YOUR DAMN BIKE TO YOUR FRIEND'S HOUSE instead of having mommy drive you there.

Well, enough rambling for now. I will step down and shut up for an hour or so, haha!

PS: If we are to have a woman president any time in the near future, I think you are looking at her on Republican Campaign ads.

[dgriffin]

Nope, Hillary will be the first woman president. McCain will win, but will lose to Hillary in 2012. He'll be worn out in 4 years. By that time, Hillary will have rehabilitated her image. She's smart, she knows how to do it. She'll make what we don't like about her personality appear as strengths (and they probably are.) She will be helped by one of the finest minds in polictics today ... yup, dopey James Carville. She'll play against McCain/Palin's inevitable first-term mistakes and likely catastrophes. If McCain dies in office and Hillary runs against Palin, Hillary will run rings around her. I like Palin, but Hillary is the real deal as far as politicians go.

By the way, if I were McCain, now that I've gotten a PR Flash out of Sarah, I'd ask her to take her Miss America image backstage for a while as I really work on winning the Presidency. He's good, he can do it, but he has a formidable foe in Obama. The camera loves Obama and he will win a lot of votes on charisma, just as Bill Clinton did. McCain has to make logic and reason shine brighter than Obama's smile. That's why, to thoughtful voters, Leiberman might have been a better choice.

Clipper, the Democrats are vindictive, it's true. They remember when Newt Gingrich (my idol) tried to shut down the government. But they also realize the vast majority of Americans are conservative by nature and try to make logical choices. It is the Democrats' job to distort and distract and form an opposition to the other party. It's not neat and tidy always, but it has indeed been a workable system.

[denise]

Clipper, you've got a pretty accurate view on the way things are and how people think. You have it 100% correct. (I still think you are a genius.)

[Clipper]

I have to agree to a point with your statements, but I don't see Hillary turning what we don't like about her into strengths. I don't see her cleaning up her image, or getting rid of the crooked shit in her past and I don't see her changing any of her attitudes. She is a very astute politician. That is true. The sad part is that we need a statesman and a wise and sage leader. She is neither. She runs strictly on politics. She has no heart for the people she serves. She ran for senator from NY and has yet to accomplish a damn thing for NY because as soon as she took office in NY, she embarked on the carpet bagging campaign to use NY as a stepping stone to the presidency.

We have always had political rivalry, but we have never in my lifetime or in history that I have read, had such disrespect for the office of President, and have never had that displeasure played on a stage where the world watches our internal strife and infighting.

We have never had the generation of pacifist isolationists that want to bring our troops home and hide here from terrorism, hoping it will just go away. We have bred a generation of fat assed, lazy, self serving, misfits, that will sit by and watch our democracy go down the shitter because they don't want their kids to fight in a war.

What don't people understand. We allow corporations to outsource all our jobs, and with the same breath, condemn social programs and unemployment, and those that are caught up in the poverty caused by the mistakes. These mistakes didn't all happen during the Bush years. We bitch about illegal immigration, but we don't send them all back when we catch them. We bitch about the illegals taking our jobs, but we allow employers to continue to hire them, with only minimal enforcement efforts and little or no prosectution. We take them back to the border and turn them loose to come back next week.

We bitch about the blacks being unemployed, but we don't hire them at the same rate we hire whites, and it isn't because they don't apply or qualify.

We complain about the homeless in our streets, but we send our charity dollars overseas to support third world causes where the dictators and crooks steal all the aid money and food contributions and SELL it to the people that it was intended for. Oh yes, we also pay about 80% of privately funded charity dollars in administrative costs to high paid administrators while our veterans live under bridges, and our VA hospitals are underfunded and deplorable. At risk of sounding cruel and cold, I really don't give a shit if a little girl in Bangladesh has shoes. I care if a Viet vet is living under a bridge in a box, with no shoes, when winter comes to NY City.

Does anyone realize that most of the homeless, drug addicted vets are a result of PTSD, and not just bums. We have yet to get a handle on the PTSD patients of the Viet Nam war, and we are on track to neglect and abuse the veterans of this war. War is hell, but it is a necessary evil, and it has to be funded, and won. Veterans cost money, but they have made sacrifices for the freedoms we all enjoy, and they must receive proper care and respect, no matter what the costs.

Someone explain to me what the strategy will be to defeat terror, after we put our cowardly tail between our legs and retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone tell me what we will do when the terrorists are alive and well, and someone looks to the "world's largest superpower" to intervene, and we have the reputation of having given up and sacrificed the freedom of the Iraqi people.

Someone throw me a life jacket. I am drowning in a sea of complacent morons that are selling my country out for personal political gain and image and for lack balls to finish the fight. I don't give a shit if Barrack Obama is the first black president, or the 31st black president. I want to hear solutions. Realistic solutions, not political rhetoric and fantasy. I want to hear what he WILL do, not what he WANTS to do.

I am not a Biden Fan, but I think that they have their ticket upside down. I MIGHT be tempted to vote for Joe Biden. I sure as hell would vote for him, before I would vote for either Obama or Hillary Clinton.

[dgriffin]

Here's my theory, Clip. The leadership of both parties are briefed daily about what's going on in the world and the potential threats to the US, as well as scenarios for how we'll deal with them. Grown men and women, intelligent enough to get themselves elected, could not possibly differ on the alternatives as much as they appear to be at odds with each other. While it's true that liberals and conservatives operate with a different set of core values, either will likely make the same choices when it comes to the proper operation and protection of the country. This is one reason why Bush has had some success with the Congress. The Democratic leadership will excoriate the President on an issue all the way down to the congressional vote, and then the Democrats will help pass the bill. All the strife is in the press the press releases and not really in the outcome of the policies. Such is called politics, and it's been going on since (before) Washington became president. US history shows many examples of some really bad shit in national politics, and yet we survived it. Newspapers regularly paid writers to make stuff up about candidates' wives or their sexual preferences. Adams threatened to shut down newspapers and had people arrested for sedition when they attacked his government. The list is almost endless.
I'll admit I'm more of an observer than a partisan. I'd like to see McCain become president. But I'm not going to waste a lot of time worrying over who actually gets elected.

[Clipper]

That theory is great Dave if you can believe it is actually happening that way. I find it hard to believe that Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, or Harry Ried would vote for ANYTHING that was sponsored by a republican period. That is the very thing that I am pointing out. I don't think the good of the country always is being put ahead of the good of the party. An 8 year media campaign of crap against the president is not in the interest of the country, and should have been handled with more tact.

There HAVE been elections where I didn't concern myself if one or the other candidate won. In this case, Obama and his past associations with marxism. I also am frightened by Michelle Obama's arrogance and unamerican attitudes. She has been known to talk like Jeremiah Wright with boobs and long hair and her loyalty to the US is shakey.

I don't give a damn if Obama is black or a muslim. I do give a damn if we are looking at putting a marxist in the White House. I am just simply not comforable with this election. I am truly hoping to see McCain win, and at least give the Dems another 4 years to develop a platform that is a winner, and bring us a candidate besides Hillary and Obama. Hillary will probably be back, unfortunately. I am hoping that Sarah Palin is a ball of fire, serves us well, and makes an impression that endears her to the party and the country, so that she might compete with that carpet bagging lard ass.

Sarah Palin strikes me as a woman that is powerful enough, and smart enough to do the job of president with no problem, as long as she gains a little experience early on as VP, and she has available a competent cabinet to help her transition and to help her make the hard decisions, as all presidents do.

[frankcor]

Aug 30, 2008 22:16:53 GMT -5 wilum47 said:

Why are we even having an election?