[Robert J. Clawson]

Originally posted by Jerry Glenn Hartwig:

I don't think any of them are scary people. I think they are people essentially trying to do the same job - albeit with somewhat different agendas and constituents.

The major difference, Jerry, is that McCain will drive the Supreme Court further right. It's already so politicized that it's made it tougher for African Americans to vote, which I find disgraceful. Republicans need to disenfranchise voters in order to win. That ain't democratic.

I doubt any of them particularly want to be in a war.

Surely you're joking? Imagine how much money has been made on the current two wars.

Despite who we may blame for starting it, it's a global conflict and the global parties will determine the agenda.

Iraq's not a blame game: WE STARTED IT! It was our first pre-emptive strike. We were bombing that country for several years before we sent in armor and troops.

Were I still in the military, though, I'd rather have McCain as the Commander-in-Chief. I think he has the POV of the grunt in the field and knows how they feel. Obama hasn't been in that situation.

First, Jerry, "Commander-in-Chief" is a linguistic ploy designed to boost the concept of the untouchable president, to make us feel more like a police state than a democracy.
Think about it: where did Bush and Cheney deliver most of their speeches?

It's only one part of the President's job. To be good at it, he needs to listen to his military commanders. Bush didn't. And McCain proudly calls himself a maverick. (He got shot down because he broke formation.)

As for understanding grunts (if that's necessary), McCain was a legacy at Annapolis (just as Bush was at Yale), being the scion of two navy admirals. He flew as a wing commander. That's not a grunt's job. Grunts have always been below his pay grade.

Obama, on the other hand, has worked the streets, where grunts hang out. The Republicans on one hand try to paint him as an elitist (Harvard Law, et al), and on the other as an insignificant community organizer (read grunt).

Economically, every person's going to vote for the person they think will best help their personal situation.

Every person? How cynical. Are there no idealists among us?

There's no one solution that's best for everyone.

Sorry, Jerry, but I have to say it: No shit, Sherlock.

Historically, my investments have done best in a Republican controlled government.

Historically, every economic indicator EXCEPT the stock market rises during Democratic administrations. Typically, they invest in jobs and production and our gross national product increases. You can look it up.

Nothing should fall under black and white rules.

You might wind up surprised by the final demographics of this election. I highly recommend reading Andrew Hacker's piece in the current New York Review of Books that details the ongoing process of disenfranchisement of black voters.

No one here can predict what either McCain or Obama will actually do...

I'll predict that McCain will appoint more right wing judges to the Supreme and the Federal Courts, that his choices will be as political as his choice of a running mate.

I feel McCain is more capable

The pitch is that he's a man of DEEDS. What do we know about his POW deeds other than what he tells us? Has he told us WHY he got shot down? Why he crashed other planes?
Many pilots don't DO that. Planes are expensive. So's training pilots.

So what else has he done? Helped Keating? For nearly 30 years he's been a senator wanting to be president. Did he DO it in 2000?

He's known for DOING McCain/Feingold, but he speaks little of it because he's using all the loopholes left in the law.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the pitch.

You know what he could DO for me? He could release his vice presidential nominee to hold a press conference. That would be a good deed.

Shameless

[Robert J. Clawson]

She may take some questions from local news entities in Alaska, but until she's ready -- and until she's comfortable -- which might not be for a long while -- the media will have to wait.

Bets on when Lockjaw's ready: Day 22? Day 41?

Whoever nails this should win a prize. How about a ticket to cram into her inaugural ball?

I think her first appearance before the press should take the form of a hearing, to which she may bring a covey of lawyers, one to advise her on which questions to take the Fifth.

I really find this ludicrous. Worse than Spiro Agnew. How can a 72-year-old guy who wears a cardigan to Florida, whose immediate ancestors died earlier than 72, and who ain't so healthy himself (melanoma's no joke), select as a running mate a person who needs time to become comfortable in front of reporters, as if she hadn't courted them throughout her career?

At the RNC, they should have played Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On?

