On Palin:

I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president

On the rat-bastard Republicans:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said: such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian, has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, “What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” The answer’s “No, that’s not America.” Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

On the economic crisis:

I have especially watched, over the last six or seven weeks, as both of them have really taken a final exam with respect to this economic crisis that we are in, and coming out of the conventions.

And I must say that I’ve gotten a good measure of both. In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that we’re having, and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me. I got the sense that he didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had.

On McCain’s campaign:

I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently — or his campaign ads — on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about.

This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign, but Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Then why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robo-calls going on around the country, trying to suggest that because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow Mr. Obama is tainted? What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate.

I agree with Powell on this one.

McCain thinks he can scumbag his way into office. Norm Coleman apparently thinks the same thing. When will they learn? Those scary ads about how scary the other guy is with wolves howling and facts set aside for sensationalistic lies DO NOT WORK.

There is exactly one thing McCain can do to stay in this race: stop talking about Obama and start talking about himself.

I seriously think McCain is losing it. He sounded like Palin last night in the debate, trying to get every issue into every answer. Obama was pretty so-so as well, it seems both those guys are tired.

Currently http://www.electoral-vote.com/ forecasts Obama getting more than twice the electoral votes as McCain.

If you want the next four years looking just like the last eight, then I am not your candidate. But if you want real change – if you want an economy that rewards work, and that works for Main Street and Wall Street; if you want tax relief for the middle class and millions of new jobs; if you want health care you can afford and education that helps your kids compete; then I ask you to knock on some doors, make some calls, talk to your neighbors, and give me your vote on November 4th.

I DON’T want the next 4 years to look like the last 8. Obama represents a much, much better shot at that than John McCain. If people weren’t single issue voters or rabid ideologues, Obama would crush McCain. As it is we have to convince people that the party in charge of the last 8 years should not be in charge of the next 8. That should just be obvious.

A friend sent me this. We’ve all seen that Palin clip by now. I think it is maybe the first time that SNL was able to use a quote word for word and have it be absolutely hilarious. Jack is mad and he should be.

I would forgive Palin for having one bad moment. We all say stupid things. Lord knows micadelic is going to paste some Obama clip to insure proper balance. But with Palin they are ALL bad moments. I haven’t heard her say an intelligent thing yet, outside of her speech at the convention. She’s not quick on her feet, she’s not well-informed, she’s not highly educated and she’s not articulate. She would be a horrible candidate for President. With McCain being 72 years old, she is running for President. And thus the MaCain-Palin ticket is excluded from being a serious choice for your vote.

I know, I’m some big elitist because I want our highest leaders to be highly intelligent.

WTF.

Palin is doing the one thing that a VP candidate should never do — weakening the ticket. The Republican ticket consists of an old man who can’t seem to control his campaign and a woman who clearly doesn’t have a clue. The financial crisis on Wall St. is damning as hell to the incumbent party and I think we are at the beginning of a McCain tailspin to defeat.

It’s clearly not over yet, but the Palin love affair, with the exception of the most brain-washed pro-lifers, is completely over.

1. 9/11
2. Katrina
3. The credit crisis
4. The closely related housing crisis
5. Iraq
6 Afghanistan
7. $4 gas

Now the government just nationalized Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac — another example of deregulation at work.

While the Democrats are deeply flawed in many ways, the Republicans are just completely incompetent. They are unfit to lead this country. They want their cake and eat it too and the math does not work out.

Recall the Republicans held the Congress for 6 of the last 8 years and the Presidency for 20 of the last 28 years.

This has been 8 years of a financially irresponsible administration, a foreign policy based on expensive national building, an economic policy of caving to the rich and sticking it to the middle class and a deregulation policy that has led to Yet Another Expensive Government Bailout.

It makes no sense whatsoever to believe that the Republicans are the answer to the problems that the Republicans created.

We need a president like Clinton again — a really smart moderate with liberal tendencies. We don’t need another President like Bush.

Obama could be a very Clinton-like President. McCain would be another Bush-like President.

