Political/Off-Topic sticky chat thread (Philadelphia, Scranton: showing, jobs, houses)

[Jungle George]

Our local news down here has been running a daily 5 minute political question arena with all the candidates from VP on down to get the public educated on each one's stance on issues.

I found this very interesting....Sarah Palin just landed in West Palm Beach 5 minutes ago to do a Republican fundraiser in Boca. No reporters are allowed to talk to her. The fundraiser will have 2 campaign reporters who will later go out to the media to "fill them in"....

Also, the commentator who does these daily interviews had one with Biden last week. He's tried to get Palin to interview & has been turned down 3 times & been told she will not be interviewed...

Sounds kinda fishy to me, like the McCain camp doesn't want her to say or do anything to hurt the campaign (at least down here), & I just heard on the news that Obama has pulled ahead of McCain here in Florida.

[Summering]

Hey Coartist........
Gosh, Oh MY, .......really.........I couldn't ever forget the guy. I can't imagine listening to him for more then 10 minutes no less 20 years. I can't even bear the thought.

Everyone has reasons for who they will choose. I hear some interesting reasons from people, and I can certainly understand. But, the flag is so important to me...having lots of soldiers and military in the family, it becomes such a symbol of country, honor and heritage.

[blip]

Originally Posted by Summering

YouTube - Obama's Patriotism Problem
Well this tape scares me.........the no flag pin, the no flag salute, and the Rev.

Hey Sum,

You have to take an ad like that with immense grains of salt-- it's from a pro-McCain attack group. These negative ads are full of distortions and out-of-context material. It's sad how much negativity there is all around in these campaigns, and even more sad that it's so effective with our brains.

I looked up some of this and came across this article on factcheck, a non-partisan group that calls both sides on their BS:
FactCheck.org: Sliming Obama

I understand that these issues are important to you, just hate seeing such biased material like this circulating. Make what you will of it..

[mbs7]

Originally Posted by Summering

Hey Coartist........
Gosh, Oh MY, .......really.........I couldn't ever forget the guy. I can't imagine listening to him for more then 10 minutes no less 20 years. I can't even bear the thought.

Everyone has reasons for who they will choose. I hear some interesting reasons from people, and I can certainly understand. But, the flag is so important to me...having lots of soldiers and military in the family, it becomes such a symbol of country, honor and heritage.

I fully understand the importance of symbolism and the great meaning the flag has. However, I also noticed that in the YouTube video you referenced in an earlier post, the tape was edited so that they cut away from Obama after he admitted he wasn't wearing a flag lapel pin but **before** he followed up with an explanation for **why** he wasn't wearing the pin. (In the video, you can tell he was drawing a breath to say more, but the tape cuts away at that point.) In general, you have to beware of things that are heavily edited and thrown together to reflect a particular point of view, no matter which side is doing the editing. (As I recall, when questioned about the lack of a flag pin, Obama said he had decided not to wear the pin because he feared it was becoming a substitute for real patriotism: he said that real patriotism meant addressing the issues facing the country, rather than just wearing a pin.) You might disagree with his decision to not wear the pin, but I think it's wrong to conclude that someone who wears a pin is patriotic and someone who does not is not patriotic--if things were that simple, we could all just wear a few different pins on our clothing and anyone who saw the pins would immediately know all about us. In reality, people--and their motivations--are a lot more complicated than that.

Re the flag on Obama's plane, according to FactCheck.org (a site which attempts to keep both candidates honest), the flag was indeed removed from the tail of the plane, but is now displayed on the side of the plane instead--a very relevant fact which the YouTube video fails to mention.

I hope that no matter which candidate we all choose to vote for, we do it not because of personal attacks against the other guy, but because we understand and agree with the positions of the candidate we've chosen to support.

[MermanMike]

Yes, this is no time to vote for someone because you like them, or because you identify with them on a personal level in any way. It disappoints me profoundly that the citizens of our country (and those yet to be born) have just been saddled with an $850 billion debt and neither candidate is "leading" on this at all. I have heard no creative solutions form anyone except Kucinich. What are your ideas Obama and McCain? And if you can't lead now, while you're still trying to convince us to vote for you, why should we believe you'll do any better job once in office?

At least Carney voted against this bill that will create relative indentured servitude for many and possibly be the prelude to the formation of the NAU. Regardless it has passed and neither of the two candidates are saying anything significant about it.

Instead we're talking about pins and old friends.

[MermanMike]

Here are a couple of videos for those of you who appreciate staying informed this way:

Naomi Wolf (author of The Beauty Myth and Give Me Liberty) discussing the increasingly fascist approach we are seeing in our government today: YouTube - Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty. This video is essentially a citizen's action alert.

Watch representative Brad Sherman talk about how the congress was threatened with a 2,000 to 3,000 daily point drop in the market if they did not immediately pass the bailout; he also says that some of the representatives were threatened with martial law (a police state run by the executive branch, constitution becomes temporarily void): YouTube - Rep. Brad Sherman Martial Law

[mbs7]

Having watched last night's debate, there's one point that I feel that Obama probably should have clarified, although, I can understand that he may not have wanted to spend a ton of time on this particular detail. Twice during the debate, McCain criticized Obama for spending $3 million on an "overhead projector" for a planetarium. I think that when most of us hear the words "overhead projector," we think of one of those little projectors used in classrooms and offices, and of course, spending $3 million for that sort of projector would be absurd. In fact, the $3 million was for a complicated new projection system for Chicago's Adler Planetarium. As most people (but maybe not McCain?) know, in a planetarium images of the stars are projected on a very large, overhead dome. These images can be moved around to show what the positions of the stars and planets will be as time passes. Modern planetarium shows also often include many other images--like closeup shots of the planets & other night-sky objects. Many, many children have been inspired by planetarium shows to take astronomy and physics courses and even to go into these fields professionally. McCain either doesn't understand this (!) or was hoping (in an elitist fashion?) that most of his audience didn't understand this. Either way, the "overhead projector" was a very strange (and unnecessary) point for McCain to mention once, let alone twice. If there's one thing this country should be investing in, it's education, particularly science and math education.

[coartist88]

"the dow is falling....the dow is falling"....so much for the bailout...

[blip]

Originally Posted by coartist88

"the dow is falling....the dow is falling"....so much for the bailout...

haha, yeah, can we get a refund of that 700B now?

[Jungle George]

LOL!!! I just got this joke in an email....

There is less than a month until the election, an election that
will decide the next President of the United States. The person
elected will be the president of all Americans, not just the
Democrats or the Republicans. To show our solidarity as Americans,
let's all get together and show each other our support for the
candidate of our choice. It's time that we come together, Democrats
and Republicans alike.

If you support the policies and character of Barack Obama and Joe
Biden please drive with your headlights on during the day.

If you support John McCain and Sarah Palin please drive with your
headlights off at night.

Thank you for your participation.