Shameless

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

The Heart-McCain incident isn't the only example of music-related controversy on this year's presidential campaign trail. Click here to read Chris Willman's report about Barack Obama's eyebrow-raising use of Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America" after his nomination-acceptance address last week.

Why didn't I read any screaming about this?

Oh yeah - It was Obama. That's OK then. Nevermind...

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Originally posted by Jerry Glenn Hartwig:

Why didn't I read any screaming about this?

Oh yeah - It was Obama. That's OK then. Nevermind...

Jerry,

You know, it might help if you actually read the article....
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008...n-america.html

Liner notes for those disinclined to reading long articles: The songwriter is a Democrat who's happy that the song was finally being used by a Democrat.

You can read more if you're inclined.

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the pitch.

Wasn't a pitch - I surely don't expect anyone to be influenced by my opinions. Especially not in a hotbed of hard-corps liberals *grin*. I was responding to Laura after she offered some of her opinions. that she might see my POV also. We were being "civilized" *wink*.

In my job, I'm all for right-wing justices. I feel people should be liberal but governments should be conservative. My reasons have nothing to do with racial issues that you mentioned - even if I bought your pitch.

Overall, you're blaming one group of people for problems that have existed throughout various leaderships. You can argue economic indicators all you wish, I'm looking at the track record of my investments. Rather than take out a "low interest student" loan at 8 - 8.5% for Ben's college, I watched adjustable 2nd mortgage rates drop to 4.5%. Works well for me - with an average $40K balance for four years that will save me about $8000. Of course, I don't expect to maintain those low rates should Obabma get into office.

You're not interested in my financial history *grin*, but I'll use that as my 'economic indicator' rather than your economic indicators, which is what most people will do.

Idealists? We all have ideals. I admire people who are idealists and willing to struggle and sacrifice for those ideals. I just don't believe there are very many of them, and I distrust people who claim to be such. Generally they're looking out for their own interests while claiming to be looking out for others.

If they have to announce the fact they're an 'idealist', that means we can't see it for ourselves, which means it probably ain't true.

"Beware the man who stands on the street corner praising God in a loud voice..." Or praising himself.

You have a different definition of the term grunt than I do, and obviously less respect for them. Hanging out on the streets? Insignificant community organizer?

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Worse than Spiro Agnew

She is Spiro Agnew on steroids wearing a dress and lipstick.

This election parallels 1968 in uncanny ways. Agnew was Nixon's desperate choice, an unknown attack dog plucked from Maryland. The black voters were disenfranchised then, just as they are now. Now it is called "voter caging". Most Republicns are not interested in democracy or truth. Though I'm sure many Republican voters are just uninformed, not necessarily malicious.

Sadly, I predict that McCain will win this election and probably die in office and we will have President Palin (she-wolf-in-chief) as we are surrounded on all sides by the angry nations of the world who are sick, sick, sick of American Imperialism and thoroughly fed up with our destructive military industrial complex. We have loved money so much that we are the leading arms dealer! We have sold arms to our enemies (beginning as early as Reagan who was never held accountable for the Iran-Contra scandel). These Republicans have all been traitors, brute beasts who lust for and abuse power. The future looks very bleak. There is a lot more to worry about than your 401K or how to get a good interest rate on college loans! But many of the people do not properly discern the times. If we have to be taken down this way, then so be it. God will judge.

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Ummm... Anne - you're going OTT, again.

But at least you didn't bring up the Book of Revelation and the number of the beast *grin*.

There is a lot more to worry about than your 401K or how to get a good interest rate on college loans!

That's exactly what most people are worried about Anne: their jobs, food, the cost of educating the kids, medical bills, the cost of gasoline...

These are the things the average American is struggling to come to terms with.



[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited September 07, 2008).]

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

You know, it might help if you actually read the article....

