i seriously think more people are leaning towards mccain as they see him as better able to defend america from the soon to be invading commies.
-
Welcome, guest!
Why not take a moment to register an account?
If you already have an account, remember to Log In!
US Presidential Elections 2008 (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Gambra
- Start date
- Replies 2K
- Views 164K
- Watchers 15
i seriously think more people are leaning towards mccain as they see him as better able to defend america from the soon to be invading commies.
Some of John Kerry's speech to the Democratic Convention.
I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let's compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.
Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it.
Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.
Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it.
Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/28/dnc/
Glenn Greenwald
Thursday Aug. 28, 2008 10:35 EDT
What's missing from the Democratic convention?
(updated below)
As one would expect them to be, virtually all of the prime-time speeches at the Democratic Convention have been -- from a rhetorical perspective -- very well-crafted and well-delivered. Bill Clinton's speech, in particular, deserves all the plaudits it is receiving, both in terms of content and delivery. But as competent, well-executed and even dramatic as the Convention has been, at least as striking is what has been missing.
First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.
Other than a fleeting reference to such matters by John Kerry in a (surprisingly effective) speech which most networks did not broadcast, one would not know, listening to the Democratic Convention, that any of those things have happened. Even our unprovoked and indescribably destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as part of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are that gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance. Those are obviously very significant problems, but they are garden-variety political issues which don't begin to capture the extremism that has predominated in this country under GOP rule, and don't remotely approach conveying the crises on numerous fronts the country faces.
It's certainly true that the purpose of these Conventions are principally political, and it thus makes perfect sense that Democrats are choosing to focus on the issues they think will help win them the election. The desire that they do anything else is both unrealistic and misguided. During the television show known as the Convention, they should devote the bulk of their efforts to the concerns most voters have, and all polls demonstrate that those concerns are chiefly grounded in economic insecurity.
But even while acknowledging those realities, the Democrats, as a result of these omissions, are largely guilty of doing what they typically do: appearing listless and amorphous by standing for nothing other than safe and uncontroversial platitudes. The loudest reaction Bill Clinton provoked last night was when he proclaimed, in passing and without elaboration, that Obama is "ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." So much of the case against the Bush administration -- much of what has fueled high-level Democratic energy to remove the GOP from power -- has been driven by the GOP's radical transformation of the core political values of the country, trampling on the Constitution and overtly embracing policies that are completely anathema to how Americans perceived of their country.
Republicans often use their Conventions as an opportunity not just to feed voters what they want to hear but to induce them to see the world the way the GOP wants them to see it. Even if it's true that the voters who Democrats are targeting care little about these issues -- and that's a precarious assumption -- the Convention is still an opportunity to persuade them why they should care and, at the very least, to fuel Democratic resolve to win and to demonstrate to non-core-Democratic voters that there are political values that Democrats actually "stand for." They've done very little of that. The virtual nonexistence of these issues in the key Convention speeches, the failure even to take a stand on virtually any of it, seems to be as much of a political failure as it is a failure on the merits.
More politically damaging still is the absence of any truly stinging attacks on John McCain. Even Joe Biden's speech -- billed as the "attack dog" event -- almost completely avoided any criticisms of McCain the Person, who will emerge from the four days here as a Wonderful, Honorable, Courageous Man -- a friend to Democrats and Republicans alike -- who just happens to be wrong on some issues. The Republicans will spend the next four days mercilessly ripping Barack Obama's character to shreds, as they did to John Kerry in 2004. Just recall a few of the highly effective and deeply personal assaults on Kerry from the featured GOP speakers in 2004:
Glenn Greenwald
Thursday Aug. 28, 2008 10:35 EDT
What's missing from the Democratic convention?
(updated below)
As one would expect them to be, virtually all of the prime-time speeches at the Democratic Convention have been -- from a rhetorical perspective -- very well-crafted and well-delivered. Bill Clinton's speech, in particular, deserves all the plaudits it is receiving, both in terms of content and delivery. But as competent, well-executed and even dramatic as the Convention has been, at least as striking is what has been missing.
First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.
Other than a fleeting reference to such matters by John Kerry in a (surprisingly effective) speech which most networks did not broadcast, one would not know, listening to the Democratic Convention, that any of those things have happened. Even our unprovoked and indescribably destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as part of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are that gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance. Those are obviously very significant problems, but they are garden-variety political issues which don't begin to capture the extremism that has predominated in this country under GOP rule, and don't remotely approach conveying the crises on numerous fronts the country faces.
It's certainly true that the purpose of these Conventions are principally political, and it thus makes perfect sense that Democrats are choosing to focus on the issues they think will help win them the election. The desire that they do anything else is both unrealistic and misguided. During the television show known as the Convention, they should devote the bulk of their efforts to the concerns most voters have, and all polls demonstrate that those concerns are chiefly grounded in economic insecurity.
But even while acknowledging those realities, the Democrats, as a result of these omissions, are largely guilty of doing what they typically do: appearing listless and amorphous by standing for nothing other than safe and uncontroversial platitudes. The loudest reaction Bill Clinton provoked last night was when he proclaimed, in passing and without elaboration, that Obama is "ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." So much of the case against the Bush administration -- much of what has fueled high-level Democratic energy to remove the GOP from power -- has been driven by the GOP's radical transformation of the core political values of the country, trampling on the Constitution and overtly embracing policies that are completely anathema to how Americans perceived of their country.