At the biggest moment of his political career, he delivered a flat, stupefyingly boring address that drained away all the excitement generated by Sarah Palin’s pit-bull-with-lipstick performance the night before. His central message – that it’s time to clean up Washington – was incoherent. Yes, McCain has some legitimate reformist credentials. But he’s also a 25-year Washington insider who marches in lockstep with George Bush on such issues as the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy.

“It really is an audacious ploy, to tell people that the country’s got to correct the mistakes made by a political party when that’s the very party you represent,” writes Tom Shales in today’s Washington Post. “It’s like staging a revolution against yourself – saying that the Republicans have got to go so the Republicans can move in and clean up the mess.”

The facts are in: McCain supports 90% of the Bush agenda. You call that change? Palin is worse than McCain, favoring teaching creationism in school, being irrationally anti-choice and begging oil companies to come in and defile the last great wilderness in America.

Obama/Biden is the ticket that represents real change. The Republicans have been in power for 20 of the last 28 years. They had their chance.

(That is an embed from CNN, we’ll see if it works.)

It’s funny (but painful) to see CNN actually ask and demand answers to hard questions. The McCain campaign has no answer as to why they have a different standard for Sarah Palin than they do for Barak Obama when it comes to the necessary foreign policy experience to be President.

I’m on Sarah Palin’s side on this one. If she is smart, educated and well-informed I believe she can be the President of the United States. Now I’d like John McCain and all you Republicans to say the same of Barak Obama. Then we can set aside this experience argument once and for all.

Republicans are weird, though. Take, for example, this quote:

Palin brings traditional political strengths—such as gun enthusiasm and a pro-life record—to the ticket.

Gun enthusiasm is a political strength? The Righties don’t seem to realize how unimportant guns and abortion are in the real world. When it comes to issues facing America today a) they are on the wrong side of both those issues and b) they are not anywhere near the top of what people are worried about.

Except, of course, for single-issue voters who care only about those two issues. Luckily, they are a shrinking minority.

But back to Palin, it surprises me that McCain took away his main advantage over Obama, which is this inexperience argument. How can McCain hammer on Obama for inexperience when he would put a small-town mayor second in line to the Presidency? It’s true that Obama can’t very well attack Palin on the inexperience issue (even though he is much more experienced than she using normal measures of experience). But McCain just took away one of his major advantages in the debate.

It also seems like a token female gender play, trying to woo Clinton supporters. I am happy to see a woman in the race and I think we should all judge her independent of her gender. But it seems like a completely political decision, as opposed to a policy decision. This could hurt McCain as well.

I don’t think people vote for, or against, the VP, so it may not make tons of difference. But I personally don’t see McCain in a stronger position after this decision.

The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor’s race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state’s public classrooms.

Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night’s televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, ‘Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.’

She later clarified to say “…she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum.”

She’s pro-life, pro-drilling-in-ANWR and she “invokes God in every decision she makes”.

I’m glad McCain chose a woman and I’m not going to condemn her myself until I learn more. But so far it does not look good.

“What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those thirty years, he was in Washington for twenty-six of them. And in all that time, he did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said. “So when Senator McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, it’s important to remember that he’s been a part of that failure.”

Lest anyone think I am blind to Obama’s failings, I think it is lame that he softening on the strategic oil reserve and off-shore drilling. Neither of those are solutions to our problems.

1. In retrospect, was it a good idea to invade Iraq?
2. Given that we are in Iraq, what is the best course of action?

My answers: 1) Of course not. It represents a complete failure of foreign policy. This is universally agreed upon with the exception of the ultra-wacko-wing of the Right wing. 2) We should transition to an international non-US-led peace-keeping and reconstruction effort and we should completely withdraw troops from Iraq except to the extent that we participate in that effort.

What would McCain say? What would Obama say? What do you say?