That's not the article I read. There are a plethora of articles, and Entertainment Weekly is not mag I peruse for political insight. *grin*

Apple’s ad, directed by famed motion picture director Ridley Scott, is legendary in the annals of television advertising. Aired during the SuperBowl in 1984, the ad set in motion Apple’s campaign for the then-new Macintosh computer. It featured a dystopian future world, where legions of drone workers sit slack-jawed watching a large video screen as a young woman dressed in bright colors and a Macintosh t-shirt runs up a center corridor, throwing a hammer into the screen.

Apple’s ad, directed by famed motion picture director Ridley Scott, is legendary in the annals of television advertising. Aired during the SuperBowl in 1984, the ad set in motion Apple’s campaign for the then-new Macintosh computer. It featured a dystopian future world, where legions of drone workers sit slack-jawed watching a large video screen as a young woman dressed in bright colors and a Macintosh t-shirt runs up a center corridor, throwing a hammer into the screen.

The political ad for Obama’s campaign used the same footage, replacing the video image of a bespectacled bureaucrat with that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama’s ostensible principal rival for the Democratic party nomination in 2008. The ad, which has been uploaded to the popular video site YouTube and has made the rounds on political television shows and elsewhere since, ends with a play on the original Apple ad: “On Jan. 14, the Democratic primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

The point is not whether a songwriter was happy at how a song was used, but that some people will grab rumor and wave it about as a sword of truth without bothering to check the facts. Yet, when the same rumor (copyright violation) emerges about their own candidate, those people who cried "Foul! Foul!" are strangely silent...

Both candidates and their supporters are human. Mistakes don't make "beasts" "running roughshod" over anything.

Again, I merely ask that people not be hypocrites. It is apparently too much to ask.



[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited September 07, 2008).]

[Donna English]

Jerry, when you mentioned people voting with their own best interest in mind, you hit a hot button for me. My number one gripe, fear is that many American voters will continue to do just that. Their vision is so narrowly focused on their own lives and pet causes that they can’t/won’t see the big picture. The candidates, who probably can see the big picture a bit better, are practically forced through the nature of our televised election process, to shift their focus from the big complex issues to the small and often insignificant issues in order to get peoples’ interest or votes. For instance, (on both sides) a candidate’s public stand on abortion, same-sex marriage or school prayer will break or seal the deal for way too many voters--even though those things have little or no effect on my or my children’s or grandchildren’s lives. My neighbors personal private abortion won’t effect/affect me in the same way her loss of a job, loss of her home, or loss of a son to war would. Some folks talk a big game, but on voting day the big complex issues that can genuinely effect our country’s future are ignored.

I fear the legislation of values and morality for lack of a better way to say it. I want to know that the person in office has a wider, longer, deeper field of vision than me and my neighbor. They need to have concrete goals, but a flexible plan to achieve them with the help of a cabinet and support team made up of the wisest, most broad and far thinking people in the country.

I know we aren’t children (well actually a lot of people are like kids I guess) but I want them to be like a truly great parent who does what is best for their children (and that doesn’t mean giving them everything they want) I want them to set an example through hard work, wisdom, kindness, tolerance, rules, limitations and consequences among many things. I want them to have high expectations for me. I want them to keep nutritious food on the table, but put a limit on the desserts. I want them to make a clean, safe and healthy environment for me to live in. I want them to make me make my bed and do my homework, take out the trash and do the dishes. I want them to let me experience negative consequences when I don’t. I want them to take me to my soccer games or piano lessons, but I don’t want my day, or their day, so full and structured that family time suffers in the shuffling back and forth, or that I fail to learn how to manage my own life. I want them to make sure that I show respect to others. I want them to monitor the kids I’m allowed to play with. I want them to guide and help me in dealing with whiners and liars and bullies. I want them to make sure I’m fully educated culturally, intellectually, and socially. I want to have opportunities and choices that allow me to fail or succeed alongside my peers. I want them to allow me to argue my point, if I can do it in a grown-up way, using intellect not the world revolves around me tantrums of a toddler.

okay, I'm done, that felt good! Apologies to those who feel like throwing up after they read this.
Donna

[Terese Coe]

Palin church promotes converting gays:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=sec-religion