Republicans often use their Conventions as an opportunity not just to feed voters what they want to hear but to induce them to see the world the way the GOP wants them to see it. Even if it's true that the voters who Democrats are targeting care little about these issues -- and that's a precarious assumption -- the Convention is still an opportunity to persuade them why they should care and, at the very least, to fuel Democratic resolve to win and to demonstrate to non-core-Democratic voters that there are political values that Democrats actually "stand for." They've done very little of that. The virtual nonexistence of these issues in the key Convention speeches, the failure even to take a stand on virtually any of it, seems to be as much of a political failure as it is a failure on the merits.
More politically damaging still is the absence of any truly stinging attacks on John McCain. Even Joe Biden's speech -- billed as the "attack dog" event -- almost completely avoided any criticisms of McCain the Person, who will emerge from the four days here as a Wonderful, Honorable, Courageous Man -- a friend to Democrats and Republicans alike -- who just happens to be wrong on some issues. The Republicans will spend the next four days mercilessly ripping Barack Obama's character to shreds, as they did to John Kerry in 2004. Just recall a few of the highly effective and deeply personal assaults on Kerry from the featured GOP speakers in 2004:
It's almost as if they're actually happy enough with the status quo and have no intention of doing anything about any of these things.
hmmm... yeah, to an extent.
But, the fact of the matter is the country is at war. Twice.
Its allegedly fighting off trrrsts at every turn.
The Dems have a notoriously wishy washy reputation, (meaning they actually think about things like starting wars for more than 5 minutes). If they start going on about how extreme the administration are, they are going to make themselves appear not extreme.
That is far away from the status quo.
That is extreme.
And, since people do not want to hear that they are in for loads of changes, since that scares people, (not in a useful trrrsts are going to get you way) people might be inclined to say, well, if things are very extreme lately, maybe that's the way they should be, maybe that's why we are not being blowed up.
Meh. I didn't exactly phrase that very well.
Basically, you bang on about things that are going to directly appeal to people's a) greed and b) feel good about themselvesness.
Economy and not being quite as huge cunts as before.
I think that because the level of debate has occasionally stooped as low as questioning how much Obama loves his country - a completely non-quantifiable abstract basket of nonsensical tomfoolery - the Democrats seem to be floundering ideologically. They dont seem to be able to stick the political knife into the gaping wound right before their eyes because they are terrified of slipping into stereotype which is one of the reasons the stereotype was propagated in the first place.
You can see the bind they are in.
Personally I think 9/11 is far enough in the past that it now possible to tell the truth about the war but you can see how they would be more comfortable with the economy.
I find it difficult to believe that this could be missed by McCain's camp but I also find it difficult to believe that it's deliberate. At 0.15 the letters C & E are blocked out to leave the word HANG behind Obama's head.
jane
Well-Known Member
Anyone else staying up to watch this speech? I've missed so much of the coverage, only catching little bits here and there, so I at least want to see the grand finale, like.
the strange guy
I LOVE ALLAH YOUSE
I am.
I've been watching his old speeches and have become suitably moved.
G'WAN KENYA!
I've been watching his old speeches and have become suitably moved.
G'WAN KENYA!
jane
Well-Known Member
Here's Al Gore! OMG!
This AND the Rose of Tralee in the same week -- madness!
Shots of celebrities in the crowd are a little gratuitous. Meh to that.
Al Gore. Fuckin' hell. He's like, "Guess what guys -- I woulda done it different." Gulp.
I'm gonna cry for about a million reasons.
This AND the Rose of Tralee in the same week -- madness!
Shots of celebrities in the crowd are a little gratuitous. Meh to that.
Al Gore. Fuckin' hell. He's like, "Guess what guys -- I woulda done it different." Gulp.
I'm gonna cry for about a million reasons.
watchin his speech now. how many times did he say "thank you" at the start? he's doin well tho.
"maccain agreed with bush 90% of the time. i'm not prepared for 10% change."
nice.
nice.
live blog on guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/oli...s2008.barackobama?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
obama's family wearing republican red. wassup wit dat?
michelle obama, wouldja?
god i'm drunk.
god i'm drunk.
"And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East."
hmm.
hmm.
david palmer opened up the alaskan oil fields for that very reason
jane
Well-Known Member
That was so amazing, but I tried so hard to stay up late that by the time he came on, I was zombified and still am. I'm gonna have to re-watch it anyway, but I'm glad I did it.
The tiredness is making me a little bit more emotional than I might otherwise be, but fuck it, this is absolutely huge.
I'm so psyched I'm gonna be in the US for the election.
The tiredness is making me a little bit more emotional than I might otherwise be, but fuck it, this is absolutely huge.
I'm so psyched I'm gonna be in the US for the election.
Users who are viewing this thread
Activity
So far there's no one here
21 Day Calendar
Similar threads
Support thumped.com
Support thumped.com and upgrade your account
Upgrade your account now to disable all ads...
Upgrade nowLatest threads
-
-
[Nov 1, 2024] Carl Stone (Unseen Worlds) + Katie Geraldine O'Neill (Bello Bar)- Started by Vinnie
- Replies: 0
-
-
-