‘Cause the thing is — the answers to these questions basically tell you the foreign policy philosophy of the respondent. If you don’t question our actions in Iraq given what we know today, you are a hardcore imperialist hawk. Given what we know today it did not warrant unilateral US military action in Iraq, no question about it. We could have kept playing the diplomacy game just like we do with North Korea and Iran. Only people who want to control the Middle East for strategic control of the oil think Iraq was a good idea.

For #2, given #1, can we admit a mistake? Can America be humble? Can we do the right thing after a mistake?

As for the war on terror, it is separate from the war in Iraq. The sects in Iraq will have to come to some equilibrium. Everyone wants to start putting things back together. The terrorists, to the extent they are there at all, will be demotivated by peace and prosperity. The US military is impeding, not aiding, the transition to self rule. That “the surge is working”, if it is, is proof of this. Peace is proportional to the number of troops on the ground in that way of thinking. It’s untenable. Peace has to be proportional to less troops on the ground if we are to be successful.

McCain is Bush on Iraq. I know he would try his best to solve it his way. We would all hope that President McCain would be a greater leader and inspire greater leadership from his cabinet. But his policy is still basically the same as Bush’s. How can anyone be convinced that the Bush doctrine in Iraq is credible!

No matter how much you disagree with my answers, Bush’s answers are the problem and McCain basically agrees with Bush on Iraq. QED, McCain cannot be trusted with the presidency.

Now it’s inevitable that the extremists in either party will sling mud and pull all sorts of dirty tricks. All they need to do is hide behind empty shell companies and buy advertising. Given the current laws we have, we can’t stop these assholes from playing dirty. Thus we must do our best to ignore it. The candidates on both sides should denounce it emphatically and ask people who are supporting them to not do it.

The fair game, in my opinion, is 2 issues:

1. What qualities does the candidate have as a person and a leader.
2. What are his positions on the issues.

Those are the only two valid discussions we should have.

Now to the issue of guilt by association — it’s a gray one, in a sense, because whom you choose to associate with does lend insight into #1 above. On the other hand, we should never take some other person’s views as a proxy for the candidate’s views. The candidates can speak for themselves! So if some advisor to Obama is a racist, for example, we cannot infer something about Obama’s views from this. If McCain has a supporter who is an ardent theocrat, we can’t assume that McCain shares that view.

If McCain, though, goes to Bob Jones University (or Obama goes to, say, The Sierra Club) and proclaims what a great institution it is, then he is inviting assumptions.

Above all I’m praying to God (and that from an atheist) that the candidates themselves take the moral high ground. Both campaigns will be looking for every advantage, but being above the pissing match should be an advantage. Let’s pick the candidate who stays on the issues, has intelligent views on the issues and who avoids the slash and burn bullshit of “Swift Boat” politics.

I have a challenge for conservatives and middle of the road Republicans — give Obama a chance. Just give the man a chance. John “Bush 3.0″ McCain represents nothing more than a minor tweaking to Bush’s policies on Iraq and the economy. When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. I know the far right could never vote for Obama but many of you that voted for Bush and were disappointed owe it to yourselves to listen to Obama and give him a chance to earn your support. I don’t agree with Obama on every issue. It’s not required that you agree with a candidate on every issue. Separate the person from the political party and give each candidate a fair shot at your support.

I respect John McCain. I really hope he doesn’t give me reason to withdraw that respect during this campaign. I agree with McCain to some extent on several issues, I respectfully disagree on some issues and I think he is dead wrong on some issues. I will listen to him during this campaign and I hope he surprises me. The Dept. of Opinion Manipulation in the Republican party is going to try to make him say all sorts of stuff*. I hope he doesn’t say it.

* I was dismayed that McCain went to the NRA with same old tired and incorrect bullshit about how Democrats want to take your guns away. I think Obama should go talk to the NRA and say “how long are you gonna let Republicans buy your vote by uttering the one sentence they know you want them to say? It’s fucking naive to think that any single issue is more important than the management of the United States of America as a whole. Your interests are much broader and more vital than the single issue of gun legislation. No one is trying to take away the guns of law-abiding citizens. Relax and let’s move on to the important stuff.”